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Battle for Bakhmut: Why the City is Key to Russia’s Liberation of Donbass

By Ekaterina Blinova – Samizdat – 10.01.2023

All eyes are on Bakhmut (Artyomovsk), a Donbass city-turned-meat grinder for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are sustaining heavy losses there. Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst, has explained to Sputnik why the city is so important for both sides of the conflict.

“First of all, from a level of its significance, one of the Russian military priorities was to secure all the Donbass, to secure the liberation of the entirety there,” Mark Sleboda told Sputnik. “And that being kind of right in the center of the Donetsk region, Bakhmut has often been called the key to Donetsk. So, of course, all of that area has to be liberated (…) Bakhmut is also a major transport and logistical hub because it’s got two highways that intersected and railroads that run north all the way to Moscow and then they go through south and then bend around down into Donetsk city.”

Second, Bakhmut is the linchpin of the entire second line of defense of the Kiev regime, the US military veteran continued.

“After that, there’s only one last defensive line in Donetsk of any major node between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, further to the west,” Sleboda noted.

Third, taking Bakhmut threatens further advances and flanks in other directions due to its geographical location. Finally, it would allow greater control of the Donetsk-Seversky Canal, which provides water to Donetsk city, according to the analyst. Sleboda pointed out that the Kiev regime cut off the water supply to Donetsk five years ago. “They did it in Crimea as well,” the analyst added. “Cutting off water is what they do.”

Following the February 2014 regime change in Kiev, the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) established control over Bakhmut (known as Artyomovsk at that time). However, the Kiev military junta captured the town in July 2014.

The city is of utmost importance to both sides, and the entire conflict now is centered on what happens there. The Kiev regime has sent tens of thousands of reinforcements into Bakhmut, which are being methodically eliminated by the Russian forces, according to the analyst. Presently, the standoff over the city has escalated dramatically, he stressed.

Entire Front Around Bakhmut is Activated

“The entire front line, particularly to the area north and south of Bakhmut and Donetsk, is fully activated,” Sleboda said. “And everywhere along there, Russian units, particularly led by the private military company (PMC) Wagner [Group], are on the assault.”

The US military veteran explained that the Russian military forces are also advancing in Soledar, a small town which lies 18 km northeast of Bakhmut. On Monday, the Defense Staff of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) announced that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Bakhmutskoe near the town of Soledar. The developments could pave the way for the liberation of Donbass.

“Both Bakhmut and Soledar are both at the same time penetrated [by the Russian forces] and there is fighting within the city districts (…) Russia is making now quicker progress, I would say. There is fierce defense, there’s no question about that, but it’s penetrating and enveloping at an increasingly faster rate,” Sleboda pointed out.

According to the analyst, there appears to be some general breakdown in the Kiev regime’s ability to rotate forces and supply reinforcements at the rate they have been doing for the last few months.

“Also, their artillery has to a much higher degree been silenced,” the military veteran continued. “Russian counter-battery artillery fire has been extremely offensive. What was already a 9-to-1 advantage in terms of artillery is probably at this point greater.”

To cap it off, the Ukrainian forces have been sustaining heavy losses which are between 300 and 1,000 people a day as per western reports. Roughly 90% of Kiev regime casualties continue to be by Russian artillery strikes, according to Sleboda.

Bakhmut Defense: City Beneath City

The particularity of the fight over Bakhmut and adjusted areas is that they’re very easy to defend and very hard to attack because of the height advantage. Those who control this height can see everything and fire down on approaching troops, explained the US military veteran.

“To get a scale, the Kiev regime just in the Bakhmut area has some 60,000 troops,” Sleboda said. “Now, a lot of them are conscripts in territorial defense, but they also have some of their best troops there. According to the head of Wagner [Yevgeny Prigozhin], they have erected some 500 defensive lines of trenches within the city.”

In addition, Bakhmut has an “unusual geography where it is split by a river and has bodies of water in it, which makes it more easily defendable,” according to the analyst.

“Then, there are extensive underground tunnels in Bakhmut that converge, it seems, at some point with the large salt mines of Soledar just to the north of it,” the veteran continued. “These were built as very extensive WW2-era bunker systems and fortifications by the Soviet Union. Some of these tunnels are reportedly big enough to drive tanks into and out of. So, there is a city beneath the city that is being fought in which makes the defense of it even better from a defensive position, and much harder to attack.”

However, despite all of the above, Russian forces are now advancing, Sleboda stressed, adding that just in the last two days, there was a breakthrough in Soledar, which will help threaten the Ukrainian military’s entire defensive line there.

This is also important because in the north there is also a large Kiev offensive grouping in the direction of the small cities of Kremennaya and Svatovo, the analyst emphasized.
“The Kiev regime has been on an offensive there very quietly,” said Sleboda. “No one’s talking a lot about that front to the north of this area in Bakhmut, and they have some 40,000 troops there, and they have been throwing them at Kremennaya. [They are] making some marginal gains and settlements, but suffering very high casualties and appears to have petered out there. If Soledar collapses the way it looks like it’s going, then Seversk will essentially be undefendable to the north of it. And if Seversk is undefendable, that is the launching pad for much of the attack on Svatovo and Kremennaya. So, that means that the entire northern offensive grouping of the Kiev regime will be unsustainable.”

One could see that the whole Ukrainian military offensive is stalled there and may have to be pulled back to save them from being enveloped by a quick Russian surge if there is a greater breakthrough in the Kiev regime lines, according to the US military veteran.

Sleboda has also drawn attention to what appear to be active mobilizations in south Donetsk, in Ugledar, in Zaporozhye, and also further to the north and the west on the Belorussian-Ukrainian border. These activities have become possible because the ground is all getting frozen now and everyone is preparing for that “winter fighting weather,” as per the analyst.

Russia-NATO Standoff is Escalating

Meanwhile, the overall conflict against Russia in Ukraine is escalating, with NATO member states stepping up their military supplies to Kiev. A new US military aid package for Kiev contains a long list of military equipment and ammunition, including 50 Bradley fighting vehicles with 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000 rounds of 25mm ammunition, 100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, Sea Sparrow RIM-7 missiles for air defense, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and 100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers.

French President Emmanuel Macron pledged an unspecified number of AMX-10 RC light tanks to Kiev, while Germany vowed to provide 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to the Ukrainian military. For their part, Polish and Finnish ministers are considering supplying some of their German-made Leopard 2 or US M1 Abrams tanks if the major western powers take the lead.

“The Western European countries are providing outdated infantry fighting vehicles,” said Sleboda. “They are not quite vintage. These are models that were just being phased out of use. So, they have them in stock and they’re still fairly effective.”

Sleboda does not rule out that soon one may also see NATO member states sending main battle tanks to Kiev, even though previously it was largely seen as a “red line.” In addition to that, all the signs are that there’s another Patriot battery now being promised by Germany, he remarked.

However, western supplies won’t become a dramatic game changer, given that Russia has been surging huge amounts of new state-of-the-art equipment to the front, either, according to him. Make no mistake, “this is all escalating,” the US military veteran said.

“If you thought the fighting in 2022 and the political divisions were significant, 2023 is right now they’re just handing off their beer. Hold my beer, because 2023 is going to make 2022 look like a skirmish,” he concluded.

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Political chaos shaking Brazil

By Lucas Leiroz | January 10, 2023

The Brazilian political scene is increasingly tense. Anti-Lula protests grow day by day, with thousands of people taking to the streets in several cities to demand the revocation of the 2022 electoral process. Recently, in an act of vandalism and disdain for the most basic civic values, pro-Bolsonaro militants invaded Brasília, damaging public buildings and the facilities of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. As a result, the Lula government began a tough response to those involved, punishing protesters, and intervening in Brasilia’s regional politics.

The Federal District of Brasilia was the target of scenes of depredation on January 8th. Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters – commonly referred to as “Bolsonarists” – attacked the Parliament, the Supreme Court and the Planalto Palace – the headquarters of the Three Branches of the Republic. Historical pieces of art that were kept on site were also destroyed, creating a true scene of barbarism.

The majority of the militants wore shirts from the Brazilian soccer team and held flags of Brazil, the US and Israel – which has already become commonplace in Bolsonarist demonstrations. As in other protests across the country, Bolsonarists in Brasília demanded the end of the Lula government and called for new elections. Some more radical militants called for military intervention – which is also a common agenda among Brazilian rightists. The invasion lasted a few hours, but the authorities regained control of the situation before the end of the day.

In fact, if the Bolsonarists’ intention was to weaken the Lula government, the plan failed. The president of Brazil, with broad support from the national media and international authorities, took control of the situation with tough measures to guarantee law and order. Not only were the protesters repelled, but hundreds of them were identified and arrested.

Lula signed a decree imposing federal intervention in Brasília’s public security, taking exceptional measures to guarantee order and end the vandalism. Measures to break telephone secrecy and in-depth intelligence investigations are also being operated in order to point out all the culprits for the invasion, including its possible sponsors.

Indeed, mass protests in Brasilia are not common. The Brazilian capital has an urban structure that does not allow for large popular mobilizations to pressure the authorities who work there. The isolation of politicians and government’s facilities was precisely the central objective of the architectural project of Brasilia in the 1960s.

Before, when the capital was in Rio de Janeiro, federal facilities were easily accessible to the population, allowing mass protests and social chaos. Brasilia is built differently, with access routes that are very restricted and easily blocked by the authorities, so that large mobilizations there can only occur in case of negligence or connivance on the part of the police.

This led the Brazilian government to identify the heads of public administration in Brasília as Bolsonarists colluding with the demonstrations, dismissing them from their offices and reformulating the administrative structure of the city with some new allies of the government. The Brazilian media adopted this speech as official and referred to the former police chiefs of Brasilia as Bolsonarists, strengthening the coalition in support of Lula’s measures.

On the other hand, leaders of right-wing parties in Brazil claim that there was some kind of “false flag operation”, where the authorities would have deliberately permitted the vandalism of the angry mass precisely to boost a radicalization of the Lula government. The war of narratives does not seem to end anytime soon.

What is really important, however, is not the political position of the former police chiefs of Brasilia, but what comes next. The Brazilian government and the media formally classified the protesters as “terrorists”, which raises a series of questions. While there has undoubtedly been vandalism and a number of deplorable acts, classifying these acts as “terrorism” is questionable and justifies all sorts of exceptional measures. To combat terrorism, extraordinary actions are valid, thus justifying the breach of the legal-constitutional norms to restore order.

Some critics of Lula fear that the new government will commit abuses and make the January 8 decree a kind of Brazilian “Patriot Act”. This criticism is valid, and the actions must be monitored so that they do not become abuses, but the most important thing, instead of criticizing Lula’s measures, is to find the necessary mechanisms to pacify the country.

Brazil is absolutely divided, polarized and tense. On the one hand, radical Bolsonarists who do not accept the former president’s defeat; on the other, similarly radical pro-Lula militants – who are now even calling for popular mobilization to “stop” the rightist protesters. As a result, Brazil remains inflamed by political partisanship, with no real concern for a project for the Brazilian State that overcomes ideological and partisan antagonisms.

Lula is trying to find those responsible for the protests in the capital. He accuses Bolsonaro of being the instigator of the actions and has even received support from key members of the American Democratic Party, who are now asking Washington to “extradite” the former Brazilian president who is in the US since December. However, there is still no legal action that legitimizes such “extradition” and continuing to try to find “culprits” is perhaps just a way to further deepen polarization.

Lula’s great challenge will not be to punish the members of the former government, nor even to put an end to radical rightism in the country. His great task is to overcome social hostility and find a way to pacify Brazil. Perhaps, calling thousands of Brazilian citizens “terrorists” is not the best way to do this. Undoubtedly, vandalism must be punished, but the ultimate goal must be national reconciliation.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Twitter censored tweets after pressure from Pfizer director

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | January 9, 2023

A newly released email from the Twitter Files has revealed that  censored a tweet from Dr. Brett Giroir, a board member at the biopharmaceutical company Altesa Biosciences, after it was flagged by Scott Gottlieb, a board member at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Gottlieb and Giroir both currently serve on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies and have backgrounds in public health. Gottlieb is a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner while Giroir is a former Assistant Secretary for Health and former acting Commissioner of the FDA.

Pfizer produces Covid vaccines whereas Altesa Biosciences develops drugs to combat Covid.

In the August 27, 2021 email, which was published by journalist Alex Berenson, Gottlieb complained to Todd O’Boyle, a senior manager on Twitter’s Public Policy team, about a tweet from Giroir that claimed natural immunity to Covid-19 was superior to vaccine immunity.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive,” Gottlieb wrote. “Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage.”

According to Berenson, O’Boyle forwarded Gottlieb’s email to Twitter’s Strategic Response team — a team that was tasked with handling complaints from Twitter’s most important employees and users.

Berenson said that O’Boyle didn’t mention that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member in this email and instead wrote, “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.”

An analyst from Twitter’s Strategic Response team quickly found that the tweet didn’t violate any of Twitter’s “misinformation” rules, according to Berenson. However, the tweet was still slapped with a “Misleading” label and had its replies, shares, and likes disabled after Gottlieb’s complaint.

This label and the restrictions still haven’t been removed, even though several high-ranking health officials, such as former White House Covid response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, have since questioned the effectiveness of Covid vaccines when it comes to preventing infections.

Berenson also claimed that one week later, on September 3, 2021, Gottlieb complained about a tweet from Covid lockdown and vaccine skeptic Justin Hart.

The Hart tweet that Gottlieb reportedly complained about stated: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”

Berenson alleged that Gottlieb complained about this tweet when the Pfizer Covid vaccine “would soon be approved for children 5 to 11.”

However, Berenson said that this time, Twitter refused to act.

Previous Twitter email releases have revealed that during the same month that Gottlieb was complaining about Giroir’s tweet, he also flagged one of Berenson’s articles to Twitter. Berenson was temporarily suspended from Twitter days after Gottlieb flagged his article.

Gottlieb responded to the revelations about him flagging Giroir’s tweet by claiming that the publication of this email was a “selective disclosure” of his “private communications with Twitter” and that it had stoked “the threat environment” and instigated “more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”

Giroir accused Gottlieb of scheming with Twitter to “apparently put corporate interests first not public health.”

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The battle between Big Pharma and scientific integrity

Review – Taking on Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett’s Battle

By Julius Getman and Terri LeClercq

Larger-than-life, creative, and fiercely ambitious, Dr. Charlie Bennett has a long history of revealing dangerous side effects of bestselling medicines. In 2006, his meta-analysis of existing data showed that top-selling ESAs (erythropoietin stimulating agents) created previously unrecognized risks, deaths, and serious illness. According to Dr. Steven Rosen, chief medical officer of the City of Hope Cancer treatment center, Bennett “saved more lives than anyone in American medicine.”

Bennett’s work also created enemies: Bennett was accused, on the basis of flimsy evidence, of mishandling government grant money and violating the False Claims Act (also known as the “Whistleblower Act”). Powerful interests within Big Pharma, academia, and law enforcement joined in the attack on Bennett. By 2010, he was forced from his academic position; was besieged by lawsuits; and became the victim of a coordinated, well-funded campaign to discredit him and refute his work. From pharma superstar to disgrace and disrepute in the blink of an eye.

“Taking On Big Pharma” explores Bennett’s achievement and evaluates the charges against him. Exposed is the unsettling relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and academia. The result of more than five years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews with scientists, academicians, and federal prosecutors, this is an unflinching look at how institutions, purportedly devoted to public health and education, can be corrupted for profit — from drug sales or research grants.

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Explosive Increase in Cardiac Symptoms after Second Injection

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 9, 2023

I have said on national TV throughout the COVID-19 vaccine campaign that no young person should receive a shot because the risks far outweigh the benefits. Chiu et al published a report where both cardiac symptoms and ECG changes were recorded after the first and second injections. The results are alarming. After the second injection of mRNA 17.1% of students reported cardiovascular symptoms.

Chiu SN, Chen YS, Hsu CC, Hua YC, Tseng WC, Lu CW, Lin MT, Chen CA, Wu MH, Chen YT, Chien TH, Tseng CL, Wang JK. Changes of ECG parameters after BNT162b2 vaccine in the senior high school students. Eur J Pediatr. 2023 Jan 5:1–8. doi: 10.1007/s00431-022-04786-0. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36602621; PMCID: PMC9813456.

The difficulty for parents is to sort out symptoms indicative of the FDA acknowledged side effects of myopericarditis and pulmonary embolism. Because of the very high rate of symptomatic side effects, even ECG screening will not be enough. Fortunately, there were no serious adverse events in this study. However, when a cardiotoxic vaccine is administered to millions of adolescents, there are hundreds of thousands of symptomatic cases and the interpretation by parents and healthcare providers is quickly becoming a nightmare. Of great concern, are cases where the symptoms are interpreted as benign yet the child is suffering significant heart damage and later on is set up for sudden cardiac death during sleep or athletic events.

In summary the best way to protect both children and parents from this unnecessary nightmare is to decline COVID-19 vaccination and thereby eliminate the risk of iatrogenic heart disease.

Chiu SN, Chen YS, Hsu CC, Hua YC, Tseng WC, Lu CW, Lin MT, Chen CA, Wu MH, Chen YT, Chien TH, Tseng CL, Wang JK. Changes of ECG parameters after BNT162b2 vaccine in the senior high school students. Eur J Pediatr. 2023 Jan 5:1–8. doi: 10.1007/s00431-022-04786-0. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36602621; PMCID: PMC9813456.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Dramatic figures link more Covid jabs with more illness

By Neville Hodgkinson | TCW Defending Freedom | January 9, 2023

A nurse friend who did not want to hear when I first questioned Covid jab safety two years ago is now furious about having been bludgeoned by the NHS into having three shots. She survived the first two but had massive bleeding after the third. Looking more deeply into the data, she found to her horror that the ‘safe and effective’ claim is completely unfounded.

I suspect there are hundreds of thousands of other healthcare workers feeling the same sense of betrayal, and that this is contributing in a major way to the current staffing crisis.

My friend’s experience is exactly in line with new figures from Australia showing a dramatic dose-response relationship between the number of jabs and the risk of having to go into hospital with Covid or dying from it.

The New South Wales (NSW) data, for the two weeks ending December 31, are a rarity in that they include vaccination status.

Out of 1,415 hospitalised patients where this status was known, ten had received a single dose, 218 two doses, 377 three doses and 810 four doses.  There were zero hospital admissions for Covid among the unvaccinated, who comprise 13 per cent of the NSW population.

Deaths followed a similar pattern except that six unvaccinated people were reported as having died of Covid. None was in hospital, raising the possibility that their diagnosis was assumed rather than confirmed.

Only one patient died who had received a single jab. Nine deaths were in those who had received two doses, and 19 in the triple-jabbed.  The figure then shot up to 53 in those who had four shots.

Businessman and mathematician Igor Chudov, reporting here on the NSW findings, acknowledges that the figures will be skewed by differences in how many people have had the different number of shots.  After adjusting for those differences, however, he finds that the four-times-jabbed have a four times increased risk of hospitalisation compared with those who had two shots.

While some of this may be further explained by age differences, with older people being given more shots, Chudov concludes that the data show the Covid vaccines to be an ‘utter failure’.

He notes that a year ago, the NSW health minister Brad Hazzard declared: ‘There is no question that we will NOT get out of this pandemic without a very substantial portion of our population being vaccinated.’

That ‘substantial portion’ – 84.3 per cent – has been achieved.  But even in Australia’s mid-summer, the country is in the middle of another Covid wave. And it is the unvaccinated who are at zero risk of being ill enough to have to go into hospital, in NSW at least.

Further evidence of the failure of the vaccine drive, Chudov notes, is that deaths overall in Australia are running at about a fifth higher than usual.

‘What awaits Australia in 2023? We do not know, and Covid proved everyone’s past predictions wrong.  I cannot see how these endless waves of Covid will end when people’s immunity worldwide is unset by reckless vaccinations [see here and here].

‘The only thing I know is that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. I hope that Australians will soon stop taking Covid vaccines.’

They will not be helped in that by the NSW health authority, which has decided to drop vaccination status from its weekly reports, as from December 31.

It says the data were included from 2021, when vaccines were first rolled out, ‘to monitor trends in the relationship between vaccination and outcomes’. But now most of the population have received at least two jabs, and with timing differences between booster doses, ‘the trends between vaccines and outcomes cannot be interpreted’.

A similar, convenient inability to interpret unfavourable data has occurred in the UK, as pointed out last month in a detailed analysis by Amanuensis, pen-name for an ex-academic and senior government adviser who contributes regularly to the Daily Sceptic. He or she wrote: ‘It wasn’t until early September 2021 that the UKHSA [UK Health Security Agency] started to include actual vaccine surveillance data in the Vaccine Surveillance Report. I’ve often wondered why they started to offer these data, as even in that September report the data didn’t support the “vaccines are good” narrative.

‘My favourite theory is that someone in authority, ignorant of the complexities of the immune system (that’s the vast majority of those in authority, if not all of them), demanded that the data be included to show the population how well the vaccines were bound to be performing.’

The data first presented were troubling, showing higher rates of Covid in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated for those aged over 40. The UKHSA included a small paragraph ‘to remind readers that you mustn’t simply look at the data and infer how well the vaccines are doing.

‘However, data based on population-wide testing tends to at least offer a strong indication of what is really going on. The real-world data . . . were highly suggestive of a problem that should have been prioritised for rigorous investigation, not explained away with the flick of a pen.’

Six reports later, the situation had deteriorated, with rates in the vaccinated higher than in the unvaccinated for all those aged over 30, and much higher rates for those aged 40-60.

The agency stopped publishing ‘helpful’ charts, presumably because they made it too easy to interpret how bad things were getting, Amanuensis says.

They continued to publish raw data for a while, but with ever more text on the dangers of interpreting the figures ‘at face value’, and eventually a stern warning that the data should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness.

‘The last set of data on infection rates strongly suggested that the vaccines were significantly increasing the risk of infection with Covid. Of course, the UKHSA were keen to suggest that the differences seen between vaccinated and unvaccinated infection rates were actually due to . . . well, anything that they could think of that wasn’t the vaccines . . .

‘The UKHSA authors were right to point out some potential reasons for the very high incidence of Covid in the vaccinated population, but they left one potential reason out: that they had used a poorly tested vaccine that might have resulted in an increase in the risk of infection.

‘To include this potential reason would have been supported by prior research into candidate vaccines for coronaviruses (including SARS and MERS). Alas, we’ve gone far beyond the realms of “trust the science” and it is clear that no one in authority is allowed to even whisper the potential for the vaccines to have made things worse.

‘We’re now nine months from that last table of real world data on Covid infection by vaccination status, and in the meantime studies from around the world continue to suggest that the vaccines increase the risk of Covid infection.’

The most recent, from the US state of Ohio, showed disease risk significantly correlated with number of vaccine doses given. Health workers who received three shots were approximately three times more likely to get infected with the Omicron variant, compared with the unvaccinated.

Amanuensis writes: ‘Perhaps if the UKHSA had been more interested in having an open mind compared with its “it’s anything but the vaccines” attitude towards the data it presented there might have been more caution taken with the vaccine rollout. As a consequence we might currently be seeing far fewer than one in 20 of the population concurrently infected with Covid.’

One glimmer of hope: my nurse friend says that whereas everyone at her hospital was bullied into receiving booster doses up to the third shot, the pressure has now stopped over fourth doses and beyond.   At least hospital staff, it seems, are recognising the real-world data that regulators still wish to hide.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

FDA Study: Pfizer Vaccine increases risk of Blood Clots in the lungs by 54% in the over 65s

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | January 9, 2023

The FDA recently published a study which looked at the COVID-19 vaccine safety among elderly persons aged 65 years and older. Today it was published in the Vaccine Journal.

The study looked at 30,712,101 individuals who had received various doses of the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines between 11 December 2020 and 15 January 2022.

Worryingly they identified four statistical signals for elevated risk of acute myocardial infarction (ACI), pulmonary embolism (PE), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and immune thrombocytopenia following the Pfizer vaccine. They didn’t find any statistical signals for the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines for the 14 outcomes they were monitoring.

PEs (blood clots on the lungs) were 54% more likely, ACIs (heart attacks) were 42% more likely, DICs (blood clotting disorder) were 91% more likely and ITPs (platelet disorder) 44% more likely.

However, they say that after further evaluation the rate ratios for AMI, DIC and ITP no longer met the statistical threshold for a signal. But, even after their further evaluation, the rate ratio for PE still met the statistical threshold.

Comically/Tragically, after more than two years of injecting people, they call their monitoring study an “early warning safety system”!

They conclude that this FDA “early warning safety system is working to rapidly identify potential new and important safety concerns following COVID-19 vaccination”. Wow, I’m glad they didn’t use their slower system because then we’d be in real trouble!

As usual and as you would expect, they go to great lengths to say that the four outcomes aren’t necessarily caused by the vaccine and may be related to other factors.

Furthermore, even though their own study has just shown the increased risks to the elderly, they say they BELIEVE the potential benefits of the vaccines outweigh the potential risks of Covid infection. Since when has ‘believe’ been a scientific way of analysing things? It sounds more like a religious conviction.

As a result, they won’t be taking any regulatory actions based on these signals, because they are still under investigation and require more robust study. So in the meantime, keep taking your boosters and we’ll let you know in maybe another two years that yes the blood clots in your lungs were from the vaccine. But we still BELIEVE your blood clots were better than your Covid infection, which you still got five times anyway – Amen.

I wonder which MSM outlets will report on the FDAs own study?

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Final Tally of Purdue Pharma’s Crime Will Be Dwarfed By What Is Now In the Making

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | January 9, 2023

On October 21, 2020—just six weeks before the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine received Emergency Authorization Use in individuals 16 years of age and older—the US Department of Justice announced its Global Resolution of Criminal and Civil Investigations with Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma and Civil Settlement with Members of the Sackler Family. As was stated in the announcement:

Today’s resolution is the result of years of hard work by the FBI and its partners to combat the opioid crisis in the U.S.,” said Steven M. D’Antuono, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office.  “Purdue, through greed and violation of the law, prioritized money over the health and well-being of patients.  The FBI remains committed to holding companies accountable for their illegal and inexcusable activity and to seeking justice, on behalf of the victims, for those who contributed to the opioid crisis.”

It is now high time for the Department of Justice and its FBI agents to investigate how and why regulatory laws and procedures for protecting the public against dangerous medical products were cast aside in order to promote and even force the dangerous mRNA vaccines on mankind.

Federal investigators need to start asking: Why are young athletes dropping on the football field and basketball court? Why are young media commentators dying in press boxes?

The same goes for the Canadian authorities, who need to ask why this CTV reporter collapsed during a live news broadcast. Wake up Mounties! Investigate why this generally fit young woman suddenly collapsed like this.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

New Zealand to Vaccinate People Against Mpox With Unapproved Vaccine, Report Says

Samizdat – 09.01.2023

New Zealand authorities are preparing to vaccinate the population against mpox, also known as monkeypox, with a vaccine that has not yet been approved, local media reported on Monday.

The authorities want to get a vaccine out as soon as possible, but Medsafe, New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority has asked for necessary documentation from the manufacturer, which means that the vaccine will be rolled out unapproved, New Zealand’s TV channel reported.

Since it is against the law to advertise unapproved medicines, there will be no big marketing campaign and the vaccine’s proprietary name will not be used, media reported.

“That’s right, we can’t [promote or advertise unapproved medicines]. But we are making sure that everyone has the opportunity for a funded visit with their medical practitioner to discuss whether the vaccine is right for them,” Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall stated.

In August 2022, media reports said the country’s authorities are considering the use of the Jynneos mpox vaccine recommended in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The report said only about 5,000 vials of the vaccine that is enough for immunization of nearly 20,000 people were so far obtained. The vaccine will be available from January 16.

Mpox is a rare viral disease that is usually transmitted to people from wild animals and is endemic in some African countries. The disease usually results in fever, rash and swollen lymph nodes. Since May 2022, mpox cases have been reported from countries where the disease is not endemic. The disease affected over 83,000 people in 110 countries, including 66 fatalities, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. New Zealand has registered 41 confirmed cases.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Pentagon Set to Begin Work on New Military Base in the Pacific

By Kyle Anzalone | Libertarian Institute | January 9, 2023

The Department of Defense is set to begin construction on a new naval base in Palau, the Pacific-island nation. A company was awarded an over $100 million contract to begin construction on the installation, which will house a new advanced radar system.

The Navy announced Gilbane Federal would receive just over $118 million for “the construction of reinforced concrete pads and foundations in support of the installation of the Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar equipment in the Republic of Palau.”

The total cost of the military base is unclear and the DoD has been secretive about the Palau base. However, the Pentagon hopes the radars will enable “over the horizon” capabilities. The facility will have two sites located 60 miles apart.

Washington’s new base in the Pacific will add to the over 750 networks of American military bases across the globe. Over the past decade, three successive presidents have poured tax dollars into increasing American military presence in the Indo-Pacific. The build-up comes as the White House prepares for potential conflicts with Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Pyongyang.

In recent years, Washington has attempted to rally its allies in the region against China. In the past few years, the US has started the Quadrilateral Dialog, AUKUS, and signed a trilateral defense cooperation pact with Tokyo and South Korea in June. Additionally, Washington has pushed its NATO partners to increase their military presence in the region.

In an interview with The Financial Times published on Sunday, Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) and of Marine Forces Japan, said the US was preparing for war with China over Taiwan.

“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations,” he said. “We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations.”

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Bloated IRS Will Skewer Taxpayers

By James Bovard | FFF | January 5, 2023

The Internal Revenue Service is perhaps the ultimate sacred cow in Washington. It is the “goose that lays the golden eggs” for the city’s power and prestige, delivering trillions of dollars to politicians to work miracles (or at least get reelected). When criticism erupted over the 87,000 new revenooers to be hired thanks to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, Washington’s Defenders of Correct Thinking rushed to the ramparts.

The media goes to bat for the IRS

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, in an article headlined “Another Republican Lie is Born,” caterwauled that Republicans’ anti-IRS rhetoric is one of the “hallmarks of authoritarianism” and justified Biden’s condemnation of Republicans for “semi-fascism.” Post columnist Joe Davidson fretted that “attacks on the IRS” are part of Republican efforts “delegitimatizing government.” Another Post article warned that Republicans are “putting federal workers in danger” by “repeating baseless claims” about the IRS. A Post purported humor columnist did a piece headlined, “Farewell, Mother I am off to join the IRS army!” sneering at baseless fears about Biden weaponizing IRS agents.

“Baseless?” At the time the Inflation Reduction Act passed, the IRS was advertising for “special agents” who must “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary” during “execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.” The IRS had recently made massive purchases of new firearms and ammunition. The job notice declared: “No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) observed, “The IRS has never pointed a gun at a billionaire or his employees, so why does the IRS need 87,000 new agents, AR-15s, and 5 million rounds of ammunition? They’re not gunning for billionaires or their bank accounts.”

Shock brigades of Fact Checkers rushed to rescue the IRS’s reputation. Reuters announced that it is “false” that the IRS “is hiring 87,000 new armed IRS agents” because only a couple thousand IRS agents carry firearms. Similarly, an Associated Press “fact-checking” report derided as “false” the allegation that “all new employees that the IRS intends to hire … will be required to carry a firearm and use deadly force if necessary.” Since not all IRS new hires will be heavily armed, it is “misleading” to pretend that any danger exists.

Controversy also swirled about a film clip of an IRS recruiting program on college campuses. A clip from Utah shows students putting on flak jackets and readying toy guns and handcuffs for “taking down a landscape business owner who failed to properly report how he paid for his vehicles.” “First they came for the tulip bulbs….”

Associated Press Fact Checkers complained that the video is “being misrepresented to falsely claim it shows a new force of IRS special agents being trained as part of agency expansion efforts.” But it is a recruiting video for college students that shows how they will be trained and use their power as IRS agents.

Since not all IRS employees will be carrying Glocks or AR-15s, Americans should presume that every IRS employee is a well-meaning civil servant waiting to assist people tormented by convoluted IRS instruction booklets. And it won’t matter if the new hires abuse their power. An IRS “enforcement operation” won’t count as a raid unless agents shoot at least three people. And then it still won’t matter because anyone who is gunned down will be labeled a suspected tax scofflaw. Regardless, Americans should presume that the IRS is actually less aggressive than a Girl Scout cookie-selling campaign.

There were plenty of “Iron Fist Bellwethers” last year when Biden first announced plans to vastly expand the IRS. The Washington Post reported that “the single biggest source of new revenue in the plan comes from dramatically expanding the clout of the nation’s tax agency.” Slate reported, “Biden wants to fund a massive upgrade to the American welfare state by making the IRS great at audits again.” And there aren’t that many billionaires to go around to finance all the schemes that Team Biden favors.

While Fact Checkers zealously squelch nitwit comments from random dudes on Facebook, they are ignoring far bigger howlers from the White House. On August 19, the White House promised that “No one making under $400,000 per year will pay a penny more in taxes” thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. Team Biden effectively insists that “those who have nothing (or at least no income) to hide have nothing to fear.” According to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), “If you’re not cheating on your taxes, you have nothing to worry about.” But the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that “between 78% and 90% of the estimated additional $200 billion the IRS will collect [over the next decade] will come from small businesses making less than $200,000 annually,” the New York Post reported.

Biden and his media allies pretend that the federal tax code is as lucid as the Ten Commandments and that depravity and/or iniquity are the only reasons people underpay taxes. But Americans are confounded by the four million words in the tax code and by the IRS’s failure to answer more than 90 percent of phone calls from taxpayers. Did the IRS need an $80 billion bribe to answer the phones? Actually, only 4 percent of the new $80 billion in funding will be devoted to customer service while 58 percent will go to turbo-charge enforcement.

IRS a law unto itself

Biden is acquiring a new army of IRS enforcers at the same time the agency obliterates unlucky taxpayers with deluges of penalties —which have increased tenfold since the 1950s. Sen. David Pryor (D-AR) complained that the IRS used penalties “as a weapon, as a whip over the innocent and the guilty taxpayer’s head, and as a point of leverage.” IRS enforcement policies have been travesties of due process for longer than Joe Biden has been in Washington.

IRS bureaucrats don’t even need to file a criminal charge before snaring citizens’ life savings. Consider IRS depredations under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which required banks to file a federal report for any cash transaction exceeding $10,000. The IRS “enforced” the law by presuming that anyone who deposited slightly less than $10,000 was a criminal. The IRS seized a quarter billion dollars because it disapproved of how businesses and individuals structured their bank deposits and withdrawals.

Between 2005 and 2012, the number of IRS seizures rose more than fivefold, but the vast majority of victims were never criminally prosecuted for structuring offenses. IRS criminal investigators simply looked at banking records and then confiscated hundreds of accounts. Most of the victims were “legal businesses such as jewelry stores, restaurant owners, gas station owners, scrap metal dealers, and others.” The IRS targeted businesses with legal sources of income, according to a 2017 Inspector General report, “to engage in ‘quick hits,’ where property was more quickly seized … rather than pursuing cases with other criminal activity (such as drug trafficking and money laundering), which are more time-consuming.” The IG found no evidence in 91 percent of the seizure cases that the money came from illegal activities. The IG noted, “Interviews with the property owners were conducted after the seizure to determine the reason for the pattern of banking transactions and if the property owner had knowledge of the banking law and had intent to structure.”

The IRS is menacing in part because federal courts have been shamelessly docile. As David Burnham, author of A Law Unto Itself: The I.R.S. and the Abuse of Power, noted, “Over and over again, federal judges have found ways either to ignore or actually to legitimize the growing reach of the tax collectors,” a “pattern of judicial tenderness … partly the product of the natural sympathy that those in power always feel toward the tax collectors.”

In U.S. Tax Court, IRS determinations of what citizens owe are “presumed correct,” with taxpayers bearing the burden to prove the feds wrong. Corporations with hefty legal departments routinely defeat the IRS in court, but few citizens can afford to fight a federal agency that appears to hold all the cards. Tax expert Daniel Pilla estimates that the “IRS’s audit results are incorrect between 60 and 90 percent of the time.”

The Supreme Court will soon hear the case of Romanian-American businessman Alexandru Bittner, who voluntarily notified the IRS that he was late filing reports on his foreign bank accounts (he was unaware of his duty to file). The IRS hit him with $2.72 million in fines, penalties, and interest — even though at least one federal court believed he should owe only $50,000. The difference between $2.72 million and $50,000 is a dramatic gauge of the arbitrary power that the IRS possesses over Americans.

The IRS agenda

The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy political opponents. But in the glorious era of President Joe Biden, all previous cases of government abuse of power are being expunged, at least by the media and Biden supporters. The stunning political bias of Obama’s IRS vanished into the Memory Hole, never to be seen again (at least by respectable media outlets). But in 2014, a report by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded that the IRS’s Lois Lerner, who masterminded the blockade of conservative nonprofit applications, “believed the political participation of tax-exempt organizations harmed Democratic candidates, she believed something needed to be done, and she directed action from her unit at the IRS.”

The Inflation Reduction Act will pay for new IRS computer systems. It has received billions of dollars from Congress to fix its computers since the 1980s, but the system is still a total mess (relying in part on 1960s-era computer technologies that are no longer widely taught in computer science classes).

How bad is the IRS information management system? An Inspector General report revealed that the IRS had destroyed 30 million tax information returns in 2021 without processing them because it was overwhelmed by the accumulating paper. Bloomberg News noted, “The IRS explained the documents were destroyed because the agency’s ‘antiquated’ information technology systems could no longer handle them.” Texas CPA Brian Streig groused, “To see the IRS just destroy these [returns] is almost like the IRS admitting they don’t really care.” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) denounced the document destruction as a “scandal” and lamented that “all the American people see at the IRS is incompetence and catastrophe.” Pascrell called for Biden to fire IRS chief Charles Rettig.

The IRS also sought to cover up the fact that it had failed to process tens of millions of tax returns in 2020 and 2021, continually misleading Congress and the media about the size of the backlog. Citizens faced harsh penalties for not filing their 1040 on time, but the IRS faced no penalty for making false statements about millions of tax returns it had failed to process.

The Inflation Reduction Act should have been named the Boarhawging Taxpayers Again Act. The Internal Revenue Service has perennially been the authoritarian means to paternalistic ends. Since politicians worship revenue above all other gods, don’t expect the Biden administration or Congress to stand up for average Americans unfairly caught in the revenue crosshairs.

Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

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