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US Lawmaker Files Amendments to Ban Kiev-Bound Shipments of F16s, Long-Range Missiles

Sputnik – 30.06.2023

WASHINGTON – US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she filed amendments to the defense budget that would forbid the US from providing Ukraine with F-16 jets and long-range missiles and cut off all funding to Kiev until a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is found.

“We should be pushing for peace, not funding war. I filed amendments to the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] that strip out all funding for Ukraine and prohibit providing them with F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles,” Greene said in a tweet on Friday.

“The death and destruction must stop, so in order to achieve peace, I also filed an amendment to prohibit any and all funding to Ukraine until a diplomatic solution to the war is reached.”

Earlier in the day, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley said he is not aware of any decisions with respect to sending the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine, but noted that it is a “continuous, ongoing process.”

Citing officials with knowledge of the developments, American media reported on Thursday that the United States is close to agreeing to send ATACMS to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top aide earlier this week said Kiev still hoped to receive the first supply of F-16 fighter jets in aid from Western countries by the end of 2023. Last week, US media reported, citing Western officials, that Ukraine could receive its first F-16 fighter jets from Western sponsors in early 2024.

A former Pentagon official told outlets that the Netherlands and Denmark could be among the first suppliers, but no final decision had been made yet.

Russia has slammed the possible delivery of F-16 fighters to Ukraine, warning that the jets will become a legitimate military target for Russian forces. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine will be a further escalation because the jets have a modification that makes them nuclear-capable.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 3 Comments

After five months of strained ties, US admits Chinese balloon did not collect information

Global Times | June 30, 2023

After repeated hyping of the so-called Chinese spy balloon incident for nearly five months, the Pentagon on Thursday admitted the airship did not collect any information, not to mention send any data back to China. This is an objective result that should be welcomed, but it came too late, as the incident has damaged mutual trust, totally changed the environment for communication between China and the US, and caused the two sides to miss a better time to restore relations, Chinese experts said.

Analysis of debris collected from a Chinese balloon drifting into the sky over the US and shot down by the latter in February showed that “it did not collect [any information] while it was transiting the US or over flying the US” despite that it “had intelligence collection capabilities,” Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder told media on Thursday.

A Chinese balloon spent a week in February flying over the US and Canada before it was shot down by a fighter jet off the Atlantic coast, on orders from President Joe Biden. Although Chinese authorities reiterated that the balloon was a civilian weather balloon, some US media and hawkish politicians continued to hype it as a spy balloon, underscoring the increasing tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press conference on Friday that China has reiterated on many occasions that the Chinese civilian airship drifting into the sky over the US was an unintended, unexpected and isolated event caused by force majeure. Calling the airship a “spy balloon” and claiming it is used to collect intelligence is total slandering and smearing, Mao stressed.

Citing some anonymous officials, a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday claimed that the balloon was found to be carrying some American-made equipment helping it to collect photos, videos and other information. Ryder did not confirm the report on Thursday when he announced the result of the Pentagon’s analysis.

The Pentagon’s brief announcement on Thursday showed that the US, or at least the US’ defense department, is trying to close the chapter on the incident as it must have realized that the facts are slapping them in the face, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

“We should welcome the move, but I have to say that it is far from enough. The US hyping damaged the basic mutual trust between China and the US and set a bad precedent in dealing with a foreign country’s civilian facility by using the military to shoot down the balloon. They should express regret for the decision,” Lü said.

The balloon incident fundamentally changed the atmosphere between the two countries. Blinken postponed a reported visit to Beijing. This led to a delay in the progress of China-US interactions of about five months for no good reason, which is very unfavorable given the already high tension between the two countries, Lü noted.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was said to have been planning a diplomatic trip to China before the balloon incident, but reportedly postponed the plan soon after it occurred. The trip was rescheduled and Blinken visited Beijing in June.

However, the US Department of Defense’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Thursday approved new arms sales to Taiwan worth $440 million. The arms package is to include 30mm ammunition, spare parts for wheeled vehicles and other items, according to media reports. This is the 10th arms-sales package to Taiwan made under US President Joe Biden.

China urges the US to abide by the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués, stop selling weapons to Taiwan island, stop creating factors that lead to tensions in the Taiwan Straits and stop damaging the peace and stability in the region, Mao Ning said in response to the deal at the Friday press conference.

The US is building Taiwan island into a powder keg and ammunition depot. This is not “protecting” or “defending” the island but damaging and ruining it, the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council said Friday, slamming the deal.

Earlier this week, a US bipartisan congressional delegation led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers landed in Taiwan for a three-day visit.

We must face the fact that US diplomacy will continue to show a character of being two-faced, as it views China as a main strategic opponent and will not change its strategy of containing China before it regains an absolute advantage over China, Lü said.

The Chinese central government must have become aware of this and is making adjustments in its strategy in the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea to maintain China’s practical control of the regions amid the US’ provocation, Lü pointed out, citing China’s firm actions in the Taiwan Straits since last year including large-scale military drills and the flying of fighter jets across the so-called median line of the Taiwan Straits, which the Chinese mainland had declared a non-existent concept.

Some experts expect more windows of opportunity in China-US relations to open after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was reported to be planning a trip to China in early July, but they also warned that the window will not be open for long, so Washington needs to make sincere moves rather than create new trouble.

When asked is there still a window of opportunity to repair China-US ties before US elections, former Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai told the Global Times on Thursday that it’s never too late if there is political will. “China has shown its political commitment to improving relations.”

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Can this treatment bring hope to the abandoned vaccine victims?

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | June 29, 2023

The unprecedented range and extent of Covid vaccine injury is not open to argument. Yellow Card reporting, which the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency say represents just 10 per cent of the true number of reactions, reveals that medical staff and victims have reported half a million adverse events and nearly 2,600 fatalities.

The most common issues following vaccination are low blood platelets (immune thrombocytopenia), heart inflammation (myocarditis), blood clots in the body and brain, (thrombosis and cerebral venous thrombosis) and Guillain-Barré syndrome, where the body attacks its nerves and can cause paralysis.

More than one thousand peer-reviewed research papers have documented and explained the connection between injury and the novel Covid gene therapy; 228 of those papers involve myocarditis, 150 thrombosis, 116 thrombocytopenia, 61 cerebral venous thrombosis, and 43 Guillain-Barré syndrome.

According to the American Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), who have received 35,302 reports of deaths, the Covid vaccine has led to more death reports than any other vaccine in history. The weight of evidence is startling but many doctors still deny Covid-19 vaccines can cause disability or death.

Despite such unprecedented numbers, our national medicines monitors continue to diminish vaccine injury. Last month the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) published this 51-page report on the Covid-19 vaccine programme for healthcare professionals which still describes vaccine injury as rare or of little significance. With no official recognition, there is no government investment into research to understand the pathology of vaccine injury, and no treatment trials to help the millions of vaccine injured.

Former scaffolder Alex Mitchell, 59, from Glasgow, nearly died of vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) officially caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine which he received on March 20, 2021. He developed blood clots so severe that his left leg was amputated above the knee. A range of medication controls his continuing clotting problems, but Alex, who has been called a liar, conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer, despite his official diagnosis and £120,000 compensation payment, has found more help to deal with his ongoing health issues through social media than he has through the NHS.

He said: ‘Supplements were recommended by someone who contacted me on Twitter who has a degree in chemistry and biology. My energy and the fatigue that us vaccine-injured suffer from has improved since I started taking them six months ago.

‘The other things that help are acupuncture and red light therapy. They reduce inflammation, and the severe muscle spasms I was experiencing, which felt like someone had taken a cattle prod to my heel bone, have almost stopped.’

A few dedicated doctors are listening and are raising funds for independent research. One is the US organisation Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) founded by a number of doctors including Dr Pierre Kory, and Children’s Health Defence Europe, who held a conference with Dr Meryl Nass last month to discuss vaccine injury.

FLCCC is at the forefront of developing protocols to help the vaccine injured. It is spearheaded by Professor Paul E Marik, formerly chair of pulmonary and critical care at the Eastern Virginia Medical School. He talks regularly to practitioners from all over the world via phone or Zoom who share their clinical experiences. Nothing is added to the FLCCC protocols without a high degree of investigation and scientific reference. Their current vaccine injury protocol has more than 700 scientific references.

Their natural healing regime includes the enzyme nattokinase and aspirin to dissolve blood clots; the anti-inflammatory supplement resveratrol; the mineral magnesium which regulates blood pressure, blood sugar, and is needed for good muscle and nerve function; omega-3 fatty acids which regulate blood clotting; energy boosting co-enzyme Q (CoQ10); the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin; bromelain, the pain-reducing enzyme found in pineapple; the plant chemical berberine which helps strengthen heartbeat, and the brain-nourishing amino acid N-acetylcysteine (NAC).

It has had mixed results but one group called ZeroSpike hope they have made a major breakthrough. ZeroSpike was put together by Fabio Zoffi, a tech entrepreneur, who three years ago formed Federazione Rinascimento Italia (FRI), a civil society of Italian doctors, lawyers, scientists, professionals, and entrepreneurs, horrified by the draconian Covid response.

He contacted Dr Loretta Bolgan, a doctor of chemistry and pharmaceutical technology, and asked her to investigate the Sars-CoV-2 virus and the new mRNA vaccine technology. Once the team discovered that the Covid vaccines and the virus both contained the spike protein, Zoffi asked them to develop a way to get rid of it.

The spike contributes to cardiovascular, brain, and blood clotting problems, and can cause autoimmune conditions, cell deformation and cell fusion damage. It can cross the blood-brain barrier causing memory loss and brain fog, can trigger a stroke or cause other neurological issues.

Manufacturers said the injected spike would clear itself naturally but information from the respected pathologist Professor Arne Burkhardt in Germany, who died recently, and from a freedom of information request from Pfizer’s nonclinical evaluation report submitted to the Australian Department of Health, shows it does not and that it can damage major organs, including the ovaries, liver, spleen and adrenal glands.

The team of ten focused on the food supplement NAC which specifically helped the condition which the vaccine injured and those with long Covid describe as brain fog. Studies showed that NAC denaturated (removed) between 12 per cent and 15 per cent of the Covid spike protein.

NAC is derived from the amino acid L-cysteine and helps replenish glutathione levels in the body and can help to improve brain function. Glutathione is produced by the liver and helps with immune system function, as well as tissue building and repair, vital to help the injured recover. The team then used quantum physics to turbo charge – augment – the NAC molecule, which made a huge difference. In the lab (in vitro), they claim it removed 99.8 per cent of extracellular spike, although there are no traditional double-blind placebo-controlled trials to support the claim.

To prove it, the team developed a urine test which showed how much spike was being excreted. Women’s health specialist Dr Tina Peers told the audience at the Better Way conference in Bath this month: ‘If you check someone’s urine before they take augmented-NAC there aren’t the end products of the denaturation, but by day eight of taking it, they found that the urine was full of denatured spike protein.’

Health practitioners with no financial interest in the product are calling it a ‘game-changer’. Pulmonary and critical care specialist Dr Pierre Kory told the Better Way audience: ‘I integrated it into my practice two months ago. Not everybody responds but some testimonials are really earth-shattering.’

Scott Marsland, a registered nurse (RN) since 1997 and a family nurse practitioner (FRP-C) since 2014, is a partner with Dr Kory in a Covid treatment practice in Syracuse, New York. They have treated more than 2,000 Covid, long Covid or vaccine injured patients in the last 14 months.

Marsland is impressed with A-NAC. He said: ‘I have treated 72 patients with it and 75 per cent have noted benefit. Three had adverse responses of mild to severe rash, but that fully resolved quickly.

‘I had a patient with mental health issues, including anxiety and depression. After taking it, he said, “I’m sleeping like a baby. A cloud has lifted.” Another, who suffered spinal injury after a car crash, had very poor respiratory status preventing the operation. Within a week she reported her lungs were stronger than in the last three years. A young patient with 5/10 chest pain reported after three days the pain was measuring 2/10.’

Dr Peers was herself injured by two AstraZeneca vaccines. She said: ‘I had a tremor in my hand, I had dormant mast-cell activation syndrome (MCAS) which flared, my face was puffy, my eyes were swollen. It affected my immune system.’

She began taking augmented NAC more than two months ago and developed a rash, like Marsland’s patients. She said: ‘After a few days I had a detox reaction and developed eczema on my face. It lasted about 48 hours but now my tremor has gone, the rash has gone and my MCAS is under control again.’

In Italy, a country hit by some of the most brutal Covid measures including a ‘no jab, no job’ policy which lasted for 18 months, ZeroSpike have helped more than 10,000 patients. Internationally, they have treated a total of 20,000 patients and say that none has come back with any complaints. Patients will generally complain if they experience negative events.

Can this new treatment give people abandoned by their governments hope? Will the medical establishment engage with this research and its findings? With countries such as Canada already making a move to ban all natural supplements like A-NAC, there will be a huge battle for recognition. But as Alex Mitchell says, ‘They’ll stop us accessing successful treatments over my dead body.’

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

There Was No Pandemic

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD | June 22, 2023

This is radical.

The essay is based on my May 17, 2023 testimony for the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) in Ottawa, Canada, my 894-page book of exhibits in support of that testimony, and our continued research.

I am an accomplished interdisciplinary scientist and physicist, and a former tenured Full Professor of physics and lead scientist, originally at the University of Ottawa.

I have written over 30 scientific reports relevant to COVID, starting April 18, 2020 for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (ocla.ca/covid), and recently for a new non-profit corporation (correlation‑canada.org/research). Presently, all my work and interviews about COVID are documented on my website created to circumvent the barrage of censorship.

In addition to critical reviews of published science, the main data that my collaborators and I analyse is all‑cause mortality.

All-cause mortality by time (day, week, month, year, period), by jurisdiction (country, state, province, county), and by individual characteristics of the deceased (age, sex, race, living accomodations) is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.

Such data is not susceptible to reporting bias or to any bias in attributing causes of death. We have used it to detect and characterize seasonality, heat waves, earthquakes, economic collapses, wars, population aging, long-term societal development, and societal assaults such as those occurring in the COVID period, in many countries around the world, and over recent history, 1900-present.

Interestingly, none of the post-second-world-war Centers-for-Disease-Control-and-Prevention-promoted (CDC‑promoted) viral respiratory disease pandemics (1957-58, “H2N2”; 1968, “H3N2”; 2009, “H1N1 again”) can be detected in the all‑cause mortality of any country. Unlike all the other causes of death that are known to affect mortality, these so‑called pandemics did not cause any detectable increase in mortality, anywhere.

The large 1918 mortality event, which was recruited to be a textbook viral respiratory disease pandemic (“H1N1”), occurred prior to the inventions of antibiotics and the electron microscope, under horrific post-war public-sanitation and economic-stress conditions. The 1918 deaths have been proven by histopathology of preserved lung tissue to have been caused by bacterial pneumonia. This is shown in several independent and non-contested published studies.

My first report analysing all-cause mortality was published on June 2, 2020, at censorship-prone Research Gate, and was entitled “All-cause mortality during COVID-19 – No plague and a likely signature of mass homicide by government response”. It showed that hot spots of sudden surges in all‑cause mortality occurred only in specific locations in the Northern-hemisphere Western World, which were synchronous with the March 11, 2020 declaration of a pandemic. Such synchronicity is impossible within the presumed framework of a spreading viral respiratory disease, with or without airplanes, because the calculated time from seeding to mortality surge is highly dependent on local societal circumstances, by several months to years. I attributed the excess deaths to aggressive measures and hospital treatment protocols known to have been applied suddenly at that time in those localities.

The work was pursued in greater depth with collaborators for several years and continues. We have shown repeatedly that excess mortality most often refused to cross national borders and inter-state lines. The invisible virus targets the poor and disabled and carries a passport. It also never kills until governments impose socio-economic and care-structure transformations on vulnerable groups within the domestic population.

Here are my conclusions, from our detailed studies of all-cause mortality in the COVID period, in combination with socio-economic and vaccine-rollout data:

  1. If there had been no pandemic propaganda or coercion, and governments and the medical establishment had simply gone on with business as usual, then there would not have been any excess mortality
  2. There was no pandemic causing excess mortality
  3. Measures caused excess mortality
  4. COVID-19 vaccination caused excess mortality

Regarding the vaccines, we quantified many instances in which a rapid rollout of a dose in the imposed vaccine schedule was synchronous with an otherwise unexpected peak in all-cause mortality, at times in the seasonal cycle and of magnitudes that have not previously been seen in the historic record of mortality.

In this way, we showed that the vaccination campaign in India caused the deaths of 3.7 million fragile residents. In Western countries, we quantified the average all-ages rate of death to be 1 death for every 2000 injections, to increase exponentially with age (doubling every additional 5 years of age), and to be as large as 1 death for every 100 injections for those 80 years and older. We estimated that the vaccines had killed 13 million worldwide.

If one accepts my above-numbered conclusions, and the analyses that we have performed, then there are several implications about how one perceives reality regarding what actually did and did not occur.

First, whereas epidemics of fatal infections are very real in care homes, in hospitals, and with degenerate living conditions, the viral respiratory pandemic risk promoted by the USA‑led “pandemic response” industry is not a thing. It is most likely fabricated and maintained for ulterior motives, other than saving humanity.

Second, in addition to natural events (heat waves, earthquakes, extended large-scale droughts), significant events that negatively affect mortality are large assaults against domestic populations, affecting vulnerable residents, such as:

  • sudden devastating economic deterioration (the Great Depression, the dust bowl, the dissolution of the Soviet Union),
  • war (including social-class restructuring),
  • imperial or economic occupation and exploitation (including large-scale exploitative land use), and
  • the well-documented measures and destruction applied during the COVID period.

Otherwise, in a stable society, mortality is extremely robust and is not subject to large rapid changes. There is no empirical evidence that large changes in mortality can be induced by sudden appearances of new pathogens. In the contemporary era of the dominant human species, humanity is its worst enemy, not nature.

Third, coercive measures imposed to reduce the risk of transmission (such as distancing, direction arrows, lockdown, isolation, quarantine, Plexiglas barriers, face shields and face masks, elbow bumps, etc.) are palpably unscientific; and the underlying concern itself regarding “spread” was not ever warranted and is irrational, since there is no evidence in reliable mortality data that there ever was a particularly virulent pathogen.

In fact, the very notion of “spread” during the COVID period is rigorously disproved by the temporal and spatial variations of excess all-cause mortality, everywhere that it is sufficiently quantified, worldwide. For example, the presumed virus that killed 1.3 million poor and disabled residents of the USA did not cross the more-than-thousand-kilometer land border with Canada, despite continuous and intense economic exchanges. Likewise, the presumed virus that caused synchronous mortality hotspots in March-April-May 2020 (such as in New York, Madrid region, London, Stockholm, and northern Italy) did not spread beyond those hotspots.

Interestingly, in this regard, the historical seasonal variations (12 month period) in all-cause mortality, known for more than 100 years, are inverted in the northern and southern global hemispheres, and show no evidence of “spread” whatsoever. Instead, these patterns, in a given hemisphere, show synchronous increases and decreases of mortality across the entire hemisphere. Would the “spreading” causal agent(s) always take exactly 6 months to cross into the other hemisphere, where it again causes mortality changes that are synchronous across the hemisphere? Many epidemiologists have long-ago concluded that person-to-person “contact” spreading of respiratory diseases cannot explain and is disproved by the seasonal patterns of all-cause mortality. Why the CDC et al. are not systematically ridiculed in this regard is beyond this scientist’s comprehension.

Instead, outside of extremely poor living conditions, we should look to the body of work produced by Professor Sheldon Cohen and co‑authors (USA) who established that two dominant factors control whether intentionally challenged college students become infected and the severity of the respiratory illness when they are infected:

  • degree of experienced psychological stress
  • degree of social isolation

The negative impact of experienced psychological stress on the immune system is a large current and established area of scientific study, dutifully ignored by vaccine interests, and we now know that the said impact is dramatically larger in elderly individuals, where nutrition (gut biome ecology) is an important co-factor.

Of course, I do not mean that causal agents do not exist, such as bacteria, which can cause pneumonia; nor that there are not dangerous environmental concentrations of such causal agents in proximity to fragile individuals, such as in hospitals and on clinicians’ hands, notoriously.

Fourth, since our conclusion is that there is no evidence that there was any particularly virulent pathogen causing excess mortality, the debate about gain-of-function research and an escaped bioweapon is irrelevant.

I do not mean that the Department of Defence (DoD) does not fund gain-of-function and bioweapon research (abroad, in particular), I do not mean that there are not many US patents for genetically modified microbial organisms having potential military applications, and I do not mean that there have not previously been impactful escapes or releases of bioweapon vectors and pathogens. For example, the Lyme disease controversy in the USA may be an example of a bioweapon leak (see Kris Newby’s 2019 book “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons”).

Generally, for obvious reasons, any pathogen that is extremely virulent will not also be extremely contagious. There are billions of years of cumulative evolutionary pressures against the existence of any such pathogen, and that result will be deeply encoded into all lifeforms.

Furthermore, it would be suicidal for any regime to vehemently seek to create such a pathogen. Bioweapons are intended to be delivered to specific target areas, except in the science fiction wherein immunity from a bioweapon that is both extremely virulent and extremely contagious can be reliably delivered to one’s own population and soldiers.

In my view, if anything COVID is close to being a bioweapon, it is the military capacity to massively, and repeatedly, rollout individual injections, which are physical vectors for whichever substances the regime wishes to selectively inject into chosen populations, while imposing complete compliance down to one’s own body, under the cover of protecting public health.

This is the same regime that practices wars of complete nation destruction and societal annihilation, under the cover of spreading democracy and women’s rights. And I do not mean China.

Fifth, again, since our conclusion is that there is no evidence that there was any particularly virulent pathogen causing excess mortality, there was no need for any special treatment protocols, beyond the usual thoughtful, case-by-case, diagnostics followed by the clinician’s chosen best approach.

Instead, vicious new protocols killed patients in hotspots that applied those protocols in the first months of the declared pandemic.

This was followed in many states by imposed coercive societal measures, which were contrary to individual health: fear, panic, paranoia, induced psychological stress, social isolation, self-victimization, loss of work and volunteer activity, loss of social status, loss of employment, business bankruptcy, loss of usefulness, loss of caretakers, loss of venues and mobility, suppression of freedom of expression, etc.

Only the professional class did better, comfortably working from home, close to family, while being catered to by an army of specialised home-delivery services.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment did not limit itself to assaulting and isolating vulnerable patients in hospitals and care facilities. It also systematically withdrew normal care, and attacked physicians who refused to do so.

In virtually the entire Western World, antibiotic prescriptions were cut and maintained low by approximately 50% of the pre-COVID rates. This would have had devastating effects in the USA, in particular, where:

  • the CDC’s own statistics, based on death certificates, has approximately 50% of the million or so deaths associated with COVID having bacterial pneumonia as a listed comorbidity (there was a massive epidemic of bacterial pneumonia in the USA, which no one talked about)
  • the Southern poor states historically have much higher antibiotic prescription rates (this implies high susceptibility to bacterial pneumonia)
  • excess mortality during the COVID period is very strongly correlated (r = +0.86) — in fact proportional to — state-wise poverty

Sixth, since our conclusion is that there is no evidence that there was any particularly virulent pathogen causing excess mortality, there was no public-health reason to develop and deploy vaccines; not even if one accepted the tenuous proposition that any vaccine has ever been effective against a presumed viral respiratory disease.

Add to this that all vaccines are intrinsically dangerous and our above-described vaccine-dose fatality rate quantifications, and we must recognize that the vaccines contributed significantly to excess mortality everywhere that they were imposed.

In conclusion, the excess mortality was not caused by any particularly virulent new pathogen. COVID so-called response in-effect was a massive multi-pronged state and iatrogenic attack against populations, and against societal support structures, which caused all the excess mortality, in every jurisdiction.

It is only natural now to ask “what drove this?”, “who benefited?” and “which groups sustained permanent structural disadvantages?”

In my view, the COVID assault can only be understood in the symbiotic contexts of geopolitics and large-scale social-class transformations. Dominance and exploitation are the drivers. The failing USA-centered global hegemony and its machinations create dangerous conditions for virtually everyone.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 2 Comments

CISA Was Behind the Attempt to Control Your Thoughts, Speech, and Life

Brownstone Institute | June 30, 2023

Keeping up with the corruption of the Covid regime feels like drinking from a firehose. The volume of the fraud, the pace of new discoveries, and the breadth of the operations are overwhelming. This makes it imperative for groups like Brownstone Institute to digest the onslaught of information and communicate salient themes and dispositive facts, particularly given the dereliction of mainstream media.

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “colluded with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans,” adding to the informational firehose we work to imbibe.

The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society.

  1. CISA’s Collusion to Overturn the First Amendment

The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis-, or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA’s censorship team, conceded that this process, known as “switchboarding,” would “trigger content moderation.”

Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. EI-ISAC worked to report and track “misinformation across all channels and platforms.” In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it “leverage[d] DHS CISA’s relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”

The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. “We don’t censor anything… we don’t flag anything to social media organizations at all,” Esterly told Congress in March. “We don’t do any censorship.” Her statement was more than a lie; it omitted the institutionalization of the practice she denied. The agency’s initiatives relied on a collusive apparatus of private-public partnerships designed to suppress unapproved information.

This should sound familiar.

Alex Berenson gained access to thousands of Twitter communications that uncovered concrete evidence that government actors – including White House Covid Advisor Andy Slavitt – worked to censor him for criticizing Biden’s Covid policies.

White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty privately lobbied social media groups to remove a video of Tucker Carlson reporting the link between Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and blood clots.

Facebook worked with the CDC to censor posts related to the Covid “lab-leak” hypothesis. Company employees later met with the Department of Health and Human Services to de-platform the “disinformation dozen,” a group including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

These were not cherry-picked examples – they were part of an institutional collusion to strip Americans of their First Amendment rights. Journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi exposed the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a collection of the world’s most powerful government agencies, NGOs, and private corporations that worked together to silence dissent.

The Supreme Court has held that it is “axiomatic” that the government cannot “induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Yet, CISA has joined the disturbing tendency of public-private partnerships designed to impede Americans’ right to information and freedom of speech.

  1. Political Operatives

Second, these programs were not idealistic attempts to promote the truth; they were calculated programs designed to quash inconvenient but truthful narratives.

The report outlines how CISA censored “malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead.” Journalist Lee Fang later wrote that the malinformation campaign “highlights not only the broad authority that the federal government has to shape the political content available to the public, but also the toolkit that it relies upon to limit scrutiny in the regulation of speech.”

In this system, uncensored information has a tacit government approval, amounting to a system of widespread propaganda.

“State and local election officials used the CISA-funded EI-ISAC in an effort to silence criticism and political dissent,” the report notes. “For example, in August 2022, a Loudon County, Virginia, government official reported a Tweet featuring an unedited video of a county official ‘because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of’ that official. The Loudon County official’s remark that the account she flagged ‘is connected to Parents Against Critical Race Theory’ reveals that her ‘misinformation report’ was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt.”

The officials supporting the operation remained unrepentant in their aim to advance political agendas. Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA’s “Misinformation & Disinformation” subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to “accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms.”

Of course, the program explicitly violated the Constitution. The First Amendment does not discriminate based on the veracity of a statement. “Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation,” the Supreme Court’s controlling opinion held in United States v. Alvarez. But CISA – led by zealots like Dr. Starbird – appointed themselves the arbiters of truth and worked with the most powerful information companies in the world to purge dissent.

This was part of a larger political campaign.

Hunter Biden’s laptop, natural immunity, the lab-leak theory, and side effects of the vaccine were all censored at the government’s behest. The truth of the reports were not at issue; instead, they presented inconvenient narratives for Washington’s political class, who then used the Orwellian label of “malinformation” to lend cover to eviscerating the First Amendment.

  1. The Terror of the Administrative State

Third, the report exposes the increasing power of the administrative state. Federal bureaucrats rely on anonymity and unaccountability. Private industry employees could never oversee a disaster like the Covid response and maintain their jobs. It’d be like if BP’s head of safety for the Gulf of Mexico received a promotion after the oil spill.

But unelected officilals like CISA officials enjoy ever-increasing power over Americans’ lives without having to answer for their calamities. Suzanne Spaulding, a member of the Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee, warned that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”

Spaulding’s comment reflects the power that CISA wields and the benefit it derives from its lack of public exposure. Most Americans have never heard of CISA despite its overwhelming influence over lockdowns.

In March 2020, CISA divided the American workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential.” Within hours, California became the first state to issue a “stay at home” edict. This began a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.

The House Report indicates that CISA was a central actor in censoring criticism of the Covid regime in the ensuing months and years. The agency is representative of the cabal of censorial and unaccountable officials engaged in public-private partnerships designed to keep us in the dark.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | 1 Comment

Kennedy Campaign Supporters Sound Like My Kind of People

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | June 30, 2023

Columnist Michelle Goldberg makes her disdain for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. clear in her Friday New York Times editorial. She paints Kennedy as a dangerous “crank.” But, when Goldberg wrote in the editorial generally about supporters of Kennedy she encountered at a June campaign event in New Hampshire, her description seems to be closer to objective and is in line with what I have observed from afar.

Goldberg’s general description of the Kennedy supporters is also, in my view, quite positive. For Goldberg and many of her regular readers, though, her description is likely negative. The difference springs from differing views regarding the United States government and its expansive exercise of power.

Describing the people she encountered at a campaign speech by Kennedy in New Hampshire this month, Goldberg wrote:

The people I encountered believe that they are living under a deeply sinister regime that lies to them about almost everything that matters. And they believe that with the Kennedy campaign, we might be on the cusp of redemption.

This description of Kennedy supporters’ assessment of the situation Americans face makes me think they are my kind of people.

Also wrote Goldberg, “the movement around [Kennedy] represents a significant post-Covid social phenomenon: a coalition of the distrustful that cuts across divisions of right and left.”

That sounds like what America needs.

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | | 2 Comments

EU and UN Discuss How to Address “Disinformation” on Digital Platforms

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 30, 2023

In an apparent display of bureaucratic synergy, the European Union and United Nations have convened to muse over the implementation of new social media regulations, ostensibly in the pursuit of a more secure and transparent digital milieu. What stirs apprehension, however, is the overt enthusiasm of the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, who anticipates that the EU’s Digital Services Act will establish a “new de facto global regulatory benchmark.” The skepticism arises from the suspicion of veiled intentions to curb free speech under the guise of combating “disinformation.”

Platforms are constantly blamed for the proliferation of “disinformation” and “hate speech,” with detractors painting them as adversaries to science, democracy, and human rights. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres brandishes a doomsday brush, asserting that large-scale disinformation constitutes “an existential risk to humanity.”

What is crucial here is the essence of the dialogue and the response it seeks to galvanize. The UN is fervently plotting a Code of Conduct premised on a policy brief that stresses the imperative for an international clampdown on disinformation. It lays out what seems to be an ambitious and comprehensive framework, involving governments, tech companies, advertisers, and other stakeholders. All very fine, but what remains unaddressed is the question of who gets to define what is “disinformation,” and what criteria determine the line between free speech and misinformation.

The Code of Conduct, steeped in an aura of academic rigor and global research, envisages a change in the fabric of digital platforms. However, the aspects it emphasizes – detaching from engagement-driven business models, and ostensibly placing human rights, privacy, and safety at the forefront – are nebulous in terms of implementation and potential overreach. Furthermore, the UN’s admission of wielding moral authority without sanctions may be viewed as a tacit endorsement of soft power coercion.

While Melissa Fleming’s words convey a seeming commitment to protect human rights and access to information, the phraseology she employs – “human rights-based,” “multi-stakeholder,” and “multi-dimensional” – are threadbare buzzwords that do little to assuage the concerns over censorship and institutional overreach.

The concern is not with the stated objectives of fostering a safe and open digital environment, but rather with the specter of global entities like the EU and UN using the cloak of “disinformation” to infringe on the bedrock principle of free speech.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

US, Turkish-backed militias in Syria boost number of child soldiers in their ranks: UN

The Cradle | June 30, 2023

According to a UN report released on 28 June, the US and Turkish-backed armed groups in Syria have been increasingly recruiting minors into their ranks.

The report claims that the number of children recruited by militant groups in the country has risen from around 800 to over 1,200 since 2020.

It adds that among those recruiting children are the US-backed Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which oversee control of Syrian oilfields in collaboration with Washington’s occupation forces.

The UN claims that more than 600 of child recruitment cases in Syria are attributed to the SDF and associated Kurdish groups in the country. This is despite the fact that the SDF signed an agreement with the UN in 2019 to end minors’ enlistment.

Over 600 child recruitment cases have also been attributed to the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) coalition of militant groups, which has incorporated fighters from several extremist groups, including ISIS, over the years.

Additionally, the UN says that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, has recruited over 380 minors into their ranks.

Twenty-five cases among Syrian government forces and allied militias have allegedly been recorded as well.

Bassam al-Ahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, said that in some cases, children are forcibly conscripted into the ranks of armed groups. He added that some join for religious or ideological beliefs, while others join for the salaries much needed by them or their families.

Ahmad claimed that some children are even sent out of the country to participate as mercenaries in foreign wars.

The enlistment of child soldiers has been an issue for much of the Syrian conflict.

During the recruitment efforts of the Nusra Front between 2013 and 2016, led mainly by Saudi cleric Abdullah al-Muhaysni, scores of teenagers were among the thousands enlisted to fight against the Syrian army. Many of these teenagers were sent on suicide missions.

In 2016, members of a US-backed armed group, the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement, were filmed beheading a 12-year-old boy named Abdullah Issa, who they claimed was a fighter in the pro-government Liwa al-Quds militia.

Liwa al-Quds released a statement at the time categorically denying that the boy was a fighter, claiming that he had been residing in an area of Aleppo under the control of armed groups.

In 2019, the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement was absorbed by the SNA after being defeated by HTS.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

By targeting Ukrainian war criminals, Moscow is protecting its civilians

By Lucas Leiroz | June 30, 2023

Recently, the whereabouts of Ukrainian officials such as the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kirill Budanov, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, have come to the attention of people around the world. Mainstream media omit information about both, while denying rumors that they died or were seriously injured during high-precision Russian strikes. These same media outlets often call Russian attacks on high-ranking Russian targets unjustified, ignoring that these Kiev public figures are openly involved in the murders of Russian civilians.

Since last year, Kiev has taken an openly terrorist stance in the conflict, focusing more on civilian targets in the undisputed zone of Russian territory than on military enemies on the battlefield. This terrorist nature of the neo-Nazi regime began to become clear when the murder of Daria Dugina, a prominent Russian journalist, daughter of the philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, took place. Daria was killed after a bomb was placed in her car in the suburbs of Moscow by an agent of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian far-right organization.

Since then, terrorist attacks have increased more and more, many times being neutralized in advance by the Russian security forces. People notoriously known for their support of Moscow’s special military operation have been targeted, even if they have no military involvement. This happened, for example, with businessman Konstantin Malofeev, who also had a bomb planted in his car by exile Russian neo-Nazi activists.

However, security forces are not always able to act in time to avoid the worst-case scenario. A new shocking murder case very similar to the one of Daria occurred in April this year, when Maxim Fomin, also known by his alias “Vladlen Tatarsky”, was murdered in a bomb attack on a public cafe in St. Petersburg, committed by an anti-government dissident admittedly linked to Ukrainian intelligence.

In May, Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin was also targeted by neo-Nazi terrorists, having survived a bomb attack that resulted in the death of his driver. The person responsible for the attack, Alexander Permyakov, also admitted to be working for Kiev’s intelligence, making clear the involvement of the regime’s authorities in the case.

In addition, it is worthwhile to remember the cases involving non-personal targets, such as the terrorist incursions in the demilitarized cities of Belgorod, Kursk, Rostov and Bryansk, as well as the frequent bombings in residential areas of Donbass. All these cases lead to countless deaths of children, women, and the elderly, causing unnecessary damage to the population, with no military relevance in the attacks.

Furthermore, in May, Kiev violated a serious redline when it attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin himself by launching drones into Kremlin facilities. The attack was thwarted, but the Ukrainian intent to kill the Russian head of state made it clear that urgent measures needed to be taken by Moscow to ensure its own security.

The main problem with these attacks is that Kiev does not hide its active involvement. Commenting on all these cases during an interview in May, Kirill Budanov admitted that Ukrainian forces had murdered Russian citizens and promised that they “will keep killing” – until Kiev “wins”. Previously, he had already admitted responsibility for the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge, which took place in October 2022.

In the same sense, Zaluzhny had also commented in December last year on the murder of Russians, stating: “And the most important experience we had and the one which we have practiced almost like a religion is that Russians and any other enemies must be killed, just killed, and most importantly, we should not be afraid to do it. And this is what we are doing”.

Russia responded quite strategically to these Ukrainian provocations, avoiding escalation in the conflict, and directing missiles only to the main targets, which are the command centers. Between late May and early June, high-precision Russian strikes took place, destroying the headquarters of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence in Kiev. There are several unconfirmed reports that Budanov was seriously injured during these strikes and was taken to Germany for medical treatment. German outlets deny the rumors, but the whereabouts of Budanov are still unknown, with even an important Ukrainian politician publicly stating that he is dead.

In the same sense, Zaluzhny is also missing, with several rumors about his health. There are unconfirmed reports circulating on the internet about a Russian attack on a Ukrainian command post in Kherson, where a meeting between Zaluzhny and other military leaders was taking place. He would have been hit at the time, possibly dying or experiencing serious injuries. Although there is no confirmation, his whereabouts remain unknown.

In fact, Moscow is avoiding commenting on these cases because it does not seem to be Russia’s intention to make war propaganda with the success of its attacks. The Russian objective is to neutralize possible threats to its citizens, which is why high-precision attacks on command centers are taking place. This is the most effective way to prevent further terrorist incursions that kill more Russians.

On the other hand, Kiev, which is militarily weakened and discredited by its allies, tries to hide its casualties as this would further affect the morale of the troops and of the Ukrainian state itself.

It is not possible to say for now if Budanov and Zaluzhny are alive or dead, but certainly they are being at least temporarily neutralized and will not return to their command posts soon. This is a relief for all Russian citizens as they have suffered public death threats from both officers.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | Leave a comment

Italy’s forgotten concentration camps in Libya

By Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | June 29, 2023

On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above all, an apology. Rome, as is the case with all former colonial powers, tried for years to close the matter without offering anything. The treaty, a success for Libya, might have ended the political and diplomatic struggle over the colonial past, but it will not wipe it out from history and people’s memories.

The idea of invading Libya came during the colonial rush that saw major colonial powers like France, United Kingdom and others divide the dying Ottoman Empire possessions in North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe itself. Libya was part of that empire, very close to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea and, above all, Libyans lacked effective means to fight back after the Ottoman military garrison left the country.

The rise to power of the Republican Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini in 1922, gave the occupation of Libya another nostalgic dimension as the fascists strongly believed in the deceptive idea that modern Italy was the rightful heir to the Roman Empire and, therefore, they were responsible for recovering the possessions of the bygone empire.  Another reason that made Libya more attractive to fascist Italy is the fact that Italy, united just 50 years earlier, became overcrowded and its farmers, particularly in the south, were eager to own land of which Libya has plenty. Mussolini used to call Libya the “fourth shore of Rome”.

Italians thought that the taking over of Libya would not be more than a few days’ sea trip and the entire country would be conquered. However, once the first amphibious forces tried to land on Tripoli shores in 1911, they were faced with stiff resistance from the locals, who rushed to defend their country with the little means they had.

As the invaders increased their numbers and widened their presence, the resistance shifted to new tactics, using the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run. Outnumbered and out-gunned, the Libyans, mostly nomads and shepherds, figured out that direct confrontation with one of the most modern armies at the time was suicidal and destructive.

Instead of facing the Italian army directly, they waged rather small battles, mostly at night time. Benefitting from their detailed knowledge of the land and its geography, the Mujahidin, as they were called, managed to make life really difficult for the Italian army wherever it went. Facing a ghost enemy fighting on horseback, the Italian army started to use unheard of methods of war, scoring many firsts.

For instance, Italy was the first country to use air war and Libya became the first country to be bombed from the air. An Italian pilot named Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, in a letter to his father, described how he threw the first bomb at an Arab [Libyan] camp in November 1911, just a month into the invasion. The young pilot wrote “today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane”, before pointing out that it was “the first time that we [Italian army] will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it.”

Pilot Gavotti, indeed, succeeded in throwing the first ever bomb from an aeroplane, ushering in the age of air war for the first time in the history of mankind.  He wrote “and after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment” in Ain Zara, today a town, but at the time just an oasis south-east of Tripoli. Ain Zara became the first place on earth to be bombed from the air. The Italian pilot did not realise what he had just done and had no idea what his bomb had done to people, mostly civilians, below. He returned to base, overwhelmed by his success in hitting “the target” and went straight to report to General Caneva that he just registered his name in history as the first person to bomb a target from the air. Carlo Caneva was the first Italian commander to announce that “Tripoli will be Italian”, as his forces launched the first attacks on Libya. He led the earlier brutal stages of the invasion before being replaced later by another, crueler General Rodolfo Graziani in 1930.

In the same year, the Italian army scored another world first when Benito Mussolini authorised, for the first time, the use of sulphur mustard to subdue Libyans. Bombing formations of fighters and civilian villages suspected of supporting the Mujahidin from the air but, this time, using poisonous gas, besides explosives.

In the 1920s, Libyan resistance intensified, particularly in eastern Libya with the rise of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a septuagenarian who suffered old age and chronic back pain, who became the national leader of the Mujahidin against fascist Italian occupation.

This forced General Graziani to revert to using collective punishment against entire civilian communities by forcing them into concentration camps across Eastern Libya. At one point, there were some 16 different camps in the Sirte desert and further east in which thousands of civilians including women, children, the elderly and young men were forced to live with their animals in desert plots surrounded by barbed wire and guarded, around the clock, by armed soldiers.

Despite this brutality, Al-Mukhtar and his colleagues fought for 20 years, until he was captured on 11 September 1931, after suffering an injury in a village called Slonta, south of Al-Bayda town in Libya’s eastern Green Mountain region.

After a quick trial, he was sentenced to death by hanging on 16 September. Hundreds of civilians, including women and children were forced to watch as Al-Mukhtar was hanged in Suluq concentration camp, one of the most infamous, south-west of Benghazi. By staging such a gruesome show, the Italian authorities wanted to terrify Libyans who might think of following in his footsteps and fight them.

Modern Libya, before the NATO invasion of 2011, used to commemorate 16 of September as a national day of mourning to remember Al-Mukhtar and remind younger generations of what happened in Libya, decades before. New Libya, however, has forgotten the mourning day, while fascist concentration camps are never really mentioned outside academic circles.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr. Dismantles Doctor’s Pro-Vaccine Stance in Town Hall Meeting

By Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | June 29, 2023

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. Epistemologists ask the foundational question, “How do we know what we know?”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appeared in a town hall meeting hosted by NewsNation and moderated by journalist Elizabeth Vargas.

The exchanges between Kennedy — chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense — Vargas and Dr. Tariq Butt, a family medicine doctor in the audience, demonstrated the real quagmire the scientific community finds itself in.

Doctors and journalists cannot see the difference between believing and knowing. If we were in a rational world, there wouldn’t be the need for censorship and shadowbanning.

Nor would many of the vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule, as presently formulated and tested, have found their way into the arms of young human beings.

In 13 short minutes, Kennedy deftly demonstrated to the audience that our problem isn’t just a failure of epidemiology — it’s one of epistemology:

Vargas first framed the topic this way:

“The biggest controversy surrounding your candidacy is your stance on childhood vaccines. Nearly every scientific and medical organization including the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the AMA [American Medical Association], the American Academy of Pediatrics, all say you’re wrong on this issue.”

Vargas opened the door for Kennedy to not only clarify his position — which he said has been distorted and misrepresented no matter how many times he has tried to set the record straight — but she also revealed how little thought and research she has done into the controversy.

Kennedy pointed out the reality of the situation. These are not organizations that have independently arrived at their conclusions. The AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics and “nearly all scientific and medical organizations” take information coming from the CDC and FDA as gospel.

In other words, if the CDC and the FDA are wrong, the entire medical establishment is wrong.

There’s a difference between consensus and herd mentality — a fact that never seemed to register with Vargas.

Kennedy is immensely knowledgeable about vaccine science and the regulatory process, as well as its corruption by Pharma interests. Moreover, he is a seasoned litigator and is not careless in his delivery. He correctly asks Vargas for clarification: “On what issue?”

Vargas first alludes to the possibility that vaccines could be the cause of autism and harm.

Kennedy immediately asks the obvious, “So you are saying that these organizations claim that vaccines NEVER damage kids?”

Vargas is forced to backpedal:

“I don’t think anyone is saying they never have. There may be a child here [or there], but overall vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives.”

Vargas is demonstrating the lack of understanding the public has about the issue. How can anyone claim that vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives if proper prospective studies with matched unvaccinated controls have never been conducted?

Kennedy makes this abundantly clear in his response to Dr. Butt, who asks Kennedy this question:

“Eradication of chicken pox and polio in the U.S. and in many parts of the world is a result of regular vaccination. MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] and many diseases are preventable. There is little evidence of these diseases in the vaccinated population. Your vaccine stance is dangerous to the health and well-being of millions. Medical experts are deeply concerned about your message. How can we help you come to the side of science?”

Kennedy admits there is evidence that vaccines have reduced the risk of mortality and morbidity from the diseases they target. However, he argued, without long-term prospective studies around all-cause mortality/morbidity in vaccinated populations nobody — no matter how educated or how big an organization you represent, he said — can claim there is an overall benefit.

Kennedy’s answer to the question dismantles the issue to the very core, catching Dr. Butt off guard. His methodical response should have proven to the audience that the family medicine doctor has very little grasp of all the available evidence.

Dr. Butt clearly wasn’t aware of analyses like this one that concluded that a “Mass varicella vaccination is expected to cause a major epidemic of herpes zoster, affecting more than 50% of those aged 10-44 years at the introduction of vaccination.”

Should studies like this guide public policy in the U.S.? They certainly do in the U.K., where health officials do not recommend universal vaccinations against chickenpox for precisely the reason Kennedy states.

Of all the preventable diseases out there, why would Dr. Butt use chickenpox as an example of how Kennedy’s vaccine stance is dangerous to the health and well-being of millions? Could it be that a doctor with a microphone was unaware of the science?

Was Dr. Butt aware of the enormous tragedy caused by the DTP (diptheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccine in Africa? After 30 years of observation, it was shown that children vaccinated with the DTP shot were dying of other causes at 10 times the rate of the unvaccinated. We would have never known about this if no one actually looked.

The devastation caused by the DTP vaccine is not limited to the continent of Africa. Kennedy informed the audience that the flurry of lawsuits against manufacturers of this vaccine led to the passing of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which has protected vaccine manufacturers from any liability.

As a concession to the public, this law also created the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, to “protect” and warn the public of potential vaccine danger; a system that has been shown to underreport injuries as commonly as it gets ignored.

Though Kennedy did not discuss the MMR and polio vaccines, his point was clear: Unless proper, long-term, prelicensure placebo-controlled safety studies are done we cannot determine if more harm than good is being done.

Dr. Butt’s response to the likely damage caused by the varicella and DTP vaccines was all too predictable: “A person can take a medicine and then get involved in a motor vehicle accident.” In other words, correlation does not prove causation!

Dr. Butt has good intentions. He is also particularly skilled at picking the weakest examples to prove his point.

The issue with the varicella vaccine was the resulting increased risk of herpes zoster infection (shingles). The issue with the DTP vaccine was the increased risk of death from other prevalent diseases that proved to be more deadly for the kids who received the vaccine.

We are not talking about random traumatic injuries that have nothing to do with immune modulation.

Furthermore, was Dr. Butt aware that the “correlation does not equal causation” argument can be used to dismiss vaccine benefits as well?

This double standard is mindlessly applied by vaccine proponents. Trials don’t prove causation, only correlation. That goes for efficacy too. On what grounds can one say that a vaccine caused a decrease in the disease it targets while assuring us that it was only correlated with an increase in side effects?

Trials just measure the incidence of things in two (or more) groups of participants. It’s a mathematical comparison. No causation is ever proven.

Vargas took issue with Kennedy’s claim that not one vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule has been subjected to a prelicensured placebo-controlled trial.

Vargas: “Yes they have.”

Kennedy: “No.”

Vargas: “Yeah, they have!”

And later …

Vargas: “The FDA says, and in fact, on its website, you can clearly see vaccines go through three stages of testing against double-blind placebo. They already DO that testing.”

Kennedy: “Elizabeth, you can say that.”

Vargas: “I’m not saying that. The FDA is saying that.”

Kennedy: “The FDA is not saying that.”

Vargas: “Yes they do! They say that on their website!”

Kennedy: “They will not tell you that there’s a vaccine that has ever undergone a long-term placebo-controlled trial prior to licensing because it’s not true.”

The reason why this embarrassing (and mildly entertaining) spectacle is important to dissect is because of what it reveals about the stubbornness we have about being right. Did Vargas actually scour the FDA website prior to this public exchange?

She couldn’t have for the obvious reason that no such statement from them exists on their website as she maintained.

Why is she so sure that she is right? I would venture to say it is because someone whom she trusts more than Kennedy told her that.

But was she really listening to what Kennedy was saying? Kennedy demanded a citation from Dr. Anthony Fauci in a face-to-face meeting with him in 2016. Fauci couldn’t produce one but promised he would.

He never did — so Kennedy (and attorney Aaron Siri) sued him and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). After a year of litigation, they finally obtained a written statement from the HHS which still does not cite a single study but assures us that inert placebos are not required to demonstrate safety in childhood vaccines.

Of course, there is no reason Vargas should trust Kennedy if she has not visited the Children’s Health Defense website where the letter from the HHS is made available.

But at what point should she have paused and honestly asked herself about what she really knew and not just what she thought she did?

In this case, the spectacle arose not because Vargas was wrong, but because she was so sure she was right.

It’s also worthwhile to consider what was on the line for her, personally. Was she able to face the possibility that the vaccines we have been injecting into our own bodies and our children have never been tested against a placebo?

Her argumentative responses to Kennedy’s views, which he defended with several key citations off the top of his head, reflected the real impediments the public has toward seeing reality for what it is. What would it mean if Kennedy has been right all along?

As a veteran journalist for NewsNation and previously for Fox and A&E Networks, Vargas should have come prepared. Kennedy has previously made himself very clear that he is willing to change his mind. “Show me where I got it wrong.”

Kennedy asks Vargas to cite a single prelicensure, placebo-controlled vaccine study. She couldn’t because no one can. There aren’t any.

Kennedy pointed out the real issue: “We have a corrupt federal agency [FDA] that is lying to the AMA and all those agencies and all those doctors. But those agencies are controlled by Pharma. That is the problem.”

Without any studies to cite or any way to refute Kennedy’s damning allegations, Vargas chose to confront Kennedy with the fact that some of his family members disagree with his stance on vaccines.

Kennedy: “Does your family agree with everything that you say?”

Vargas: “Definitely not. You got me on that one.”

Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.

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.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment

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