RT DE accounts frozen
RT | March 3, 2023
RT’s German production company has had its bank accounts frozen amid an EU-wide crackdown on Russian media. The company was already prohibited by the bloc’s sanctions from carrying out its work in Germany, but said it will continue publishing and broadcasting news online.
“The bank accounts of RT DE Productions have been frozen,” RT’s press service said in a statement on Friday. “Despite this move and the ongoing liquidation of RT DE Productions GmbH, RT DE’s online, broadcast and social media platforms will continue to provide German-speaking readers and viewers across the world with quality content.”
RT Productions GmbH is a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow. The firm announced at the beginning of February that it would halt journalistic activities in Germany, due to the “repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”
An EU sanctions package introduced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel. These measures left RT DE Productions cut off from funding and unable to work in Germany.
RT’s French subsidiary faced a similar situation in January. With its accounts frozen by authorities in Paris, the network shut its doors but continued to broadcast on various online platforms and to publish news in French on its website. While the French government had previously been content to allow RT France to operate, a number of prominent French media outlets campaigned for its closure at the beginning of the year.
Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT DE faced a difficult legal battle to broadcast in Germany. German banks refused to work with the broadcaster, and regulators in Berlin threatened legal action when the network finally began broadcasting into Germany from Serbia in December 2021.
The regulators eventually blocked RT DE last February, a month before the European Commission ordered a bloc-wide ban on all RT channels and websites. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by withdrawing the press accreditation of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and listing the network as a foreign agent.
Twitter received ‘state-sponsored blacklists’ from US State Department
RT | March 2, 2023
The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents.
Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest ‘Twitter Files’ reveal that the company’s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in 2021 and given a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of engaging in “inauthentic behavior” in support of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The list was provided by the ‘Digital Forensics Research Lab’ at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC), as well as a host of NATO governments and weapons manufacturers.
According to the files, Roth investigated the list and found that “virtually all appear to be real people” rather than Indian bots, while Taibbi contacted several and learned that they were “ordinary Americans” with no connection whatsoever to Indian politics.
Created in the final year of the Obama administration, the GEC is a State Department entity that works with multiple US intelligence agencies to “counter foreign disinformation.” It is forbidden from operating within the United States, and recently had to cut its ties with a George Soros-backed NGO that was using its funding to target American conservative news sites.
While the list of supposed Hindu nationalists was given to Twitter via the Atlantic Council, the GEC directly passed other lists to the social media platform, including 500 accounts that were allegedly spreading Iranian “disinformation,” and 5,500 “Chinese accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation,” despite the fact that this latter list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees.
Roth described the Chinese list as “a total crock,” while fellow employee Aaron Rodericks said it provided “more entertainment value than anything.”
The GEC and its organizations tangentially connected to the State Department – such as the infamous ‘Alliance for Securing Democracy’ that published the ‘Hamilton68’ dashboard of “Russian bots” – had long pressed Twitter to crack down on allegedly Kremlin-connected accounts, but Roth told staff that it was impossible to detect “Russian fingerprints” on any of the accounts.
Instead, accounts that retweeted “news sources linked to Russia” were considered Kremlin-sponsored. One list handed to Twitter by the GEC considered membership in France’s anti-government ‘Yellow Vests’ movement as “being Russia-aligned.”
While Twitter’s executives may have been skeptical of the GEC’s ‘blacklists’, the US media was not. Emails show that multiple news outlets and agencies – including the Associated Press – would receive reports from the organization, and then press Twitter to take action and ban the listed accounts.
“Reauthorization for GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year,” Taibbi wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?”
Israel’s ‘right to exist’ challenged in expert testimonies
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | March 3, 2023
“Israel’s right to exist” has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim. Dugard is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He has served intermittently as Judge of the International Court of Justice. His other high-profile appointment was at the United Nations where he served as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2001 to 2008. Shlaim, who is an author of several books on Israel and Palestine, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and an Emeritus Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford.
Dugard and Shlaim issued their testimonies in response to the UK government’s prohibition on schools and universities from engaging with organisations that question Israel’s “right to exist”. The testimonies are part of a legal action against the former Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, by UK human rights group, CAGE. In a 2021 letter to schools and universities, Williamson applied pressure to adopt the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The letter also told schools that they were prohibited from engaging with organisations that reject Israel’s “right to exist”.
A judicial review of the government’s guideline was lodged by CAGE, it argued that no such right exists in international law that prohibits people and groups from questioning a state’s legitimacy. “For too long, the political phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist’ has been used as a weapon to silence any debate about the legitimacy of its creation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by its creation and the apartheid nature of the Israeli state,” CAGE said at the time. In July a British High Court ruled against a judicial review.
This week CAGE published the expert testimonies of Dugard and Shlaim. Both challenged the prevailing narrative pushed by the UK government on Israel’s “right to exist”. Their testimony gave a brief history of the creation of the State of Israel and explained why the claim of a “right to exist” in law and morality is debatable.
Shlaim described Williamson as someone who habitually conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He also claimed that the former education secretary had used his ministerial position to restrict freedom of speech on Israel. Commenting on the IHRA and possible financial sanctions that may be imposed if schools refused to adopt it, Shlaim said: “This is a highly controversial and, in my opinion, discredited definition which was promoted by Israel’s friends. The two-sentence definition is vacuous, but it is followed by 11 ‘illustrative examples’ of what might constitute antisemitism. Seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The real purpose of the definition is not to protect Jews against antisemitism but to protect Israel against legitimate criticism.”
Shlaim was one of 77 Israeli academics in Britain who united in response to Williamson’s infamous intervention. In January 2021, they sent a letter to vice chancellors and academic senates in England urging universities not to adopt the IHRA document, which they viewed as being “detrimental not only to academic freedom and to the struggle for human rights, but also to the fight against antisemitism.”
Challenging Israel’s right to exist, the expert testimonies argued that such a claim has no basis in international law. The idea that states have rights is rejected outright. The point is often made in the following way: Human beings have a right to exist, and to live flourishing lives. The moral and legal justification for the existence of any nation-state is based on their ability to protect and defend the rights of human beings and through serving the interest and well-being of peoples cultures and communities living within the territory they control. When a state fails in this regard for enough of those people for a long enough time, its control comes under challenge and loses its legitimacy. The shelf-life of any state is to the degree it can guarantee the human rights of people in territory controlled by that state.
Though there are many examples, a classic case often cited to highlight that point is Apartheid South Africa. Arguments were raised that Apartheid South Africa should not be recognised as a state and should be expelled from the UN. Although South Africa was not expelled from membership of the world body, the credentials of the South African government were not accepted, and it was denied the right to participate in the work of the General Assembly. In effect, this meant that many countries believed that South Africa no longer had the right to exist as a state because of its policy of apartheid. South Africa lost its legitimacy because of its refusal to guarantee and protect the rights of black South Africans in the same territory.
The arrangement in Apartheid South Africa has many similarities with Israel, which is why every major human rights group has concluded that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Within the territory controlled by the occupation state – known also as historic Palestine – seven million of Israel’s Jewish population enjoy full rights and privileges, while seven million of the territories’ non-Jewish population experience some form of discrimination depending on where they live. Twenty per cent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens for example suffer less discrimination than the five million Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Not forgetting also, the six million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return while every Jew in the world is granted their “right to return”.
Returning to the expert testimonies, Dugard and Shlaim rejected Israel’s “right to exist”, explaining that such a right cannot be exercised because there is no basis for it in international law. According to Dugard, the rights of a state that are enshrined in international law are the right to territorial integrity; political independence and not to be forcibly attacked by another state. It’s not obvious therefore why Israel should be allowed to enjoy these rights given that it has no defined borders, and furthermore not only has it forcibly attacked and occupied the State of Palestine, it continues to annex territory beyond the internationally recognised borders of the apartheid state.
Further arguments rejecting Israel’s “right to exist” are demonstrated by the fact that a state may be recognised as a state by some states but not by others. Consequently, it is a state for those countries that recognise it but not for states that do not recognise it. Palestine, for instance, is recognized as a state by 138 countries, which is more than Kosovo, recognised by 100 states.
Perhaps the most powerful objection against Israel’s demand on others to recognise its “right to exist” are claims it had made about itself during the country’s founding. Israel’s declaration of independence was based on the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate of the League of Nations and the General Assembly’s Partition Resolution. Every one of those claims have been challenged on legal grounds since 1948. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 for example did not recognise the right of the Jewish people to a state in Palestine. It simply stated that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a home for the Jewish people” but that this was to be without prejudice to the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The clear and obvious goal of the declaration was to create a “home” for the Jewish people “In Palestine,” not erase Palestine as Israel has done to supplant a new state on top of it.
Similar contentions exist with the British Mandate for Palestine and UN Partition Plan. Although the Mandate incorporated the provisions of the Balfour Declaration it made no provision for a Jewish State. As for the partition plan, Palestinians rejected Resolution 181 on account of its unfairness: it gave the Jewish community comprising 33 per cent of the population of Palestine 57 per cent of the land and 84 per cent of the agricultural land.
The message in the expert testimonies can be boiled down to the fact that not only is the British government’s suppression of a discussion on Israel’s “right to exists” preposterous, ahistorical and an attack on freedom of thought, there can be no discussion about Israel’s “right to exist” without a similar discussion about Palestine’s right to exist.
Blinken lied about exchange with Lavrov – Moscow
RT | March 3, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was lying when he claimed that he and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, discussed a jailed American citizen during a brief recent exchange, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow has said.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Blinken revealed that he and Lavrov “spoke briefly” on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in India. Among other things, the American official said he had “raised the wrongful detention of Paul Whelan,” a former US Marine currently serving a 16-year prison term in Russia for espionage.
“The United States has put forward a serious proposal. Moscow should accept it,” Blinken added.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied those claims on Friday, saying she had asked Lavrov about the exchange with Blinken. The top Russian diplomat told her that his American counterpart had not brought up Whelan’s case, with Zakharova describing Blinken’s statement as “lies” and an example of “astounding” behavior by the US government.
Whelan is a Canadian-born former US Marine, who in 2020 was sentenced to a 16-year prison term in Russia for spying. He claimed he was framed while on a trip to the country.
The administration of President Joe Biden has called on Russia to release Whelan, branding his sentence unfair. The proposal to which Blinken referred matches those previously made by Washington to Moscow, State Department spokesperson Ned Price claimed on Thursday.
US officials reportedly tried to include Whelan in a prisoner exchange last year involving American WNBA player Brittney Griner and Russian businessman Viktor Bout, although the two sides ultimately freed just one convict each. Griner was serving a term for a drug crime in Russia, while Bout was imprisoned in the US on gun trafficking charges.
Europe needs new NATO without US – Orban
RT | March 2, 2023
Europe needs its own military bloc free of American influence, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Swiss magazine Weltwoche on Thursday. The politician accused the US of dragging Europe into a conflict that cannot be won and risking a global war.
“The solution would be a European NATO,” Orban said, arguing that America’s desire for further expansion of its influence is what led to the current tensions between the West and Russia.
Moscow is concerned about NATO expanding further east into Ukraine and Georgia, Orban stated, referring to his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin just weeks before the conflict between Moscow and Kiev erupted in late February 2022.
“Putin told me his problem was with the American missile bases in Poland and Romania and possible NATO expansion in Ukraine and Georgia,” Orban told the Swiss media, noting that the Russian leader was concerned about the US potentially deploying its weapons to these nations as well.
According to the Hungarian premier, that was one of the underlying reasons behind the conflict in Ukraine. “I understand what Putin said. I do not accept what he did,” Orban explained.
He insisted that Hungary should stay out of the conflict, but added that Budapest was subjected to “constant pressure” as other Western nations “want to drag us into the war through every possible means.”
Orban believes that this is because the EU is serving the interests of the US at the expense of its own. “Decisions made by Brussels reflect American interests more often than European ones,” he said.
Orban argued that Western nations need to demonstrate a true “desire” and “will” for peace in Ukraine, adding “that will is what is lacking today, at least in the West.”
Hungary has repeatedly called for peace amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, and has criticized the Western sanctions imposed against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine. Earlier this week, Orban said that the hostilities benefitted no one in the world. Hungary was also the only NATO nation to voice support for China’s peace plan for Ukraine.
China Demands US Stop All Military Contact With Taiwan: Defense Ministry
Sputnik – 03.03.2023
BEIJING – China has demanded that the United States stop all military contacts with Taiwan and stop arms sales to the island, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said on Friday.
“China demands that the United States stop selling arms to Taiwan and military contacts with Taipei, stop interfering in the Taiwan issue and aggravate tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Tan said.
Beijing also made a representation to Washington on the approval of a possible deal to sell Taiwan ammunition for US-made F-16 fighter jets and equipment worth more than $600 million, the official added.
“China strongly opposes the arms sale to Taiwan by the United States. US actions are a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, seriously violate the ‘one China’ principle and the provisions of the three joint US-Chinese communiques, cause serious damage to China’s sovereignty and security interests, and pose a serious threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Tan said, adding that China has already made a representation to the US side on this issue.
The Chinese military is always ready to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the official concluded.
Earlier in the week, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said the US State Department has granted preliminary approval for a $619 million sale of F-16 munitions and related equipment to Taiwan.
Medvedev names ‘red line’ for direct war with NATO
RT | March 2, 2023
Canadian and German troops teaching Ukrainians how to use Leopard tanks already qualifies as participation in the conflict, but sending fighter jets to Poland would mean “direct entry,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
Medvedev, who is also deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, warned the US and its allies that they can be treated as parties to the conflict “if, in addition to supplying weapons, they train personnel to operate them,” citing legal precedents from the early 20th century.
Tank training on EU territory already applies, Medvedev noted on Telegram, but if that expands to fighter jets based somewhere in Poland, “that would be direct entry of the Atlanticists into war against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.”
“Everyone who made the decision to deliver those weapons or repair them, along with foreign mercenaries and military trainers, ought to be considered legitimate military targets.”
According to Medvedev, only fear of this has so far restrained the “infantile” West from giving airplanes and long-range weapons to Kiev, though he predicted their desire to destroy Russia would prevail before long.
While the US, NATO and the EU talk about the “freedom-loving people of Ukraine,” Thursday’s attack on Russia’s Bryansk Region shows that they are supporting “Nazi bastards, terrorist scum who attack civilians,” Medvedev said.
“These are your proteges, Mr. Sunak, Macron, Scholz and Biden!” he wrote, addressing the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and US. “And our attitude towards you is now the same as towards them. Your countries are now participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime, and you are direct accomplices of terrorists.”
Though the West considered him a “liberal” during his 2008-2012 presidency, Medvedev has been blunt and outspoken about the military operation in Ukraine since it was launched in February 2022. Just last month, he warned the US that its talk about “strategic defeat” means Russia now sees the conflict as existential.
A group of Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border into Russia on Thursday morning, attacking two villages and shooting up a car with civilians inside. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the “terrorist attack” and vowed to punish the perpetrators.
Russia reveals position on Istanbul grain deal
RT | March 2, 2023
The Black Sea “grain deal” arranged last August is not working as intended, because the grain from Ukraine is not going to the needy countries of Africa and Asia, while the West continues to block all Russian food and fertilizer exports, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.
The arrangement, negotiated by the UN and signed on July 22, 2022 in Istanbul, established a safe corridor for ships bringing corn and wheat from Odessa to countries facing food insecurity. It was also supposed to re-establish the export of grain and fertilizer from Russia, the ministry noted in a statement.
Eight months later, only the first part of the deal has been implemented, and in a way “far from the declared humanitarian goals,” the ministry said. Since August 1 last year, Ukraine has exported over 23 million tons of grain, of which 70% was animal feed. Of that, the EU accounted for 47% and “upper-middle income countries” for another 34%, Moscow said, while only 2.6% is currently going to countries needing food the most.
Meanwhile, there has been “close to zero” progress in unblocking the delivery of Russian grain or fertilizer, badly needed elsewhere. Kiev has continued to block the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline “for purely political reasons,” resulting in a shortage of 2.5 million tons of raw material that could produce seven million tons of fertilizer and feed 200 million people, the ministry said.
The US and its allies have said their sanctions do not include Russian food and fertilizer – but they have banned all Russian ships from docking in their ports or accessing insurance and brokerage service, imposing a total blockade on commercial shipping in effect, if not in name.
“It’s time to stop playing the food card. The lion’s share of grain from Ukraine goes to the European Union as fodder at dumping prices, and not to the poorest countries,” the ministry noted. “Russian agricultural exports are being blatantly hindered, no matter how much the Europeans and Americans, who are used to telling lies, try to convince everyone otherwise.”
As an example, the ministry said that 262,000 tons of Russian fertilizer has been blocked in the Dutch and Baltic state ports for months. Moscow has offered the fertilizer to African countries absolutely free of charge, yet only one shipment of 20,000 tons, destined for Malawi, has managed to depart so far.
Russia is working on its own to organize deliveries to Africa, since the UN process is plagued by such difficulties and delays, the ministry added.
Moscow is therefore forced to conclude that the grain deal “does not work,” identifying the main problem as “sabotage by Western countries” of the Russia-UN memorandum.
“It is obvious that Americans and Europeans do not care about the needs of countries in need, nor about the efforts of the UN, which they have long and persistently tried to turn into a tool for serving their political goals,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
‘Worst Public Health Mistakes in History,’ Witness Tells COVID Pandemic Oversight Committee
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 1, 2023
Convening for the first time on Tuesday, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic presented the testimony of four public health experts, as part of a roundtable: “Preparing For the Future By Learning From the Past: Examining COVID Policy Decisions.”
The agenda for the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), focused on government policy pertaining to COVID-19, including vaccine mandates and other public health guidance.
In his opening remarks, Wenstrup said the subcommittee will examine the origins of COVID-19, policies surrounding gain-of-function, research, the impacts of lockdowns and other government policies, including school closures, and “vaccine and therapeutic development and the subsequent mandates.”
“We are here to deliver an after-action review of the past three years,” said Wenstrup. “To learn from the past, not just what went wrong, but what was done right, and to prepare for the future. This is work that must be done, must be done thoroughly, and must be done with reverence with an eye toward the truth and based on facts.”
The experts who testified included Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at Stanford University; Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., chief of islet transplant surgery and professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University; and Georges C. Benjamin, M.D., M.A.C.P., executive director of the American Public Health Association.
In introducing the experts, Wenstrup said they can “help us chart a path forward; to help us understand what policies went wrong and how we, as a country, can improve.”
Wenstrup cited examples like the vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration, ignoring natural immunity, the harm caused to elders forced into nursing homes, and the consequences of stopping in-person learning and implementing remote work, particularly in the public sector.
“The American people deserve to know and understand how and why these impactful decisions were made,” said Wenstrup. “Did we create unnecessary fear in some, and dangerous ambivalence in others?”
“At the end of this process, our goal is to produce a product, hopefully bipartisan, based on knowledge and lessons learned,” he stated.
Ranking member Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) focused on American lives lost during the pandemic, stating that it “was real and not a hoax” and “laid bare vulnerabilities and inequities in our public health infrastructure and our economy.”
“We need to understand the lessons, learn all the barriers of misinformation, disinformation, the politicization of this and avoid those for the fake of our nation, in order to save more lives,” Ruiz said.
Most of the witnesses shared critical words about the overall public health response to COVID-19, which Kulldorff described as “the worst public health mistakes in history.”
Makary said “public health officials have made many tragic mistakes during the pandemic,” including:
“Ignoring natural immunity, dismissing the lab leak as a conspiracy, closing schools, masking toddlers … pushing boosters for young people, bypassing FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] expert panel customary votes that we’ve been using for decades, telling people to wash their hands like crazy.”
Bhattacharya said:
“The American people deserve answers to fundamental questions about the pandemic. On what empirical basis were schools closed? Did public health decision-makers consider the harms of their policies as thoroughly as their putative benefits? Why did authorities ignore recovered immunity or failure of the vaccine to prevent disease transmission?”
“Scientists and people vehemently disagreed about the wisdom of lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates and discrimination and so much else,” he added. “There’s near-universal agreement that what we did failed.”
Benjamin, the only expert who was generally supportive of the overall public health response, said, “We must remember the limited information we had when we made those decisions … and also the fact that our knowledge base and science continues to evolve over time.”
He added, “We created a safe and effective vaccine by every standard that we understand safety and efficacy today, in record time.”
Wenstrup praised the quick development of vaccines, describing it as “amazing,” but added, “but we knew from the trials that even people that were vaccinated got COVID” and “we also knew that vaccines produce variants and we should be expecting that.”
Citing the early public health response focusing on COVID-19 at the expense of other patients and health issues, he said one of his constituents, an elderly man, had an operation for “a painful hernia” canceled, ultimately resulting in his death.
Several experts addressed this type of inflexibility. Makary said that while “public health officials are not wrong for making recommendations based on the knowledge that they had at the time … that’s not actually what happened.”
“They were wrong because they refused to evolve their positions as the data became abundantly clear,” he said.
Nursing home policies, hospital visitation restrictions ‘a human rights violation’
Kulldorff said one of the two “major failures” of the public health response was “the failure to properly and optimally protect older Americans,” including “nursing home residents.” He described “sending sick people to nursing homes” as “criminal.”
“We also didn’t protect older working-age Americans in their 60s and 70s, while the ‘laptop class’ was often working from home, whether they were in their 20s or 30s or 40s,” he said. “The way we dealt with the pandemic was the worst assault on poor people, working Americans, the middle class [since] segregation and the Vietnam War.”
Kulldorff, who along with Bhattacharya helped draft the “Great Barrington Declaration” on “the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies,” said that when the group “proposed very concrete things for how to better protect older Americans” they were “slandered.”
Bhattacharya, in turn, said “the public health establishment … abandoned an essential commitment to science” in “sending COVID-19-infected patients back to nursing homes.”
Experts also addressed broader restrictions on hospital visitation during the pandemic. “To date, no randomized controlled trial has been conducted … against the cruel and inhumane hospital visitation policies that prevented people from seeing their dying loved ones,” said Makary, who described this failure as “a human rights violation.”
‘A house of cards that’s now falling apart’
Several of Tuesday’s witnesses focused on pandemic lockdown policies.
According to Bhattacharya, “By early 2022, about 95% of Americans had contracted COVID, despite the harsh countermeasures in most states.”
Bhattacharya described the policies as a “widespread violation of civil liberties.” He referenced a “Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis [finding] that lockdowns had failed to contain the spread of COVID.”
“At best, [lockdowns] temporarily protected the ‘laptop class’ who could work from home without losing their jobs, perhaps 30% of the population, while being served by the working class,” he added.
Kulldorff said such measures were themselves responsible for many deaths.
“Lockdown harms, school closures, people not going to medical visits … has killed many Americans and will continue to do so in the next few years,” he said, adding that “the lockdowns had enormously negative consequences on public health.”
For example, screening and treatment on cardiovascular disease and other ailments “plummeted,” Kulldorff said.
“The pandemic response is a house of cards that’s now falling apart,” he added.
Several of the experts focused on school closures, with Kulldorff stating, “I don’t think there’s anybody left who thinks that school closures were a good idea.”
Bhattacharya said school closures helped create “tremendous collateral harm” and “have set kids behind in ways that will lead them to worse outcomes as adults, including shorter, poorer lives.”
Mandates ‘ignored clear scientific data’
Bhattacharya questioned why “public health authorities ignore[d] clear scientific data that COVID infection [and] acquired immunity is as strong or stronger than vaccine-acquired immunity.”
“Vaccine mandates forced many frontline workers … to choose between their careers and a vaccine that provides less protection than the natural immunity they already had,” he said.
According to Makary, “Young healthy people were essentially spared from this pandemic,” with “an infection fatality rate no worse than influenza.” However, he said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denied knowledge of studies confirming these findings.
Benjamin said, “We were all kind of surprised the kids did kind of well,” although “there were some children that got … multisystem inflammatory syndrome.”
Defending the COVID-19 vaccines, Benjamin said:
“We have learned that if you do get native infection — meaning you aren’t immunized [and get infected], and then if you get vaccinated — you have a really, really, really robust response, and that’s great science and I’m glad we’re learning about that.”
Makary took a different view, saying, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government” when it claimed “vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity” and that “masks were effective.”
Makary referred to the recently published Cochrane meta-analysis showing that masks did not prevent the spread of COVID-19 while pointing out that myocarditis is “four to 28 times more common after the vaccine” but that the government has said “young people benefit from a booster.”
Kulldorff referred to the example of Sweden, describing it as the “one Western country who did very well during the pandemic” and that had “mostly voluntary measures” and a “very light approach,” instead of lockdowns and mandates.
“Sweden, together with other Scandinavian countries, [had] the least excess death in the world,” said Kulldorff.
Prompted by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, M.D. (R-Iowa), who said, “It wasn’t until I came to Congress that I found out infection-acquired immunity was a novel concept,” Kulldorff stated, “I guess we knew about it since 430 B.C., the Athenian Plague, until 2020, and then we didn’t know about it for three years, and now we know about it again.”
Makary said that since the time of the Athenian Plague, natural immunity had been observed, “and yet it was considered a conspiracy theory or something we couldn’t trust or believe in because we didn’t know the long-term protection. Well, we didn’t know the long-term protection of the vaccines either.”
“There has not been recognition that there is immunity after having had an infection,” said Kulldorff. There “was never a reason to mandate that vaccine for people that all had COVID. There was recently a study of mass vaccinations that shows [they] had zero or very little benefit.”
Benjamin, however, argued that in terms of natural immunity, “We generally don’t do that in medicine, particularly when we have a therapeutic option that will prevent it.”
“Many faced with these anti-scientific choices will never trust public health authorities again,” Bhattacharya said. “Public health bureaucrats operated more like dictators than scientists during the pandemic, sealing themselves off from credible outside criticism.”
As a result, said Bhattacharya, “I’ve seen a rise in vaccine hesitancy for essential vaccines like measles [and] DPT,” describing this as “quite alarming.”
Kuldorff concurred. “By forcing children to have a vaccine that they don’t need because they’ve already had the disease, that undermines the trust in other vaccines,” he said, characterizing this as “very, very serious.”
“It’ll take decades to restore some of this damaged trust” in public health authorities, added Makary.
Kulldorff said, “These failures are due to abandonment of basic principles of public health,” including an exclusive focus on one disease at the expense of all others, and “trying to suppress or eradicate COVID, which was impossible.”
Makary asked, “Why do we have the same policies for everybody?” He noted the “biases” of COVID-19 policy decision-makers, whom he described as “a small, non-diverse, like-minded group making all the decisions, and they were HIV researchers” even though “in HIV, there’s no natural immunity.”
“CDC and the FDA and people at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] made up their mind before the trials were completed,” said Makary. “They decided babies were going to get vaccines before the study was done. And then [they] found no statistically significant difference in efficacy between the two groups and they just authorized it anyway.”
“Why are we even doing trials? Why do we even have an FDA?” asked Makary.
Where do scientists whose careers were destroyed go to get their reputations back?
Ruiz said, “We are still dealing with the long-term implications of this public health crisis,” citing “the spread of misinformation or disinformation” as having “undermined the American people’s trust in our nation’s public health institutions and in each other.”
Ruiz said “misinformation” and “disinformation” may “lead to non-compliance or failure of therapeutics where people are making decisions that put themselves and their families in harm’s way.” But most of the experts took a different view.
Bhattacharya said that “under the banner of combating misinformation, government health agencies use their power to collaborate with social media companies to control the public conversation about COVID science and policy,” noting that he was put on a “trends blacklist” by Twitter as a result, leading to his participation in a lawsuit against the Biden administration based on censorship claims.
“I personally have faced censorship,” Bhattacharya said, “from government sources during the pandemic, including … slander and denigration. You need to involve outside voices respectfully in order to get the full set of people … or else bad decisions will get made, just as they were during this pandemic,” he added.
Kulldorff referred to the Great Barrington Declaration, saying that when it was presented, he and its authors were “slandered instead of taking it seriously,” while Bhattacharya said there was “a media campaign to take down our proposal, which tens of thousands of doctors, epidemiologists and scientists endorsed.”
“Where do the scientists whose careers were destroyed … go to get their reputations back?” he asked.
While Benjamin claimed, “There are many people out there who have a large bullhorn who have made it worse,” he conceded that “nobody should be censored.”
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.
COVID-19 Vaccines Remain Pregnancy Category X
Products Should Never Have Been Administered in Pregnant Women and Those of Childbearing Age
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | March 2, 2023
All drugs have a pregnancy category designation giving mothers and doctors guidance on what is known and how safe products are during pregnancy.
- Category A: The possibility of fetal harm appears remote. Extremely few drugs exist in this category (e.g., multiple vitamins).
- Category B: If there is a clinical need for a drug in this category, they are considered safe to use. Examples: acetaminophen, amoxicillin.
- Category C: These drugs should be given only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus. Examples: fluoroquinolones, gentamicin, saccharin, aspirin.
- Category D: There is positive evidence of human fetal risk, but the benefits from use in pregnant women may be acceptable despite the risk. They should only be used in pregnancy when the alternatives are worse. Examples: tetracyclines, ACE inhibitors, and most antineoplastics.
- Category X: The risk of use of the drug in pregnant women clearly outweighs any possible benefit. The drug is contraindicated in women who are or may become pregnant. Examples: thalidomide, oral contraceptives, statins, all COVID-19 vaccines.
I published an article in 2021 with Dr. Raphael Stricker, who advises one of the largest fetal loss centers in the country, warning women that the COVID-19 vaccine should be considered pregnancy category X. This designation should have been assigned by the vaccine manufacturers and agreed to by the FDA and properly placed on all vaccine program documents since pregnancy and childbearing age without contraception were exclusions from the EUA registration trials.
Shockingly, in the very first week of mass vaccination in December of 2020, news reels depicted well-intentioned pregnant mothers getting injected with synthetic lipid nanoparticles laced with long-lasting mRNA coding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology Spike protein. How could this be happening with no mutagenicity or teratogenicity studies? How could good clinical practice by doctors be abandoned?
Pregnant mothers and vaccine center workers didn’t seem to care. There were no assurances of gestational, peripartum, or long-term safety. Would the baby be affected by this brand-new technology? The regulatory agencies and medical colleges appeared to be in a tranced oblivion.
There are more than a dozen papers that extoll the virtues of mass vaccination and quickly conclude that COVID-19 vaccines are “safe” in pregnancy. Each paper has critical flaws including: 1) not randomized, 2) no comparator group, 3) limited time window and not entire term with continued follow-up, 4) incomplete capture of clinical events, 5) conflict of interest with American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) who received an undisclosed sum of money from the White House HHS COVID-19 Community Core Fund to promote vaccination.
In drug safety research, even if it is only one abstract, manuscript, or monograph that raises a serious safety concern, it should be pursued over those which failed to find the signal. Thorp and colleagues used CDC VAERS and compared COVID-19 vaccines to influenza vaccines and found in US cases, a 27-fold higher risk of miscarriage and more than a twofold increased risk across six categories of adverse fetal outcomes. Because the mRNA is now known to circulate for 28 days or more and the Spike protein causes clotting, bleeding, and is known to damage tissues, my conservative conclusion is that COVID-19 vaccination remains pregnancy category X—contraindicated.
McCullough PA. Lack of Compelling Safety data for mRNA COVID Vaccines in Pregnant Women
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