NYT: Covid Vaccine Makers and Bill Gates’ GAVI Screwed Everyone
US Government and Other Governments are Holding The Bag
By Igor Chudov | February 1, 2023
This New York Times story from today is very illustrative of the current times.
Vaccine Makers Kept $1.4 Billion in Prepayments for Canceled Covid Shots for the World’s Poor
Separately, Johnson & Johnson is demanding additional payment for unwanted shots, confidential documents show.
It turns out that makers of Covid vaccines expertly screwed their customers, keeping a large part of the prepayment money advanced to them without shipping vaccine doses that no longer find any demand.
As global demand for Covid-19 vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world’s poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs.
Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times.
The worst example is J&J, manufacturer of the Janssen vaccine, which was pulled from use worldwide due to blood clots. Despite that, J&J demands that more money be given to it “because of existing contracts.”
If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more.
Gavi and Johnson & Johnson are locked in a bitter dispute over payment for shots that Gavi told the company months ago it would not need, but which the company produced anyway. Johnson & Johnson is now demanding that Gavi pay an additional, undisclosed amount for them.
New York Times is lamenting this situation and highlights appeals to the conscience of vaccine makers:
Covid vaccine manufacturers “have a special responsibility” because their products are a societal good and most were developed with public funding, said Thomas Frieden, the chief executive of the global health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives and a former director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Who is Thomas Frieden? He is a former director of the CDC and also a convicted sex offender, in my opinion.
Vaccine makers resist Frieden’s appeals to their conscience because they do not have any.
Bill Gates’ GAVI is not asking Pfizer for refunds: Pfizer was paid directly by the US government. Did Bill Gates pull strings to have the US government hold the financial bag in the case of Pfizer?
If so, Bill certainly had personal financial reasons for this!
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested 55 million into Pfizer’s vaccine maker BioNTech in Sep 2019.
This investment was made when BioNTech was an obscure company with no vaccines in the pipeline. That “unexpectedly” changed mere months later when BioNTech was selected to become the largest producer of Covid vaccines. Such lucky timing for Bill!
So, Bill Gates, having a financial interest in BioNTech, did not want his own GAVI to pay for BioNTech vaccines that eventually found no buyer; instead, the US government paid Pfizer directly. Pfizer will keep the funds, giving the US government an “option” to buy vaccines that nobody wants anymore.
Under the revised deal, a total of 600 million Pfizer doses will be made available to the US by the end of the year, giving the administration more time to find countries who want them. Pfizer had originally agreed to sell a billion shots at cost by this month.
Bill Gates-funded GAVI seems to have screwed its donors innovatively: the donors gave money towards Covid vaccinations, which fizzled. Hence, GAVI received back 1.6 billion out of 2.3 donated billions it gave Covid vaccine makers. Gavi, however, will not refund 1.6 billion to the donors and will use the money it recovered for other purposes, inflating its budget:
Had some vaccine manufacturers not been willing to renegotiate their contracts with Gavi, the costs to the organization could have been much higher. Gavi would have been on the hook for $2.3 billion for the doses it wanted to cancel, the documents show, but it saved $1.6 billion by exiting those contracts.
…
Donations for Covid shots substantially inflated Gavi’s budget, and the lost prepayments for canceled Covid vaccines do not threaten its regular childhood-vaccination work.
Such is the current state of the pandemic. The money is gone; vaccines do not work; people are dying suddenly; the government and Big Pharma do not want the public to pay attention.
If you, my reader, are in the United States, remember that the US government’s money is your money. Say bye-bye to it.
Will there be any real investigations?
Federal government is accused of using antiterrorism tech to target vaccine dissent
Using it against its own citizens
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2023
The US federal government is adopting military-grade AI that was used to crack down on ISIS to censor dissent by US citizens on issues like election fraud and vaccine hesitancy, according to the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz.
Private firms and universities have received millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency, to develop tools similar to those developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program in 2011.
SMISC’s tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” in the Middle East. In a report, Mike Benz detailed how the NSF and other organizations are using this technology to censor the speech of Americans.
“One of the most disturbing aspects of the Convergence Accelerator Track F domestic censorship projects is how similar they are to military-grade social media network censorship and monitoring tools developed by the Pentagon for the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism contexts abroad,” reads the report.
Speaking to Just the News, he said: “DARPA’s been funding an AI network using the science of social media mapping dating back to at least 2011-2012, during the Arab Spring abroad and during the Occupy Wall Street movement here at home. They then bolstered it during the time of ISIS to identify homegrown ISIS threats in 2014-2015.”
According to Benz, the NSF has adopted DARPA’s technology to target two groups of Americans: those skeptical of recent election results and those who claim COVID-19 vaccines could be harmful.
“The terrifying thing is, as all of this played out, it was redirected inward during 2016 — domestic populism was treated as a foreign national security threat,” Benz said.
“What you’ve seen is a grafting on of these concepts of mis- and disinformation that were escalated to such high-intensity levels in the news over the past several years being converted into a tangible, formal government program to fund and accelerate the science of censorship,” he said.
“You had this project at the National Science Foundation called the Convergence Accelerator,” Benz recounted, “which was created by the Trump administration to tackle grand challenges like quantum technology. When the Biden administration came to power, they basically took this infrastructure for multidisciplinary science work to converge on a common science problem and took the problem of what people say on social media as being on the level of, say, quantum technology.
“And so they created a new track called the track F program … and it’s for ‘trust and authenticity,’ but what that means is, and what it’s a code word for is, if trust in the government or trust in the media cannot be earned, it must be installed. And so they are funding artificial intelligence, censorship capacities, to censor people who distrust government or media.”
Benz noted how mainstream media and fact-checkers have become arbiters of truth, determining what is acceptable and unacceptable to post online, and how the pandemic has normalized “censorship in the name of public health.”
“What’s happened now is the government says, ‘Okay, we’ve established this normative foothold in it being okay to [censor political speech], now we’re going to supercharge you guys with all sorts of DARPA military grade censorship, weaponry, so that you can now take what you’ve achieved in the censorship space and scale it to the level of a U.S. counterinsurgency operation,’” Benz explained.
George Soros is either prophetic or pulls a lot of strings
By Tony Cox | RT | February 2, 2023
George Soros is either stunningly prescient or frighteningly influential when it comes to determining who will need to do all the bleeding and dying that he deems necessary to bring about a desirable “new world order.”
Consider the Hungarian-born billionaire’s essay on the future of NATO: “The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder.”
Soros deserves credit for neatly describing the US and NATO strategy for bringing about and exploiting the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Ukrainians are providing the manpower – in other words, the cannon fodder – and the Western puppeteers can endeavor to weaken Russia and enforce their vision of a favorable world order. They also can do this without having to make the case to their citizens that this is a fight for which it is worth tolerating body bags coming home from the front.
Additionally, by sharing the burden of providing military and economic aid to Kiev, the Western powers achieve the dual benefits of prolonging their proxy war and creating the impression that the whole world is steadfastly standing with the blue and yellow. That helps underpin the narrative frame that there is no moral basis for criticizing Ukraine policy and anyone who does so is probably a Kremlin agent.
The thing is, Soros didn’t write his take on the situation this week, this month or even in the past year. He didn’t even write it back in 2014, when he was allegedly backing the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government and might have reasonably anticipated a coming conflict with Russia. No, Soros wrote this assessment in 1993, nearly 30 years ago.
Back then, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Soros wanted to prevent former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact nations from becoming nationalist countries that would be governed according to their own interests and oppose the global order that he was promoting.
Western leaders had made assurances that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward, but Soros saw the military bloc as “the basis of a new world order.” He conceded that the group would need “some profound new thinking,” given that its original mission was “obsolete,” and he insisted that the alliance must be free to invite any country to join.
In fact, he saw a great opportunity for NATO to take advantage of the security void created by the Soviet collapse if it could act quickly. “If NATO has any mission at all, it is to project its power and influence into the region, and the mission is best defined in terms of open and closed societies.”
“The countries of Central Europe are clamoring for full membership of NATO as soon as possible, preferably before Russia recovers. Russia objects, not because it harbors any designs on its former empire but because it sees no advantage in consenting. Its national pride has been hurt and it is sick and tired of making concessions without corresponding benefits.”
Soros saw NATO as both a viable platform to develop into the anti-Russia enforcer for his new world order and the bright and shiny object to lure Europe’s former Eastern Bloc states into the fold. “NATO has a unified command structure which brings together the United States and Western Europe,” he said.
“There are great advantages in having such a strong Western pillar: It leads to a lopsided structure firmly rooted in the West. This is as it should be, since the goal is to reinforce and gratify the desire of the region for joining the open society of the West.”
The goal became reality. For example, Soros noted that there was nothing to prevent countries such as Poland, Czechia and Hungary from joining NATO. The three nations became the first wave of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion, joining the bloc in 1999. In fact, the bloc has since nearly doubled in size, adding 14 members by 2020 and teeing up Ukraine and Georgia as future prospects.
NATO moved right along the Russian frontier, placing strategic weapons and security guarantees on Moscow’s doorstep and helping to trigger the current crisis. As Soros acknowledged in 1993, Russia had no desire to restore the empire of Peter the Great – contrary to a popular CNN talking point. However, as the Kremlin warned repeatedly in the years leading up to the current conflict, Moscow couldn’t stand idly by while its national security interests were trampled.
It’s easy to see why Soros was and is so worried about nationalism: His vision could never sell with a government that served the interests of its own people.
NATO’s expansion binge didn’t make anyone safer. We know the little brothers, like the people of Ukraine, aren’t better off. They have the privilege of bleeding and dying as they provide the “manpower” for NATO’s proxy fight with Russia. As for the big brothers, they undermine their own security. Americans and Western Europeans are suffering the economic effects of the US-NATO sanctions war against Russia, and their governments are pushing them ever closer to a planet-ending nuclear Armageddon.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced last week that its Doomsday Clock had advanced to within 90 seconds of midnight, the latest ever, indicating that humanity stands at “a time of unprecedented danger.” The group cited the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has “challenged the nuclear order – the system of agreements and understandings that have been constructed over six decades to limit the dangers of nuclear weapons.”
Not to worry if you’re George Soros, 92 years old, and watching your geopolitical dreams come true. He and others like him can keep marching onward to perfect their world order as they see fit.
If we wonder whether NATO works on behalf of that order, we need look only at what has transpired and the framing of the current conflict. When Russian forces began their offensive against Ukraine last February, Western leaders and pundits condemned President Vladimir Putin for undermining the “rules-based international order.”
So NATO has emerged as the enforcer of the rules-based international order – the new world order, if you will – just as Soros called for three decades ago. The results of that “profound new thinking” are much the same as the political activist envisioned in 1993. He also called for expanding NATO to Asia, which hasn’t yet happened, but the bloc’s 2022 summit was enlarged to include representatives from Asia-Pacific “sentinel states” – Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Was Soros so much of a visionary that the hedge-fund investor could foresee how geopolitics would play out several decades ahead of time, or does his accuracy reflect the fact that he and his allies tend to get their way? Rather than prescience, is this situation more like the cook being a good predictor of what we’re going to have for dinner?
Soros himself offered a hint on that theory in his essay: “We have to act without full knowledge of the facts because the facts are created by our decisions.”
Anyone who suggests that Soros calls a lot of the policy shots is immediately condemned by the Western media as anti-Semitic because, after all, he has Jewish heritage. Never mind that he’s an avowed atheist who has been accused of undermining Israel’s democratically elected government and funding groups that defame the Jewish state.
So when Moldovan President Maia Sandu returns from a recent trip to Davos and promptly starts hinting about joining NATO – in violation of her country’s constitutional commitment to neutrality – we shouldn’t point out that she met with Alexander Soros, son of George Soros, during the summit. Revealing or trying to connect such dots would be anti-Semitic, according to the Western media.
It couldn’t be that George Soros wields an inordinate amount of influence over world affairs. It couldn’t be that some of his critics have legitimate and unbigoted disagreements with his ideas. It couldn’t be that his immunity to criticism is further evidence of his power.
And shut your eyes when a US watchdog group reveals that Soros has financial ties to at least 253 media organizations worldwide and funding links to 54 prominent media figures, including such names as Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Lester Holt of NBC News and Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee.
So Soros gets to wield his influence with impunity, apparently achieving what he wants in many cases. He gets to serve the interests of billionaires, defense contractors, power-mongering politicians and social engineers. But what about the rest of us, the other 8 billion people in the world? What about those who just want to be able to support our families, pursue happiness and live in peace – without worrying that iodine pills are sold out and there might not be time to build a nuclear fallout shelter?
Soros himself might prescribe us more bread and circuses, to keep the masses distracted – as well as tribalism, to keep the people divided – at least until we’re needed to serve as “manpower” for the cause.
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
Iran points finger after drone strike
RT | February 2, 2023
The Iranian government suspects that Israel was responsible for last Saturday night’s attack on a military facility in the central city of Isfahan, news outlet ISNA reported on Thursday, citing a senior diplomat.
Amir Saeid Iravani, Tehran’s envoy to the UN, made the accusation in correspondence with senior officials at the organization, according to ISNA. In his letter, he reportedly stated that a preliminary investigation had pointed to Israel’s responsibility for the drone attack.
He condemned the incident and referred to statements by senior Israeli officials, including an interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on CNN earlier this week, in which he declined to confirm or deny Israel’s involvement in the Isfahan attack.
“Every time some explosion takes place in the Middle East, Israel is blamed or given responsibility – sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not,” the prime minister told the US news network.
In his letter, Iravani emphasized that Iran had a right to “decisively respond” to the threat posed by Israel with whatever means it deems necessary.
The Iranian diplomat also condemned a Ukrainian official for their remarks about the attack. Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, framed the incident as retaliation for what Kiev claims to be assistance provided by Iran to Russia in the conflict with Ukraine.
“War logic is inexorable and murderous. It bills the authors and accomplices strictly,” Podoliak said, adding that Ukraine “did warn you.”
Iravani reiterated that Iran was not involved in the Ukraine crisis and said any statements condoning attacks on Iranian infrastructure were “irresponsible.”
According to ISNA, Iranian specialists analyzed the debris of drones used in the attack and identified the producer. They reportedly found clues after comparing the aircrafts’ body, engines, power supply and navigation system to samples at their disposal.
The Iranian military will use the new information to improve security at its installations, the outlet said, citing a source close to the national security council.
The attack reportedly involved three small drones carrying explosives, which were launched from a nearby location. Iran said they were intercepted and caused only minor damage to the roof of the building that was targeted.
Large-scale Russian combat actions in Ukraine expected in February
By Lucas Leiroz | February 2, 2023
A new wave of activity is expected for the Russian special military operation during February. The recent changes in the command of the operation appear to have been carefully planned in order to elevate the combat to a new level and several of Moscow’s strategic objectives may soon be achieved, radically changing the course of the conflict.
According to information provided by Russian military, a major offensive is being prepared for the period between February and early March. The informants say that the objectives will be:
1. Reaching the borders of the regions recently reintegrated into the Russian Federation, pacifying the new oblasts;
2. capturing Nikolaev, Odessa, as well as the entire Black Sea coast, reaching Transnistria;
3. seizing Kiev, forcing a political capitulation of the neo-Nazi regime until early March.
The territory of Belarus will become the main springboard for the upcoming strike. Mobilized Russian servicemen are being trained in training camps in Belarus, where heavy military equipment and combat aircraft are concentrated. A large bombardment force is in readiness for action. Also, Russian forces in Belarus have been collecting strategic information on the location of Ukrainian units, mainly about Kiev’s air defense, gathering intelligence data that will be used to plan the attacks.
In parallel to Belarus, Zaporozhye and Lugansk are also key zones for the Russian strategy. It is expected that massive attacks will come from these regions during the offensive, destroying enemy units in a short period of time which will allow a rapid Russian advance on the battlefield, reaching the zones listed in the above-mentioned objectives.
Sources also report that for the offensive to be successful Russian forces will focus on blocking all enemy’s supply lines. The main route of arrival of supplies to Ukraine is the border with Poland, where there is the transit of NATO’s ammunition and military equipment.
In fact, the battlefield conditions seem favorable for these objectives to be achieved. The Ukrainian forces are currently exhausted and weak. On the other hand, the mobilized Russian soldiers are fully prepared to engage in high-intensity combats. In addition, Russian artillery positions in Belarus and in the liberated territories have a privileged location, which significantly increases the chances of victory in the coming offensive.
Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was promoted to the position of Commander of the Joint Forces of the Russian Federation in the Special Military Operation Zone. Gerasimov’s arrival to power seems to have been a move towards the final stage of the special military operation.
His predecessor, General Surovikin played an important role while in command. A veteran of Chechnya and Syria and having extensive experience in counterterrorism, Surovikin was appointed to the post at a time when Ukrainian terrorist actions were on the rise. He fulfilled the goal of neutralizing the enemy’s offensive potential with his strong actions on the Ukrainian critical infrastructure, at the same time that he saved thousands of Russian lives with his policy of avoiding trench warfare and prioritizing long-distance bombing. Now, however, the special military operation needs a new direction.
And this was the main reason for the appointment of Valery Gerasimov. As Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, he is undoubtedly the most prestigious Russian officer and therefore the right man to lead the operation’s most decisive moves. The objective now is no longer to break the enemy’s offensive potential, but to force Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime into capitulation through a huge offensive.
After so many Russian attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, with the Ukrainian government ignoring them and insisting on an irresponsible military campaign, now there seems to be no other possible end to the conflict than a Russian offensive strong enough to liberate the entire Ukrainian coastline and capture Kiev.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Peru’s Congress Refuses Early Elections, Heightening Tensions as Protests Rage
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 02.02.2023
Peruvian legislators shot down any remaining chance of a peaceful resolution to protests that have already seen around 60 demonstrators killed by security forces.
The Congress of Peru voted down a proposal to move up presidential and legislative elections to 2023, complicating efforts to end the deadly crisis that has gripped Peru since ousted President Pedro Castillo was forced from power and jailed by security forces nearly two months ago.
With just 53 legislators in support, lawmakers fell far short of the 87 votes needed to advance the initiative after five hours of debate.
Legislators from elite-dominated parties reportedly insisted that early elections were “unconstitutional” and complained that members of Peru’s notoriously-unpopular Congress should be allowed to finish their term.
Demonstrators have been calling for the liberation of Castillo, a new constitution, and for Congress to be dissolved.
The lawmakers’ refusal to budge on the issue of early elections means demonstrators have little incentive to leave the streets. After seven weeks of daily protests, participants have so far shown little intention of packing up and leaving.
“There is no truce,” one Peruvian journalist wrote following the proposal’s rejection.
“The demonstrations against the government of Dina Boluarte continue in #Lima the same day that Congress denied the possibility of an advance of general elections.”
Widespread pushback against the newly-formed Peruvian regime of Dina Boluarte began on December 7, after Castillo was charged with rebellion over accusations that he attempted to “illegally” dissolve Congress, which holds an abysmal approval rating of just 7% per latest polls.
Boluarte herself isn’t faring much better. The most recent survey available shows just 21% of Peruvians approve of her performance and 63% want the unelected head of the regime to resign immediately.
Scholtz failed to secure support for Ukraine on his tour of South America
By Ahmed Adel | February 2, 2023
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to Argentina, Brazil and Chile was with the aim of involving them in the Ukraine conflict and to create a regional counterweight to China’s growing influence. These are similar actions already made by the US in South America and one that we can also expect from other European powers.
Scholz’s visit is an attempt to restore influence in a region that has been empowered by China and Russia to forge an independent path that is not under the umbrella of the “Monroe Doctrine.” It is not a coincidence that the German Chancellor visited the region just days after the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), at which member states sought to strengthen regional integration in the context of Western powers attempting to prevent Latin America from strengthening relations with Russia and China.
Behind Scholz’s visit was the fact that China has become very close to Latin America. Therefore, it is in Berlin’s interest to note this competition between the Great Powers in South America and follow the trends that are emerging in the region rather than just behave as Washington’s representative.
It cannot be overlooked that South America, especially Chile, has large lithium reserves. Scholz’s visit is a form of US and European effort to effectively make the Chilean economy work in their own interest, as was the case when the US installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator in 1973.
The West’s imperial attitude of previous centuries remains the same, but, now with China’s thirst for resources, South American countries are finding a way out from the grasp of US hegemony. It is reminded, for example, that Chile’s main copper export partner today is China and not the US.
Both Washington and Berlin want major Latin American countries, like Chile, to ratify commercial, diplomatic, and political relations with the West so that they are not absorbed into China’s sphere of influence. This is an endeavour that will take many years to undergo because China is already entrenched in the region, something that is problematic for Germany as they need immediate solutions to the self-imposed energy crisis caused by sanctions on Russia.
Germany’s own self-destructive policies made it show an interest in a region that it never traditionally did. If the war in Ukraine was not occurring, it is more than likely that Berlin would not be in a hurry to forge new relationships for alternative energy sources. The issue is that Germany wants to impose its own liberal ideology over Latin America as a condition for trade, which means a cut in trade and relations with China and Russia.
South America is not only an important source of resources, but is a major region that refuses to cut trade and diplomatic relations with Russia. Whatever anticipation or expectation Scholz had on his trip were quickly dashed as he did not find the response he was expecting from his Latin American counterparts. The positions of the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Chile reflects the fact that these governments know how to distinguish economic cooperation from political dependence.
Involving Latin America in the Ukraine conflict is something that will face widespread rejection. For example, although new Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “emphatically deplored Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and annexation of parts of its territory as flagrant violations of international law” in a joint statement released with Scholtz on January 30, his government’s policies towards Russia have not deviated far from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
However, Lula also confirmed that Brazil would not provide ammunition to Ukraine for German-made Gepard anti-aircraft guns, as reportedly requested by Berlin, and insinuated that Ukraine was not seeking peace. Effectively, Lula is happy to pay lip service to the West but will not take any concrete action in matters related to the war in Ukraine.
In the same light, Argentina and Chile’s leaders also ended any German hope that they might lend support for Ukraine despite the fact that they were happy to condemn Russia’s military operation as an “invasion”. On his Latin America tour, Scholz wanted to demonstrate that international unity against Russia extends beyond the Western World, but only managed to secure some statements that are unlikely to damage relations with Moscow.
For his part, Lula said Brazil will work with other countries to help achieve peace in Ukraine as his country has not taken sides – something objectively true despite some damning rhetoric. In fact, likely to the annoyance of the German Chancellor, Lula said that China has an important role to play in peace talks, which he said he will discuss on a planned visit to Beijing in March.
It can be said that although Scholz’s trip can serve as a foundation for German-South American relations, his main goals – to secure support for Ukraine and to make advances in the resource industry only found limited success. Although he secured some rhetoric against Russia, he could not secure any material support for Ukraine. At the same time, although Germany has pitched its entry into the resource market, there is no guarantee that it will come to fruition or even challenge China’s dominance in the region.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
UK government used an Army unit to spy on citizens so it knew “how scared people were” during Covid
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 31, 2023
The report, “Ministry of Truth: The Secretive Government Units Spying On Your Speech” – an extensive, over 100-page long deep dive into the subject matter, among other things analyzed how the UK government used the country’s military to glean “how scared people were” during Covid.
Read the report here.
This, the Big Brother Watch privacy and civil rights group – that says the report is based on Freedom of Information Act responses and whistleblower accounts – meant creating a facade of dealing with “fake news,” while in reality conducting “large-scale monitoring of the British public on social media.”
According to the newly released document, the unit involved was the British Army’s 77th Brigade (aka 77x), whose purpose is to conduct “information operations” – within the military – including audience analysis and spreading “counter-propaganda.”
Previous “clients” they targeted included the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but now, it was time to turn to Twitter users and suss out anything that the authorities might consider to be Covid “misinformation.”
In late 2020, we reported that the 77th Brigade was used as support for the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit (RRU) effort to push vaccination, but the Ministry of Defense insisted they were “not used against UK citizens” and that their focus was on the international arena.
The report, however, goes on to detail what kind of social media posts found their way into something called “The Disinformation Daily,” compiled by said unit.
In early June 2020, the Cabinet Office received one, and its contents concerned posts about the possibility of Covid being a vascular disease (based on a Lancet medical journal article), while two other items, dismissed as “disinformation” were videos – one that 77th Brigade claimed was a “conspiracy video” about UK laws, and another that accused the UK government of deliberately terrifying, threatening, and manipulating citizens during the pandemic.
The report also contains testimony from a whistleblower who shed light on how the brigade really carried out its work as a “disinformation force.”
Although the involvement of the military was justified by the need to fend off “foreign actors” apparently trying to frighten Britons, the whistleblower reveals that the monitored posts “did not contain information that was untrue or coordinated – it was simply fear and domestic dissent.”
And – “We learned from the feedback that the government were very keen on hearing what the public thought about their COVID-19 response and how scared people were.”
The whistleblower also spoke about the concern that the government was “so interested in individual Twitter posts that they devoted an entire unit to monitoring what scared and otherwise powerless people had to say,” adding – “and I regret that I was a part of it.”
MHRA Caught Not Doing Its Promised Vaccine Safety Monitoring (Again)
BY NICK DENIM | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 28, 2023
We all know, I hope, about the significant and sustained number of excess deaths since May 2022. Most recently, you probably saw Esther McVey MP asking if the Department of Health would commit to an urgent and thorough investigation.
Maria Caulfield MP, one of the health ministers, replied saying that it’s also happening elsewhere and there is a range of factors. Implicitly, she was refusing to investigate. Outrageous.
However, it actually reminded me that way back in February 2021, MHRA promised to do a whole range of routine population-level data analysis “to quickly detect a potential safety signal” for the Covid vaccines. It announced it here under the section “Rapid Cycle Analysis and Ecological Analysis“. It explains what it involves as follows:
[A]s COVID-19 vaccination records (i.e., those given outside of GP surgeries) begin to get updated within GP systems, the MHRA will implement a form of active surveillance known as ‘Rapid Cycle Analysis’. This method involves proactive, weekly analysis of a range of pre-defined events (theoretical side effects) to quickly identify safety signals – it again involves ‘observed vs expected’ analyses (i.e. comparing rates after vaccination to rates in unvaccinated comparator groups) but doesn’t rely on people directly reporting any concerns through the Yellow Card scheme. It is also a more robust way to quickly determine if rates are likely to be consistent with a coincidental association. It also uses the MaxSPRT approach with adjustments made for the expected delays in the recording of events presenting to and diagnosed in secondary care settings. The list of pre-defined events of special interest is not fixed and can be expanded at any time.The MHRA will also use the CPRD data to conduct ‘ecological analyses’. This involves monitoring trends in the rates of pre-defined events within given population cohorts, based on prioritisation groups for vaccine roll out, to see if they are occurring to a greater extent amongst those targeted for vaccination after it is deployed compared to historical rates from the pre-deployment period. Comparisons can also be made to trends seen in groups not targeted for vaccination at the same time. This approach is most useful when we see high vaccine uptake and is another way to quickly detect a potential safety signal.
So I had a poke around MHRA’s website to see how it is getting on with this. Not very well, it turns out.
One of MHRA’s five divisions is called Clinical Practice and Research Datalink (CPRD) and it maintains a bibliography of peer-reviewed research and reports which have used data provided by MHRA from NHS datasets for things like ICU, A&E, inpatients, outpatients, cancer registration and pregnancy. When I looked, the bibliography had been updated as recently as January 9th 2023. So well and truly up-to-date. So far, so good.
Imagine my surprise when I could only find two population-level studies relating to the Covid vaccines, both relating to thrombocytopenia (low blood platelet count), one from February 2022 and one from October. So just one type of adverse event has been put through MHRA’s promised ecological analysis in the last two years. It doesn’t say much for MHRA’s commitment to use population-level data “to quickly detect a potential safety signal”.
Imagine my further surprise that none of the datasets which MHRA’s CPRD Division provides for research contains data after June 2021.
So in conclusion, all about as useless as the other strand of Covid vaccine surveillance it promised, Targeted Active Monitoring, which I noted in a recent article it quietly dropped 15 months ago.
For me, there are only two possible conclusions: either the MHRA is not doing the Covid vaccine surveillance it promised, or it is doing it and not making the results publicly available. Either way, it’s high time that MPs, the Covid Inquiry and the media started asking MHRA some searching questions.
Until Nick retired a few years ago, he was a Senior Civil Servant in a Government Department.
Researchers bamboozling journalists with mythical comparison of vaccinated and unvaccinated
Where are the numbers? by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil | January 31, 2023
From: XXXXXX
Sent: 30 January 2023 12:33
To: Norman Fenton
Subject: Hart GroupDear Professor Fenton,
Apologies for any intrusion, but I’m contacting you directly since the Hart Group (which I understand you to be a member of), have not replied to my earlier emails – all very busy people, I do understand.
As a small group of individuals who between us have some journalistic and medical-science history, we are working on a presentation (with a further view to establishing a website), which aims to offer a wider range of information concerning Covid policies and treatment than, it appears, is usually available through current mainstream and social media.
Given that our aim is a balanced juxtaposition and presentation of arguments, hopefully allowing better-informed opinions to be arrived at, we do have a range of “issues” we’d love to understand better in order to present them fairly.
You are (I imagine) well-placed to comment on one specific matter, and I would be enormously grateful if you would spare a minute to advise, assuming this enquiry doesn’t create any conflict of interest or other problems for you:
The Times and other media recently reported on a QMUL study* which indicates that unvaccinated individuals with certain medical conditions are more likely to suffer “serious outcomes” than vaccinated individuals. I believe presenting this this demands careful attention to context and contrasting with other possible perspectives.
Dr Aseem Malhotra in a Twitter-hosted video makes reference to de-bunking claims about how this story has been reported, but makes no reference I can find to where such a de-bunking can be found; and sadly, he too seems unavailable to comment!
Probably, Dr Malhotra’s position is not an issue you are required in any way to comment on. However, in general, I do think that those who would like to see “better”, more balanced reporting on Covid should find time to speak to others, like us, who are trying to support exactly that cause – presumably it’s in everyone’s interest. But that’s just a peripheral observation on my part!
It would be truly helpful if you can find a moment to provide some pointers to help us present a balanced picture of the study referred to above.
Many thanks, and best wishes.
Your’s faithfully,
XXXXX
* Also reported on the QMUL website: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2022/smd/unvaccinated-individuals-with-heart-problems-up-to-9-times-more-likely-to-die-or-suffer-serious-complications-from-covid-19.html
The study referred to is this one.
Here is my self-explanatory response:
Dear XXXXX
I should make it clear that, although I just briefly discussed this with one or two members of HART, my response below should certainty not be construed as ‘the HART response’.
The most important point to note about the QMUL study is that it certainly does not claim anything like what either you or The Times seem to think it claims, i.e it certainly does not show that “unvaccinated individuals with certain medical conditions are more likely to suffer serious outcomes than vaccinated individuals.” In fact, no comparison with a vaccinated cohort was undertaken.
All the study actually did was look at the outcomes for covid patients with pre-existing conditions like myocarditis. This is something very different to the later studies (such as those Aseem Malhotra referred to) which compared incidence of myocarditis occurring post-vaccination with the base rates for unvaccinated. So, all the study actually shows is that “that individuals with certain pre-existing medical conditions who get covid are more likely to suffer serious outcomes than those without such medical conditions who get covid.” That is hardly novel, since this has been widely known since March 2020.
In fact, the authors of the study are demonstrating a very clear bias by referring to the people in the study as ‘unvaccinated’. Of course, they were unvaccinated – it was a meta-analysis of 110 published studies between 1st Dec 2019 and 16th July 2020. There was, of course, no vaccinations anywhere during that period so referring to these people as ‘unvaccinated’ must have been done to fit a particular mischievous agenda. I am actually pleased you brought this study to my attention since it needs to be exposed for leading people like the Times and yourself to believe it was showing something that it wasn’t.
One major conclusion in the paper seems sensible – that having diabetes or hypertension or ischaemic heart disease predicts for poorer outcomes (although the same could be said for many other conditions so there is hardly anything novel in this). But the first part of the conclusion seems entirely wrong. Just because you see covid hospitalising a lot of people who had pre-existing cardiac comorbidity certainly does not mean that covid caused their comorbidity. It seems that this part of the conclusion may have been influenced by possible conflicts of interests (see below).
There are a number of other specific concerns about the study:
- They included studies published from 1st Dec 2019 – but that was before covid was formally accepted to exist, so how could any study published in Dec2019/Jan2020 have patients with suspected covid? Any study published pre-mid Jan 2020 should be excluded by default, since even the flawed confirmatory PCR test was not available until then. There would be no way of knowing if ‘is covid’ results was a mix of ‘not covid’, ‘possibly covid’ and ‘probably covid’.
- How is ‘suspected’ the same as ‘confirmed’? When the symptoms used for Covid marry to any number of other conditions that are common (and even endemic) then how can you say that suspected covid is even ‘a thing’?
- Someone hospitalised with exacerbation of an existing condition is NOT the same thing as someone who gets a new diagnosis OF that condition after vaccination.
- Including so many Chinese studies clearly biases the work – and using China and USA to predict for LMIC (in the Introduction) is strange to say the least.
A colleague also noted the link between Prof Gupta (the senior author) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other potential conflicts of interest:
- In this report Gupta is acknowledged as having provided the statistical support for a report that seeks to help the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation find new ways to support medical/health research in the UK. There are also a number of links between Gupta before he came to QMUL and functions (like some project called D3140 for the Rotary Club funded by BMGF in Mumbai, and research out of Imperial College) supported by the Gates Foundation. He is also heavily involved in Wellcome Trust AND the WHO – and is listed on the minutes of meetings between the two.
- Gupta and the lead author (Sher May Ng) are both on this study that was in part funded by the NIH (Grumbach acknowledges an NIH grant while at the UCal Nursing School. My colleague managed to find that she also has an NIH.GOV email address).
- Co-Author Kenneth Rice has worked on studies like this with staff from BMGF.
- Kenneth Rice and Gupta are two of the over 200 doctors who are part of a research collaborative called TOPMed – funded by the NIH with a combination of US Gov and BMGF money.
I hope this helps you.
Yours
Norman Fenton
For clarification of the potential conflict of interest with BMGF, Scott McLachlan has provided the following information:
Bill Gates is the world’s largest single shareholder of Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer stocks and therefore every time Pfizer, Moderna, Lilly (Eli), GSK, CureVac or even AstraZeneca (he had something like 8% in AstraZeneca shares at one point) sell a vaccine, that’s money back in his pocket. (see here)
And while fact checkers claimed Gates would not profit from Gilead (Remdesivir), he actually purchased a significant chunk of Gilead and 27,000 shares in Merck in 2018 in preparation. (Merck are one of the manufacturers who licensed to manufacture Remdesivir in their plants)
The thing that journalists get confused on is the idea that he, through his foundations, made ‘grants’ to Moderna et al. These were not ‘grants’ in the way we get grants from EPSRC or UKRI – they are grant investments. Various companies in control of the BMGF are shareholders in Pfizer and Moderna. In return for sinking $50mil+ into Moderna, Gates’s foundation took a large slice of Moderna’s shares.
Further, Gates sells access to “investment opportunities” through GAVI COVAX and AMC. The ‘investor’ (usually a rich western govt or pharma/healthcare company) gives money to GAVI in their rich country where they make profits and need a tax write-off… then, they get included in the contract with some LMIC govt to sell them vaccines. The whole model works by shifting where the pharma/healthcare company make their profits. Pharma companies ‘invest’ by subsidising vax initially and then, over time the contract shifts to the country’s govt paying extortionate rates for future vax.
As one of the links above says – as the world keeps getting sicker Gates keeps getting richer. He invested $555mil into COVID vax companies during 2019/20 and has made an estimated $4bil return. Nice work if you can get it.
We rightly mourn the dead, but mustn’t forget the disabled
Worrying data from the USA and UK
Health Advisory & Recovery Group | February 1, 2023
Much of the analysis around Covid 19 vaccine harms revolves around counts of deaths, and excess mortality. This is perfectly understandable since “excess deaths” is a “hard” measure in that most countries are able to count the number of their citizens who have died quite accurately so this does allow for some reasonably informative inferences and international comparisons.
The same is of course not the case for “covid deaths” which even the strongest proponents of the establishment covid narrative have had to admit are affected by differences between countries in classification, testing rates, and policies.
However, as well as many countries experiencing excess deaths, there is currently a second huge problem: marked increases in the numbers registering as long-term disabled.
Because registering as disabled is usually done for the purposes of receiving financial assistance or other support from the state, there is a built-in gatekeeping function which limits spurious claims, so we can be reasonably confident that any significant increases represent genuine medical issues.
Looking at the USA first, a group called Phinance recently published an analysis of the proportion of the US civilian labor force who are registered as disabled.
This graph shows the % of workers aged 16 to 64 with a disability against the total number of Covid vaccinations administered in the same age group.
Phinance also published this graph which is a regression analysis showing a very strong correlation between the increase in the number disabled and the total number of doses given – something which actually is rather obvious from the above.
It is fair to point out that such a regression analysis should not in general be performed on cumulative series of data (ie total doses administered), but rather on discrete data (which in this case would be daily or weekly doses). If the measurements can only increase and not fall (as with cumulative data), this limits the significance of any correlation observed, as by default they will rise together.
This is less of a problem here in that only one of the 2 data points (vaccines) is cumulative (for the other axis they have used the increase in the number disabled). However, we wrote to the authors to ask why they didn’t use daily or weekly doses administered.
They responded with the not unreasonable point that because the adverse effects occur over a wide and variable period after dosing, a cumulative series is probably more informative. We agree. Just because fewer doses were given one week does not mean there were fewer people at risk of developing a post vaccination disability in that week.
The extremely experienced medical statistician who blogs as “John Dee” has performed further analysis on the US data above. The article is rather technical but in essence by applying a number of sophisticated statistical tools he concludes that using cumulative data may exaggerate but has not invalidated the findings, which should therefore be regarded as highly suggestive (though not in themselves proof of) a causal relationship.
However, the criticism of the statistical methodology was never really “on point” anyway. Science advances through testing hypotheses by questioning the available data.
The point of the analysis of the disability data was not to conclusively “prove” that the vaccines cause harm, but rather to answer the question: Is there a signal of potential concern which warrants further study? The answer to this appears to be “yes” and anyone finding excuses to not even look further should be regarded as willfully blind.
Of course, the link to vaccination could quite easily be further tested by ascertainment of the vaccination status of a representative sample of the disabled, with comparisons to disability rates in the unvaccinated. That this is not even being discussed must surely be regarded as a red flag.
When a potential signal of concern is replicated internationally, it increases the likelihood that we are dealing with a causal relationship. Not much quality data on disability rates is available from other countries, but one country which does publish some comparable data is the UK.
In the UK, if disabled, a state payment called a personal independence payment (PIP) can be claimed. An official UK government report states that there have been “unprecedented levels of new claims in recent quarters” (in England and Wales).
This has been reported by various news websites, including Yahoo’s article titled “The ‘astonishing’ rise in people claiming one key benefit”.
PIP data is actually downloadable from an official UK government website, and “John Dee” has performed some analysis on it which can be read here and here.
The new claims data plotted against cumulative doses administered looks like this (with thanks to John Dee for the graphs):
Clearly, this bears an uncanny resemblance to the US data above.
As he did with the US data, John has drilled deeper into the data, showing, for example that whilst claim rates in the pandemic period were similar to those in the pre-pandemic period, there is a huge uptick in the post-vaccine period, with the error bars (and statistical tests of significance) indicating that this is not just random variation.
Moreover, he has used a technique called “cross-correlation” which strongly suggests that “the increase in the month-on-month changes in total administered doses is followed three months later by a rise in month-on-month changes in new cleared claims.”
This would appear to add plausibility to the causation argument, in that three months is the period required by the government as a minimum qualifying period before an application for PIP can be filed.
Overall, these datasets surely raise huge concerns, which could be assuaged by further more detailed examination of the data, especially including vaccination status. We urge governments to carry out such an analysis, which need only be performed on a representative sample in order to generate reliable conclusions.
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From the Archives
How 1960’s French Nuclear Tests Are Still Claiming Lives in Algeria
Sputnik – 15.02.2018
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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