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Zelensky demands $5 billion “every month” from NATO, cites security in Europe

Samizdat | June 29, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged the US-led NATO bloc to ramp up support of his country amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, claiming that Kiev’s defeat would result in a “delayed” war between Moscow and the whole West. Zelensky made the remarks as he addressed the NATO summit in Madrid via a video link on Wednesday.

“It’s either urgent aid to Ukraine sufficient for victory, or a delayed war between Russia and you,” Zelensky told NATO leaders.

The country needs both direct military and financial aid, Zelensky stated, adding that some $5 billion a month was needed to cover its budget deficit. Top Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called upon the West to provide financial support.

“Financial aid for Ukraine has no less significance than arms deliveries,” Zelensky said. “We need some $5 billon every month, you know that. And this is a fundamental thing, needed for defense and protection.”

To help Ukraine now end this war with a victory on the battlefield, that is, to give a really strong response to Russia’s actions – this is what we, and the entire alliance, the whole Euro-Atlantic community need.

Once the conflict is over, Ukraine must be provided with a decent place in the Western security architecture, Zelensky insisted, rejecting the prospect of Ukraine remaining in a “gray zone” between Russia and the NATO bloc. “We need security guarantees, and you must find a place for Ukraine in the common security space,” he stressed.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Tehran rejects G7’s anti-Iranian statement as baseless, one-sided, unfair

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani
Press TV – June 29, 2022

Tehran has vehemently denounced as “baseless, one-sided, and unjust” an anti-Iranian statement by the Group of Seven industrialized states.

The statement was issued during a meeting of the group’s sevenfold members—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—in Germany on Tuesday.

It urged “restriction of Iran’s nuclear program,” faulted Iran’s “ballistic missile activities,” and accused it of “human rights violations.”

Later during the day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the country “strongly condemns” the passages of the statement.

The statement, he said, “deliberately ignores” the United States’ departure from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and others as well as Washington’s subsequent re-imposition of illegal sanctions against the Iranian people.

The Iranian official reprimanded the countries that had issued the statement for their cooperation with the US in imposing sanctions and their refusal to confront the coercive economic measures.

He also spurned any accusations directed towards Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program, saying the statement “deliberately” ignores the Islamic Republic’s ban on all nuclear weapons.

Kan’ani reminded that the G7 countries were facing Iran with “factitious accusations,” while they, themselves, were in possession of the world’s “biggest nuclear arsenal.”

The spokesman, meanwhile, blasted the statement for trying to portray Iran’s comprehensive cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear body, in a bad light.

The official further rejected all allegations against Iran’s “legitimate and defensive missile program,” reminding that the country’s missile work can never be subject to any negotiation or compromise.

“It is necessary that the parties that have issued the statement rather be accountable for their sales of billions of dollars of advanced weapons, which is one of the most important factors of instability in our region,” Kan’ani asserted.

Addressing the human rights accusations made through the statement, the official said the countries throwing the allegations were the very same states that have closed their eyes to the “flagrant violation” of the Iranian nation’s rights as a result of the sanctions.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Hypocrisies and successes at UN meeting to ban nuclear weapons 

By John LaForge | PeaceVoice | June 24, 2022

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 65 governments, known in diplomatic circles as States Parties. The treaty’s first Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) concluded here June 23, after painstakingly working out — in the words of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons — “a blueprint for the end of nuclear weapons.” The New Treaty is the extraordinary, crowning achievement of ICAN, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts.

At 1MSP, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany — all three of whom use U.S. nuclear weapons on their air force bases — participated as Observer States. The three have not ratified the TPNW, having acquiesced with a string of U.S. administrations — Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s — that conspired at every opportunity to derail, prevent, delay, weaken, and boycott the new ban — in spite of Broad Public Support For Nuclear Disarmament. Mr. Trump demanded that States Parties withdraw their ratifications. None did. Biden’s White House reportedly urged Japan not to attend the 1MSP as an Observer, and they stayed away.

German and Dutch representatives took their turn and spoke to the MSP on June 22, but both NATO members used exactly the same words to note their government’s explicit disapproval of the TPNW, and to voice their supposed support for the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both representatives said their governments “will not accede to” the nuclear ban treaty “because the TPNW is inconsistent with NATO doctrine.”

The hypocrisy in German and Dutch opposition is that their “sharing” of U.S. nuclear weapons, while consistent with “NATO doctrine” is totally inconsistent with their hallowed Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In fact, their 50-year-long dismissal of the NPT’s binding (Art. VI) obligation to begin negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament “at an early date” is also completely inconsistent with their feigned support for the NPT.

As German Representative Rüdiger Bohn said June 22, NATO “doctrine” includes the doleful edict, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear Alliance.” This embrace of genocidal atomic violence is not an Article of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Or NATO Charter. It was manufactured entirely by its nuclear-armed members, and there is no legal obligation for NATO to remain a nuclear-armed terrorist organization.

NATO “doctrine” is fluid, strictly advisory, and accepted voluntarily by its members. Even the NATO Charter’s famous Article 5, regarding collective response to a military attack on a member state, declares only that the NATO membership “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking … such action as it deems necessary.”

In comparison, the Non-Proliferation Treaty is binding international law and includes explicit, unambiguous prohibitions and clear, binding obligations. NATO’s ongoing planning, preparations and ever-present threat to launch nuclear attacks (known as “deterrence”), is simply a ritualized practice which can be ended at any time — say by complying with the NPT’s Articles I and II which prohibit any transfer or reception of nuclear weapons between states, or its Article VI pledge to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Indeed, it is the 50-year-long postponement, or rejection of Art. VI that has prompted and propelled the overwhelming success of the new TPNW.

What might have been a week-long celebration of the TPNW’s progress in seeking a world free of nuclear threats, was dimmed by Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. It was the war’s spoken and unspoken reminders of ready nuclear arsenals in Russia and NATO that moved the MSP to say, in its Final Declaration, that it “condemn[s] unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances.”

The Declaration castigates nuclear weapons and echoes Daniel Ellsberg’s 1959 Essay “The Threat and Practice of Blackmail,” noting that the Bomb is used to coerce, intimidate, plague, curse, and terrify. “This highlights, now more than ever, the fallacy of nuclear deterrence doctrines, which are based and rely on the threat of the actual use of nuclear weapons and, hence, the risks of the destruction of countless lives, of societies, of nations, and of inflicting global catastrophic consequences.”

The Parties agreed to push ahead with resolve to eventually see the nuclear weapons states sign on, saying “In the face of the catastrophic risks posed by nuclear weapons and in the interest of the very survival of humanity, we cannot do otherwise.”

____________________

John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Climate Change Committee Warns Government Must Go Further To Limit Warming

By Richie Allen | June 29, 2022

The UK government’s official advisers on climate change have warned that much more needs to be done to persuade people to fly less and eat less meat in order to meet climate targets.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that unless policies are radically improved, the UK won’t achieve its target to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

According to The BBC:

The committee is an independent body advising on climate policy. This report is an annual review of progress to MPs.

It does praise ministers on two issues: it says the government’s renewable energy programme will save people £125 a year on bills by 2030.

And it congratulates ministers on promoting electric cars – even though it says more charge points and more electric vans are needed…

The committee agrees that carbon-cutting policies are now in place for most sectors of the economy – but it says there’s “scant evidence” that these goals will be delivered.

And it warns that ministers need a back-up plan, including measures they may prefer to avoid such as asking the public to change behaviour by eating less meat and flying less.

The chairman, Lord Deben, told BBC News that recent climate extremes were “very, very worrying”. He continued: “The public should be proud of the UK setting best targets but I’m very worried that there’s no convincing programme for delivering policies.

“I’m seriously worried that we are not moving fast enough to avert real catastrophe.”

Legendary Australian Geologist Ian Plimer has just published a new book entitled “Green Murder.” I’ve just finished reading it. I wish every man, woman and child on Earth had a copy to hand.

In the book, Professor Plimer forensically annihilates the claim that man-made Co2 is responsible for global warming.

He warns us that ludicrous net zero policies will result in ruined economies, the destruction of the global food chain, permanent travel restrictions, the death of civil liberties and worldwide unemployment.

Each and every claim in his book is backed up by peer-reviewed evidence, yet you’ll never hear Ian Plimer on the BBC.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

EU Told to Prepare for Economic Hammering, Forget ‘Wildly Optimistic’ Plans to Replace Russian Gas

Samizdat – 29.06.2022

Economists on both sides of the Atlantic have recently urged their respective publics to prepare for a recession, and possibly a stagflationary crisis, amid surging inflation and soaring energy costs exacerbated by Washington and Brussels’ moves aimed at dramatically reducing dependence on Russian oil and gas.

The European Union’s plan to replace Russian gas before the end of the current year isn’t only “wildly optimistic,” but will add to the economic woes the bloc is already facing, London-headquartered macroeconomic forecasting consultancy TS Lombard has predicted.

In a recent report, TS Lombard researcher Christopher Granville calculated that the EU imported roughly 155 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from Russia in 2021, with all of Brussels’ proposed measures to replace it – including diversification of gas sources, heating efficiency measures, solar rooftops, biomethane, etc. account for the equivalent of about 102 bcm of gas, leaving about a third of supplies unaccounted for.

“Apart from implementation timings of commissioning German LNG-receiving terminals, Russia is also an important supplier of LNG, underlining the challenge for Europe of sourcing adequate LNG supplies,” Granville wrote.

Amid EU efforts to source gas from alternative suppliers, including the US, Qatar and Azerbaijan, Granville’s report warned that the EU will be made to “pay more on average for its [non-Russian] oil and gas than its peers. Asian countries will buy more Russian oil at discounted prices… LNG imported by Europe from the US will cost [much] more than the price paid by US consumers owing to transit and liquefication/re-gasification costs.”

Russian officials and European energy company officials have estimated that Russian pipeline gas flowing to Europe has been 40 and 50 percent cheaper than American LNG, and less expensive than all other alternatives, owing to the shorter transit distances, larger volumes, and competitive pricing.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Moscow’s “Western colleagues” had “forgotten” the elementary laws of economics by trying to cut themselves off from Russian energy, predicting that the decision would turn Europe into the region with the highest energy costs in the world. This would undermine the EU’s competitiveness vis-à-vis other agglomerations, he said.

“Obviously, together with Russian energy resources, economic activity will also be leaving Europe for other regions of the world. Such an economic suicide is of course the internal affair of European countries. We must proceed pragmatically and primarily from our own economic interests,” Putin said.

Russian natural gas exports to Europe have declined precipitously in recent months as EU bloc countries search for alternatives. The drop accelerated earlier this month after Russian gas giant Gazprom indicated that it would be forced to reduce flows to Europe by up to 60 percent due to problems with the repair and maintenance of German-sourced turbines pumping gas through the Nord Stream 1 network. Germany and Denmark activated emergency measures as supplies dropped. Brussels accused Moscow of artificially throttling exports, with the European commission calling the emergency measures “blackmail.”

Takahide Kiuchi, an economist at the Tokyo-based Nomura Research Institute economic consultancy, warned in a research note Tuesday that if the crisis surrounding the Nord Stream 1 shortfall escalates, Brussels could add gas to the list of other Russian energy supplies that have been banned or semi-banned. This, he predicted, would push the Eurozone into a “sharp slowdown,” and plunge Germany into a recession.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Biden announces new troop deployments in Europe

Samizdat | June 29, 2022

Washington will significantly increase its military presence in Europe to “defend every inch of allied territory,” US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday after arriving in Madrid, Spain for the annual NATO summit.

The US 5th Army Corps will set up a headquarters in Poland, while 5,000 additional troops will be deployed to Romania.

The Pentagon will also boost rotational deployments in the Baltic states, dispatch two additional squadrons of F-35 fighter planes to Britain, and station additional air defenses in Germany and Italy. The US Navy will increase the number of destroyers stationed in Spain from four to six.

There are already around 100,000 US troops stationed in Europe. “We’re stepping up, proving that NATO is more needed now than it ever has been and it’s as important as it ever has been,” Biden said.

NATO has been boosting its military presence on its eastern flank after Russia sent troops to Ukraine in late February. The military bloc’s chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Monday that the alliance will increase its rapid-response force from 40,000 to 300,000 troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cited NATO’s attempts to establish “a foothold” in Ukraine as one of the causes of the conflict.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Climate Lockdowns Are Here

By Patrick Macfarlane | The Libertarian Institute | June 28, 2022

In a development that has been widely broadcast for decades (to those tuned to the correct frequency), Western countries have begun implementing the next step in the government-by-emergency manual.

Indeed, once the public allows government to immolate its rights to freedom of association and freedom of movement, those rights are never again absolute.

Last week, local officials in Bordeaux, France banned outdoor events due to heat advisories, citing public “health risk.” The new regulations forbid “[c]oncerts and large public gatherings… until the end of the heat wave.” But not to worry! “Private celebrations, such as weddings, will still be allowed.” (Emphasis added).

The BBC notes that these heat advisories are the product of man-made global warming. It advises:

Climate change is causing global temperatures to rise. Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, released into Earth’s atmosphere in large volumes are trapping the sun’s heat, causing the planet to warm. This has brought more extreme weather, including record-breaking high temperatures across the world.

In recent weeks, the global heatwave has allegedly caused everything from wildfires to water and energy shortages. Amid “Putin’s price hike,” the warm weather has caused countries to ration energy via fuel and electricity limitations.

For instance, Breitbart reports that Ireland is planning COVID-style lockdowns in the event heat waves increase demand amid an attempted rejection of Russian energy.

Americans are not exempt. In December 2020, President Biden called climate change “a crisis” saying, “[w]e need a unified national response to climate change we need to meet the moment with the urgency it demands, as you would during any national emergency.”

In a January 2021 interview with CBS, Biden’s climate change tsar, Gina McCarthy framed her administration’s approach to this “crisis.” Her carefully-constructed word choice should be familiar to anyone who has studied the technocratic class’ COVID agenda:

This is a whole of government approach… we have to pay attention to science and facts. It’s a future that says we’re going to base our decisions based on real evidence, and that we recognize that climate change is a catastrophe.

In a perfect example of how government and the new media work together to advance a common agenda, the CBS interviewer helped Ms. McCarthy frame the issues:

People don’t often think about climate change as an opportunity. But it is an opportunity to reshape our future into a better future, economic, health-wise, our society in general. What are some of the biggest initiatives you’ve planned to move forward?

Ms. McCarthy’s responses to this prompting included predictable policy that will dramatically lower the standard of living of people everywhere. This includes a transition from fossil fuels to “clean energy,” massive government spending, government intervention in the economy, and elimination of systemic racism in a policy referred to as “climate justice.”

Whether the day’s hobgoblin be climate change, the Hitlerian Vladimir Putin, or the common cold, one thing is certain: government-by-emergency is bringing us closer to a waking dystopia.

Patrick MacFarlane is the Justin Raimondo Fellow at the Libertarian Institute where he advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy. He is a Wisconsin attorney in private practice. He is the host of the Liberty Weekly Podcast at http://www.libertyweekly.net, where he seeks to expose establishment narratives with well researched documentary-style content and insightful guest interviews. His work has appeared on antiwar.com and Zerohedge. He may be reached at patrick.macfarlane@libertyweekly.net

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Thanks Pfizer!

By Alex Berenson – Unreported Truths – June 26, 2022

My mom, a devotee of Saint Anthony Fauci – America’s Doctor! – found herself in atrial fibrillation following her booster last fall. The afib passed, so come spring she dutifully lined up for another booster.

Guess what came back?

And guess what has now appeared on her counter – what she’ll now be taking for the rest of her life?

Coincidence, of course, given her history of heart problems – oh, wait, she had NO history of heart problems ever?

Well, whatevs, stuff happens.

I believe Big Pharma calls that a win-win!

Not that I needed more incentive to chase the truth until the sun explodes and swallows the earth, but now I have it.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Bobbie Anne Flower-Cox | Session 108: fiat iustitia

ATTORNEY AT LAW BOBBIE ANNE FLOWER-COX INTERVIEWED BY REINER FUELLMICH AND VIVIANE FISCHER (June 10, 2022)

Guest:
Bobbie Anne Flower-Cox – Attorney at Law, New York with focus on representing New Yorkers on
matters pertaining to over-reaching government agencies or departments.

About:
As an attorney in NY and during this year she has been in a lawsuit against Governor Kathy Hochul and the NY Dept of
Health over their illegal “isolation and quarantine camp” regulation.
This regulation allows the government to take someone out of their home, quarantine them just because they assume
they have been exposed to a disease, and they don’t even have to prove that the person really has a disease.
They can even remove just one person from a family unit!

The Corona Committee was founded on the initiative of attorney and economist Viviane Fischer and attorney Dr. Reiner Fuellmich. It is conducting a review of evidence on the Corona crisis and measures.

Learn more about the committee:
https://corona-investigative-committee.com

Anonymous tips to the Corona Committee:
https://securewhistleblower.com

Dr. Reiner Fuellmichs english Telegram channel:
https://t.me/s/ReinerFuellmichEnglish

Tor:
http://2hfjtvg32qm6kjo2esoqu3djhc6xctn2wofnkrpc4vjez47a5wei44qd.onion

Only through your donation the work of the Committee is possible:
https://corona-investigative-committee.com/donate/

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video | , | Leave a comment

NEJM: Global Warming Causes Stillbirths, Birth Defects, Infant Heart problems

Finally you can laugh a bit

By Igor Chudov | June 28, 2022

Okay, enough birth rate sadness, let’s lighten up a bit. We have a long road ahead of us, we cannot be sad all the time, so it is time to smile.

We have some climate change news.

Remember that a couple of days ago, I asked, why is the birth rate in Germany dropping? What is going on with a 23% drop in live births in Taiwan? Why are births dropping 10% in Switzerland this year? Why is the UKHSA vaccine surveillance report not reporting live births since February, for which it showed a 10% year-to-year drop in live births, and nothing since?

Fortunately, science has an answer for us. These baby problems have a known cause. It is climate change. Here’s an amazing article. It came out just in time for the birth rate scandal, which is obviously just a coincidence.

This article refers to a study, published in New England Journal of Medicine, a prestigious bellwether of medical science and a guide to all doctors worldwide.

The article explains that global warming may cause many problems in developing and unborn children. “All children are at risk”, says the study. Some of these problems are very familiar to us, and I am glad that scientists finally could attribute them to global warming.

Let me list them, coming verbatim from the NEJM article:

The article, further, admonishes physicians to be aware of the new medical consensus:

Protection of children’s health requires that health professionals understand the multiple harms to children from climate change

So if parents ask a doctor, why are their children having heart problems, neurological issues, etc, the doctor would be able to cite the NEJM article and explain how those problems are caused by climate change.

One of the two coauthors of this global warming article, Kari Nadeau, is a well-published scientist who also published an interesting study explaining why vaccine-induced immunity is better than natural immunity. That study was, purely coincidentally, financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It also contradicts everything that we know from practical experience, of course. What else did you expect?

 

Financing of such authors by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, obviously, is nothing to worry about. I also wonder, how can Kari Nadeau be equally good at writing on matters of immune imprinting and immunology, as well as on totally unrelated matters of climate change? I am not sure.

June 28, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The Long Arm of the Covid Saga

By Gabrielle Bauer | Brownstone Institute | June 28, 2022

With the emergency phase of the pandemic behind us, the Covid alarmists don’t have much material left to work with—but doomsaying abhors a vacuum.

Enter long Covid, the perfect object of fear because it can never be disproved. You can hold it responsible for any symptom you develop after the acute phase of the illness, whether weeks or years down the road. Tired? Long Covid. Forgot where you put your keys? Long Covid. Breathless after climbing a flight of stairs? Long Covid, no doubt. It’s an unfalsifiable diagnosis, a fearmonger’s wet dream.

If I sound flippant, it’s because the past two and a half years have left me just a tiny bit wary of the human propensity for panic. As we’ve all discovered, a panicked populace will accept—or rather, demand—any and all restrictions on basic rights and freedoms. If we allow long Covid to become the new panic button, these restrictions could stretch into an indefinite future.

For the record, I’m not suggesting that long Covid doesn’t exist. I don’t wish to dismiss the suffering of affected people. My beef isn’t with individuals, it’s with public health messaging that keeps pumping fear into an exhausted and confused populace that has lost the capacity for rational risk assessment. I’m suggesting that we put long Covid in perspective so it doesn’t become the next pretext for putting our lives on hold.

Media Magnification

We certainly can’t count on a balanced perspective from legacy media and the experts they enlist: fear generates clicks, retweets, and ad revenue. “There’s no one who is too young and healthy to not go on and get post-acute COVID syndrome,” says New York rehabilitation therapist David Putrino in Parade magazine, doing his part to ensure everyone stays scared.

In a New York Times article titled “This is really scary: kids’ struggle with long Covid,” National Institutes of Health researcher Avindra Nath warns of the impact of long Covid on children’s development. “They’re in their formative years,” he says. “Once you start falling behind, it’s very hard because the kids lose their own self-confidence too. It’s a downward spiral.”

One can’t help contrast this solicitude with the lack of media concern about the effect of school closures and long masking on child development. Just saying.

Long Covid alarmists also compete for airspace in the Twitterverse, with professional fearmonger Eric Feigl-Ding predictably leading the charge. From his May 20 tweet: “Let this sink in. A billion people could suffer long Covid in the next 3 years.” True to form, he can’t resist inserting some chest-beating into his scare story. “The burden of long Covid will likely be much higher than anyone imagined. And yet very few care enough to mitigate transmission. And that makes me sad.”

It’s not just health professionals who spit out such tweets. Software developer Megan Ruthven exhorts us to reactivate the stop-the-spread program of 2020, this time to “prevent hospital collapse due to long Covid.” For exactly how long? According to a dude called Xabier Oxale, as long as it takes. “Let’s look at Long Covid, and then, only then, you can assure that a strain is less severe. For that, you need months, even years. As they don’t know, cautionary principle must prevail. Covid Zero!” That’s right, folks. Covid Zero is back.

Then there’s Charlos, who decries the government’s inaction in the face of long Covid, which he dubs “the greatest mass disabling event in human history.” The ampersand-loving Mx. Charis Hill, meanwhile, points the guilt screws right at you and me. “You may be personally willing to risk an infection & Long Covid & the loss in financial stability that will cause. But what if you get Covid, give it to your spouse/child/parent/sibling, & they become permanently disabled? Because of you?”

If these Tweets don’t strike terror in your heart, you have only to read the June 7 blog post by the People’s Pharmacy. “Long Covid is common and scary!” reads the headline, followed by “long Covid is nasty!” in the subhead. Further along in the article, we learn that the “brain and body both react to Covid!” Not one to give up on exclamation marks, the author warns us again that “the body is also impacted!”

It’s time to slow the spin, I say. Let’s start with some numbers.

All over the map

Studies on the prevalence of long Covid have yielded wildly discrepant results, which alone should cast doubt on the scariest numbers. Some researchers estimate that fewer than 10% of Covid infections progress to long Covid, while others peg the rate at more than half. In children and adolescents, the reported prevalence swings even more widely—between 4% and 66%, according to a review of 14 studies. To make things still more confusing, long Covid symptoms can also occur after influenza, though with less frequency.

So what and whom are we to believe? When in doubt, it never hurts to look at large, well-controlled studies, which by design carry the greatest statistical weight. A UK analysis of over 50,000 subjects, both with and without a history of Covid infection, suggests that long Covid may not live up to its cataclysmic media portrayal. In its report on the study, the UK’s Office of National Statistics states that 5% of previously infected subjects reported at least one common long Covid symptom 12 to 16 weeks later. The twist: “[The] prevalence was 3.4% in a control group of participants without a positive test for COVID-19, demonstrating the relative commonness of these symptoms in the population at any given time.”

There it is, straight from the ONS: at any point in time, more than 3% of random people on the street experience the nonspecific symptoms that characterize long Covid, such as fatigue, headaches, and poor concentration. A similar picture emerged from a controlled Danish study of pediatric long Covid, involving over 44,000 subjects and published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

A substantial minority of previously infected children reported long Covid symptoms—but so did their non-infected counterparts, at a lower rate deemed “statistically significant but not clinically relevant.” While this doesn’t disprove the existence of long Covid, it does invite skepticism about the sky-high prevalence figures reported in some studies.

Symptoms attributed to long Covid are also all over the map, from hallucinations and hair loss to menstrual changes and penile shrinkage. Allergic reactions, peeling skin, joint pain… the list goes on. But here’s the thing: we can’t conclusively pin any of these symptoms on long Covid. As a McGill University report on long Covid symptoms concedes, “Noticing something after getting sick with a virus does not automatically imply that it was caused by the virus.” In a nutshell, long Covid remains a slippery eel, adept at eluding our grasp.

What we don’t know

There’s something else we don’t know, and it’s the hottest of hot potatoes: whether situational or psychological factors could explain some long Covid symptoms. Relax, people. I’m not suggesting it’s all in the head. All I’m saying is that a symptom can spring from more than one source, and experts agree.

A Johns Hopkins expert report on the origin of long Covid symptoms allows that mental health problems can arise from “unresolved pain or fatigue, or from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after treatment in the intensive care unit.”

Along similar lines, a Globe and Mail article notes the challenge of untangling “which [post-Covid symptoms] can be attributed to long COVID and which are the result of hospitalization, since a lengthy stay can itself cause a host of physical and mental health problems.”

I repeat: I am not negating the existence of long Covid. I am not denying it can cause pain and suffering. I support research and public investment into the phenomenon. I’m simply saying that we need to drop the sky-is-falling pronouncements and replace them with more balanced and hopeful messaging.

Above all, we need to avoid turning long Covid into the new Scary Thing, the monster in the closet that leads a frightened public to demand longer and harsher restrictions on living. No level of protection is worth going through that exercise again.

Gabrielle divides her time between writing books, articles, and clinical materials for health professionals. She has received six national awards for her health journalism.

June 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Experts Urge Caution as American Academy of Pediatrics Calls for Mental Health Screenings for Newborns to 21-Year-Olds

By Martha Rosenberg | The Defender | June 27, 2022

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) this month added recommendations for preventive pediatric healthcare to its 2022 Periodicity Schedule, also known as Bright Futures — including the recommendation to “screen for depression and suicide risk” annually in children starting at birth and up to 21 years.

With experts warning of a mental health crisis among children and adolescents, the AAP’s recommendation, at least on the surface, may seem sound and reasonable.

But depression screening can be dangerous, some experts say.

Dr. Allen Frances, professor and chairman emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in 2016 told The Wall Street Journal that depression screening risks medicalization of the “normal” and that “teens may be haunted for life by carelessly applied labels.”

Dr. Edmund Levin, who specializes in adolescent psychiatry, wrote in Adolescent Psychiatry, “Over-diagnosis needs to be considered as a contributor to the trend of increasing percentages of youth being diagnosed and medicated for a variety of mental health conditions, including depression.”

And according to 2019 research in the journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, overmedication is often seen in children in foster care, children from distressed families and those in the juvenile justice system or residential treatment programs.

Psychiatric medications for children have their place on the continuum of treatment options, but could the AAP’s new recommendation result in many more children being prescribed lucrative and dangerous psychiatric drugs — some of which can cause suicide, especially in children, according to their own labels?

The AAP describes itself as “an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.”

Yet a quick look at its top donors reveals companies whose products may sometimes conflict with the “health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.”

These include Ronald McDonald House Charities, the biotech giant Sanofi Genzyme, baby powder maker Johnson & Johnson (among the AAP’s “top 10 donors”) and the drugmakers Abbott, Merck and Novavax.

The AAP is hardly the only well-respected medical association to play both sides of the street — taking drugmaker money while giving “trusted” medical advice.

Nor is it the only association to establish detailed recommendations and screenings for patients — screenings that often directly enrich drugmakers.

For example, “TeenScreen,” a program at Columbia University in New York City that ran from 2003 until 2012, offered free psychiatric services to screen children for suicidal tendencies and emotional problems.

Directed by Leslie McGuire, formerly a leader at the drug industry-funded National Alliance on Mental Illness, TeenScreen “routed [children] into ‘mental health’ treatment,’” wrote the Idaho Observer.

“Many of these would be ‘treated’ with psychiatric drugs, ignoring the fact that many of these very same drugs carry Black Box warning labels, mandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because they are known to cause violence and suicide.”

According to the Alliance for Human Research Protection, TeenScreen, which folded in 2012, was a “highly controversial, aggressive, medically dubious mental health screening protocol developed with federal funding…”

AAP not new to marketing problematic drugs

In 2015, Fox News reported the AAP helped Merck market its asthma drug Singulair (montelukast) to children.

“Merck teamed up with kid-friendly groups like Scholastic Press and [gave] money to the American Academy of Pediatrics to train doctors on ‘diagnosing’ and prescribing ‘proper medication’ for asthma,” wrote Fox reporter Tisha Thompson.

The marketing partnerships presented two problems — the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in trusted organizations promoting the sale of prescription drugs for private companies, and the promotion of what turned out to be a drug with a very concerning safety profile.

On Sept. 27, 2019, the FDA held a joint meeting of the Pediatric and Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committees to address growing reports of neuropsychiatric events caused by montelukast in pediatric patients.

The meeting included a lot of talk about black-box warnings.

Testifying at the hearings were parents whose children had experienced severe harm and even killed themselves on the asthma drug.

The parents, who came from groups like the Montelukast Side Effects Support and Discussion Group and Parents United for Pharmaceutical Safety and Accountability, asserted that a black-box warning, not yet added to the montelukast label, would prevent future tragedies.

At the time, the montelukast label warned only against “neuropsychiatric events.”

The parents were successful. On March 4, 2020, the FDA decided to add a “boxed warning” to montelukast due to “an elevated concern regarding the risk of neuropsychiatric events, including suicidal thoughts and actions.”

In a statement provided to Fox News about the conflict of interest, the AAP wrote:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Comprehensive Asthma Program is an independent program promoting the evidence-based guidelines for asthma care from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The incidence of asthma in children — especially minority children living in poverty — is steadily increasing.

“The goal of this program is to improve the care of children with asthma by helping pediatricians adopt the NHLBI guidelines in their practices, within the context of a medical home, thereby reducing the rates of emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths in children with uncontrolled asthma.”

An educational grant to provide funding came from the Merck Childhood Asthma Network Inc., a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization headed by Dr. Floyd Malveaux that is separate from Merck & Co.

The AAP told Fox News:

“The grant provided $651,530 from 2008 through 2011. While the sponsor provided funding for the Comprehensive Asthma Program through an educational grant, the content was determined solely by the AAP, using guidelines from the NHLBI. It is not a conflict of interest. By accepting external grants like this, the AAP is able to disseminate its educational messages to mass audiences.”

Three years after the Singulair scandal, Knight Science Journalism Fellow and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today reporter John Fauber reported on another suspicious AAP partnership — the AAP endorsed guidelines that recommended particular acne drugs when 13 members on a 15-member panel were “paid consultants or speakers for companies that make the drugs.”

According to Fauber, the co-chairs of the acne guidelines panel that the AAP relied on — Diane Thiboutot, professor of dermatology at Penn State-Hershey, and Lawrence Eichenfield, pediatric dermatologist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine — had worked as consultants or speakers for Galderma, the manufacturer of a recommended acne drug.

Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized medical reporter. Her work appears in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Consumer Reports, Public Citizen, Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and other top outlets.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

June 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

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