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Son Alleges Texas Hospital’s COVID Treatment Plan Killed Unvaccinated Father

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 21, 2023

For decades, Constantine “Gus” Kotsanis was a respected otolaryngologist in Grapevine, Texas. Having emigrated from Greece at age 15, Constantine became a University of Texas-Southwestern medical professor, a cancer and autism researcher and founder of the Kotsanis Institute of Functional Medicine.

In an interview with The Defender, Constantine’s son, Andy Kotsanis, said that in the 1980s, his father helped transform what was previously the Grapevine Medical Center into the Baylor Scott & White Medical Center — Grapevine, affiliated with Baylor University. It is now the largest not-for-profit health system in Texas.

It was in that same hospital, that on March 14, 2021, Constantine “violently lost his life,” his son said — days after being admitted with respiratory problems and a subsequent COVID-19 diagnosis.

Andy said he believes his father’s death resulted from the treatment he received, including remdesivir, fentanyl and other drugs Constantine and his family had not authorized.

Andy also alleges he was “threatened and assaulted by the police and the hospital administrator” as his father was dying, and barred from the room as his father passed away.

Today, Andy is raising awareness about his father’s death — and the stories of others who endured similar treatment — through his own activism and as a social media outreach coordinator for the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation.

Andy discussed his family’s experience around his father’s hospitalization and subsequent death at Baylor Scott & White, and the activism he is now involved in as a result. He shared extensive documentation and photos with The Defender to corroborate his story.

Hospital president to victim’s family: ‘I’m not letting you see him’

Andy told The Defender that he was the very first baby born at Baylor Scott & White’s then-new outpatient operating room. Just days earlier, his father “was the first physician to do a procedure in that operating room,” he said. “So, there’s a very long history with my father and Baylor.”

“This is a story of tragedy, but also betrayal, because he helped build that place,” Andy said.

According to Andy, his father was not vaccinated for COVID-19. “He was not a fan of it,” he said. He said he now believes his father’s vaccination status may have played a crucial role in the treatment he received in the hospital.

After hearing about Gail Seiler’s story, Andy said, “Maybe they played that same game with him and did not tell the truth completely to us,” he said.

Andy said his father spent “a little over six days” in the hospital. He was admitted when “he had a hard time breathing. … He was really struggling, [in] a great state of hypoxia, almost to the point where he was exhausted with breathing.”

At the hospital, his father tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted. According to Andy, the pulmonologist assigned to his father, Dr. Jagadeshwar Gummi Reddy, administered four rounds of remdesivir daily.

“At first, my father was calling me, saying ‘I feel a little bit better, everything’s fine,’” Andy said. “Then things started to go downhill very quickly. … I didn’t understand at the time what remdesivir was, how powerful it was and what it did to people or how deadly it was.”

A few days later, another phone call came from the hospital, this time from nurse Sarah Grice, who told Andy’s mother, “I had to put your husband in restraints, because he was confused about why he had tubes in his lungs.”

After his father’s death, Andy discovered that hospital medical records claimed no restraints were used.

“At the time, I didn’t know that there’s a formula that they follow: They sedate you and they’ll put you in restraints if they have to put remdesivir in you,” Andy said. “We requested to speak to the hospital administrator, Chris York, president of Baylor Grapevine at the time.”

According to Andy, York “arrogantly” told them, “‘I don’t care who your dad was or who your husband was, I’m not letting you see him.’ I said, ‘I think this is criminal. You’re not letting me see my dad. I don’t know what’s going on. Please let me see my father.’”

But York told them, “If you think it’s a crime, call the police,” according to Andy, who said, “I’ll never forget that sentence for the rest of my life.”

Nurse ‘started performing the most violent chest compressions I’ve ever seen’

Grice called the family again, telling Andy’s mother, “Your husband said he wants to die and be put on a ventilator.” This sounded nothing like my dad, Andy said, “because all over his chart, it says he didn’t want to be intubated. No ventilator, no remdesivir.”

“So how do you go from ‘No, I don’t want to be on a ventilator’ to ‘I want to die, put me on the ventilator’ in a matter of less than six days?” Andy asked.

On what turned out to be the day before his father’s death, Andy, his mother and their attorney “barged in the front door … demanding to see my father,” Andy said. “We were ready to press charges if they didn’t let us in.”

Subsequently, York “made the decision to only let my mother in,” Andy said, while Reddy spoke to him in person. According to Andy, this discussion was peculiar.

“He came downstairs with his mask off, with his hands shaking like he was scared, like someone was after him,” Andy said. “He introduced himself [and said] ‘My hands are tied. There’s nothing I can do.’ I said, ‘That’s not a good answer, sir,’ and he just walked away. It was almost like he was being bullied.”

Reluctantly, Andy’s mother approved the use of the ventilator that day, Andy said. But at 5 a.m. the next morning, the hospital called to say his dad was coding.

Again, only one family member was allowed into Andy’s father’s hospital room, so the family decided to let Katerina, his sister, be that person.

Expecting “some humane treatment,” Andy said they were instead met at the front door by Donna, an older nurse, and Demorrius Jones, a policeman, who “arrogantly greeted us in a very rude way.”

According to Andy, they got York on the phone, who said, “No one can go into the room. You have to watch him die through the glass.”

Andy told The Defender that, through the glass, they saw nurse practitioner Rommel Villas Lantajo handing a syringe to Grice, who then injected Constantine.

“Before she injected him, I saw the heart monitor,” Andy said. “He had a pulse of 122. So, I’m thinking to myself ‘Why is he coding? He has a heartbeat.’”

After the injection, “his pulse started to drop rapidly, and she [the nurse] started to do the most violent chest compressions I’ve ever seen,” Andy said.

“His body was bouncing 10 inches off the table. It was like watching someone get chainsawed in half. It was very violent and brutal, and looked more like she was trying to kill him, not save his life,” Andy said.

Andy said his father’s health was “already compromised with all those drugs they gave him” in the preceding day, which included fentanyl, adding that “he was still on the ventilator when she [Grice] was doing what she was doing.”

Grice subsequently stopped administering chest compressions and, according to Andy’s mother, “turned off all the machines.” Immediately following this, “My dad lifted his chest off the table, and then he had a seizure and died in front of my mother” while she was screaming “Stop, stop, stop!”

Andy was not present as his father died, though, because the police officer had “forced me out of the ICU. He threatened to arrest me if I didn’t leave the hospital immediately.”

Father’s death ‘malicious and arbitrary’

“They did this to a very kind, gentle soul,” Andy said, adding that his father’s death was “malicious and arbitrary, on behalf of Chris York, the administrator.”

“I’m still in shock,” Andy said, telling The Defender :

“The aftermath was so bad. I’m still in therapy over it. I’m very sad. I can’t put into words what a panic attack is like. I didn’t have irritable bowel syndrome until my dad died. You only get that when you experience something traumatic. Some people consider that a form of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].”

“I’ve had several panic attacks,” Andy added. “I’ve lost count.” He said he’s “almost had to institutionalize” his mom. “I put my whole life on hold and I’m still, to this day, at her aid, trying to help her. She’s still not the same,” he said.

Andy also noted the anomaly of an extraordinary number of pages — many of them duplicates — in his father’s medical charts. “You’re in the hospital for six days but the chart is 948 pages long?” he asked. Another anomalous document dealt with “permission to be filmed,” he said, calling it “a very suspicious document.”

‘This is a huge cover-up’

His father’s experience led Andy to become an activist, he said.

“I’m trying to promote my story on my website and to inform everyone, the whole planet, that we’re witnessing the collapse of the healthcare system. … They’re using drugs in hospitals that are clearly not working,” he said. “I’m trying to show people that this is what they did to me. This is what they probably plan to do to you if you’re in there.”

“If that’s how you want to say goodbye to a loved one, go to Baylor Scott & White,” Andy said. “They’ll be more than happy to accommodate you if that’s your desire. That’s how I feel about this organization.”

“Hopefully, in the future, this can be a reference point for people to go, ‘We don’t want to be like Baylor, don’t pull a Baylor, don’t be like Baylor.’ That’s where I’m going with this,” Andy said. “This was so vicious and atrocious. I’ll never forget it.”

Aside from his website, Andy’s activism has included “putting road signs out, [placing] cards on doors,” he said, adding that such acts are “perfectly legal in the state of Texas” due to the Texas Citizens’ Participation Act.

However, just weeks after Andy began these activities, he was warned by local police and a local detective to “be careful” where he placed his signs and cards because his “First Amendment rights are limited.”

Andy said he experienced more difficulty with police when he attempted to press manslaughter charges against Baylor Scott & White. Local police referred him to Baylor Police and the Texas Rangers. When Andy contacted the Rangers, they advised him to “start a paper trail” by calling Baylor Police.

Yet, Baylor Police refused to take a report, telling him to “call our legal department.”

“So, this is a huge cover-up,” Andy told The Defender. “The police are covering up, in my opinion, what I would consider a homicide.”

Andy said his efforts, though, have managed to secure a degree of professional difficulty for York. According to Andy, “He orchestrated this, and now he’s no longer in the state of Texas. For a small while, he was an administrator in Arkansas, but thanks to my efforts informing his new employer, he’s no longer [there].”

In addition to his individual activism, Andy joined the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation, which advocates on behalf of victims of COVID-19 hospital protocols and others with similar experiences. He described them as “the best group you can find if you’re a victim.”

“We’re on a mission,” Andy said. “We’re here to help as many people get as many stories out there and turn the narrative around.”

Many people have reached out to him through the FormerFeds Group but also through his own website, said Andy, describing similar treatment that they or loved ones experienced at hospitals, including at Baylor Scott & White.

Referring to the COVID-19-related hospital protocol prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Andy said he is not certain if it was followed by Baylor Scott & White in his father’s case. But he noted that his and other victims’ experience make it sound like “there’s a formula they’re following.”

Andy said these efforts are important to everyone, even if they haven’t been victims of COVID-19 hospital protocols or similar treatment.

“We all get old and will need a little extra attention,” he said. “The question is, what kind of attention is that going to be? I’m hoping it’s going to be a real standard of care.”

Andy shared some words of advice for individuals who have had similar experiences or who may end up in the hospital for similar reasons.

“If you can get the chart, get the chart, print the chart. Read it before you do any reporting. Do your own homework,” he said.

He also recommends seeking professional help to grieve. “It’s okay to ask for help.”

“Also, understand that there are people like me out there, a lot of us that are going to, for as long as we’re alive, try to turn this thing around,” he added. “Don’t give up because you feel like you’re going nowhere. I have felt that way many times. … Believe in yourself. Don’t give up. Be persistent.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Hurricane Katrina and the “Angels of Mercy”

Ethical boundaries in medical decision-making

By Jonathan Engler and Jessica Hockett | HART | August 21, 2023

The debate as to how much “pandemic” harm was caused not by a virus, but rather by the dystopian response to the perceived threat of a virus, has been raging for some time now.

Jonathan tweeted about this last year in relation to Lombardy and that thread was turned into this Panda article.

An analysis of the spatial characteristics of deaths during the spring 2020 wave in Northern Italy was carried out by him along with a Panda colleague; this suggested that it looked nothing like a spreading virus, and more like the sudden imposition of a policy response.

More recently, Jessica has essentially come to the same conclusions about New York: that something terrifyingly unnatural appears to have happened, which cannot be explained by the sudden spread of a deadly virus.

It surely does not require any scientific understanding whatsoever to glance at the below graph of total mortality rate in NYC going back to 2015 and see that what happened in a few weeks during spring 2020 suggests an abrupt episode of ferocious lethality which was at odds not only with anything observed anywhere at the time or thereafter, but also with even the highest estimates of the infection fatality rate alleged to have caused “the pandemic”.

 

If we look back even further, it can be seen that the reported spring 2020 mortality spike in New York is actually around double that observed in the autumn of the 1918 pandemic.  But other places in 2020 did not see waves of deaths anywhere near those observed during the 1918 pandemic.

Moreover, unlike elsewhere, the increase in deaths was seen across a younger demographic, not exclusively in the elderly.

As shown in the graph below, all-cause hospital inpatient weekly death counts in the 20-59 age group were dramatically elevated for a short period, by a shocking 6-fold at their peak, with nearly all these deaths being coded as ‘covid’.

In fact, in New York, the % increase in all-cause deaths during the spring “1st wave” period was the same in the 20-69 year old age group as in the 70s and over:

 

In other places, however, what we were told was the same disease caused by the same virus left the younger age groups largely untouched, with nearly all deaths being in the elderly.

This discrepancy remains completely unexplained. It seems unarguable that certain difficult questions certainly need asking about what happened in New York in 2020 if we are to unravel the truth about what happened there.

Of course, the narratives emerging from Northern Italy and New York in 2020 were instrumental in driving fear and hysteria worldwide. Moreover, the number of deaths in both places informed early estimates of the IFR. These inciting incidents directly sparked much of the worldwide exaggerated, fear-driven response to what we now know was (if anything) a virus mainly affecting the frail and elderly, to which most people already had sufficient immunity to prevent severe illness.

For these reasons, it is essential that particular attention is paid to try to ascertain precisely what happened in these specific places.

It’s worth detailing – as evidence for the deeply dystopian mindset operating at the time – just some of the many deviations from normality that adversely affected human health and immunity, or which constituted sudden changes to healthcare practice.

These included (but were not limited to):

  • Stress and anxiety from confinement (being told to stay home) and fear propaganda
  • Discouragement to attend hospitals if ill
  • Reduced community prescribing of broad-spectrum antibiotics
  • Low staff levels in healthcare settings due to self-isolation of those “testing positive,” even with no symptoms
  • Isolating the elderly
  • Barring loved ones from hospital and care homes
  • Fear (on the part of HCWs) of tending to covid positive patients, compromising basic medical and care needs.
  • Early and inappropriate invasive ventilation
  • Overuse of midazolam and opiates

Inevitably, and rightly, some researchers have started to perform post-pandemic autopsies analysing the motives and reasoning used to justify policies and other changes in behaviour and to examine their real world consequences.

Some medical practitioners have taken umbrage at any suggestion that the stressful environment and sudden expectations and pressures laid upon them may have resulted in well-meaning medical staff crossing ethical lines, or violating the Hippocratic Oath.

Those who wish to point out that there is historical precedent for medical staff behaving diabolically while thinking they are doing good often invoke atrocities during the 1930s and 1940s (and receive opprobrium as a result).

However, there is a much more recent example, and one which we were oblivious to until recently, despite this incident being totally “out in the open”, the subject of a lengthy investigative article, book, and a TV mini-series: the post Hurricane Katrina incident at Memorial Hospital Center in New Orleans in 2006.

Wikipedia provides the basic facts:

In the hurricane aftermath, the basement of Memorial Hospital Center flooded, power failed, and battery power for essential equipment started to run out. Most, but not all, patients were successfully evacuated.

The hurricane occurred on 29th August. A shocking finding was made in the aftermath, as described in the Wikipedia article:

On September 11, mortuary workers recovered 45 bodies from the hospital. Toxicology tests were performed on 41 bodies, and 23 tested positive for one or both of morphine and the fast-acting sedative midazolam [branded as Versed in the US], although few of these patients had been prescribed morphine for pain.

In the following weeks, it was reported that staff had discussed euthanizing patients. Some reports went further; Bryant King, an internist at Memorial, told CNN that he believed “the discussion of euthanasia was more than talk.”

LifeCare told the state Attorney General’s office that nine of their patients might “have been given lethal doses of medicines by a Memorial doctor and nurses.”

King publicly charged that one or more healthcare workers had killed patients, based on conversations with other health care workers. King told CNN that when he believed a doctor was about to kill patients, he boarded a boat and left the hospital. King explained his actions in terms of his opposition to Pou’s alleged actions, arguing “I’d rather be considered a person who abandoned patients than someone who aided in eliminating patients.”

Following an investigation into the deaths described above, the local DA (“District Attorney”) decided there was sufficient evidence to charge three medical staff with four counts of second-degree murder. Charges against two were later dropped in exchange for testimony.

The prosecution was deeply unpopular. Despite substantial evidence of deliberate actions taken to terminate lives – indeed, enough to satisfy the legal definition for homicide – many members of the public felt medical staff were simply “doing their best” under very trying circumstances. According to a local reporter the incident “ignited a furious debate in New Orleans and elsewhere about whether sharp ethical boundaries can be drawn around decisions on patient comfort made in a crisis.”

The DA failed to win re-election, and when the new DA convened a Grand Jury* at an undisclosed location, much of the previously amassed evidence was not presented and some of the key witnesses not called. The Grand Jury decided that charges should be dropped.

Unsurprisingly, several commentators (e.g., Loyola University Law Professor Dane Ciolono) opined that the Grand Jury was convened and run in such a way as to ensure charges would be dropped while providing “cover” for such an outcome.

Whatever actually occurred at Memorial Hospital, or whatever the staff’s motives, the incident speaks to an unsettling, yet undeniable truth: during a crisis, “ethical red lines” – however deeply held and valued – may be easily crossed. Society may judge those decisions acceptable or understandable, as appears to have happened with the Memorial Hospital case.

In summary, it would appear that the legal process was manipulated to assure an outcome which accorded with public opinion – that is to say to extinguish the possibility of prosecution while maintaining the pretence of due legal process. In this way, facing up to the stark reality – that as a society we mete out justice arbitrarily when we wish to – was avoided. Perhaps the well-ordered rules-based system suggested by statutory definitions of what actions constitute crimes, is to some extent just “for show”.

The Memorial Hospital case obliterates – with a relatively recent example – the notion that doctors and nurses all have the same ethical boundaries which they simply will not cross under any circumstances.

Could such boundaries have been crossed during the recent covid event?

A number of commentators are considering the possibility that changes in the policies and practices around the use of certain drugs (midazolam and opiates), and procedures (invasive ventilation) – sometimes in combination – may have contributed to the high mortality reported, at least in some specific places.

In relation to drugs, in an article published on his Substack last year, the blogger known as Bartram’s Folly explored the possibility that (in the UK) sheer fear and panic may well have driven medical staff to use midazolam and opiates more liberally in patients with covid, which may have encompassed anyone with a positive covid test.

In the UK one such mechanism which may have encouraged this measure is the NICE Guideline NG163 (no longer on their website but available here or as PDF download here), about which others have also written in detail. This guideline effectively transposed the advice for treating end-stage cancer patients with midazolam and opiates into that for covid patients. More detail on this here.

Of the guideline, Bartram said,

“… the NICE guidelines appear to have introduced a pathway for doctors which allowed for (perhaps even encouraged) more than a gentle nudge for those who were ill with Covid towards death, some of whom might well have survived given the chance. This iatrogenesis hypothesis would mean that at least some of the deaths recorded as with Covid might well have been a direct result of the care guidelines as set out by NICE.“

Later, Bartram makes the point that the pretext of a crisis situation or emergency may establish the grounds for ethical boundaries to be crossed or disregarded, at least temporarily, under the auspices of ignorance or ‘doing one’s best’ with the information said to be known or available at the time:

It is important to note that in the iatrogenesis hypothesis it isn’t necessary for some people to have had an evil intent – it is entirely possible that individuals promoted and exercised a policy that resulted in needless deaths while believing that they were ‘doing the right thing’ (e.g., see Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil).

In particular, ‘petty bureaucrats’ appear to be readily able to think up policies without seeing the need to consider the full consequences, and when these consequences are eventually revealed will usually point to the minutes from endless meetings with other petty bureaucrats to show that they weren’t personally responsible for the policy and they were simply following process.

Of course, once a framework had been decided front-line staff might have been grateful for the guidance offered given the challenging times, at least until the negative consequences of the guidance became painfully clear.

It should also be remembered that – in the US at least – certain extraordinary policy measures may have been important factors. For example, during the emergency NYC Governor Cuomo issued executive orders and suspended laws which gave doctors and nurses immunity and absolved hospitals of the responsibility to keep close patient records. (The order itself can be found here, and some legal commentary on it here.) Articles in JAMA can be interpreted as giving ethical permission for physicians to issue unilateral DNR orders, avoid CPR, and ration ventilators and critical care beds.

Moreover there are numerous examples of doctors, nurses and others in the US who later said they were following guidance, learning as they went. (See this interesting essay by Dr Kory, for example.) Under these circumstances it is easy to see how they could assume that something which ordinarily might have been questionable would become acceptable as “everyone else was doing it”.

Evidence of increased midazolam use can be seen in the US as well as in the UK.  This graph from a study describing the use of 7 specific drugs in 47 hospitals in NY shows the daily count of patients (blue) who received midazolam and the disproportionate quantities used (orange) between March 1 and May 16, 2020.

Moreover, midazolam is currently listed by the FDA to have been in short supply since 2 April 2020:

This Guardian article from 13 April 2020 reports on a letter sent by “a group of prominent medical practitioners and experts” to capital punishment states imploring them to:

“release their stocks of essential sedatives and paralytics that they hoard for executions” so that they can be “used for intubations and mechanical ventilation of the most severely ill coronavirus patients who cannot breathe for themselves”.

The tone of this letter can be taken to illustrate the sense of sheer panic prevailing at the time – certainly not conducive to rational decision-making – combined with the assumption that invasive ventilation was going to be extensively required and used.

This takes us to the question of invasive ventilation, whether it might have been used too often, inappropriately, and why.

As well as panic, the role of fear on the part of healthcare workers cannot be underestimated. Here is Dr Vinay Prasad stating that:

“It is a unique situation in medicine. In our whole medical career, doctors have never been personally afraid the way they were [with covid].”

Official guidance (see for example this from a British anaesthetists’ professional association) certainly reinforced the idea that one of the benefits of early intubation was to reduce the aerosolization of virus, such that it would be safer for those caring for the patients, compared to when non-invasive forms of ventilation were used.

This JAMA Clinical Update “Care for Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19” published on 11 March 2020 strongly supports the idea that the thinking was very much that non-invasive oxygen augmentation could be dangerous for healthcare workers:

 

 

The journalist Alex Berenson was early to point out that ventilator shortage may have more to do with overuse “to protect staff” than to being overwhelmed by patients in respiratory failure.

It seems like fear may well have been augmented by official guidance to result in significant overuse of this measure.

It is important to understand the differences between the Memorial Hospital incident and what may have happened in the early stages of the covid crisis. In New Orleans, it may indeed have been reasonable to assume that it was going to be impossible to evacuate the patients (who were given midazolam and opiates to ease suffering) in time, and that they were indeed unsaveable due to the extraordinary circumstances. (Whether or not this was actually the case will probably never be known, because of the legal shenanigans described above.)

However, whether that applies to all, some, or just a few of those who died in spring 2020 after being administered the same or other drugs (or placed on mechanical ventilators or issued a unilateral DNR, etc.) is still a matter of debate whereas for sure, Hurricane Katrina was self-evidently an extreme weather event that created devastation and emergency conditions in its fury and wake.

Certainly, it seems clear that personal fear and a belief in the lethality of this infection drove much medical decision-making in the early days. It is not hard to imagine actions being taken which were then rationalised by imagining the suffering that had been prevented, limited resources preserved, and many lives saved. The deaths witnessed could easily have acted as positive reinforcement in the minds of healthcare workers as to how serious the illness was. These protocols could lead to the deaths of patients who were not particularly old and frail and thus reinforce the message that the virus was potentially fatal even in such people

The decisions that healthcare workers made, and the influences on and factors involved in those decisions, will be discussed and dissected for decades to come. When humanity is ready to confront what occurred – and admit that ethical inversions in hospitals and care homes contributed to unintentional iatrogenic death, we can move toward keeping it from happening again.

* (A Grand Jury in the US is a specific type of court empowered by law to determine whether probable cause exists to support criminal charges for a suspect in a crime. Louisiana – in which New Orleans is situated – is one of 23 US states that use grand juries for indictments in serious crimes.)

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Meta Pays Supposedly Independent Australian “Fact-Checkers” 800 Dollars Per Fact-Check

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023

Those who doubt that “fact-checking” is an industry created around the push for internet censorship that’s been going on these last years might be persuaded otherwise by information that emerged from a lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by Australia-based reporter and commentator Avi Yemini, and it reveals the amount of money changing hands between Facebook (Meta) and its notorious “fact-checkers” whose purpose is supposed to be weeding out “misinformation.” And who are supposed to be “independent.”

However, these efforts disturbingly often end up in plain censorship of “disfavored” opinion on political and social issues.

And even though Yemini eventually had to withdraw his lawsuit in order to avoid costs he was unwilling or unable to pay, the legal process while it was ongoing produced some interesting findings, including the true nature of some of the “fact-checkers’” purported financial independence from Big Tech.

According to a deal cited in the court documents, the figure went up to half a million dollars annually – and that’s involving just one “fact checking” operation, RMIT University’s FactLab, also based in Australia.

The agreement was kept confidential, but surfaced in Yemini’s defamation suit naming RMIT FactLab as the plaintiff. Yemini claimed that this group subjected one of his reports to a false “fact-check.”

But, whether that’s true or false, RMIT lab was given 800 Australian dollars per “check,” up to 40,000 per month – with the contract stipulating that RMIT would run up to 50 articles through its “fact-checking machine” each month.

The issue that this discovery sheds light on is the nature of these arrangements – namely, “independent fact-checkers” seem to be very much involved in commercial dealings with social media giants, which has the inherent potential to sway the results of their work in a desired direction.

At the same time, given the reach and influence of the huge platforms where content is “arranged” in a certain way thanks, among other things, to the work of these organizations, this means that public opinion could be unfairly influenced through biased information.

RMIT University, which is behind RMIT FactLab, maintains that the group is in fact independent and that the money comes from “philanthropic donations and independent research grants.”

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | | Leave a comment

The UN is Building a “Digital Army” To Fight What it Calls “Deadly Disinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023

The UN is tripling down on its role as an important global player in the “fight against online misinformation” and amplification of the narrative of a supposedly serious threat this allegedly new phenomenon brings to humankind.

Thus UN peacekeepers are adding another task to the duties the member-states fund when they approve their missions meant to help people and countries devastated by war and other disasters: they are now also “building a digital army.”

And according to a writeup on the UN website, “misinformation” is viewed by the world organization in exceedingly alarmist terms as, “deadly,” and posing “existential” risk to such core building blocks of modern societies as democratic institutions and fundamental human rights.

They really do make that connection, verbatim. And they now use the term “war” and “battlefield” to describe (mis)information and other goings on in the media, too.

We’ve heard this before, of course, from the Biden administration regarding the Covid vaccines/pandemic – but the identical wording may or may not be a coincidence.

In order to justify as much as it can this considerable shift in policy and focus from UN’s traditional operations and purpose, the UN article doesn’t talk only about things like undermining epidemic(s)-containing efforts, protecting scientific truths and facts (and, as recent experience has shown, “facts” as well ), and the like.

To prop up the argument, it is claimed that the peacekeeping work itself, and the safety and lives of peacekeepers are also falling victim to “large scale misinformation.”

The UN’s solutions: effectively testing “proactive” approaches to the problem they defined, and doing this in a number of war-torn African countries.

Leading the charge seems to be the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUSCO (a French-language acronym).

Then there’s something called the UN Verified initiative, which offers a course free of charge that is supposed to “educate” people in these physically dangerous places on how to keep themselves safe from – online “misinformation.”

This effort expands on several basic topics, including how to recognize “disinformation,” and the UN will also tell you why it is being spread.

Another one is to be able to discern emotional, dramatic, and provocative content (some might say the article from the UN site referenced here might easily qualify.)

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Americans urged to ‘immediately’ leave Belarus

RT | August 21, 2023

Any US citizens in Belarus should leave right away, the State Department said in a bulletin on Monday, citing new closures of border crossings by Lithuania and the possibility of more to come.

“The Lithuanian government on August 18 closed two border crossings with Belarus at Tverecius/Vidzy and Sumskas/Losha,” the department said. “The Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian governments have stated that further closures of border crossings with Belarus are possible.”

“US citizens in Belarus should depart immediately,” the bulletin added.

Americans were urged to travel by land using the “remaining border crossings with Lithuania and Latvia,” because Poland has closed the border, or by plane, though not to Russia or Ukraine.

The Ukraine-Belarus border has likewise been closed. Meanwhile, most Western airlines have halted flights to Minsk and Western nations have closed their airspace to Belarusian and Russian flights, so it was unclear how Americans might fly out without passing through Russia.

Washington has urged its citizens not to travel to Belarus for years, first citing the Covid-19 pandemic, then the 2020 unrest following the presidential election – which the US claims to have been rigged or stolen – and since February 2022, Minsk’s support for Moscow’s military operation against Kiev.

According to the State Department, Belarus is also dangerous due to “the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, the potential of civil unrest, the risk of detention,” and the inability of the US to assist its citizens, since the embassy in Minsk “suspended operations” at the end of February 2022 .

The Polish government has increased its military presence along the border with Belarus over the past month, citing what they called a threat of “hybrid warfare” by Wagner Group fighters who left Russia at the end of July, following a failed mutiny.

Minsk has repeatedly insisted that there is no threat and that Warsaw is getting hysterical due to domestic politics ahead of the general election. Meanwhile, Moscow has warned that any attack on Belarus would be treated as an attack on Russia itself.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

US offloads oil from seized Iranian tanker despite Tehran’s warnings

The Cradle | August 20, 2023

An oil tanker seized by the US Navy for allegedly carrying sanctioned Iranian oil began transferring its cargo to another tanker off the coast of Texas on 20 August, despite threats from Tehran to target shipping in the Persian Gulf in response.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed the Marshall Islands-flagged Suez Rajan began the ship-to-ship transfer of its oil to the MR Euphrates, a tanker located some 70 kilometers southeast of Houston in the Gulf of Mexico. The value of the oil on the 800,000-barrel tanker is estimated to be $56 million.

Washington illegally seized the Marshall Islands-flagged Suez Rajan supertanker in April of this year in what was described by the Pentagon as “a sanctions-enforcement operation.” Washington also charged the ship’s owner with “sanctions evasion” and directed the stolen cargo to the waters off the Texas coast.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Suez Rajan came under Washington’s radar after an anti-Iran organization – the New York-based United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) – provided information about the ship’s cargo to government officials. Lawyers representing the families of victims of the 11 September attacks, “whom US courts have given the right to claim compensation from [Tehran],” filed a lawsuit against one of the ship’s former owners.

However, oil firms in the US had been reluctant to unload the shipment of stolen Iranian oil sitting, saying they were “too worried about Iranian reprisal” to touch the cargo, sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ.

“Companies with any exposure whatsoever in the Persian Gulf are literally afraid to do it,” a Houston-based energy executive told the US outlet, adding that companies fear “the Iranians would take retribution against them.”

“I don’t know if anybody’s going to touch it,” another executive at a shipping company had said.

The transfer of the Iranian oil comes as the US Navy has bolstered its forces in the Persian Gulf in recent weeks, including by sending the troop-and-aircraft-carrying USS Bataan through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington is also considering placing US troops on commercial vessels to prevent Tehran from seizing them in response to Washington’s own seizures of Iranian ships.

US theft of Iranian oil from the Suez Rajan also comes as Tehran and Washington seek to complete a prisoner exchange that also involves the US releasing between $6 and $10 billion in seized Iranian oil proceeds held in banks in South Korea and Europe.

Iran has been resisting US sanctions by continuing to sell its oil abroad, while the US has been seizing cargoes since 2019 after withdrawing from the nuclear deal negotiated between the two rival countries. The 2015 nuclear deal held that Iran would limit the enrichment of uranium for its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The US withdrew from the deal unilaterally in 2018. Washington accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, however, Iranian leaders have stated the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and that developing nuclear weapons is forbidden by Islam.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

China Ready to Stand Against Foreign Interference Together With Iran

Sputnik -21.08.2023

BEIJING – China is ready to work with Iran to jointly resist outside interference and protect the interests of Beijing and Tehran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday.

“China is willing to work with Iran to continue to firmly support each other on issues related to the core interests of each side, jointly resist external interference and counter unilateral harassment, protect the sovereignty, security and development interests of China and Iran, uphold the common interests of developing countries and international impartiality and justice,” Wang said in a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian.

The parties also discussed issues of common interest, including cooperation within the BRICS framework.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US not in a position to send more missiles to Ukraine – media

By Lucas Leiroz | August 21, 2023

Western criticism of the Ukrainian “counteroffensive” is increasing. In response to Kiev’s unlimited demand for arms, Western media claim that the US is not in a position to send more heavy weapons to the regime. According to a major western outlet, Washington does not produce enough tactical ballistic missiles to send the number that would be needed to guarantee the Ukrainian counterattack’s victory.

In a recent article for the Financial Times called “US grows doubtful Ukraine counteroffensive can quickly succeed”, Western experts reported that the US does not manufacture enough tactical ballistic missiles to make a difference on the battlefield. The “necessity” to send weapons to Ukraine coexists with the need for internal supply for the arsenal of the American armed forces, with no possibility of accelerating production significantly in the short term.

In addition, the newspaper’s informants allege that Washington is currently “holding back” as many missiles as possible, as Americans are concerned about the possibility of escalation in the conflict. Kiev’s officials blamed the failure of the counteroffensive on the supposed “slowness” in the supply of weapons, mainly high-range missiles capable of reaching the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation. Many American experts, however, seem to disagree with this analysis.

Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the US think tank Rand Corporation, told Financial Times’s journalists that ballistic missiles are capable of causing damage to Russian logistics, but assessed that this is not the main problem to be solved by Ukrainians to achieve victory. According to him, there are no “magic wands” able to make the counteroffensive become successful, thus echoing the growing Western pessimism with the Ukrainian military moves.

“I don’t think that you’ll hear an argument from anyone that this [Ukraine’s counteroffensive] is going well right now or that this is heading to a place that people would view as good, but there is not much by way of plan B (…) There’s no magic wands,” Charap said. “It’s hard to make the case that long-range strike [missiles] can fix the problem of minefields or all these defences (…) It will complicate Russian logistics but that’s not the main or the only problem the Ukrainians are facing today”, Charap said.

In fact, this assessment exposes growing dissatisfaction on the part of the West with Ukraine’s progress in the conflict. The strategy used by the Ukrainians – certainly instructed by NATO agents – failed on the battlefield and Kiev quickly lost massive amounts of soldiers and equipment. The Ukrainian defeat was so evident that it was not even possible for the western media to continue doing its propaganda work, which meant that more critical and pessimistic opinions began to be exposed by the newspapers.

For its part, Kiev responds to the criticism by demanding even more weapons. It became commonplace among the regime’s officials and Western warmongers to blame a supposed “failure” in NATO’s aid for the fiasco of the counteroffensive. It is said that the more lethal and long-range weapons Ukraine receives the faster it will achieve victory against Russian forces. But, in practice, this has not been seen so far.

The West sent heavy – and even illegal – weapons to its proxy regime as much as it could. Packages including banned cluster bombs, radioactive depleted uranium ammunition and British long-range missiles arrived in Kiev and were used on the battlefield, not to seek any military victory, but to murder civilians and bomb undisputed demilitarized zones, making “counteroffensive” a mere wave of terrorist attacks.

Apparently, American experts understood that the more lethal weapons they send to Ukraine, the greater the risks of escalation and, consequently, the greater the regime’s losses will be. In this sense, in the Financial Times article, it is also said that until next year, military aid to Kiev is expected to decrease, at least in terms of quality – lethality of the weapons. There is a concern to avoid greater losses in an eventual scenario of escalation by Russia – which is aggravated by the upcoming presidential elections and the inability of the American defense industry to produce arms in even larger quantities.

“Even if Congress authorizes the latest package of Ukraine funding requested by the White House, some US officials and analysts say it is unlikely that Washington will be able to offer the same level of lethal assistance to Ukraine next year, given the looming presidential election and munitions manufacturers’ longer-term schedule to increase production”, the article reads.

This scenario of American disappointment with Ukraine must be analyzed from a realistic point of view. Washington does not want the war to end. On the contrary, it wants to prolong the hostilities in order to generate friction with Russia for as long as possible. And this is precisely why the country is avoiding increasing the deployment of long-range weapons, as it fears that Russian responses to Ukrainian provocations could be strong enough to end the conflict quickly.

For the US and NATO, what matters is to keep Russia fighting on multiple flanks as the alliance prepares for a direct military conflict with China. With no hope of defeating Russia on the battlefield, the US just wants to keep Moscow fighting in various proxy conflicts. Therefore, it is in Washington’s interest to prolong the war in Ukraine as well as to generate provocations in other regions where Russia could be militarily involved.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

German general admits heavy personnel losses of Ukrainian army

By Ahmed Adel | August 21, 2023

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost many commanders, said German Army Lieutenant General Andreas Marlow to Reuters agency. This suggests that Germany’s training of Ukrainian troops makes no difference on the battlefield as these newly trained recruits do not reinforce an experienced leadership. This comes as the popularity of the German government collapses amid a growing economic crisis.

“The training of sergeants and officers is what moves the Ukrainians most because the professional soldiers have been fighting this war for one and a half years now, and many have died or been wounded – so they need a fresh supply of military leaders,” said Marlow to journalists.

The press meeting was held at the Klietz training camp in Germany, where foreign instructors trained the Ukrainian military. The site is used to train Ukrainian service members to operate German Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, as well as IRIS-T air defence systems. However, as has already been proven, these short training missions make no difference to Ukraine’s war effort as the undertrained soldiers are only fed to the Russian meatgrinder.

Marlow’s revelation that most of Ukraine’s professional soldiers are either exhausted, wounded or dead comes as Gunnar Beck, a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the European Parliament, blasted his country’s policy on Ukraine.

Olaf Scholz’s government members, including Finance Minister Christian Lindner, recently expressed support for sending long-range Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missiles to Ukraine. The German finance minister said a decision would be made “faster, in a shorter timeframe” than in the past. Berlin is pushing ahead with this despite most Germans opposing the step.

A new poll revealed that while 36% favour supplying new military aid, 52% are against it. Support fell to just 21% among residents of eastern Germany.

According to Russian sources, Germany has sent more than 260 Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, including from its arsenals and other European NATO allies, as well as Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, MARS rocket artillery systems, Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzers, Marder infantry combat, Bergepanzer armoured recovery vehicles, Panzerfaust rocket-propelled grenades, and many other weapons, support equipment, ammunition, and supplies. These weapons are worth about €7.5 billion, all handed to Ukraine over the past year and a half, the second-highest amount after the US.

Although the US and other NATO countries promised that the weapons would not be used against Russian territory, the Ukrainian military used supplied military equipment, including artillery, missiles, and drones, to attack Russian cities and towns. Germans who do not want to be embroiled in the war are especially afraid that Ukraine will use the Taurus cruise missile, a €950,000 481kg warhead with an operational range of over 500km, against Russia. Ordinary Germans fear what a Russian response could be.

Berlin would obviously want to prevent Ukraine from using the missiles against Russian territory, but this is wishful thinking. In practice, Germany cannot do anything to prevent Ukraine from using the missiles, which is why the move is so unpopular.

Recently, support for the right-wing AfD, which has been the most critical of Berlin’s anti-Russia policies, has increased, with recent polls indicating the party would get up to 21% of the vote if elections were held today, the same level as Scholz’s Social Democrats. Despite relentless anti-Russian propaganda in the German media, many Germans have lost faith in the Scholz coalition, mainly due to the declining economic situation spurred on by anti-Russia sanctions.

According to the new Insa survey for Bild, 64% of those surveyed found that a change of government would be better for Germany. The survey found that just as many respondents (64%) ​​are dissatisfied with the work of the current federal cabinet. Only 27% are satisfied. There are even more dissatisfied and less satisfied when it comes to Scholz. 70% are dissatisfied with his work, and only 22% are satisfied.

The German economy for two quarters in a row declined, a “technical recession,” as described by economists. Germany’s GDP stagnated at the previous quarter’s level in the last recent quarter, and there is evidently a decline. The IMF predicted in its July estimates that most of the world’s major economies will see growth, except for Germany, which is expected to contract by 0.3% this year. In fact, the financial institution forecasted Germany to do worse than in the last report from April 2023.

Germany is no longer the European economic powerhouse it once was, primarily due to self-sabotaging anti-Russia sanctions, making the country import energy at an inflated price and cut off from Russian markets and businesses. More disturbing is that Germany insists on maintaining the sanctions and continues to train mostly ordinary Ukrainian men knowing they cannot overturn Russian forces.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Battle for Climate Earth

ClimateCraze | July 5, 2021

There is no climate crisis — just climate alarmism.

Music …    • Two Steps From Hell Live in Prague 20…  

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment