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US and South Korea Conduct Training Simulating Assassination of Kim Jong Un

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 3, 2024

A top South Korean defense official said Washington and Seoul have considered assassinating the North Korean leader. The simulations have gone as far as joint special operations training missions.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik explained to reporters last month that the deployment of US nuclear weapons or the assassination of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un were options being discussed between Washington and Seoul.

“While it is difficult to openly discuss decapitation, the ROK-US special operation forces are… conducting training,” Won-sik said. “This training is for aerial maneuvers, raids on key facilities, and indoor mop-up.”

The Daily Beast first reported the US and South Korea would conduct the decapitation war games in August 2022.

Since President Joe Biden took office, tensions have risen sharply on the Korean Peninsula. The current administration has abandoned the Donald Trump-era diplomacy with Pyongyang. Biden has deployed some of America’s most advanced weapons to the region and ramped up military engagements with South Korea.

Pyongyang has responded to Washington’s provocations by stepping up its military capabilities. North Korea has conducted several missile tests, including with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Pyongyang successfully placed a military satellite into orbit in 2023 and plans three more this year.

Kim and other top North Korean officials warned several times last year that the US and South Korean military activities have put the Peninsula on the brink of a nuclear war. During a major address, Kim explained Pyongyang would further its nuclear weapons program during the coming year.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Why are so Many Californians Dying?

By Thomas Buckley | Brownstone Institute | January 3, 2024

Covid has claimed about 105,000* lives in the state since 2020.

In that same time period, 82,000 more Californians died from everything else than is typical.

Adjusted for the decline in population, that non-Covid “excess death” figure becomes even more concerning as the state has seen its population drop to about the same it was in 2015.

In 2015 – obviously there was no Covid – 260,000 of the then 39 million Californians died. In 2023, not including November and December, 240,000 people died not from Covid (6,000 additional people died of Covid.).

Extrapolating the year-to-date figures for 2023 creates a final year-end figure of 280,000 – 20,000 more people than died in 2015. That’s a non-Covid, population-neutral jump of 8%.

In other words, despite the protestations of certain officials, the state’s death rate has NOT returned to “pre-Covid” levels – in 2019 the year before the pandemic, 270,000 people died with a population at least 400,000 greater than today.

Why?

Dr. Bob Wachter, medical chair at UC-SF and ardent supporter of tight pandemic restrictions, did not respond to an email from the Globe (away for work the auto-response said) but he did recently tell the San Jose Mercury News that in “(T)he last three years, not only were there a lot of deaths from Covid, there were a lot of additional deaths from non-Covid causes, which are probably attributable to people not receiving the medical care that they normally would have received’ when ERs were overflowing with Covid patients (note – the truth of that ER assertion has not been verified), Wachter noted.”

In other words, the pandemicist Wachter admitted the pandemic response itself at least contributed to a significant number of excess deaths, a fact that was aggressively and roundly denied and – if mentioned – led to censoring and societal ostracization (and in many cases job losses) by the powers that be during the pandemic.

A second admission along these lines was recently made by former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins – Tony Fauci’s boss.

In this video clip, Collins – who once called for a “devastating takedown” (see above) of those who questioned the hard pandemic response – said his DC and public health blinders, well, blinded him to the problems his pandemic response caused and is still causing:

If you’re a public health person, and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens, so you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from. Collateral damage. This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made. 

(You can see Collins for yourself here.)

Needless to say there is not even a half-hearted apology involved. And Collins is/was wrong in the approach to public health he apparently subscribes to, as throughout modern history it has involved a cost/benefit analysis and a weighing of the impact on society.

Public health, practiced properly, does not – and never before has – attached “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”

“We had the exact wrong people in charge at the exact wrong time,” said Stanford professor of medicine (and one of the people Collins tried to “take down”) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “Their decisions were myopically deadly.”

To remind Collins of the ramifications of his decision beyond the excess deaths: 

Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street.

The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.

The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Bhattacharya) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches; approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable –  that had been tested and succeeded before.

Nationally, pandemic “all-cause” deaths spiked, for obvious reasons, but they remain stubbornly higher than normal to this day.

There could be mitigating factors to California’s numbers, specifically the issue of drug overdoses. Since 2018, the overdose death rate has doubled. The last overall figures available are from 2021 which showed 10,901 people dying of an overdose. While not specifically broken out for which drug, the vast majority are from opioid overdoses and the vast majority of those involve fentanyl. In 2022, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths with 6,473 of those involving fentanyl.

But the overdose death increase would account for only about 25% of the total increase in “excess deaths,” meaning it has an impact but cannot explain the whole story.

There is also the issue of homeless deaths. Homeless people die at a far higher rate than the rest of the population and California has had a burgeoning homeless population for the last few years, despite the money being spent on the issue. However, at least a portion of that increase can – as with overdoses – be attributed to fentanyl and is therefore difficult to separate out as discrete numbers.

Those two increases, however, may explain the fact that the “all-cause” excess death rate for those in the 25-to-44 year age bracket (it has comparatively higher overdose death and homelessness figures) have remained – except for two very recent weeks – above the typical historical range.

The increase in overdose (and alcohol-related deaths) has been directly tied to the pandemic response previously. In California, there were about 3,500 more alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic response than before: 5,600 in 2019 (pre-pandemic,) 6,100 in 2020, 7,100 in 2021, 6,600 in 2022, and 2023 is on pace to see about 6,000.

That still leaves roughly half of the excess deaths unaccounted for, raising questions about the safety of the Covid shot (a shot, not a vaccine) itself. The CDC lists 640 deaths in California directly from the shot and an increase in “adverse effects” from the shot compared to many other actual vaccines. The Covid shot “ adverse” rate was one in a thousand, while, for comparison, it’s about one in a million for the polio vaccine.

That means a person was more than 9 times as likely to die from the Covid shot as any other vaccine and 6.5 times to be injured by it in some fashion.

Still that is – according to state figures – not enough to explain the increase.

There are three other issues to note: first, many of the counting questions around dying “from” Covid versus “with” Covid remain, meaning the Covid death numbers could be elevated if the “withs” are lumped in with the “froms.”

Second, there is the simmering matter of “iatrogenic” deaths – i.e. deaths caused by the treatment. Early on in the pandemic response, a push was made to “ventilate” patients mechanically. From the above article (no caps in the original):

here’s an unsettling comparison: in NYC area, mortality rate for all COV ICU patients was 78%. in stockholm, the SURVIVAL rate was over 80%. this is a staggering variance. the key difference: ventilators. NYC used them on 85% of patients, sweden used them sparingly

Combined with the placing of Covid patients in nursing homes, the number of actual “only” or “natural” (for lack of a better term) Covid deaths, again, may be elevated.

The state Department of Public Health declined to comment on the matter.

Which brings us back to the Wachter and Collins oblique, nearly accidental admissions that the response itself may have caused significant and ongoing damage across numerous personal and public sectors.

Comparing California to other states also shows a concerning trend, specifically when considering the aftermath of the pandemic response. While increasing in population, for example, Florida’s excess death rate increase was/is lower than California’s as was its Covid death rate, a fact Gov. Gavin Newsom has been lying about for years.

During the pandemic itself, the nation saw an “all-cause” – including Covid – death rate increase of about 16% above normal. Using that metric, as it is clear the response itself had knock-on effects – California’s was 19.4% and Florida’s was 16.7%, despite the wildly different pandemic responses.

Imagine, if you will, you own a baseball team and you have two shortstops, one that earns $10 million a year and one that earns $1 million. And it turns out that both are equally talented – errors, batting stats, etc. – and that maybe the cheaper one is actually even a bit more talented it turns out. Which shortstop was the better deal for the team? The less expensive one, of course.

That is an apt analogy for states choosing how to respond to the pandemic – Florida cut the $10 million player while California kept him. In other words, the two states got the same-ish performance but at wildly different societal costs.

This pattern seems to be borne out by many of the figures. Obviously, various states that ended up lower than the national average took very different approaches: North Dakota and New Jersey saw roughly the same all-cause mortality numbers, as did Washington (state) and South Dakota.

This is true on the “high side” as well: California and Montana, Oregon and Arkansas are two pairs that had similar numbers with different approaches.

All of this raises a deeper question in that there appears to be little if any direct causative resultant difference between a draconian pandemic response and a softer touch.

And that should not at all be the case: the lockdowns, the masks, the shots, the social distancing, the closing of schools and stores and churches and parks, and everything else should have produced a clear and distinct difference – if the pandemicists were right.

If they were right, the difference in results should be stark and obvious to the naked eye. Miami should look like Genoa after the plague ships arrived while Los Angeles should seem like a New Eden. If the much-maligned Swedish “soft” model was as dangerous as the pandemicists said, Stockholm should be a ghost town.

But that’s not at all true and that’s why the pandemicists are/were so evidently wrong: the harshest methods had little impact on the end results.

While there were differences between states, they cannot necessarily be directly tied to a specific policy construct (save Hawaii, which can be discounted considering their isolated geography). Hard or soft pandemic response, in the long run it didn’t seem to matter much in the Covid death tolls.

Where it did – and still does – matter is the immediate and long-lasting damage the more tyrannical responses had on society as a whole.

And – if California’s excess death numbers are an indicator – the pandemic response itself is still killing people.

And that, too, definitely shouldn’t be happening – if the pandemicists were right.

It is even more problematic – and even more ethically abhorrent – if the Covid death figures are inflated; the number of Covid deaths of 105,000 is only about 20% higher than the other non-Covid excess death figure of 82,000.

In other words, the net “from Covid” deaths may not be terribly different from the “from the Covid response” death count.

And that possibility is the most terrifying of all.

*  All numbers used are rounded for simplicity and come from state and federal sources.

Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. and a former newspaper reporter. He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

French Researchers Identify ‘Improbably High Rate of Deaths’ in Newborns Who Received New RSV Shot

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 2, 2024

French researchers identified possible safety signals in babies coinciding with the rollout of Beyfortus, a recently approved monoclonal antibody treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in newborns.

The discovery comes as public health authorities ramp up warnings about the spread of respiratory viruses and step up their promotion of the drug.

In interviews with The Defender, the researchers — French independent scientist and author Hélène Banoun, Ph.D., and French statistician Christine Mackoi — explained that data from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) indicates an improbably high rate of deaths of babies between 2 and 6 days old in France during September and October 2023.

INSEE is the authority that compiles official birth and death data in France.

This increase, the researchers said, coincides with the introduction of Beyfortus in French hospitals, which began on Sept. 15, 2023. In an interview with cardiologist Peter McCullough, M.D., MPH, Banoun said that over 200,000 newborn babies in France have been injected with Beyfortus since that date.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended Beyfortus in August 2023, while the European Medicines Agency (EMA) authorized the drug in September 2022.

Beyfortus was developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Sanofi.

The drug is offered as a “one-time shot for infants born just before or during the RSV season and for those less than 8 months old before the season starts,” and for some high-risk 8- to 19-month-old infants.

According to The Associated Press, “In the U.S., about 58,000 children younger than 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year and several hundred die.” CNBC reported that “RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization among infants in the U.S.” According to the CDC, nearly all children are infected with RSV before the age of 2.

But the French researchers and other medical experts who spoke with The Defender warned that no long-term studies have been conducted involving Beyfortus and newborns and that the administration of monoclonal antibodies on this population is unprecedented. They also pointed to data indicating RSV’s low risk to babies.

Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, biological warfare epidemiologist and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory committee, told The Defender, “Giving newborns any drug or biologic should be done with extreme caution, let alone a novel, injected monoclonal antibody. You cannot tell if the infant is damaged by the shot, when you don’t yet know how healthy the newborn is and how it normally behaves. This should be a huge red flag for manufacturers as well as parents.”

According to Banoun, “The French government is recommending that Beyfortus be injected into newborns before they leave the maternity ward, from Sept. 15, 2023, even though the product has not been tested on this age group,” Banoun said.

Nass pointed out that the CDC published a paper in 2021 on all U.S. RSV deaths over the preceding 12 years. The CDC reviewed death certificates, and found there were only 26 deaths per year with RSV, and only 17 deaths per year in the entire U.S. caused by RSV in babies under one year old.

According to McCullough, “Among the 22.4 million children under age 5 years, the annual risk of RSV hospitalization is well under 1%.”

Excess deaths among newborns ‘alarming,’ ‘disturbing’

Mackoi told The Defender, “There is an excess of deaths for the months of September and October. The excess deaths in October are very alarming. It is very worrisome that this happened in two consecutive months.”

According to Mackoi, the increase in these excess deaths coincides with the introduction of Beyfortus in France.

“There is a strong concomitance with the Beyfortus injection since Sept. 15, 2023,” she said. “In France, babies receive injections of Beyfortus before leaving the maternity hospital. They leave the maternity hospital three or four days after their birth … These excess deaths are abnormal.”

According to Mackoi, the data show “a 50% increase in deaths of babies between 2 and 6 days of life compared with what would be expected,” noting that “the reference is obtained by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of births in 2018 and 2019; the result is 0.69 deaths between 2 and 6 days per 1,000 births.”

In September, the observed mortality rate was 0.97 deaths per 1,000 births, and in October, it was 1.05 deaths per 1,000 births, Mackoi said. “It is anomalous that this very significant increase should be found two months in a row. It may well be due to the injection of Beyfortus since Sept. 15, 2023.”

“Although of no scientific value, I have received testimonials from relatives and via the internet from families of healthy babies who were hospitalized in intensive care with respiratory distress syndrome immediately after the injection,” Banoun added.

Mackoi said that using the official INSEE data, which she described as “reliable [but] underestimated,” she “calculated for each month, the rate of babies born the month in question and died between 2 and 6 days of life,” and used a Poisson distribution to identify abnormal mortality rates, compiling the findings on her website.

According to the INSEE data, 54 deaths were recorded for 55,489 births in France in September 2023, despite the average number of expected deaths being 38, based on historical averages.

For October 2023, the data showed 61 deaths out of 57,940 births, despite the average number of expected deaths being 40.

Mackoi said that the probability of the September 2023 death figure occurring by chance is 0.9%, while the probability of the increased mortality in newborns in October 2023 is even lower, at 0.1%. She also noted that “there are no excess deaths less than 48 hours after birth,” and that this is “one more indication” that Beyfortus is causing the deaths, because they are not receiving the monoclonal for the first 48 hours of life.

“The coincidence of Beyfortus injections with excess infant deaths is disturbing,” Mackoi said.

Monoclonal antibodies may exacerbate symptoms rather than prevent them

These revelations came as the White House announced on Dec. 14, 2023, that it would make 230,000 additional doses of Beyfortus available last month, in addition to 77,000 doses that were released in November 2023.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Dec. 28 concluded, “Nirsevimab protected infants against hospitalization for RSV-associated lower respiratory tract infection and against very severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract infection in conditions that approximated real-world settings.”

The study was funded by AstraZeneca and Sanofi.

According to Banoun, official data do not indicate that Beyfortus is effective. The data do, however, indicate a high prevalence of adverse reactions — including bronchiolitis — even though the treatment is supposed to protect recipients from respiratory illness.

“The most frequently reported adverse events are upper respiratory tract infections, including bronchiolitis,” she said.

Banoun added that data from the French National Authority for Health (HAS) do not “support a possible impact of Beyfortus in terms of reduced length of hospital stay, transfer to intensive care units, and mortality.”

“According to HAS, in the trials, the absolute risk of RSV infection was reduced by 3.8% in the five months following injection, and the absolute risk of hospitalization was reduced by 1% to 2% over the same period,” she said.

Banoun said the trials were not conducted on newborns, whereas the French government recommends injection from the first days of life in the maternity ward.

According to EudraVigilance, as of Dec. 24, 2023, there were 64 adverse events related to Beyfortus in those 1 month old or younger, and 68 for those between 2 months and 2 years of age. One death, that of a baby below 1 month old, was recorded, as were 60 records containing the word bronchiolitis. And according to VigiAccess, there were 104 adverse events reported, including 57 infections and respiratory disorders.

Another study, concerning premature babies and newborns suffering from heart or lung disease that compared Beyfortus with monoclonal antibodies previously used on high-risk babies, recorded six deaths — five due to bronchiolitis. Of the six babies that died, five had been treated with Beyfortus.

Yet, “these bronchiolitis cases are not attributed to the treatment by the investigator, who is also the manufacturer of the products,” Banoun said. “All this suggests that nirsevimab [generic name for Beyfortus] could facilitate and aggravate bronchiolitis: these injections take place during periods when the virus is circulating.”

“Let’s not forget that this whole bronchiolitis ‘prevention’ campaign is supposed to avoid overcrowding hospitals with babies suffering from the disease,” Banoun said. “If this product doesn’t significantly reduce hospital admissions, what’s the point?”

According to NTD, “Monoclonal antibodies are copies of an antibody that seek out foreign material to destroy them,” but the treatments come with a “risk that the body might trigger a strong reaction to the antibodies.”

Complications may be serious and can include “acute anaphylaxis or life-threatening massive allergic reactions and cytokine release syndrome that can result in organ damage.” This phenomenon is one of the adverse effects of Beyfortus.

In his interview with Banoun, McCullough said, “Antibody-dependent enhancements [ADE] have always been something we’ve been worried about because if antibodies bind the virus but not very tightly, that means they don’t neutralize the virus. And then, [a] fragment [Fc] of the antibody binds to a cell receptor. In a sense, the antibody can bring the virus into the cell.”

McCullough told The Defender, “The antibodies will invariably affect the development of natural immunity with repeated exposures to RSV during childhood. Beyfortus-resistant strains can be expected with indiscriminate use.”

Banoun cited a study in which “two of the 25 subjects in the nirsevimab group with RSV … had an RSV isolate containing substitutions associated with resistance to nirsevimab,” while “No subject in the placebo group had an RSV isolate containing substitutions associated with resistance to nirsevimab.”

Banoun also referred to a September 2022 EMA report, which found that during failed RSV vaccine trials in the past, children died of severe bronchiolitis in the vaccinated groups, but none from the control groups died.

“This ADE is due to the deleterious effect of antibodies which, instead of neutralizing the virus, facilitate its entry into the cell via the receptor of the Fc fragment of immunoglobulins. And it’s precisely this Fc region of nirsevimab … that industry has seen fit to modify,” Banoun said.

“Manufacturers are looking for the beneficial effects of this phenomenon and are wary of deleterious effects, which is why they have investigated the risk of ADE with Beyfortus in animal models,” Banoun added. “They claim not to have detected it, but the EMA points out, unmoved, that no histopathological evaluation of rats was carried out after treatment and infection with RSV: This is the only recognized marker of ADE.”

On his Substack, McCullough wrote that this effect may be triggered by aerosolized RSV virions present in hospitals.

“This means as ambient aerosolized RSV virions are present in hospitals, clinics, and home, the monoclonal antibody may backfire and enable the inhaled virion to gain access to the bronchial epithelial lining and cause worse bronchiolitis than the baby would have with their own developing natural immunity,” he wrote.

Beyfortus administered on newborns despite being tested on older babies

During the clinical trial leading up to approval of Beyfortus by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a total of 12 infant deaths were recorded. However, the FDA claimed the deaths were “unrelated” to the antibody.

CNBC reported in June that of the 12 infants, “Four died from cardiac disease, two died from gastroenteritis, two died from unknown causes but were likely cases [of] sudden infant death syndrome, one died from a tumor, one died from COVID, one died from a skull fracture, and one died of pneumonia.”

“Fact-checkers” were quick to respond to any stories indicating that the infants’ deaths were related to Beyfortus, with factcheck.org writing in August 2023, “There isn’t evidence the [Beyfortus] shots have killed any babies, contrary to social media claims.”

But according to Banoun, “According to the HAS and EMA, 11 deaths were reported in the nirsevimab groups, one death in the pavilizumab (former equivalent drug) group and three deaths in the placebo groups. The FDA counted 12 deaths in all treated groups versus three in the placebo groups, not including the one that occurred after the follow-up period.”

“It should be noted that all deaths in the placebo groups concerned premature babies in the Griffin study,” Banoun said. “In trials involving full-term babies, all deaths involved treated subjects.”

Banoun said:

“The FDA has added one death in the placebo groups which occurred after the end of follow-up, but no mention is made of any deaths in the treated groups which occurred after this same period. Similarly, a significant number of babies are withdrawn from the trials and therefore no longer followed up after their withdrawal. This imbalance is therefore potentially more serious than published.”

Other studies also showed infant deaths connected to Beyfortus. McCullough told The Defender, “I am concerned about 3 versus 0 deaths with Beyfortus and placebo respectively in the MELODY trial published in NEJM, 2022.”

Nass pointed out another such anomaly in clinical trial results where “The deaths were said to be disproportionate between the placebo and nirsevimab groups.”

“I don’t trust the data as being reliable,” Nass said, “For instance, in this NEJM-published trial, 9.5% of babies who did not receive nirsevimab wound up with pneumonia and ‘lower respiratory tract’ RSV infections.”

“This seems awfully high,” Nass continued, “Especially when the CDC’s own study showed only 17 babies per year die from RSV. I find it hard to rely on the NEJM data.”

“The problem is that, with potentially billions of dollars riding on the outcome of a few clinical trials, there may be tremendous pressure to come up with the desired results. And there are many ways in which the desired results can be achieved,” she added.

Banoun also pointed out that while Beyfortus is administered to newborns, clinical studies tested the drug on older babies.

If we refer to the descriptions of the deceased babies, in the Domachowske study, “Only 1 was less than a month old at the time of injection (23 days), while all the others were between 1 and 7.5 months old,” she said. “We find the same panel of babies in all the other studies … in the Griffin study, the babies have a median age of over 6 months, in the Hammitt and Domachowske studies, only half the babies are under 3 months old … in the Hammitt study, the median age is 2.6 months (range 1.05 to 4.5 months).”

According to Banoun, public health authorities are aware of this discrepancy, noting that in the HAS Transparency Commission’s report on Beyfortus, Sylvie Chevret, M.D., Ph.D., professor of public health and biostatistics at France’s Université Paris Cité, said:

“In these trials, they included children who were essentially said to be in good health, so tomorrow, do you intend to give this drug to all newborns, bearing in mind that the studies did not include newborns?

“They included children who were less than three months old, of course, but up to more than 6 months.”

“The FDA and the American Association of Pediatrics jumped the gun in 2023 and were reckless in the approval and recommendation of Beyfortus for mass deployment in babies without carefully considering these issues,” McCullough told The Defender.

‘Expectant mothers should be prepared to resist’ Beyfortus for their babies

Despite these indications and possible safety signals, Banoun said that there has been no reaction so far from public health authorities in France or elsewhere.

“The only reaction to my posts was censorship and a video that was supposed to debunk my claims but actually confirmed them,” she said. “Like all critical scientists, I am censored: strict control over social networks, in particular Twitter, where we have been rendered virtually invisible since December 2023, when the European Digital Commissioner threatened Twitter with heavy fines.”

“When all debate is censored, all criticism discredited, even penalized and ostracized, can we still speak of ‘science’?” Banoun questioned, tying the censorship she’s experienced and the promotion of drugs such as Beyfortus to the concept of biopolitics.

Banoun explained that biopolitics was theorized by French philosopher Michel Foucault “to explain how power is exercised over human populations … on a global level” and “which, in our time, tends to impose health standards on all human populations [and] increasingly relies on vaccination as an alternative to care in infectiology.”

“Biopower today is exercised by an alliance of governments and health agencies with big industry. Biopolitics [also] concerns the control of populations in fields other than health: digital identity and climate,” she added.

For Banoun, financial interests are a key reason for this stance on the part of public health authorities and pharmaceutical companies.

“The market for bronchiolitis prevention will therefore represent several billion dollars for Big Pharma in the years to come. Why such a large market for a disease that is benign in the vast majority of cases? … The giants of the pharmaceutical industry are in permanent financial difficulty because of the fines and compensation they have to pay.”

“To compensate for these fines, manufacturers have to launch ‘blockbusters’ — highly profitable products that sell very well,” Banoun said, adding that the vaccine liability shield afforded to vaccines by laws such as the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 may be extended to treatments and drugs other than vaccines.

“It is feared that this exemption from liability will be extended to preventive therapies such as Beyfortus,” Banoun said, pointing out that U.S. and European authorities have mixed the classification of Beyfortus, considering it a vaccine in some instances and not in others.

In the U.S., the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended adding Beyfortus to the childhood vaccine schedule, providing its manufacturers with a waiver of liability, but also recommended coding it as a drug for insurance purposes and leaving it out of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).

In addition to this liability shield, Banoun said that, in France, midwives and nurses reportedly “receive a bonus for each injection — Sanofi pays a sum to each hospital, which is then redistributed to the injectors.”

Experts advised parents and physicians to be wary of Beyfortus.

“Physicians and parents should be conservative in deciding on Beyfortus. I do not recommend it for parents who are expecting healthy newborns or babies without severe pulmonary disease,” McCullough told The Defender.

Banoun said “Expectant mothers should be prepared to resist,” noting the White House’s and CDC’s efforts to promote Beyfortus and pressure placed on new mothers in French hospitals, where “nursing staff insist on giving it to the mother up to four or five times during her stay in the maternity ward.”

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.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 4

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | January 2, 2024

Happy New Year, dear readers! As always, this series of headlines is presented without commentary. It’s everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Florida Surgeon General Calls for a Complete Halt on Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Vaccines

FDA, CDC Unable to Handle Dr. Ladapo’s Concerns.

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 3, 2024

Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo is a Harvard-trained MD, PhD, and arguably one of the top experts on COVID-19 in the world. Prior to the Florida Surgeon General appointment, Dr. Ladapo was in academic practice at UCLA and published with myself, Dr. John McKinnon, and Dr. Harvey Risch on the efficacy of early hydroxychloroquine in acute COVID-19.

On December 6th 2023, State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo sent a letter to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Mandy Cohen regarding questions pertaining to the discovery of DNA process-related impurities found in the the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Ladapo’s concerns center around lipid nanoparticles laced with Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter/enhancer/origin of insertion DNA sequences widely distributed through the body. SV40 is a known promoter of proto-oncogenes.

The 2007, the FDA ‘Guidance for Industry: Considerations for Plasmid DNA Vaccines for Infectious Disease Indications (Guidance for Industry) outlines important considerations for vaccines that use novel methods of delivery regarding DNA integration, specifically:

  • DNA integration could theoretically impact a human’s oncogenes – the genes which can transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.
  • DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability.
  • The Guidance for Industry discusses biodistribution of DNA vaccines and how such integration could affect unintended parts of the body including blood, heart, brain, liver, kidney, bone marrow, ovaries/testes, lung, draining lymph nodes, spleen, the site of administration and subcutis at injection site.

The FDA provided a written response on December 14, 2023, indicating the sponsors have NOT addressed risks outlined by the FDA itself in 2007. Because the FDA failed to handle these concerns, Dr. Ladapo has released the following statement:

The FDA’s response does not provide data or evidence that the DNA integration assessments it recommended itself have been performed. Instead, it pointed to genotoxicity studies – which are inadequate assessments for DNA integration risk. In addition, it obfuscated the difference between the SV40 promoter/enhancer and SV40 proteins, two elements that are distinct.

DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients. If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.

Providers concerned about patient health risks associated with COVID-19 should prioritize patient access to non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and treatment. It is my hope that, in regard to COVID-19, the FDA will one day seriously consider its regulatory responsibility to protect human health, including the integrity of the human genome.

Ladapo called for a halt in Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. However, he did not recall the non-genetic, Spike-protein antigen Novavax vaccine. The Bio-Pharmaceutical complex does not promote Novavax largely because Weber Shandwick has a PR contract with the CDC vaccine office to promote only Pfizer and Moderna. Senator Rand Paul has called out this conflict of interest and obvious paid favoritism for mRNA over the safer but equally ineffective Novavax product.

I wonder if Pfizer and Moderna were halted, would our government switch to promotion of Novavax or would they continue to let the smaller company languish?

The Florida State Surgeon General’s announcement today is a milestone as more government officials join a chorus calling for recall of COVID-19 vaccines including myself (US Senate, multiple State Senates, EU Parliament, UK Parliament), 17,000 physicians representing the Global COVID-19 Summit, Australian scientists, the World Council for Health, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Randomized Controlled Trials of Early Ambulatory Hydroxychloroquine in the Prevention of COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death: Meta-Analysis Joseph A. Ladapo, John E. McKinnon, Peter A. McCullough, Harvey A. Risch medRxiv 2020.09.30.20204693; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.30.20204693

McKernan, K., Helbert, Y., Kane, L. T., & McLaughlin, S. (2023, April 10). Sequencing of bivalent Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines reveals nanogram to microgram quantities of expression vector dsDNA per dose. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/b9t7m

Speicher, D. J., Rose, J., Gutschi, L. M., Wiseman, D. M., PhD, & McKernan, K. (2023, October 19). DNA fragments detected in monovalent and bivalent Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna modRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Ontario, Canada: Exploratory dose response relationship with serious adverse events. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/mjc97

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Expansion of UK Investigatory Law to Force Tech Companies Into ‘Surveillance State’

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 03.01.2024

King Charles III announced No.10’s decision to expand the powers of the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act last year, adding that threats to national security are currently “changing rapidly due to new technology.”

The UK government’s drive to update the country’s controversial Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) is prompting “a fresh outcry” among both industry execs and privacy campaigners, a US news outlet has reported.

According to the outlet, Downing Street’s actions to expand what is known as one of Europe’s toughest surveillance laws could hobble efforts to protect user privacy.

In a letter to Home Secretary James Cleverly, industry body TechUK warned that the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill threatens technological innovation, undermines the sovereignty of other nations and leads to far-reaching consequences if it causes a domino effect overseas.

TechUK insisted that combined with pre-existing powers, the IPA changes would “grant a de- facto power to indefinitely veto companies from making changes to their products and services offered in the UK.”

“We stress the critical need for adequate time to thoroughly discuss these changes, highlighting that rigorous scrutiny is essential given the international precedent they will set and their very serious impacts,” the letter reads.

The document points out that TechUK is concerned that the the proposed changes are presented by the Home Office as minor adjustments and as such are being downplayed.

Director of thecampaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, argued that with CCTV footage or social media posts people may not have an expectation of privacy, but that “data taken together and processed in a certain way, can be incredibly intrusive.”

“What we’re seeing across these different bills is a continual edging further towards […] turning private tech companies into arms of a surveillance state,” Carlo said.

A No.10 spokesperson in turn underscored that the government has always been clear that it supports technological innovation as well as private and secure communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption. “But this cannot come at a cost to public safety, and it is critical that decisions are taken by those with democratic accountability,” the spokesperson warned.

On June 5, the Home Office opened consultations to discuss “possible outcomes for revised IPA notices…intended to improve the effectiveness of the current regimes” amid new challenges to national security.

The Home Office in particular wants companies offering messaging services, including Apple behind FaceTime and iMessage, and Meta behind WhatsApp, to seek government approval around these messaging tools’ security features.

The 2016 IPA, commonly known as the “snoopers’ charter”, contains a spate of provisions, such as requiring broadband internet service providers and mobile operators to log internet connection records (ICRs) for up to 12 months.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Facebook Rolls Out “Link History” Showing How it Tracks All The Websites Users Visit

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 3, 2024

Facebook, just like the rest of Big Tech, has historically made a great effort to track users across the internet, even when they are not logged into the platform, for data collecting and ultimately monetary reasons.

Now, reports say that a new way to achieve this has been recently launched by the giant, and notably, for the first time this type of tracking is made visible. Called Link History, the new feature is found in the Facebook app as essentially one of the permissions, and “documents” every link a user clicks while using the app.

Once again, fully in vein of what Google, Microsoft, etc., are doing, Facebook says the change – putting all links in one place – is there for better user experience, and again habitually, while the feature is not mandatory, it is there by default and “hiding” behind a pretty solid wall of an “opt-out.”

Whatever the case may be, most users don’t bother jumping over that wall, allowing corporations to at once offer a choice – and in most cases have it their way.

In order to deactivate this on their app, users first need to be aware Link History exists, and then navigate to the appropriate setting in order to “opt out.”

But there is no shortage of criticism of this latest move, from the privacy point of view (although mainstream tech press curiously chooses to single out Facebook while praising Google and Apple as some sort of “privacy warriors” now).

This should be viewed as part of the big (political) picture where keeping pressure on Facebook as still the most influential social media is especially important in an election year – while at the same time rightfully questioning Facebook’s (persistent) motivation for pursuing cross-site user tracking.

A classic example of two things getting to be true at the same time.

Facebook (Meta) doesn’t exactly pretend it is working solely to make sure users “never lose a link again” and enjoy other things that benefit them. A part of Link History’s announcement spells this out: “When you allow link history, we may use your information to improve your ads across Meta technologies.”

What the statement doesn’t clarify is if any of the well-known, ultra-invasive methods it uses to track users will actually change in any way with the introduction of Link History.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel, settlers commit 146 violations against Bedouin communities in December

MEMO | January 3, 2024

The Israeli occupation and its settlers committed 146 violations against the Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank last month, Al-Baydar Organisation for the Defense of Bedouin Rights said.

The violations include physical assaults on citizens, demolition of homes and confiscation of land, uprooting and destruction of crops, seizure of property, the establishment of new illegal settlement outposts, physical injuries, demolition notices for citizens’ homes, setting up ambushes at night to terrorise citizens and preventing shepherds from accessing pastures.

The governorate of Hebron suffered the highest number of attacks, 53 , followed by Bethlehem governorate with 26 attacks.

The General Supervisor of Al-Baydar Organisation for Defending Bedouin Rights, Hassan Malihat, said Bedouin communities suffered from a number of major attacks at the hands of Israeli occupation forces and illegal settlers in December, which reflects a clear policy of ethnic cleansing.

He added that the occupation authorities and settlers are exploiting the war on Gaza to carry out the largest collective displacement operation against Bedouin communities.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel forces violently beat Palestinian before demolishing home in Jabal Al-Mukhaber

MEMO | January 3, 2024

Israeli occupation forces today raided the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal Al-Mukhaber before beating then detaining Palestinians and demolishing the home of Iyad Shuqirat.

Video footage circulating on social media shows four heavily armed Israeli occupation soldiers violently beating an unarmed Palestinian man who is lying on the floor. They appear to be kicking him in the head and across his body and repeatedly using a baton to strike his legs.

Some 11 Palestinians were detained during the raid, they could be seen lying on the floor, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. One was in home clothes which are unsuitable for the winter weather.

Occupation forces went on to demolish the home of Iyad Shuqirat, while damaging a neighbour’s car using a bulldozer.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Who else was killed by Israel alongside Al-Arouri in Beirut?

Hamas office in Beirut, Lebanon following Israeli drone attack in which Hamas deputy leader Saleh Arouri was killed on Jan. 3, 2024. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | January 3, 2024

The deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Saleh Al-Arouri, was not alone when he was martyred on Tuesday in an Israeli missile strike on an office in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The Hamas movement mourned him as well as the others, who included two of the most prominent commanders of the movement’s armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades.

Among the seven killed by Israel was Azzam Al-Aqraa, Abu Abdullah, known as Ammar, who was the head of Al-Qassam outside Palestine. He was from the town of Qabalan in Nablus Governorate in the occupied West Bank. As one of the 400+ Palestinian men exiled to Marj Al-Zuhur by Israel in 1992, he was a former prisoner.

Another of those martyred by Israel in Beirut yesterday was Samir Fandi, known as Abu Amer, who was in charge of Al-Qassam operations in Lebanon. Fighters from Al-Qassam Brigades in Lebanon participated in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on the border between 1948-occupied Palestine and Lebanon, when several were martyred. Israel’s Channel 14 revealed last July that Israel’s Shin Bet security agency had placed Fandi on the assassination list.

Al-Aqraa’s name appeared in the Israeli media several times, most recently in October 2022, when the apartheid state accused one of the Palestinian detainees in prison of having met him in Turkey and planned to work on infiltrating the Israeli Cellcom communications network.

A source told Arabi 21 that the other martyrs who were accompanying the senior officials and were killed in the Israeli raid were Ahmed Hammoud, Mahmoud Shaheen, Muhammad Al-Rayes, and Muhammad Bashasha.

Immediately after the news of the martyrdom of Al-Arouri and his companions was announced, marches took place in all of the refugee camps in Lebanon, including the Rashidieh camp in Tyre, from which Samir Fandi hailed.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Two terrorist blasts in Iran’s Kerman leave at least 103 dead, 188 injured

Press TV – January 3, 2024

Hundreds of people have been killed and injured in two terrorist blasts near the burial site of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani in the city of Kerman during a ceremony marking his fourth martyrdom anniversary.

Iran’s emergency organization said that the explosions left 103 people dead and 188 more injured.

Medical services said the death toll is expected to rise as ambulances were taking the wounded to hospitals, with Babak Yektaparast, deputy head of Iran’s Emergency Organization, saying that some of the injured are in critical condition.

According to IRNA, the first explosion occurred some 700 meters from the grave of General Soleimani and the second one about one kilometer away.

Tasnim news agency cited unnamed sources as saying that two bags loaded with explosives which were remotely detonated caused the explosions. IRNA also quoted an informed source as saying two bombed bags detonated by remote control caused the explosions.

The first explosion occurred at 14:50 local time. The second one took place 10 minutes later, according Kerman Mayor Saeed Tabrizi, ISNA reported.

Iran’s Red Crescent Society said three rescuers were killed by the second blast.

Some people were injured during a crowd crush following the first explosion. Officials say all the injured have been transferred to hospitals and the situation is under control.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Meanwhile, the Iranian cabinet of ministers has announced a day of national mourning on Thursday.

Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the Islamic Republic of Iran’s News Network that a crushing response will soon be given to the culprits.

He said the bombing attacks were a continuation of various plots to kill innocent civilians at ceremonies across the country, many of which had been foiled by Iranian security services.

He said the situation is now under the control of security forces.

According to the minister, most of the fatalities were caused by the second blast. The blast is under investigation and further details will be announced by officials as soon as possible.

Iran’s Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei vowed the perpetrators and those responsible for the attack will be swiftly hunted down and brought to justice.

He blamed the attacks on terrorists backed by the world arrogance who harbor deep grudges against General Soleimani, saying they’ve chosen to take revenge on the people after their various plots against the country’s security were foiled.

General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and their companions were assassinated in a US drone strike authorized by then-US President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

Both commanders were highly revered across the Middle East because of their key role in fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

In less than a week after the attack, Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill that required the government to expel all US-led foreign forces from the country.

The IRGC also targeted the US-run Ain al-Asad base in Iraq’s western province of Anbar with a wave of missile attacks in retaliation for the assassination of General Soleimani.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Russia thwarts Ukrainian attack on border area

RT | January 3, 2024

Russia’s Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, has come under fresh attack after Kiev’s forces launched a barrage of a dozen missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced, adding that its air defenses had shot down all incoming projectiles.

The ministry wrote on its Telegram channel on Wednesday that “another attempt to carry out a terrorist attack by the Kiev regime on facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation, using multiple launch rocket system ‘Olkha’ missiles and ‘Tochka-U’ tactical ballistic missiles, was thwarted this morning.”

According to the statement, the shelling involved six rockets of each type.

Local residents reported seeing explosions in the skies early on Wednesday morning.

The Ukrainian military also shelled the region on Tuesday evening, using the same type of rockets, the defense ministry said, adding that all incoming missiles had been intercepted.

Earlier in the day, Kiev’s forces launched 17 ‘Olkha’ missiles toward Belgorod Region in three separate attacks. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel that one civilian had died and two were injured as a result of falling debris as the missiles were shot down.

The Russian Defense Ministry estimated that its air defenses brought down a total of 32 Ukrainian drones over Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk and Moscow regions on Monday night and Tuesday morning.

On Saturday, the city of Belgorod came under attack, with a massive Ukrainian barrage killing 25 people and wounding more than 100 others.

Kiev described the strike as retaliation for a previous Russian attack on major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev.

According to an anonymous Russian security source, Saturday’s shelling was personally ordered by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has also claimed that the UK and the US also bear responsibility for the death of Russian civilians in Belgorod.

Ukraine and Russia have since engaged in daily tit-for-tat bombardments.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday that its missile strikes had obliterated a number of military industry facilities, repair shops, and ammunition warehouses in the neighboring country. Ukrainian authorities claimed that most of the projectiles ended up hitting civilian infrastructure and apartment blocks, killing multiple civilians.

January 3, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment