Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Trump Makes a Statement on COVID Vaccines, Brags About Nine Month Approval Time

Are you Tired of Winning Yet?

BY IGOR CHUDOV | MARCH 8, 2024

Trump released the following statement on Truth Social, responding to Joe Biden’s State of the Union:

In the TruthSocial post above, Trump mentioned his nine-month approval time for Covid vaccines.

I am frankly shocked by the stupidity of both statements.

The vaccines did not “save us from the pandemic” – they made the pandemic worse. And being proud that such vaccines were pushed through in just nine months is perhaps a bit misguided.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 4 Comments

Leaked files from transgender ‘experts’ show callous disregard for medical ethics 

By Michael Cook | BioEdge | March 7, 2024

Newly leaked files from within the leading global transgender healthcare body have revealed that the clinicians who shape how “gender medicine” is regulated and practiced around the world consistently violate medical ethics and informed consent.

The leaked files from the internal messaging forum of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) were published this week by the US-based think tank Environmental Progress.

WPATH is considered the leading global scientific and medical authority on “gender medicine,” and in recent decades, its “standards of care” have guided the policies and practices of governments, medical associations, public health systems and private clinics across the world.

However, Environmental Progress claims that leaked files reveal that WPATH does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along. Members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming care,” and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents.

“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” said Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress. “The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”

Some of the discussion appears very disturbing. Members appear to ignore long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments. Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions.

Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterize efforts to protect them as unnecessary “gatekeeping.”

The leaked files provide clear evidence that doctors and therapists are aware they are offering minors life-changing treatments they cannot fully understand. WPATH members know that puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries will cause infertility and other complications, including cancer and pelvic floor dysfunction. Yet they consider life-altering medical interventions for young patients, including vaginoplasty for a 14-year-old and hormones for a developmentally delayed 13-year-old.

The WPATH Files also show how far medical experiments in gender medicine have gone, with discussions about surgeons performing “nullification” and other extreme body modification procedures to create body types that do not exist in nature.

A growing number of medical and psychiatric professionals say the promotion of pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments is a global medical scandal that compares to major incidents of medical malpractice in history, such as lobotomies and ovariotomies.

A section in the report on medical ethics is particularly damning about the notion of autonomy. “In the past, the emphasis on autonomy in medical ethics was meant to act as a shield: there were things a doctor could not do to you without your consent,” says the report. “Nowadays, and especially in gender medicine, autonomy acts as a sword: in its name, there is nothing a doctor may deny you.”

The ”Trans Leaks” have not been reported yet by any major newspapers apart from The Telegraph (London) and Canada’s National Post. Dr Marci Bowers, the president of WPATH, issued a statement in which she contended that trans medicine is scientific and that sceptics aren’t:

“WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world. We are the professionals who best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals-and stand opposed to individuals who misrepresent and de-legitimize the diverse identities and complex needs of this population through scare tactics.”

The raw files have been published in a report called The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults. Journalist Mia Hughes puts the WPATH Files in the context of the best available science on gender distress.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

New Alarmist Definition Of A Region’s ‘Rapid Climate Change’ Is A Slight Cooling Trend Since 1960

By Kenneth Richard | No Tricks Zone | March 7, 2024

A  -0.005°C temperature change over a span of 60 years in northern Pakistan (Himalaya region) is ostensibly having “adverse impacts in multiple sectors.”

The first sentence of a new paper’s (Khan et al., 2024) abstract claims:

“Hindu Kush Himalaya region is experiencing rapid climate change with adverse impacts in multiple sectors.”

But in the body of the paper itself the “rapid climate change” is specified as a -0.0047°C mean annual temperature cooling trend from 1960 to 2018.

The title of the paper indicates there have been “increasing extremes” in precipitation in recent decades, but, again, the long-term (635 years) precipitation reconstruction reveals there have been a lack of any obvious wet or dry trends over many centuries.

Even if there were increasing extremes in recent decades, this could not be linked to “climate change” or “global warming” because, as noted, the climate has been slightly cooling in this region. So the “adverse effects” also cannot be linked to anthropogenic global warming either.

The authors also acknowledge that climate change, or wet vs. dry variability, is “largely governed” by natural “dominant forces” like ENSO, PDO, and the AMO.

“Climate and their anomaly of the HKKH and adjacent regions is largely governed by prevailing local to regional general circulation systems in addition to the influence of climatic modes and phases like AMO, ENSO, PDO, and SOI of remote location.”

“The AMO, ENSO, PDO, and SOI are the major climatic modes/phases that influence the seasonal or annual climate variability or anomaly in the HKKH and adjacent regions. The short periodicities of 2.2–8.3 years observed in our reconstruction fall in the band of ENSO cycles. These quasi-cyclic periodicities related to ENSO are some of the dominant forces to local dryness/wetness variation in the South Asian summer monsoon-dominated Himalaya and adjacent regions. In four centuries long spring season streamflow reconstruction in Nepal using composite tree-ring residual chronologies they found predominantly high frequency signal related to ENSO.”

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

China discovers oil field of proven reserve of 102 million tons in South China Sea: CNOOC

Global Times | March 8, 2024

China has discovered its first deep-water, deep-reservoir oil find in the South China Sea, state-owned oil giant CNOOC announced on Friday.

The Kaipingnan oilfield, 300 kilometers southwest of the waters of Shenzhen in South China, has a proven reserve of 102 million tons of oil equivalent, according to the company.

It is the first oil reserve with a water depth of over 300 meters and a well depth of over 3,000 meters found by China’s own efforts, as well as the largest, said CNOOC. The maximum depth where the oilfield lies is 532 meters and the maximum well depth reached 4,831 meters.

Testing drilling yields over 1,000 tons of oil and gas on a daily basis, which is a new record in China for a deep-water, deep-reservoir oilfield, the company said.

The Kaipingnan oilfield demonstrated the vast potential of deep-water exploration in the South China Sea, and further consolidated the foundation of China’s offshore oil and gas reserve, which is significant toward ensuring the country’s energy security, the company said in a press release on Friday.

In recent years, CNOOC made significant discoveries at the Bozhong 26-6 deep-reservoir oilfield in China’s Bohai Sea and the Baodao 21-1 gas field in western South China Sea.

Zhou Xinhuai, CEO of CNOOC, said the company’s continuous discoveries in the eastern part of the South China Sea forged new growth drivers for the company’s offshore oil and gas business, noting the company will continue to pour more efforts in oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea to ramp up energy supply capacity.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Public is Not Being Told the True Cost of Net Zero, Warns Former World Bank Economist

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 6, 2024

Bankrupt, blackout Britain where the ever-expanding ranks of the poor get clobbered, open borders place intolerable burdens on public spending and services, the rich spivs get richer backing heavily-subsidised energy white elephants – and those of a certain age look back to the good old days of the 1970s. That isn’t quite how Professor Gordon Hughes spells it out in his excellent new report that crunches the energy transition numbers of the collectivist Net Zero project, but it might be considered a fair summation of reading between the lines.

The insanity of Net Zero becomes clearer by the day. The idea that hydrocarbons – a natural resource whose use from medicines to reliable energy is ubiquitous in modern industrial society – can be removed within less than 30 years is ridiculous. In his report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Hughes concerns himself with the transition from hydrocarbons to ‘green’ technologies such as wind and solar. Forget all the politically-inspired low-ball figures of transition, he is suggesting. Looking at you, Climate Change Committee. It is likely that the amount of new investment needed for the transition will be a minimum of 5% of gross domestic product for the next 20 years, and might exceed 7.5%. Gordon Hughes is a former World Bank economist, and is Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.

There is no chance of borrowing such an “astronomical” amount, notes Hughes, and the only viable way to raise the cash for new capital expenditure would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10%. “Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war, and even then never for more than a decade,” he notes.

Recent polling in the U.S. has shown that the desire of a majority of citizens to pay for Net Zero barely stretches to more than the ‘chump’ change in their back pockets. “Commitment to the energy transition is a classic ‘luxury belief’ held most strongly by those who are sufficiently well-off not to worry about the costs… Indeed at least some of those who promote the transition most strongly are among those who expect to gain from the business opportunities.” On this latter point, Hughes was possibly recalling the recent activities of rising media star Dale Vince (£110 million in wind subsidies to date, and counting).

Politicians sometimes blather about the pioneering role taken by European countries in Net Zero. Hughes points out that leaders in China and India are not fools. “Posturing about targets that are patently not achievable and might be economically ruinous is unlikely to convince anyone, although most will be too polite to point this out,” he observed.

Writing a foreword, Lord Frost identified a make-believe world inhabited by Net Zero proponents where it is claimed costs will magically come down, new technologies will somehow be invented and promised green growth will pay for everything. “But they never give any evidence for believing this – and, where we can check what they say, for example in the real costs of wind power, we can see that these cost reductions are simply not happening,” he said.

On the immigration front, Hughes notes a 1% increase in the British population every year. He notes that 4% of GDP must be invested every year in new (not replacement) capital per head. Of course nothing like this is being spent and capital per head is falling rapidly. “Just maintaining the amounts of capital per head will eat up an amount of investment equivalent to that required for the energy transition,” he states.

Squeezing domestic consumption, in other words making the already squeezed poor even poorer by removing all their remaining luxuries in life (older cars, cheap foreign holidays, meat), is the only realistic way to fund the enormous sums required for the Net Zero energy transition. Possibly a glimmer of reality is creeping into political circles with the opposition Labour party having gone through “agonies” and ditched its £28 billion a year green deal. “Clearly, they concluded that it was impossible to sell an increase in the tax burden of that magnitude to a reluctant electorate,” he said. In fact, the sums involved in the Labour plan were only a fifth of the estimated cost of transition.

Any future Government wishing to travel the path of Net Zero must make the choices of reducing public services and mandating savage cuts in household expenditure. Needless to say, the general population is in almost total ignorance about these realities. Hughes notes that the electorate has given no indication that they are willing to bear the costs involved. “Indeed until now all they have been told is that there are few or no trade-offs required, and technology will somehow magically solve everything.”

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Israeli rabbi calls for genocide of all Palestinians in Gaza

Al Mayadeen | March 8, 2024

The mass killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “is permissible according to the halakhic principles,” the head of a Jewish religious school in occupied Yafa, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, stated according to Israeli news website Ynet.

A recording of the extremist’s answers to questions on the Gaza Strip was published a few hours ago on YouTube and is available for the public.

Halakha or Jewish Law, which also translates to “the way to behave or act,” is held as divine law among Orthodox Jews such as Mali, who called for the extermination of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

When asked about what should be done to infants and the elderly, Mali simply answered, “The same.”

Mali founded the religious school Shirat Moshe and has called upon his students to strictly follow the orders of the Israeli occupation forces, saying that if IOF soldiers do not kill Palestinians, then Palestinians will kill them. It is worth noting that Shirat Moshe students serve in the IOF, despite other schools of Orthodox Judaism refusing military service.

The extremist stressed that the main principle of the war on Gaza is that “no soul remains alive,” urging Israelis to carry on the genocide against Palestinians.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Western soldiers and spies flip off Lebanon’s sovereignty

By Radwan Mortada | The Cradle | March 7, 2024

Among West Asian countries, few face the brunt of foreign intelligence meddling as Lebanon does. Its sovereignty is routinely disregarded by intelligence services from abroad, who operate within its borders with brazen impunity. In some cases, foreign militaries have even sought unrestricted access to the country.

These clandestine activities not only violate Lebanese law but also undermine its national security. The recent incursion of Dutch special forces into Beirut’s southern suburb, a stronghold of Hezbollah, is the latest such incident.

Under the guise of evacuating Dutch nationals, these foreign militants were armed with military-grade weapons, ammunition, and equipment without coordination with Lebanese authorities, demonstrating a level of freedom not permitted even in their own country.

Spying for Israel 

Last week, the Beirut Military Court convicted Russian national Yuri Rinatovich Chaykin of espionage, sentencing him to eight years behind bars for spying on behalf of Israel. Chaykin’s expertise in lock picking led him to make an attempted breach into a secret facility belonging to Hezbollah, only to be thwarted by surveillance cameras.

His arrest at Beirut Airport while trying to leave the country unveiled a web of espionage activities, including the collection of sensitive intelligence and reconnaissance missions conducted on behalf of Israel.

During his interrogation, Chaykin admitted that he worked for Israeli intelligence and that he repeatedly visited Lebanon with his wife and child, whom he used as a cover for his activities. He also admitted to collecting information and data in the southern suburbs and south Lebanon at the request of his Israeli handlers, who provided him with maps of Hezbollah facilities and asked him to photograph them.

Chaykin’s conviction marks a notable precedent, as Lebanon has long been considered a playground for foreign intelligence services seeking to gather crucial information about Hezbollah. Often entering the country as tourists, journalists, or diplomats, these operatives typically enjoy diplomatic immunity and are shielded from accountability by their respective governments, evading significant consequences for their actions.

‘Tourists’ and diplomats as tools 

Among these is an Italian ‘tourist’ recruited by Israeli intelligence. His first task was to photograph an obituary paper hanging on the wall of a church in the predominantly Christian Jounieh area, east of Beirut.

At first glance, this may seem like a trivial mission, but his Israeli operators were likely seeking to ensure that their agent was actually in Lebanon. His second assignment was to monitor a warehouse on the airport road in the southern suburb near a football field belonging to the Al-Ahed Sports Club affiliated with Hezbollah. It was the same site Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely claimed at the UN General Assembly in September 2018 that Hezbollah had established a factory for manufacturing precision missiles.

The Italian ‘tourist’ surveilled the location by taxi and was able to photograph it using a miniature camera attached to a fishing rod so as not to arouse the driver’s suspicions when he stuck it out of the car window. He asked the driver to pass by the site several times so that he could take as many pictures as possible from different directions.

The Italian operative’s next mission was to make contact with an arms dealer in the town of Brital, situated in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon, to procure a grenade launcher. This mission included orchestrating a plan to bomb the warehouse before hastily fleeing to Beirut airport for departure.

But the ‘tourist’s’ inquiries about his arms dealer contact aroused suspicions in the taxi driver, who decided to alert Hezbollah-affiliated security personnel. The Italian spy was swiftly apprehended, but the Lebanese military judiciary, under pressure from the Italian embassy, handed a lenient sentence to the spy.

In a separate incident last month, Hezbollah’s security service intercepted a Spanish diplomat in the Al-Kafaat area of the southern Beirut suburbs, who was caught photographing a street on his mobile phone.

Upon being transferred to the Lebanese General Security Service, the Spaniard claimed he was lost and had been trying to send the pictures to his embassy colleagues to arrange a pickup. Despite possessing a diplomatic passport, he refused to grant investigators access to his phone. The embassy’s intervention secured his release from Lebanese authorities without scrutiny of the phone’s contents.

‘Evacuation plans’

Last week, the Lebanese “Al-Mahatta” YouTube channel revealed that Hezbollah security forces arrested six armed Dutchmen in the Bir al-Abd area of Beirut’s southern suburb. It was discovered that the Dutchmen were special forces and were allegedly in the midst of a security operation simulating the evacuation of Dutch citizens and diplomats – in a Hezbollah-controlled area.

Hezbollah interrogated the six foreign militants for 24 hours before transferring custody the next day to Lebanese Army Intelligence officers. During their questioning, the men admitted to being Dutch ‘soldiers’ operating under orders from their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and were training to evacuate two employees of the Dutch embassy who lived in the southern suburb.

Despite receiving this information about unlawful activities conducted on Lebanese territory by armed foreigners, a Lebanese military judge released the Dutchmen that same day. Had it not been for the insistence of Army Intelligence officers on obtaining their statements, the militants likely would have spent a mere ten hours under interrogation.

Notably, the Dutch embassy in Beirut and its foreign ministry did not issue a formal apology, and Lebanese authorities did not release any official statement denouncing the violation. Such complacency only serves to embolden illegal foreign military missions that flout Lebanese law – and sovereignty – with impunity.

Evacuation planning has been a concern for foreign embassies in Lebanon since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October set off widespread military confrontations within West Asia, with a notable escalation along Lebanon’s border with Israel, where hundreds have been killed in heavy clashes.

Foreign embassies have mobilized equipment, weapons, and special forces ostensibly to facilitate the evacuation of their nationals and diplomats in the event of escalated conflict. This was purportedly the case with the Dutch soldiers, as noted by the Dutch daily De Telegraaf.

The US, British, Dutch, and Canadian embassies, among others, have been at the forefront of these special forces arrangements, but doubts persist about the actual objectives of their military missions, particularly given the unwavering support of these nations to Israel’s expanding war against Lebanon and its ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Moreover, as in past evacuations – and as these very same embassies frequently notify their citizens in Lebanon – nationals are expected to make their own way to exit ports and airports in the event of an evacuation.

Vulnerabilities in Lebanon’s security apparatus

On 5 January, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar cited Lebanese military sources saying that British intelligence services are using dozens of watchtowers on the Lebanese–Syrian border – which the UK helped establish during the Syrian war – to collect information about cross-border weapons transfers to the Lebanese resistance.

The sources said the British were providing Lebanese soldiers in the watchtowers with photographs of Syrian, Iranian, and Russian weapons suspected of being transported into Lebanon so that they could identify and seize them.

Earlier this year, Al-Akhbar also reported that Lebanese Army Intelligence refused to grant a former British officer, now part of a CNN team, an entry permit to southern Lebanon on suspicion of collecting information about the military activities of Hezbollah and the Hamas movement.

The newspaper alleges that Officer “Wayne G” had previously been part of the British military team charged with training the four land border regiments of the Lebanese Army before moving to Ukraine as part of a CNN-affiliated unit where he worked closely alongside Ukrainian forces.

After the events of 7 October, “Wayne G” joined the CNN team in Beirut. Al Akhbar further noted that the former British officer had also tried to obtain a permit to enter southern Lebanon through the BBC team in Beirut.

The absence of robust, official Lebanese measures and judicial rulings that would significantly deter espionage and military activity of individuals recruited by Israel, whether local or foreign, except in rare instances, leaves Lebanon vulnerable to multi-source intelligence breaches targeting the nation’s resistance.

These ramifications extend beyond Hezbollah: British and other foreign intelligence agencies have spent years infiltrating Lebanon’s various intelligence, security, and telecommunications apparatus, posing a threat to the country’s national security and endangering the lives of its citizens.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing

By Jonathan Cook | March 8, 2024

A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:

1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.

Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.

2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.

The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather than the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.

With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business as usual in Gaza afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.

3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.

4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.

5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.

And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.

No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.

He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment