Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter – September 26, 2022
A British doctor, Aseem Malhotra, has just had a two part, peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance. The aim of the paper was to gain a better understanding of the true benefits and potential harms of the mRNA Covid vaccines. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 in full by clicking on the links.
Dr Malhotra. a cardiologist by trade, was originally a strong Covid vaccine advocate. He volunteered in a vaccine centre, was one of the first people to be double dosed and appeared on morning television to encourage everyone to get vaccinated. He was surprised and concerned at vaccine-hesitant patients when they asked about ‘anti-vax’ propaganda.
That was until, sadly, in July 2021, his father suffered a cardiac arrest and died. His father had been the former deputy chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) and honorary vice president. The 73 year old gentleman was extremely fit and active and heart scans from a few years earlier had revealed no significant problems. Dr Malhotra was shocked to read his father’s post mortem which found that two out of three of his major arteries had severe blockages.
Aseem couldn’t explain the post mortem findings and became more concerned in November 2021 after reading a peer-reviewed abstract in Circulation Journal. In the study, the mRNA vaccine was associated with significantly increasing the risk of a coronary event within five years from 11% pre-mRNA vaccine to 25% 2-10 weeks post vaccine.
He began to question his father’s death and wondered whether the Pfizer vaccination he had received six months earlier could have contributed in some way. After six months of critically appraising the data and speaking to eminent scientists, he reluctantly concluded that, contrary to his own dogmatic beliefs, Pfizer’s vaccine was far from being as safe and effective as first thought.
Questioning the data
During his reassessment of the Covid vaccine he recalled a conversation with a cardiologist colleague who decided against vaccination due to his low personal risk and concerns about short and long term harms. His colleague was particularly alarmed that, during the trials, there had been four cardiac arrests in the vaccine group but only one in the placebo group.
Next, Dr Malhotra assessed the 95% efficacy claims. Whilst this relative risk reduction made good sales material, the true value of a treatment can only be established by looking at the absolute individual risk reduction.
This turned out to be 0.84%, in other words, in a trial of 20,000 people (10,000 in the vaccine group and 10,000 in the placebo group), 4 people in the vaccine group and 88 people in the unvaccinated group would end up testing positive for Covid. Another way to express that is that you would need to vaccinate 119 people to prevent one positive test.
This absolute risk reduction figure (0.84%) is extremely important for doctors and patients to know but how many of them were told this when they received the shot? Transparent communication of risk and benefit of any intervention is a core principle of ethical evidence-based medical practice and informed consent.
The trials did not show statistically significant reductions in serious illness or mortality and in fact there were actually more deaths (19) in the vaccine group versus the placebo group (17). Furthermore, there were only nine severe cases of Covid in the placebo group, representing 0.04%. And this was in regions specifically chosen for their high prevalence of infection.
To find protection against death, then the 119 figure above (people vaccinated to prevent one positive test) must be multiplied by the number of infections that would lead to a single death in each age group. So, Dr Malhotra calculates his rate of death from Delta was 1 in 3,000 meaning the absolute risk reduction of the vaccine protecting him from death is (1 x 3000 x 119) 1 in 357,000.
As also pointed out in a recent editorial by John Ioannidis in BMJ evidence-based medicine the inferred efficacy of the vaccine from non-randomised studies may be ‘spurious’, with bias being generated by ‘pre-existing immunity, vaccination misclassification, exposure differences, testing, disease risk factor confounding, hospital admission decision, treatment use differences and death attribution’.
What should be part of the shared decision-making informed consent discussion when any member of the public is considering taking the shot is something along these lines: Depending on your age, several hundreds or thousands of people like you would need to be injected in order to prevent one person from dying from the Delta variant of COVID-19 over a period of around three months. For the over 80s, this figure is at least 230, but it rises the younger you are, reaching at least 2600 for people in their 50s, 10 000 for those in their 40s, and 93 000 for those between 18 and 29 years. For omicron, which has been shown to be 30% – 50% less lethal, meaning significantly more people would need to be vaccinated to prevent one death. How long any protection actually lasts for is unknown; boosters are currently being recommended after as short a period as 4 months in some countries.
But how many people have had a conversation that even approaches an explanation similar to that? This is before we get into the known, unknown and as yet to be fully quantified harms.
Harms
Concerns have been raised about trial participants being limited as to the type of adverse event they could report. Furthermore, hospitalised participants were withdrawn from the trial and not reported in the final results. To make matters even worse, after two months, the FDA allowed the placebo group to be unblinded and get vaccinated, completely removing any control group with which to assess adverse events.
Dr Malhotra sticks with his field of expertise, cardiology and discusses one of the most common vaccine-induced harms, myocarditis. Whilst authorities say that myocarditis is more likely after infection than vaccination, other studies have shown the opposite. There is no evidence of myocarditis until vaccination began in 2021, a full year after millions of youngsters naturally caught Covid.
Although vaccine-induced myocarditis is not often fatal in young adults, MRI scans reveal that, of the ones admitted to hospital, approximately 80% have some degree of myocardial damage. It is like suffering a small heart attack and sustaining some – likely permanent – heart muscle injury. It is uncertain how this will play out in the longer-term, including if, and to what degree, it will increase the risk of poor quality of life or potentially more serious heart rhythm disturbances in the future.
The UK’s Yellow Card reporting system is addressed and determined to be far from adequate to cope with a rapid roll out of a brand new product. 9.7 million doses were administered before the clotting problems with AstraZeneca were detected. In Denmark, they detected the problem after only 150,000 doses.
Since the beginning of the vaccine roll-out, there have been almost 500,000 adverse events reported involving over 150,000 individuals. This shows around 1 in 120 suffer an adverse event that is beyond mild. This number is unprecedented and represents the same as the total number of reports received in the first 40 years of the Yellow Card system being active. The MMR vaccine reports around 1 in 4000 suffer an adverse event.
The paper also looks at VAERS in the US which has recorded over 24,000 deaths, 29% occurring within 48 hours of vaccination and 50% within two weeks. Before 2020 there were approximately 300 deaths recorded per year.
Of most concern is that these reporting systems are actually likely to be underestimates with one paper suggesting that only 1% of serious adverse events are ever reported to the FDA. Another analysis estimated that only 10% of serious adverse events were ever reported on the Yellow Card system.
Moreover, these reporting systems will generally miss medium and long term harms as it is more difficult to attribute to vaccination.
According to ambulance service data, in 2021 there were an extra 20,000 (20% increase) cardiac arrest calls compared to 2019 and 14,000 more than 2020 in the UK.
Similarly, a recent paper in Nature revealed a 25% increase in both acute coronary syndrome and cardiac arrest calls in the 16- to 39-year-old age groups significantly associated with administration with the first and second doses of the mRNA vaccines but no association with COVID-19 infection.
More harm than good?
One has to raise the possibility that the excess cardiac arrests and continuing pressures on hospitals in 2021/2022 from non-COVID-19 admissions may all be signalling a non-COVID-19 health crisis exacerbated by interventions, which would of course also include lockdowns and/or vaccines.
Given these observations, and reappraisal of the randomised controlled trial data of mRNA products, it seems difficult to argue that the vaccine roll-out has been net beneficial in all age groups.
Dr Malhotra concludes the first part by saying that whilst risks from vaccination remain constant, the benefits reduce over time as the virus become less virulent and variants are not targeted by outdated products. He recommends a pause and reappraisal of vaccination policies.
Pandemic of misinformation
In part 2, Dr Malhotra explores the pandemic of misinformed doctors and a misinformed and unwittingly harmed public.
According to one senior doctor in regular contact with England’s Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, most of his colleagues in leadership positions influencing health policy may not have been critically appraising the evidence and were instead relying on media stories on COVID-19 and the vaccines.
He says there are four key drivers and seven sins that are the root of medical misinformation:
There are six components essential to informed decision making: (1) description of the nature of the decision; (2) discussion of alternatives; (3) discussion of risks and benefits (in absolute terms); (4) discussion of related uncertainties; (5) assessment of the patient’s understanding; and (6) elicitation of the patient’s preference.
If the administration of the vaccine did not adhere to these principles (which is likely widespread, consistent with historical evidence), then it is also a significant breach of General Medical Council duties of a doctor to ‘give patients the information they want or need in a way that they can understand’.
The paper continues to look at institutional corruption and erosion of public trust, the failure of regulation, biased reporting in the media and censorship of legitimate scientific debate.
A hard hitting, yet sensible paper which should be read by everyone, especially doctors who lost their critical thinking skills over the last few years. Dr Malhotra is a regular on TV so will this be reported in the MSM… I doubt it.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. – The Defender – September 26, 2022
A federal court in Texas is giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) until Friday to release the first batch of data on adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination collected by the agency via its V-safe app.
The order by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas-Austin Division follows a series of lawsuits filed by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), an Austin-based nonprofit “focused on the scientific integrity of vaccines and [the] pharmaceutical industry.”
According to ICAN, the court order requires the CDC to release the first batch of 19 months’ worth of data collected from millions of participants who reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination via the V-safe app between Dec. 14, 2020, and July 31, 2022.
In all, the CDC will be required to release more than 137 million health V-safe entries.
The CDC describes V-safe as a smartphone app that “provides personalized and confidential check-ins via text messages and web surveys,” enabling users to “quickly and easily share with CDC how you, or your dependent, feel after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.”
According to the CDC, “This information helps CDC monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in near real time,” adding that the purpose of the V-safe app “is to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines when given outside a clinical trial setting.”
Public will ‘see for themselves the actual self-reported data’
The data collected via the V-safe app is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” with only the CDC having “access to the individualized survey data.”
Oracle’s access is limited to “aggregate deidentified data for reporting.”
This distinction led to the main thrust of ICAN’s lawsuits against the CDC. ICAN argued that “based on the CDC’s own documentation, the data submitted to V-safe is already available in deidentified form (with no personal health information) and could be immediately released to the public.”
ICAN submitted three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the deidentified data collected via V-safe, “in the same form in which Oracle can currently access it.”
However, ICAN said, the CDC “had apparently not read its own documentation regarding V-safe” and refused ICAN’s requests, claiming “information in the app is not deidentified.”
Even when ICAN clarified its FOIA request to specifically ask for “all data deidentified after [emphasis original] it was submitted to the V-safe app,” the CDC “administratively closed this request stating it was duplicative of the original request.”
ICAN responded by suing the CDC in federal court in December 2021, via its attorney, Aaron Siri, for the release of this data.
Siri also represented Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, the organization that sued the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) for the release of data from the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials — a lawsuit that was successful.
Following a new FOIA request by ICAN in April 2022, for the release of “all data submitted to V-safe since January 1, 2020,” and the CDC’s subsequent refusal, ICAN filed a second lawsuit in May 2022.
ICAN said these successive refusals on the part of the CDC came “despite the CDC’s ability to immediately release this deidentified data pursuant to its own protocol,” based on the claim that “the information in the app is not deidentified.”
ICAN commented on the significance of the ruling, stating in a press release:
“This is a huge win for ICAN and for the American public, who will finally start to be able to see for themselves the actual self-reported nationwide data about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, called the ruling an “absolutely huge development.”
Hooker told The Defender :
“This is an absolutely huge development and I’ll be waiting with anticipation as the V-safe data are released.
“With CDC’s reluctance to release this information, one can only imagine that it will not reflect well on the whole COVID-19 vaccination program, especially given irregularities seen with VAERS [the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reporting and the shifting narrative of the CDC regarding COVID-19 guidance.”
Hooker has faced similar obstacles to those encountered by ICAN when requesting data from the CDC. He said he “submitted a FOIA for the V-safe pregnancy data early in the process and was denied.”
“I’m glad that Aaron [Siri] and ICAN stuck with it,” Hooker said. “I can only think of the lives that could have been spared if the CDC would have been forthcoming with this information in the first place.”
The data collected via the V-safe app is distinct from the data submitted to VAERS. ICAN described the distinction:
“The FDA and CDC have admitted their existing safety monitoring program, VAERS, was incapable of determining causation and therefore unreliable.
“The CDC has therefore deployed a new safety monitoring system for COVID-19 vaccines called V-safe, and now claims that these ‘vaccines are being administered under the most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history.’”
Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Der Spiegel says CIA warned German government of potential sabotage weeks ago
By Michael Shellenberger | September 27, 2022
A former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.
Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Poland’s Secretary of State, Stanisław Żaryn, denounced Sikorki’s claim on Twitter as “Russian #propaganda,” calling it “a smear campaign against Poland, the US, and Ukraine, accusing the West of aggression against #NS1 and #NS2. Authenticating the Russian lies at this particular moment jeopardizes the security of Poland. What an act of gross irresponsibility!”
But it’s not out of the realm of the possible that the U.S. is indeed behind the attack. President Joe Biden promised on February 7 to prevent Nord Stream 2 from becoming operational if Russia invaded Ukraine. “If Russia invades,” said Biden, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since… the project is in Germany’s control?”
Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”
And:
Dr. David McGrogan – The Daily Sceptic – September 27, 2022
It is encouraging that Tory MPs are taking seriously the threat to an open society posed by PayPal’s demonetisation of UsForThem, Toby Young, the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic. And it is more encouraging still that they are likely to respond to the threat through legislation – possibly through an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill. It is vital, however, that they get this response right, and understanding the purported legal basis for a company like PayPal excluding a user from its services is crucial in this regard.
To get some preliminary matters out of the way, it is important first to distinguish a financial services provider like PayPal from a social media outfit like Twitter or Facebook/Meta. There is a case to be made (although it is ultimately not one I would concur with) that it is legitimate for a social media operator to exclude people who express opinions deemed undesirable by its owners. I agree, for example, with the position that the Supreme Court adopted with respect to the baker in the famous ‘gay cake’ case; it is unconscionable for the law to force the owner of a private company to propagate a message that would conflict with said owner’s sincerely held beliefs. I think large social media providers are fundamentally different from the baker in that case, but I can at least understand the basis on which somebody would argue that Twitter booting, say, Andrew Tate, is essentially the same as a Christian baker refusing to bake a cake bearing a message supporting gay marriage (or, let’s say, a hypothetical Muslim printer refusing to print a satirical magazine bearing an image of the prophet). But there is no sense in which PayPal can be construed to be said to be in this position. PayPal does not serve to propagate messages of any kind; nor are its users even publicly known or identifiable for the large part; whether or not the Daily Sceptic is a customer of PayPal places no requirement on the latter to associate itself with the expression of any view whatsoever. It is a different kettle of fish.
It is also important to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons for a business like PayPal seeking to exclude users who express certain kinds of views that might be connected with criminal offences, even indirectly. To use an obvious and extreme example, there would be nothing wrong with PayPal closing an account it discovered to be connected to an organisation dedicated to sharing positive perspectives on paedophilia; while a group of paedophiles getting together to talk about how wonderful their predilection is would not (I think) in itself constitute a criminal offence, it is easy to see why PayPal would wish to avoid coming within a barge-pole’s distance of any suggestion it was knowingly assisting such a group. However, this kind of concern clearly would not apply with respect to the FSU, UsForThem, the Daily Sceptic or Toby personally.
A company like PayPal cannot therefore fall back on these kinds of excuses in behaving as it has done. And in any case, we can all what is really going on here – it’s nothing to do with matters of conscience or a legitimate attempt to ‘de-risk’ with respect to potentially criminal behaviour. (It is notable, for example, that PayPal appears to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about the risks of being seen to be associated with precisely the kind of paedophile support group I mentioned earlier.) This is simply a case of somebody at PayPal wishing to send a statement: “We’re on the side of the good guys, and if you’re not on our side, mind your P’s and Q’s.” The fact that a very important set of elections is due to take place in the US in November undoubtedly has something to do with this.
It is therefore entirely legitimate for Parliament to legislate to prevent this kind of behaviour, and the question thus becomes: what form should such legislation take?
Looking at the underlying purported legal justification for PayPal’s conduct will give us an answer. The recent closure of the accounts of the Daily Sceptic et al seems to have been done on the basis that these respective parties have violated their respective User Agreements with PayPal. The User Agreement, it must be said, has not been particularly clearly drafted, but this much at least is clear: PayPal may close a user’s account if the user is in breach of its terms. The specific breaches themselves in this case were not, however, made particularly clear. Initially, it seemed that PayPal was accusing the Daily Sceptic et al of breaching its Acceptable Use Policy – namely item 2 (f) of that document, which prohibits the user engaging in ‘the promotion of hate, violence or other forms of intolerance’. This obviously wouldn’t stick, though, and subsequent statements by PayPal have suggested that the accounts were closed on the basis that the Daily Sceptic et al were ‘providing false, inaccurate or misleading information’, which is on the list of ‘restricted activities’ in the User Agreement proper.
The haphazard way in which PayPal appears to have conducted itself is suggestive that the decision was made to close the accounts first, with the justification being worked out afterwards. But we do now know what its legal representatives would trot out as the purported contractual basis for closing the accounts in question: being in breach of the User Agreement by engaging in the restricted activity of providing false, inaccurate or misleading information.
And this in turn would allow us to identify the remedy in the creation of a relatively short Act (or amendment to the Online Safety Bill). I am not a Parliamentary drafter, but my suggestion would be something along the lines of:
A provider of financial services may not by reference to any contract term terminate or suspend the provision of services to a user on the basis of that user spreading false, inaccurate or misleading information, or similar, unless it is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the spreading of said information would in itself constitute a criminal offence in the laws of England and Wales.
This would quite neatly prevent PayPal or any other such provider from doing this kind of thing in future, while allowing such operators to ‘de-risk’ for the legitimate reason of avoiding any connection to the commission of crime. The consequence would simply be to make a term of a contract between a financial services provider and a customer purporting to allow termination on the grounds of the spreading of false information, etc., unenforceable, and the legislation could be worded to give this immediate effect.
Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.
Stop Press: Allysia Finley has written a good comment piece for the Wall St Journal about why the Supreme Court may well uphold the law in Texas prohibiting large social media companies from blocking speech based on viewpoint.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 27, 2022
During an appearance at the “Goalkeepers 2022” event, investor and philanthropist Bill Gates lamented “misinformation” that was shared about him amid the coronavirus pandemic and complained that so-called misinformation about masks and vaccines reduced compliance with mandates.
“I’d say the biggest tragedy is that it [misinformation] fragmented society where certain sources, if they told you to wear a mask, that was the last thing you were going to do,” Gates said. “Or if they told you, you know, get the vaccine, particularly to protect, reduce transmission to elderly people, they didn’t comply. It is a phenomena that held us back and hurt us in a pretty dramatic way.”
Gates also dismissed “conspiracy theories” about him wanting to track people.
“This whole tracking thing, why would I want to track you?” Gates said. “I don’t know, you know. Do I have time to track all these people?”
While Gates was seemingly referring to vaccines, just one day later, at the “Forbes 400 Philanthropy Summit,” Gates admitted that he has a group dedicated to tracking what people say about him online.
“I have a group that tracks what’s on the web that’s talking about things that connect to me,” Gates said. “Overwhelmingly during the pandemic, 95% was all the conspiracy theory stuff. It is calming down now.”
At the Goalkeepers 2022 event, Gates also complained that conspiracy theories are “cynical” and look for “one bad person who’s doing all this stuff” and welcomed “trusted sources” and “fact-checkers” partnering with social media companies to slow down the spread of content that he deems to be misinformation.
Gates’ nonprofit, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to some of the Facebook fact-checkers whose content is used in warning labels that are appended to Facebook posts. When these warning labels are added to Facebook posts, their click-through rates decline by around 95%.
While Gates framed the debate around so-called misinformation and conspiracy theories as a tragedy that reduced compliance with the advice being pushed by trusted sources, he failed to mention that these so-called trusted sources have issued false or conflicting advice throughout the pandemic.
In the early stages of the pandemic, mainstream media outlets downplayed the severity of Covid and health officials in the US urged people to stop wearing masks, then later reversed their stance.
The theory that the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab was initially dismissed as a conspiracy before so-called trusted sources finally admitted the lab leak theory was a possibility.
And health experts initially suggested that COVID-19 vaccines were up to 90% effective at preventing Covid before ultimately admitting that the vaccines don’t prevent infection.
Those who challenged or questioned the “trusted sources” were accused of spreading misinformation and censored by Big Tech platforms, even though many of their challenges and questions later turned out to be true.
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | September 27, 2022
Congress is poised this week to approve an estimated $12 billion in new economic aid and military assistance to Ukraine. But don’t expect a lot of debate or even fanfare because it is being rolled into a stopgap measure to keep the entire federal government operating until December.
Called a continuing resolution, the massive spending bill must be passed by Friday to avoid a shutdown. This was obviously the most convenient way for Biden to push the Ukrainian aid measure through: Majority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spearheaded its inclusion in the resolution, and, with most members of Congress in favor of the previous aid packages and precious few days for any floor discussion, any critics of the proposal have little or no time to question it.
And plus, who’s going to chance being accused of wanting to “shut down the government” by raising a stink?
According to the most recent reports on Monday night, lawmakers have agreed to include $12 billion — $4.5 billion for weapons and equipment, and $2.7 for military, intelligence, and other defense support, plus another $4.5 billion to keep the Ukrainian government running for another quarter.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ attention seems to be focused elsewhere, on a completely different potential stumbling block: a permitting reform measure by Sen Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Nevertheless, the first step is a cloture vote to move the massive bill forward, with the Senate beginning deliberations today.
This new money is on top of the $40 billion approved in May. Since the war began, the U.S. has sent more than $15 billion in weapons and military assistance to Kyiv in its war against invading Russian forces.
But critics say there has been little visible oversight in Washington of the money already spent, whether it is getting to where it needs to go, or being used effectively by the forces that need it.
“Oversight of Ukraine aid is sorely needed,” Julia Gledhill, a defense analyst for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), tells Responsible Statecraft. “The State and Defense departments are handling billions of dollars in Ukraine funding, but neither have permanent inspectors general in place to investigate and prevent abuse of funds.”
The word is that the Democrats are unified behind the new aid package (recall no Democrat in either the House or Senate voted against the $40 billion measure in May). Republicans, on the other hand represent the potential opposition, with 11 GOP senators and 57 House Republicans dissenting on that same vote.
According to recent reports, Republican complaints of this latest tranche have focused on the fact it was being tied to the CR and the lack of debate.
“I haven’t seen a detailed list of exactly how they want to spend the money,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Sept. 19. “I think whatever we do on Ukraine, we ought to be doing it separately from the CR. I think we’ve gotta have a clean CR that goes through Congress.”
In that same CNN article, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he was “open for discussion” about the Ukraine aid. The House side seems a bit more restive: a recent Politico article quoted Rep. Chip Roy, (R-Texas) balking at what seemed to be rubber stamping aid for Ukraine.
“There’s no limiting principle. So no, count me against throwing more money at Ukraine without having a serious conversation about guns and butter, a serious conversation about why we’re spending it and how it’s in our national security interest,” he said.
But these primary concerns — oversight and debate over whether continuing aid is in the U.S. interest (and whether, when not paired with diplomatic strategy, we might be prolonging the war at Ukraine’s ultimate expense) — will be likely overtaken this week by the bipartisan desire to keep sending aid. This includes party leaders and chairs/ranking members of the prominent Armed Services Committees who believe that new and more weapons will put Ukrainians in a position of strength from which to eventually negotiate.
In fact, folks like Sen. James Inhofe want to give more. “This aid package is insufficient to provide the Ukrainians with what they need to win,” the Republican ranking member of the SASC complained on Twitter in early September.
Politically, however, Biden is smart to get this through now. If Republicans take over the House after the November midterms, they are expected to throw up many more roadblocks against additional Biden/Democratic spending, and that might jeopardize further Ukraine aid. But that’s not set in stone: Establishment institutions like the Republican Policy Committee are clear the assistance to Ukraine must continue. In fact, they tie it to our foreign policy writ large:
“We must leave absolutely no doubt in the minds of Russia’s, China’s, or any other nation’s leaders about U.S. resolve to support sovereignty and self-determination around the globe,” the RPC said in Sept. 12 paper. “Decisive military aid to Ukraine will accomplish this task.”
Responsible Statecraft will update this story as it develops.
Samizdat | September 27, 2022
The EU will slap sanctions on anyone involved in referendums on joining Russia in the Donbass republics, as well as in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, according to Peter Stano, a spokesman for the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
“There would be consequences for all people, who participate in the illegal, illegitimate referendums,” Stano warned on Tuesday, the fifth and final day of voting.
Stano did not rule out the possibility of foreign observers, including EU citizens, also facing restrictions over any support they have given to the process. He said it would be up to member states to decide who falls under the sanctions regime.
Another high-ranking EU foreign policy official, Luc Devigne, also told European lawmakers on Tuesday that individuals who are “obviously linked” to the referendums would be targeted in the next sanctions package.
Residents of France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Brazil and other countries have reportedly arrived to monitor voting in the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR), and the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, which are mostly controlled by Russian forces.
Ukraine and its Western backers have labeled the referendums a “sham,” vowing that they won’t recognize their results regardless of the outcome. The polls in the plebiscite closed at 4pm local time (1pm GMT) on Tuesday. The head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, said preliminary results would be ready by this evening.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | September 27, 2022
The arrest of a couple of prominent Palestinian activists, one of whom was Musab Shtayyeh, by Palestinian Authority police on 20 September was not the first time that the notorious Preventive Security Service (PSS) has arrested someone who is wanted by Israel. The PSS is largely linked to the routine arrest and torture of Palestinians who are active against the Israeli occupation.
Several Palestinians have died as a result of PSS violence, the latest being Nizar Banat who was tortured to death on 24 June last year. The killing of Banat ignited a popular revolt against the PA across occupied Palestine.
For years, various Palestinian and international human rights groups have criticised the PA’s violence against dissenting Palestinian voices, quite often within the same human rights reports critical of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. The de facto Hamas government in Gaza also has to take its fair share of blame in terms of violence against dissenters.
In its January 2022 World Report, Human Rights Watch said that, “The Palestinian Authority (PA) manages affairs in parts of the West Bank, where it systematically arrests arbitrarily and tortures dissidents.” This was neither the first nor the last time that a human rights group has made such an accusation.
The link between Israeli and Palestinian violence targeting political dissidents and activists is equally clear to most Palestinians, even though some may at one point have believed that the PA’s role is to serve as a transition between their national liberation project and full independence and sovereignty on the ground. Nearly thirty years after the formation of the PA, though, such a notion has proved to be wishful thinking. Not only has the PA failed to usher in the coveted independent State of Palestine, but it has also morphed into a massively corrupt institution whose existence more or less serves the interests of a small class of Palestinian politicians and business people; in Palestine, they are largely one and the same group.
PA corruption and violence aside, what continues to irk most Palestinians is that the authority, with time, has become another manifestation of the Israeli occupation, curtailing Palestinian freedom of expression and carrying out arrests on behalf of the occupation security services. Sadly, many of those arrested by the Israeli military in the West Bank have experienced arrest by PA goons as well.
Riots in Nablus following Shtayyeh’s arrest were reminiscent of the riots against Israeli occupation forces in the northern West Bank city and elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Unlike previous confrontations between Palestinians and PA police — following the killing of Banat, for example — this time the violence was widespread, and involved protesters from all Palestinian political groups, including the ruling Fatah faction.
Perhaps unaware of the massive collective psychological shift that has taken place in Palestine in recent years, the PA was desperate to contain the violence. Subsequently, a committee that represents united Palestinian factions in Nablus declared on 21 September that it had agreed a “truce” with PA security forces in the city. The committee, which includes prominent Palestinian figures, told Associated Press and other media that the agreement restricts any future arrests of Palestinians in Nablus to the condition that the individual must be implicated in breaking Palestinian, not Israeli, law. That provision alone implies a tacit admission by the PA that the arrest of Shtayyeh and Ameed Tbaileh was motivated by an Israeli, not a Palestinian agenda.
But why would the PA bow down so quickly to pressure from ordinary Palestinians on the street? The answer lies in the changing political mood in Palestine.
In considering this matter it must be stated that resentment of the PA has been brewing for years. One opinion poll after another has indicated the low regard that most Palestinians have of their leadership, of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and particularly of the PA’s “security coordination” with Israel.
Moreover, the torture and death of political dissident Banat last year erased whatever patience Palestinians had with regard to the leadership. Banat’s death demonstrated that the PA is not an ally of the people, but a threat to the people.
It also has to be said that the Unity Intifada of May 2021 has emboldened many segments of society across occupied Palestine. For the first time in years, Palestinians have felt united around a single slogan and are no longer hostage to the geography of politics and factions. A new generation of young Palestinians has advanced the conversation beyond Abbas, the PA and their endless and ineffectual political rhetoric.
Finally, armed struggle in the West Bank has been growing so rapidly that the Israeli army Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi, claimed on 6 September that since March, around 1,500 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank and that, allegedly, hundreds of attacks against the Israeli military have been thwarted.
In fact, evidence of an armed intifada is growing in the Jenin and Nablus regions. What is particularly interesting, and alarming from the Israeli and PA viewpoint, about the nature of the budding armed struggle, is that it is largely led by the military wing of the ruling Fatah party, in direct cooperation with Hamas and other Islamic and national military wings.
For example, on 9 August, the Israeli army assassinated Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi, a prominent Fatah military commander, along with two others. Not only did the PA do little to stop the Israeli military machine from conducting more such assassinations, but six weeks later it also arrested Shtayyeh, a close comrade of Nabulsi.
Interestingly, Shtayyeh is not a member of Fatah, but a commander within the Hamas military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades. Although Fatah and Hamas are meant to be intense political rivals, their political tussle seems to be of no relevance to military groups in the West Bank.
Unfortunately, more violence is likely to follow because Israel is determined to crush any armed intifada in the West Bank before it spreads across the occupied territories; there is a leadership transition looming within the PA due to Abbas’s old age; and unity is growing among Palestinians around the issue of resistance.
While the Israeli response to all of this can easily be gleaned from its legacy of violence, the PA’s future course of action will likely determine its relationship with Israel and its western supporters on the one hand, and with the Palestinian people on the other. The question has to be asked: whose side is the PA on?
Zionist groups condemn “extremists” unless they are Jews
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 27, 2022
It has been a normal couple of weeks for reporting on what is going on in Israel, which is to say that the bad things it has been doing have been carefully suppressed by the US government and the media. The Israelis continue their program to isolate, humiliate and terrify the Palestinians by destroying their civil and human rights organizations while also limiting foreigner access to the remaining Arab inhabited areas on the West Bank. Israeli Jews now routinely refer to all Palestinians as “terrorists” to justify the harsh measures used to steal their land and homes while also destroying their livelihoods.
The so-called Israel Defense Forces, whose Chief Rabbi Eyal Karim approves of his soldiers raping ‘attracting Gentile women’ as a way to keep up morale, are also continuing to kill Palestinians at an unprecedented rate and have covered-up the murder four months ago of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, admitting only that the woman was apparently killed by a soldier who claimed that he thought her to be an armed Arab rioter. No further action will be taken. A US State Department briefer accepted the verdict saying that the action “underscore[s] the importance of accountability in this case, such as policies and procedures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.”
Actually, the Israeli statement does no such thing as it lacks any accountability. The White House should have blocked the $3.3 billion gift that Israel gets every year from the US Treasury for starters. And the shoot-first policies by Israeli soldiers will continue, a position emphasized by Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who firmly rejected proposals to change the Army’s current rules of engagement which led to the Akleh killing, saying that he would not allow outsiders to “dictate our open-fire policies.”
When it comes to the exercise of Jewish power in the United States, the word “hypocrisy” should immediately come to mind. A recent report on extremism in America has been compiled by the indefatigable Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which has a “Center on Extremism” that has examined “more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military. It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August… The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the US.”
It is not hard to guess what the ADL didn’t look for: radical armed “extremist” Jewish groups fundraising and operating cooperatively in the US and Israel. Nor did it look at black radical groups like Black Lives Matter and the other organizations that were spawned in the wake of the George Floyd death that have produced chaos in a number of American cities. Only white conservatives need apply under the standards of “extremism” set by the ADL, which should surprise no one.
The issue of Jewish and Israeli invisibility when they are doing something horrific struck me recently when I attended a peace rally that included a number of speakers over the course of about five hours. The theme of the gathering was resistance to the warmongering policies that have driven the US government to the verge of nuclear war. When the event was concluded I observed that Israel or the Jewish/Israeli Lobby had not even been mentioned once, even when describing situations in the Middle East that begged for a comment regarding Israeli complicity and its dominance over US policy in the region. One particularly delusional speaker, who would benefit from a basic course in Middle Eastern history, actually claimed that the current hostility between Washington and Tehran is the result of the CIA overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1954. That constitutes a cute evasion of reality but the fact is that US-Iran policy is driven not by lingering concerns over Mossadegh, but rather by Israel and its lobby.
To illustrate the level of Israeli control, President Joe Biden bowed to Israeli pressure and has placed “off the table” any consideration of a new nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran, even though it would be in America’s interest. There are no other significant American national interests as Iran does not actually threaten the United States or its economy. The reality is that the US military is in Syria and Iraq for the same reason, i.e. to provide protection and support for Israel, while it also heavily bribes Israel’s neighbors in Egypt and Jordan to keep the peace with the Jewish state.
It is all a world turned upside down with Israel controlling Washington, as former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have boasted, and part of the control mechanism is to manage the narrative so the American public never really sees what is going on. But what is really interesting is how so-called peace activists, like at the gathering I attended, toe the line and are terrified of offending Israel or the powerful domestic Jewish groups that use their money and political access to promote the wars in the Middle East as well as against Russia in Ukraine. Some of them clearly are fearful of being labeled anti-Semites, which is the weapon most frequently used by groups like ADL to ward off criticism of the Jewish state.
Interestingly, one of the speakers at the meeting I attended demonstrated how it is possible to make a point about Israel and the Jewish power behind it without using either the “I” or “J” word. He observed that the foreign and national security policies of both major US political parties are largely driven by the personal interests of their donors, whom he described as “billionaire oligarchs, some of whom are not even Americans.” The allusion was pretty clear to most members of the audience. It sure sounded like arch globalist George Soros, who has used his money to corrupt local and state governments, and, more to the point, Israeli citizens Haim Saban and the recently deceased Sheldon Adelson. Hollywood denizen Saban, the top single contributor to the Democrats, has said that he is a “one issue guy” and that issue is Israel. Adelson, who is buried in Israel, contributed $100 million to the Republicans and was the man who in return got President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognize the incorporation of the Golan Heights into the Israeli state, and have a free hand to suppress the Palestinians.
The good news is, however, that pushback is developing, and it is in part coming from some Jews. The Jewish peace group Tikkun has recently published a devastating article by Jeffrey Sachs on the Jews who have been activists for Israel who have been agitating for the post 9/11 wars. It is entitled “Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster” and describes how “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle…”
It is actually worse than that as a global nuclear confrontation threatens. It is time for those in America and Europe who genuinely want peace to begin to be honest about who is pushing for the wars and why. Euphemisms and evasions to avoid offending the culprits help no one and just empower those who believe themselves “chosen” and would seek to establish the supremacy of one particular ethno-religious state even if it brings disaster to everyone else.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Samizdat | September 27, 2022
German utility RWE has inked a deal with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) for delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the company announced on Sunday.
The deal so far covers only one tanker: a shipment amounting to 137,000 cubic meters of LNG to be delivered by Abu Dhabi National Oil company to RWE in late December or by early 2023, Bloomberg reported, citing the company’s announcement. Separately, RWE also announced it will partner with UAE-based company Masdar to explore offshore wind energy projects and supply 250,000 tons of diesel per month in 2023 to Germany’s fuel distributor Wilhelm Hoyer.
The deal also includes a memorandum of understanding for more LNG deliveries next year, but the document is non-binding and it is unclear how many more LNG deliveries Germany may expect.
The agreement was signed during German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to Abu Dhabi during a tour of the Gulf countries.
“We need to make sure that the production of LNG in the world is advanced to the point where the high demand that exists can be met without having to resort to the production capacity that exists in Russia,” Scholz told reporters prior to the deal’s announcement.
After the UAE, Scholz visited Qatar. However, according to Scholz’s statement issued after the meeting with the Qatari emir, no agreements on LNG supplies have been made there. The two countries have been in talks over LNG supplies for several months now, so far to no avail, as Berlin is reluctant to enter into long-term contracts with Doha.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 21, 2022
The battle with Big Tech for free speech is heating up! States are passing bills to stop the social media censorship, and legislators are holding investigative hearings, while a recent lawsuit including several State Attorneys General is making headway.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 21, 2022
Suddenly, Biden announces the pandemic is over as the narrative is now collapsing from all sides. From boosters to kids shots, the vaccine push is faltering as lawsuits pile up to remove the last covid restrictions.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
On The Transgender Agenda
Lies are Unbekoming | May 12, 2016
I’ve been following Jennifer Bilek’s reporting on the Transgender Agenda for the last year.
In my opinion, she is doing the best investigative journalism, in the world, on the top-down nature of this society deforming “input” and “normalization”.
What we don’t understand is the scale of money behind this push, and the individuals controlling this weaponized capital. These are questions that go to the heart of Jennifer’s work. … continue
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Aletho News If Americans Knew International Solidarity Movement Richie Allen No Tricks Zone
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