Iran Ramps Up Oil, Gas Production, Exports as Western Sanctions Fail
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 16.08.2023
Washington’s years-long effort to bring Iran’s oil exports down “to zero” has failed to bear fruit, with fresh restrictions put in place by the Biden administration last fall to “severely restrict” the Islamic Republic’s crude sales culminating in the nation’s exports to its biggest customer hitting a decade-long high.
Iran has announced plans to further ramp up the creation and implementation of new oil and gas projects as the Middle Eastern nation projects its biggest bump in sales to energy-hungry China since 2013.
Sixty-seven oil and gas projects currently in development worth the equivalent of $15 billion will be put into operation before the end of the current Iranian calendar year in March 2024, First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber has announced.
Sixteen additional projects, worth an additional $21 billion, continue to be developed, according to Mokhber’s figures.
On Monday, Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji indicated that Iran had completed energy projects worth over $12 billion over the past year, and that “not a single cent” of the nation’s oil revenues have been blocked by sanctions since the Raisi administration took power in 2021.
Owji said Iran’s oil production has reached 3.19 million barrels per day (bpd), with plans to increase output to 3.3 million bpd before the end of the month, with the production of gas condensates reaching the equivalent of between 700,000 and 800,000 barrels per day.
In a related development, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said Tuesday that Phase 11 of the massive South Pars gas field owned jointly by Iran and Qatar would become operational in the near future in a ceremony to be attended by President Raisi and Oil Minister Owji. The gigantic Persian Gulf field is estimated to have up to 1,800 trillion cubic feet (51 trillion cubic meters) of gas, plus 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensate, with the energy wealth split between the two countries.
KPLR, a Houston-based commodities analytics firm, calculated this week that Chinese imports of Iranian crude have soared to their highest levels since 2013 in 2023, with the Islamic Republic estimated to export up to 1.5 million barrels per day to the Asian economic giant throughout August – up from an average of 917,000 bpd in exports reported between January and July.
Also this week, Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization chief Davoud Manzour told lawmakers that Iran’s oil revenues have increased by 42 percent since March.
Iran’s National Oil Company expects crude production to reach 3.5 million bpd per day by September – up from a low of just below 2 million bpd in late 2020, at the height of Washington’s attempts to sanction Tehran into submission and bring the country’s energy exports down “to zero.”
The Biden administration’s stated goal of reactivating the Iran nuclear deal has not stopped the White House from ramping up restrictions against the oil-rich nation, with the US Treasury moving to “severely restrict” Iranian energy exports last fall, including by targeting alleged “front companies” set up in China, India and the UAE.
But the sanctions have reportedly failed to work as planned, with energy-hungry nations around the world turning to Iran, Russia and other exporters shunned by Washington and its allies, which slapped restrictions on Russian energy in 2022, resulting in a dramatic spike in global demand and soaring prices.
The US has accompanied efforts to restrict Iranian oil sales with the deployment of additional air power, warships and 3,000 additional Marines to the Gulf in recent weeks, ostensibly in a bid to crack down on Iranian seizures of commercial vessels in neutral waters. Tehran says its crackdown has been aimed at stopping smuggling, and has called on regional nations to ensure Gulf security independently, without the interference of “outsiders” like the United States.
Doubt in Denmark
Another progressive country is having second thoughts about paediatric gender transition
BY BERNARD LANE | GENDER CLINIC NEWS | AUGUST 13, 2023
Denmark has taken a step towards caution in gender care by offering a form of counselling rather than medical treatments to the main patient group of teenagers with no childhood history of distress in their birth sex.
Official acknowledgment of a change in treatment policy was given on May 31 by the Liberal Party Health Minister Sophie Løhde during parliamentary debate of an unsuccessful resolution seeking a total ban on medical transition of minors.
Ms Løhde said that medical treatment at the Danish central gender clinic in Copenhagen—the Sexology Clinic—would only be offered “if the child or young person has had gender dysphoria since childhood.”
“If the gender dysphoria has started in connection with puberty, the young person may, among other things, be referred to a process of reflection or clarification,” she said.
“This process is often finalised without medical treatment, as the indication for treatment is not considered present.”
The dominant patient profile internationally is adolescent-onset dysphoria, chiefly affecting females, but the (limited and contested) evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors mostly derives from past studies of classic early childhood-onset dysphoria typically among males.
Gender distress that appears at or after the onset of puberty, often following online immersion and transgender identity declarations among school friends, is commonly referred to as Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) following the 2018 preliminary study of American public health researcher Dr. Lisa Littman.
Dr. Littman’s work is well known in Nordic countries. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare last year referenced her 2021 detransitioners study and declared that the very low rate of treatment regret claimed by youth gender clinics “no longer stands unchallenged”.
Sweden and Finland are the most advanced in the post-2019 Nordic shift to caution, while health authorities in Norway are under pressure after the country’s independent healthcare investigation agency declared in March that medicalised gender change for young people was “experimental” and should be confined to clinical trials.
Systematic reviews of the evidence base undertaken in Finland and Sweden showed it to be weak (as did reviews in the United Kingdom).
“[Although in Denmark’s parliament] the issue of gender reassignment for children and other identity policy topics seems strongly divided into blocs, we feel that this is by no means the case in the general population, when the seriousness of the matter finally dawns on people. Many simply did not know that this was happening”—Danish Rainbow Council post, 2 March 2023
Denmark’s point of difference is that the call for an end to medical transition of minors is being spearheaded by a mainstream LGBT group, the Danish Rainbow Council, launched in 2022 under the leadership of transsexual Marcus Dib Jensen. The organisation is pledged to child safeguarding and recognition of gender dysphoria as a mental disorder, while opposing the extremes of gender ideology.
In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde faced pointed questions on gender medicine from politicians Mette Thiesen and Mikkel Bjørn, both members of the populist Danish People’s Party.
The minister presented the treatment policy change as an evolution influenced by developments in the field and clinical judgment. She was not specific about which medical treatment was being withheld from patients with adolescent-onset dysphoria (or ROGD), nor the timing of the policy change.
She noted that the Sexology Clinic had “become more reluctant to offer hormone treatment” to young people.
“This reluctance manifests itself particularly regarding young people with gender dysphoria that arises in connection with puberty.
“I think it is a positive thing that there is [such] a response to research and experience… both in Denmark, but also abroad, which we must follow closely. And this knowledge and experience lead to adjustments in the current treatment options.”
The group LGBT+ Danmark, whose slogan is “Global Queer Solidarity” and which campaigns for “better gender-confirming treatment”, told GCN that the minister’s remarks referred not to a change in general treatment guidelines but to “an adjustment in the practice” of the Sexology Clinic last year.
GCN put questions to the clinic and to Denmark’s health ministry.
Video: “You can be uncomfortable with reality, but it doesn’t change reality”—Marcus Dib Jensen, chairman of the Danish Rainbow Council
Big change
A recent commentary article on the minister’s remarks posted by the Danish Rainbow Council’s deputy chairman Jesper W. Rasmussen said:
“It is important to understand how significant it is that as many as 80 per cent of the children who previously underwent gender reassignment surgery will now, in the minister’s own words, no longer be able to undergo this controversial, irreversible treatment.
“Since [the minister’s comments], we have received several emails from relieved parents of ROGD children, and in the coming months we will keep a close eye on whether these children continue to be free from hormonal sex reassignment.
“We will do this by regularly requesting access to the treatment statistics from the Sexology Clinic [at the specialist hospital Rigshospitalet].”
The resolution for a total ban, put up in March by the populist New Right party after all other members of parliament had ignored apolitical appeals from the rainbow council, was not expected to pass in the government-controlled chamber.
But the council argued that the result was significant because public debate had been unleashed and the authorities were put under pressure.
The council suspected that the de-medicalisation of adolescent-onset (or ROGD) cases had been enacted without formal announcement in 2022, thereby explaining a sharp decline that year in the number of minors undergoing hormonal treatment.
Roughly 80 per cent of the 341 minors who had undergone medicalised gender change from 2015 to 2022 were believed to be in the ROGD category, the council said.
Since 2015, when Ms Løhde was also health minister, minors have been able to undergo irreversible medical gender reassignment without parental consent from the age of 15.
“A top [American] pediatric psychiatry organization has nixed at least three panels with leading European psychologists about Europe’s move away from chemical interventions for children with gender dysphoria, raising questions about the politicization of American medicine and underscoring a clinical divide between the United States and much of the world”—Aaron Sibarium, news report, The Washington Free Beacon, 11 August 2023
Future unknown
In 2021, Sexology Clinic consultant Dr. Mette Ewers Haahr gave an interview to the Dagbladet Information media outlet in which she acknowledged “a lack of research” relevant to today’s mostly teenage female patients and her concerns about why these girls wanted to change gender.
“We see that treatment helps young people in the short term. But we lack knowledge about what happens in ten and 20 years. Or when they want to have children. What happens when they fall in love and start to have an active sex life?” Dr. Haahr said.
“Transgender young people assigned female have, for the most part, no active sex life. Not even with themselves. How will their sex life develop and does this affect their perception of their gender? We have sometimes seen in young people that gender and sex life interact and change together.”
Dr. Haahr’s comments about the weak evidence base prompted the rainbow council to ask why the authorities had allowed such a confident regimen of paediatric transition to begin in 2015.
“As adults, we must dare to step up and say stop this madness. We castrate and sterilise children and physically destroy their otherwise healthy bodies to alleviate a psychological discomfort that is usually temporary and, if not, can be treated with a sex change on the other side of puberty,” the council’s June 2 comment said.
No surgery on minors
In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde also said that under new referral guidelines, it would no longer be permissible to offer transgender surgery such as mastectomy to children under age 18—“an option that, by the way, has never been used in Denmark.”
She said the country’s “entire guidance on health care for individuals with gender identity issues” was being reviewed.
GCN asked the Danish Health Authority if a systematic review of the evidence base would be undertaken.
A spokeswoman for the authority said: “We are in the process of updating the existing guideline and we will consult leading experts in that revision.”
In a post on a Danish study dealing with trans identity and suicide attempts, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) said:
“It remains to be seen whether the Danish Health Authority will take a cautious approach to the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth like the growing number of their European counterparts, or whether Denmark will choose to align with the current direction supported by a number of U.S. medical societies that assert that medical gender transition should be widely available for all youths who desire it.”
Copenhagen psychotherapist and former teacher Lotte Ingerslev, who writes the blog Transgender: the Fine Print and is a member of SEGM, told GCN that the Danish health minister’s May 31 remarks were “very, very important.”
She said the minister had represented this policy shift “as simply a result of the doctors ‘following the evidence’, and not a complete and utter break with their previous approach.”
Ms Ingerslev said this appeared to be a government tactic for “evading responsibility for the utter disregard for children’s bodies and lives.”
Nonetheless, she said the policy change meant “that teenagers will no longer be able to expect to get hormones as a quick fix for their loneliness, autism or inner homophobia.”
But she said these concessions to caution by the government and the Sexology Clinic were not enough and “the transing of children needs to be stopped completely.”
“Otherwise, the general public, schools, day-care centres and parents of gender-non-conforming children get a message from the state saying that gender-non-conformity is a sign that a child is ‘trans’, which goes against all evidence,” she said.
Opt-out females
In her 2021 media interview, the Sexology Clinic’s Dr. Haahr wondered aloud about why female patients are disproportionately represented in gender clinic caseloads.
She worried that for some girls, transition was more about “opting out of the feminine than opting into the masculine”, and more to do with physical discomfort than a different gender identity.
“When the birth-assigned girls reach puberty and their bodies change, some of them start to have these thoughts. Maybe the outside world has started to react differently to them because their bodies are suddenly sexualised,” Dr. Haahr said.
“They may not get as much speaking time, they’re belittled if they take up too much space, and certain girl things are expected of them that they can’t identify with. And then they feel really, really bad about their feminine bodies.
“Unlike the children [with early-onset dysphoria], who have experienced themselves as a different gender for as long as they can remember, we see that some of the [teenage] girls… have only had these thoughts for six months and are determined that they need body modification treatment. And then it becomes really difficult to figure out what it’s all about and what the right thing to do is.”
She said she paid particular attention to whether these girls had suffered traumatic experiences such as bullying, assault or sexual abuse.
“Abuse during adolescence and childhood can lead to alienation from one’s body. That’s where we need to be extra vigilant.”
She said today’s teenage female patients sometimes used formulaic language seemingly not their own when explaining why they wished to transition—it was like “listening to them read from a Facebook manual”.
She defended Dr. Littman’s 2018 ROGD study, which generated an international backlash from “gender-affirming” clinicians and trans activists, as well as pressure for the journal to issue a “correction” which in fact left the Littman hypothesis unchanged.
Dr. Haahr’s gender clinic colleague, chief physician Astrid Højgaard dismissed the ROGD hypothesis and objected that right-wing groups were enthusiastic about the idea of trans social contagion.
But Dr Haahr said:
“It is not my impression that Littman has done the research to appease the right wing or because she is transphobic, but because she thought the phenomenon should be studied.
“I think that if we can’t talk about this very large increase in the number of birth-assigned girls seeking to change their bodies during puberty, then it’s going to be a problem for all transgender people in the future.”
More Fuel… For Inflation! German Government Doubles Planned CO2 Price Increase
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 16, 2023
Germany’s Socialist/Green government adds more fuel to inflation… announcing it will boost the price of CO2 emissions by 10 euros a ton beginning in 2024!
High energy costs have led to runaway inflation in Germany. Source: www.statista.com/
According to Germany’s online Handelsblatt, the German government has moved to increase the price to emit a ton of CO2 in 2024. The original plan was to increase the price by 5 euros a tonne, from 30 to 35 euros a ton, but now the government has decided to double that increase to 10 euros, meaning the price of emitting a ton of CO2 will be 40 euros.
That 33% increase will add to the heating and fueling bills for consumers, and further add upward pressure to the country’s already high inflation rate.
Germany’s economy is already among the weakest in the Euro Zone and high energy costs will make it all the more painful for consumers. The higher price will go into effect on January 1st.
The impact of the higher price will hit the poor the hardest, who are already reeling from higher costs of living. The government is expected to take in an extra 2.3 billion euros in revenue, a total of 10.9 billion euros in 2024.
“We must act cautiously with regard to CO2 pricing, especially in view of the current weakness in growth,” said Germany’s Minister of Finance Christian Lindner.
The state says it will invest in climate-friendly projects, with billions earmarked for building renovations, industrial conversions and electric cars. For 2024, spending of 57.6 billion euros is planned, which is 21.6 billion euros more than in 2023.
China to strengthen military cooperation with Iran
MEMO | August 16, 2023
China is looking to enhance military cooperation with recent fully-fledged member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Iran.
Speaking at the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security yesterday, China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu said that Beijing was keen to bolster military ties with Tehran and other SCO members and observer states.
“We will continue to strengthen the mechanism of security cooperation within the SCO, actively deepen defense collaboration with the organisation’s newest member Iran, as well as Belarus, which will soon become a SCO member,” Russia’s official TASS news agency quoted Li as saying.
The defence minister also emphasised that China is prepared to hold joint drills with other countries and to enhance international cooperation on arms control: “Beijing is ready to hold joint military drills and exercises with all countries, as well as find a larger space to hold drills and strengthen international cooperation in the field of arms control and non-proliferation [of nuclear weapons].”
Last month Iran became the newest member of the SCO, joining China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The SCO Charter outlines the intergovernmental organisation’s commitment to the collective security of member states, especially in regards to” joint counteraction to terrorism, separatism and extremism in all of them manifestations.”
The Jerusalem Post noted that it was the first time the Islamic Republic has joined a regional pact since its founding in 1979. “This will grant Iran a freer hand to openly trade arms with Russia and China, and other SCO countries, which results in Iran’s expanding its influence and aggression in the region. The West needs to carefully consider the repercussions of this significant strategic development,” the article warned.
Iranian Ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, praised the Moscow conference, saying: “It is a weighty exhibition in which the Islamic Republic of Iran has a good presence in this exhibition with its many companies. Very good topics were raised in the international security conference.”
US role in Pakistan chaos is obvious and logical
RT | August 16, 2023
A recently leaked secret diplomatic cable revealed that the United States had pressed Pakistani diplomats to seek the removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan in 2022. Khan, who was ousted from office later that year, was not a supporter of the US or its geopolitical agenda, and had sought closer ties with both China and Russia.
Ejected from the leadership, Khan was quickly arrested and then banned from participating in politics. Then, within the same week, Pakistan signed a new defence agreement with the US, affirming age-old ties between Washington and the Pakistani military elite, who have long formed the backbone of the state.
This is no conspiracy theory, it’s very easy to see what has gone on here. The US has engaged in a subtle regime change operation in Pakistan; an unusual choice given its simultaneous pursuit of stronger ties with India. This shows the ambitions of the US to play the two countries against each other and assert its own military domination over the South Asian region, using India as a pawn in its struggle against China, while simultaneously blocking the strategic rise of India by using Pakistan as a counterweight to it.
First of all, we must understand that the US ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ is tailored toward one thing: hegemony. That is, ensuring the explicit strategic dominance of the US over the Pacific and Indian Oceans by containing the rise of China, but also ensuring that no rival power emerges. While India is seen as a critical partner by Washington in containing Beijing, one should also understand that this does not mean the US consents to India, a nation of 1.4 billion people with enormous economic potential, becoming a superpower and taking control of the region. A Pax Indica is not a Pax Americana, because India’s foreign policy is premised around its maintaining strategic autonomy and a “neighbourhood first” doctrine.
While India-China tensions are high, the biggest, most direct and historic military threat to India is of course its neighbour, Pakistan. Traditionally, Washington has maintained a very strong military relationship with Islamabad, as it was an ally in the war on terror in Afghanistan and is a huge buyer of US military equipment. India in turn, always resented US support of Pakistan, which was one reason the countries never got too close in the early 2000s. However, as the strategic environment changed, Pakistan tilted toward China, and India toward the US. Beijing became the biggest economic backer of Islamabad through the Belt and Road Initiative, seeking to create the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a new route to the Indian Ocean to bypass the waters the US was militarising, as well as the Indian subcontinent itself.
Under the leadership of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s foreign policy increasingly took on an anti-Western stance. He embraced China wholeheartedly, distancing himself from the US while increasing defence ties with Beijing. In addition, Khan also sought closer economic ties with Russia, having visited Moscow on the day the military operation in Ukraine began. However, with Pakistan being such a geostrategically important country, the US found Pakistan’s foreign policy direction increasingly disruptive to Washington’s own interests, and therefore lobbied for Khan’s removal. Although the US relationship with India has been growing simultaneously, Washington is not interested in creating an “either/or” situation on the Indian subcontinent where the US backs India and China backs Pakistan. Rather, it seeks to divide and conquer.
The existence of Pakistan, a nation with over 200 million people and nuclear weapons capability, is a useful military and strategic check on the power of India. India may be bigger than Pakistan, and will of course be the more successful country in the long run too, but Pakistan will always be a potent threat which can never be fully removed. In the eyes of US strategists, why should Pakistan be purely China’s strategic benefit? What the US wants is to enjoy favourable relationships with both Pakistan and India, so that it might be able to use them against each other, and profit accordingly. The US may be backing New Delhi right now, but it should be known this does not mean Washington consents to the rise of New Delhi as a rival power when the only acceptable vision the US has for the world is unipolarity.
If the US succeeds in containing China and strategically subordinating it, India will be its next target. How will Washington go about that? It will create strong relationships with all of India’s neighbours and will then purvey a narrative that New Delhi is a “bully” and “aggressor” and use that to boost its military and economic relationships with them. Who will be top of the list? Pakistan, of course. The US sustains its power by backing small countries against big ones, and then presenting itself as the only defence and security guarantor.
For that reason, the US has overseen the removal of Imran Khan and reasserted its defence relationship with Pakistan. Washington does not want a Pakistan that is a partner of Russia and China, and a global advocate of Muslims. It wants to see Islamabad and New Delhi in a contest with each other, using US-supplied equipment, then framing itself as the peacemaker, saviour and, ultimately, overlord.
New Book by Doctors for COVID Ethics Details Dangers of mRNA Vaccines
By Margot DesBois | The Defender | August 15, 2023
The Doctors for COVID Ethics (D4CE), an international group of physicians and scientists, last month released a new book, “mRNA Vaccine Toxicity,” an extensive assessment of the mechanisms and manifestations of mRNA vaccine technology harm, through the perspectives of immunology, pathology, pharmacokinetics, epidemiology and medical history.
The book is available to download free of charge or order in print.
D4CE, led by microbiologist and immunologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, consists of more than 100 medical practitioners and researchers from 30 countries who “oppose the ongoing abuse of science and medicine for the destruction of peoples’ health, livelihoods, and even lives,” and believe “this abuse includes but is not limited to the ‘public health’ measures taken in the contrived COVID ‘pandemic.’”
In the months following the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) issuance of emergency approval for the COVID-19 vaccines, D4CE wrote a series of open letters to the EMA warning of short-term and long-term health dangers from these experimental products and calling for their immediate withdrawal.
During the past two years, the group has conducted five online symposia and published numerous articles, letters, video presentations and other resources on current threats to health and freedom posed by the COVID-19 public health mandates.
Written and edited by D4CE founding signatory and biochemist Dr. Michael Palmer, “mRNA Vaccine Toxicity ” includes chapter contributions by Bhakdi; Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) senior director of science and research; Margot DesBois, CHD science fellow; and biochemist David Rasnick, Ph.D.
In the book’s afterword, Catherine Austin Fitts, president of Solari, Inc., publisher of the Solari Report, provides insight into the broader implications of this scientific information and encourages readers to pass on this knowledge and resist the future deployment of harmful medical technologies.
The foreword by CHD President Mary Holland, reproduced in full below, previews the book’s contents:
Anyone alive today may be forgiven for experiencing PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) about all things COVID—the lockdowns, the fear-mongering, the masking, the testing, the censorship, the suppression of effective treatments, the coerced experimental gene-based shots, and the pervasive injuries and deaths. After three years of horror, it is only human to want to put this behind us and to forget.
Yet this book makes abundantly clear that we would do so at our own peril. This undeclared war against humanity is not over, and we must arm ourselves with knowledge.
The book’s purpose is to explain what the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine toxicity means for future mRNA vaccines. It outlines three potential mechanisms that likely account for what’s happened: (1) the toxicity of the lipid nanoparticles; (2) the toxicity of the vaccine-induced spike proteins; and (3) the immune system’s response to them.
It concludes that the immune system’s response to the spike proteins is the most significant toxic factor because it both corresponds to the autopsy findings of inflammation and immune system damage and jibes with the theoretical mechanisms of harm.
The book’s conclusion is bleak: “Every future mRNA vaccine will induce our cells to produce its own specific antigen, related to the particular microbe it targets. We must therefore expect each such vaccine to induce immunological damage on a similar scale as we have witnessed with those directed against COVID-19.”
Recognizing that myriad mRNA vaccines are in the pipeline or already on the market—against flu, RSV, HIV, malaria, cancer, allergies, heart disease, to name a few—this knowledge is as chilling as it is critical.
The book warns: “First and foremost, we must accept that we are indeed in our governments’ crosshairs. Instead of relying on their treacherous and malevolent guidance, we must therefore watch out for ourselves and our loved ones—do our own research and seek out honest health advice wherever it may be found, be it inside or outside the established venues of science and of medicine.”
You hold in your hands an indispensable primer. The book is comprehensive, drawing on a wide array of published scientific literature, reasonably short and highly readable—156 pages of text and 20 pages of citations—providing required reading on virology, immunology and toxicology. It has excellent citations, illustrations of viral and immune mechanisms, and stained tissue photographs of those who died from COVID-19 shots.
The chapter on the epidemiology of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine adverse events is illuminating—looking at the vast harms to date. Here we learn that 13 billion COVID vaccine doses have been administered worldwide—almost two doses for each person on the planet. And the US dispensed 650 million doses, causing millions of adverse events.
The types of injuries are remarkable for their breadth—including myocarditis, blood clotting throughout the body and neurological, immunological and reproductive harms. Still, the CDC has the audacity to call the vaccines “safe” and to recommend them for all people 6 months and up on at least an annual basis.
The final chapter by David Rasnick chronicles how AIDS and HIV became the “blueprint for the perversion of medical science” that we continue to live through today. In the 1980s, Dr. Tony Fauci initiated “science by press release,” proclaiming and enforcing an entirely unproven AIDS narrative.
Rasnick cogently explains that the AIDS orthodoxy is false, having never been proven despite 40 years and billions of dollars invested. He writes:
“[A]s incredible as this may sound, there has not been a single scientific study designed or conducted to determine whether or not AIDS—or even HIV—is sexually transmitted. . . .
“Since WWII—but especially in recent decades—the stifling of debate and the persecution of dissenters has become entrenched in virtually every major field of science in the US. It is particularly virulent in the so-called biomedical sciences. . . .
“The conjoining of government, big business and academe which President Eisenhower warned about in 1961 now rules the world. . . . The COVID-19 fraud is the AIDS scam writ large. . . . We are in the middle of a global totalitarian takeover and things are going to get much worse in the months ahead.”
The book’s overall conclusion echoes Rasnick:
“It is not possible to interpret the actions of the authorities as ‘honest mistakes.’ Too much has occurred that points unequivocally to a sinister agenda behind the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. The rushed approval without necessity, the outright threats and the coercion, the systematic censorship of honest science and the suppression of the truth about the numerous killed or severely injured vaccine victims have all gone on for far too long to permit of any doubts as to intent and purpose.
“Our governments and the national and international administrative bodies are waging an undeclared war on all of us . . . [T]his war has been going on for decades, and we must expect it to continue and to escalate.”
While this well-founded information is both alarming and depressing, knowledge is power. If we come to grips with the reality that past and future harm from mRNA vaccines is both intentional and inevitable, we can protect ourselves and our loved ones.
Forewarned is forearmed. Read this book and keep it close as a reference until we’ve turned the page on this dark chapter in global history.
Margot DesBois is a science and research fellow with Children’s Health Defense.
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.
Biden Regime Argues Texas and Florida Anti-Censorship Laws are a First Amendment Violation
The Biden regime suddenly cares about the First Amendment
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 15, 2023
Presented as an effort to safeguard speech rights, the Biden administration has called on the Supreme Court to dismantle controversial segments of the anti-censorship social media laws ratified in Florida and Texas.
We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.
(President Biden is also using the argument that banning his administration from asking platforms to remove speech is a First Amendment violation.)
The laws in question restrict the autonomy of leading social media platforms by preventing them from censoring citizens speech and discriminating on the basis of political viewpoint.
Both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott staunchly support these laws as a means of protecting voices from being suppressed. Governor DeSantis, at the law signing in May 2021, criticized Big Tech’s bias for Silicon Valley ideology and emphasized the need for accountability.
The Texas law, featuring a provision prohibiting discrimination based on viewpoints, incorporates several exceptions, permitting platforms to ban content promoting violence, criminal behavior, child exploitation, and harassment of sexual-abuse survivors and more. The law presses social media platforms to adopt user complaint procedures, disclose content and data management practices, and publish a comprehensive biannual transparency report.
The legislation only applies to platforms attracting over 50 million monthly users.
The Florida law has a similar scope and, in addition, mandates a detailed justification for each content moderation. The legislation also forbids the banning of political contenders or “journalistic enterprises.”
US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar perceives this as an encroachment on First Amendment rights. She contended in a recent court filing that such laws infringe the liberty of tech giants in selecting, editing, and arranging user-generated content. Essentially, she claimed these actions are all protected under the First Amendment.
Endorsing two industry trade groups that have formally contested the laws, she implored the Supreme Court to scrutinize both measures.
Federal appeals courts, however, are divided over the issue. The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has primarily blocked Florida’s legislation, deeming it potentially unconstitutional. Conversely, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit backed the Texas law but held it back to permit an appeal to reach the Supreme Court.
Certainly, both states, as well as the trade groups, are petitioning the Supreme Court to adjudicate on a range of issues concerning the two cases. An announcement of the court’s decision is expected as early as September.
While Prelogar largely aligns with the social media companies, she refrained from endorsing their protest against the “general-disclosure provisions” that require the publishing of content-management policies and production of transparency reports. These issues, she argued, are not the main subject of the lawsuits and high court review would be premature.
Rutgers Set to Disenroll Students on August 15th if Not Compliant with COVID Vaccine Mandates
By Lucia Sinatra | Brownstone Institute | August 14, 2023
On March 25, 2021, Rutgers University became the first university in the nation to announce it would require students to take COVID vaccines for fall 2021 enrollment, retracting its January 8, 2021 announcement that “… with our stance of human liberties and our history of protecting that, the vaccine is not mandatory.” What happened within a few short months that made Rutgers ultimately decide to hell with student civil liberties?
Rutgers claimed and still does to this day that it has a “commitment to health and safety for all members of its community” even though on July 30, 2021, Rochelle Walensky issued a press release claiming that COVID vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. As if that press release is some figment of our imagination, in January 2022, Rutgers announced a booster mandate with a compliance date set for January 31st, leaving students with few options but to comply to stay enrolled.
As of today, Rutgers remains one of less than 100 universities out of 2,679 four-year colleges and universities that refuse to let go of COVID vaccine mandates, and according to anonymous sources, Rutgers is planning to disenroll non-compliant students beginning on August 15, 2023.
Perhaps this dogmatic adherence to COVID vaccine mandates has been a long time coming. In 2020 and 2021, Rutgers had some of the strictest pandemic lockdown restrictions, even when other colleges were finding ways to resume normalcy. Students quickly fell in line and anyone who questioned the lockdown or mask mandates was denounced as an anti-science MAGA supporter and a grandma killer. A former Rutgers student described her experience as being stuck in a maelstrom of fear, divisive partisanship, and social pressure leading her to self-censor rather than jeopardize relationships or lose standing in her beloved community.
When the vaccine distribution began in early 2021, pandemic fears quickly morphed into anger against anyone who dared to question the vaccine’s necessity, safety, and long-term effects. Dozens of classroom conversations were fueled by vaccine talk. Support for the vaccine mandate was seen as virtuous and altruistic, and anyone who had questions quickly learned to keep their mouths shut or else they were given the dreaded anti-vaxxer label, which begs the question that if it was okay for the CDC to announce that the vaccines were not protecting us from contracting the virus and MSM was reporting on it, why wasn’t Rutgers supporting its students so they could feel safe to talk about it?
Meanwhile, Rutgers insisted to its community members that nobody was forced to get vaccinated since they could request an exemption. What they were not advertising was that exemptions were hard to come by. Religious exemptions were mostly denied. Medical exemptions often took months and multiple appeals to be approved, if ever. While the University did give a 90-day extension on booster compliance based on a recent COVID infection, this extension could only be requested once, and any medical exemption requests based on positive antibody titers from prior COVID infections were denied.
One former Rutgers student described his experience requesting a booster exemption after developing significant cardiac issues. He was told explicitly that antibody titers made no difference. His medical exemption request written by his cardiologist was eventually denied after multiple rounds of back-and-forth. Apparently, the Rutgers Immunization Group, an opaque group of people in charge of handling exemptions, determined this young man’s cardiac issues were not a good enough reason to exempt him from a booster despite emerging data showing COVID vaccines could cause cardiac side effects, especially in young males.
Faculty and staff members at Rutgers arguably had it worse than students as federal Executive Order 14042, signed on September 9, 2021, required that employees of federally contracted entities, including research universities such as Rutgers, be vaccinated against COVID.
On January 4, 2022, Rutgers announced a booster mandate for all community members including employees, even though a booster requirement was not part of the federal mandate. Some employees—all of whom completed primary vaccinations, and most were COVID-recovered—reported that they received threatening notices to comply with the booster mandate stating that “…if you fail to comply with the Executive Order and the University’s requirements, you will be subject to discipline, up to and including termination of employment, but namely termination.”
While the Executive Order provided exemptions for medical or religious reasons, they were also very difficult to attain. As a result, many employees reluctantly complied, and some were forced to resign. The oppressiveness of the employee vaccine mandate also kept many prospective employees from accepting career-changing job offers at Rutgers, despite the administration lamenting about the ongoing labor shortage at the university.
On May 12, 2023, President Biden signed an Executive Order revoking 14042 thereby eliminating Rutgers’ reason for implementing an employee COVID vaccine mandate. Four days later, Rutgers dropped the booster mandate, yet the employee COVID vaccine mandate remains.
Now, in August 2023, months after the federal government announced the end of the public health emergency, Rutgers is one of a small minority of universities steadfastly holding onto COVID vaccine mandates. The pandemic is nowhere near over at Rutgers, not by a long shot.
Lucia Sinatra is a recovering corporate securities attorney. After becoming a mother, Lucia turned her attention to fighting inequities in public schools in California for students with learning disabilities. She co-founded NoCollegeMandates.com to help fight college vaccine mandates.
Russia’s asymmetric response
Russia’s asymmetric response to latest announced plans of U.S. and NATO for sending more devastating military hardware to Ukraine
By Gilbert Doctorow | August 15, 2023
Each time over the past 18 months that it appeared the Ukraine war was approaching a finale amounting to Kiev’s defeat and capitulation we have been surprised by yet another U.S. initiated escalation that changes the nature of the conflict and promises a new and drawn-out stage of fighting.
Did the Ukrainian counter-offensive which began on 4 June fail? An increasing number of Western mainstream media including CNN have published reports acknowledging it is a failure. In Washington, the finger pointing game over who ‘lost Ukraine’ has begun among the country’s most determined backers.
Europe is a backwater in more than one dimension. Not everyone here has gotten the word about Ukraine’s losses in two months of desperate attacks on Russian defensive positions across the entire 1,000 km front. Last night I watched a round-table discussion of the war on French television in which not a single panelist had been told that the game is up in Ukraine. These smirky amateurs, mostly garden variety journalists, were discussing the fighting around one or another Ukrainian town on the front line whose name they could barely pronounce, all convinced that the Ukrainian forces had the upper hand and were on their way to breaching the Russian defenses, about to reach the less awesome second line of defense, and were surely to make it through to the Sea of Azov, thereby achieving the basic objective of the entire operation – cutting the Russian supply lines and breaking the back of Russian resistance. The whole time these commentators smiled broadly as if the war were just a video game.
But to hell with the French propagandists. In the German media, mainstream journalists have been seeding the discussion of the war with news about Ukraine’s setbacks and the improbability of their accomplishing anything other than self-destruction as the fighting continues. Simultaneously with the announcement that Germany is about to supply long range reconnaissance drones to Kiev, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for “continuation” of peace negotiations. It is curious that no one told him there are no peace negotiations going on today. But the main point is that victory on the battlefield seems to have vanished from the Berlin discourse.
Nonetheless, the United States and Britain announce day after day new appropriations for delivery of military hardware of the most devastating sort to Ukraine. Abrams tanks are on the way. Longer range strike missiles with a range up to 500 km may soon be shipped. Biden in the past week inserted authorization for another 14 billion dollars in military supplies into a bill for provision of aid to victims of natural disasters, meaning the present disaster in Hawaii and elsewhere in the States. The tactic was meant to overcome rising Republican opposition to giving Ukraine one more cent of aid should the aid have been in a separate bill dedicated to the war effort. The drumbeats for provision of F16s to Ukraine continue and there is talk of preparing new Ukrainian troops for a renewed counter-offensive in 2024.
So what are the Russians doing about the new arms on the way to Ukraine?
An article posted in Russian social media and carried by the number one news portal, Dzen, formerly a subsidiary of Yandex, gives us a good insight into Russian countermeasures that otherwise are buried in general daily Western reporting on the war. We hear about air raid alerts across Ukraine which took place a day ago but there is no explanation. We hear about a Russian missile strike that killed a young Ukrainian family but are told it is just part of the Russian attacks on civilians.
The article posted on “Интересная жизнь с Vera Star” makes sense of it all.
First, those air raid sirens across the whole of Ukraine were related to the systematic Russian bombardment of all still functional Ukrainian airports from which their air force’s SU-24 and SU-27 can operate. These are the aircraft that are capable of carrying and firing the Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that have been supplied by Britain and France, and which may carry German missiles, if Berlin decides to proceed with its previous offer of such materiel.
Second, we are told that the Russians have just used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy the railway tunnels passing under the Carpathians which have been the main supply route of Western military hardware arriving from Poland and Romania. For a long time, there was discussion in the Russian senior military command over whether it was permissible to attack this ostensibly civilian infrastructure. However, the decision was taken to do so in light of the latest U.S. and NATO plans to raise the bar in what attack equipment they are providing to Ukraine. As the Russians argue, civilian infrastructure that is being used to serve military objectives automatically becomes a legal target for them.
By Russian calculations, they have now nullified the latest Western plans to prolong the war.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Western military dominance ‘has ended’ – Moscow
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu © Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation; RIA Novosti
RT | August 15, 2023
Asian, African and Latin American states have seen their role in the global arena increase as Western military dominance has started to wane, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said.
Speaking at the 21st International Security Conference in Moscow on Tuesday, the minister argued that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has “put an end to the dominance of the collective West in the military sphere.”
“Just as the defeat of fascism by the Red Army in Europe in the last century gave a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements throughout the world, so will the defeat of the Ukrainian neo-fascists supported by the West serve as a factor in counteracting modern neo-colonialism,” Shoigu said.
The minister noted that Russia is currently fighting “not just the armed forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West,” which, he added, has recently been joined by several states from the Asia-Pacific region.
In its confrontations with Kiev’s forces, which have been provided with foreign weaponry worth billions of dollars, Russia has dispelled many myths about the superiority of Western military standards, Shoigu said. It has become clear that the use of Western weapons and supposedly advanced NATO tactics and training “cannot ensure superiority on the battlefield,” he added.
The minister also claimed that Kiev’s foreign advisers are essentially using the Ukraine conflict as a testing ground for various military strategies involving Western weapons, while President Vladimir Zelensky supplies the manpower for these experiments. Shoigu said the losses among Ukrainian military personnel are being disregarded by Ukraine’s Western backers.
The Russian minister also claimed that Ukraine’s military resources are almost completely exhausted, according to preliminary estimates. Russia’s Defense Ministry had previously reported that since launching their counteroffensive operation in early June, Ukraine’s forces had lost some 43,000 soldiers as well as nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment, including dozens of Western tanks and combat vehicles.
Shoigu suggested that the US is using the Ukraine conflict to line the pockets of its defense industry by forcing its partners in Europe to procure new products to replace those they have sent to Kiev.
The Summer of Fraying Threads
By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 14, 2023
On April 23, 2021, I wrote the following:
“Ukraine has two options: accept its role as a buffer state, or be dismembered. If the US goads them into an attempt to subjugate the Donbass, Russia will slice away eastern Ukraine and assimilate it — and there is *nothing* the US can do to prevent it.”
Of course, we all know what has happened since then. And now, as the summer of 2023 slips away here on our increasingly vexed planet, I note the following salient developments:
Matters have reached the point where the imperial masters will be forced to choose between a humiliating disengagement and abandonment of Ukraine to its fate — or otherwise blunder into a calamitous direct military intervention.
In recent months, many of the most influential voices in Russia have reiterated the demands made of the NATO bloc in December 2021: it must withdraw its military forces to their pre-1997 posture.
NATO presence in and military support for Ukraine must cease forthwith; Ukraine must be entirely demilitarized, and a neutral regime must be installed in whatever Ukrainian rump state the Russians choose to leave unrestored to mother Russia.
Additionally — and this demand has been explicitly stated — American missiles must immediately be removed from Poland and Romania, and NATO military presence in all the Russia-adjacent nations must be withdrawn.
Many geopolitical analysts have commented to a limited degree on Putin’s address to the world delivered even as Russian forces had commenced their “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, but few, if any, have focused their attention on the equally portentous address Putin delivered three days earlier.
In his February 21, 2022 speech, Putin meticulously recounted the relevant history of the region dating back multiple centuries, and focused specifically on the events that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In addition to Putin’s history lesson, he makes particular reference to a detailed proposal Russia delivered to the United States and its NATO allies in mid-December 2021 — a proposal that effectively amounted to a “final warning”; a last-ditch effort to avoid war in Ukraine.
Consider his words carefully, and especially in light of how Russia has unswervingly adhered to the three primary war objectives Putin articulated in his February 24th speech.
Last December, we handed over to our Western partners a draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees, as well as a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and NATO member states.
The United States and NATO responded with general statements. There were kernels of rationality in them as well, but they concerned matters of secondary importance and it all looked like an attempt to drag the issue out and to lead the discussion astray.
We responded to this accordingly and pointed out that we were ready to follow the path of negotiations, provided, however, that all issues are considered as a package that includes Russia’s core proposals which contain three key points. First, to prevent further NATO expansion. Second, to have the Alliance refrain from deploying assault weapon systems on Russian borders. And finally, rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.
Vladimir Putin, Address by the President of the Russian Federation, February 21, 2022 (emphasis added)
Clearly, the Russians are emboldened by both their burgeoning military strength as well as NATO’s manifest military debility.
This war has achieved precisely the opposite effect envisioned by its imperious authors: it has served to strengthen Russia, and also forged an unbeatable alliance between Russia, China, and Iran.
That said, I cannot shake the haunting worry that the Empire At All Costs cult may yet succeed in persuading the powers-that-be in the Pentagon to test the myth of American military supremacy against what was so long imagined to be Russian military ineptitude.
I believe we will see the answer to that question between now and the vernal equinox in March 2024.
They will no longer tolerate US meddling in Taiwan, nor permit the US to dictate the geopolitical relationships of the nations in east Asia and the western Pacific.
The days of a patient and grudgingly submissive China have come to an end.
To punctuate this reality, we have recently seen the unprecedented development of joint Russia/China naval patrols in the Pacific — including off the coast of Alaska.
In other words, we have well and truly arrived at a hinge point in time.
The first global empire in human history has long-since receded from its high-water mark and is now in rapid and increasingly chaotic decline.
“I have touched the highest point of all my greatness; And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting …”
Great dangers and momentous changes lie ahead — some in the relatively near future; some not far over the horizon.
Prepare accordingly …
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From the Archives
Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
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