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Papers reveal what CIA did to captives in Afghanistan

By Kit Klarenberg | RT | December 7, 2021

New published documents have shed fresh light on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program in Afghanistan, describing in alarming detail some of the extreme techniques used by officers that resulted in deaths in captivity.

In a recent legal filing, the lawyers of Abu Zubaydah – the Guantánamo Bay detainee almost tortured to death by the CIA, held without charge by the US for nearly 20 years – urged that their client be released, given Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and with Al-Qaeda are finally over.

Writing to a DC district court, they argued that these developments meant there was no legal justification for keeping him captive, and he must be immediately discharged. What the petition omits to mention, however, is that Zubaydah’s detention was, from day one, intended to be permanent in order to keep the CIA’s criminal maltreatment secret and ensure his abusers were insulated from prosecution in perpetuity.

In July 2002, four months after his capture in Pakistan, the Agency’s team in Afghanistan specifically sought “reasonable assurances” from superiors that he would “remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.” In response, a memo stated that there was “fairly unanimous sentiment” within CIA headquarters that Zubaydah “will never be placed in a situation where [he] has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released,” and would “remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

Langley’s desire for total omerta in all matters concerning its torture program is understandable, for a great many people have much to hide.

At the start of December, BuzzFeed published hundreds of declassified papers related to CIA Inspector General investigations into child sexual abuse by Agency staff and contractors. Buried among these was a May 2004 Special Review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, launched after Gul Rahman, an Afghan suspected of having militia ties, died at the ‘Salt Pit’ black site in Kabul 18 months prior.

It notes that Rahman was subject to sleep deprivation sessions lasting 48 hours, during which he was denied clothing “to cause cultural humiliation,” and subject to “hard takedowns” – a euphemism for “rough treatment.” Despite this, he remained uncooperative and provided no intelligence, only admitting his identity after several days “in cold conditions with minimal food and sleep.” A psychological assessment in November 2002 noted his “remarkable physical and psychological resilience,” and resultantly recommended “continued environmental deprivations” to get him to talk.

One afternoon that month, when food was delivered to Rahman, he reportedly threw a water bottle and his defecation bucket at guards, warning that he’d seen their faces “and would kill them upon his release.” When Salt Pit’s manager learned of this incident, he authorized ‘short-chaining’ the prisoner – tying his hands and feet to the floor so he could not stand or sit comfortably – naked from the waist down in his cell.

On the morning of November 20, Rahman was found dead. Subsequent investigations by the Inspector General found that Salt Pit staff had employed a number of techniques and “improvised actions” approved by neither the Department of Justice nor CIA headquarters. These included frequent freezing showers, at such icy temperatures they left the suspect unable to speak properly.

A psychologist present at Salt Pit recalled observing Rahman “showing the early stages of hypothermia” after being subjected to one such shower, and ordered guards to give him a blanket. Another contractor declared that these showers were a deliberate “deprivation technique,” deployed when it was perceived he was being uncooperative, and never for “hygienic reasons.”

Nonetheless, when asked by investigators whether cold was used for the purposes of interrogation, a nameless CIA staffer coyly responded, “not per se,” but acknowledged physical and environmental discomfort “was used to encourage the detainees to improve their environment.” They went on to argue that “cold is hard to define,” asking rhetorically “how cold is cold? How cold is life-threatening?’”

While the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program remains classified today, its 525-page executive summary referred to Rahman over 100 times. Details of his death were largely absent, although it was revealed that not only was no Agency staffer disciplined as a result of it, but Salt Pit’s manager – who was not a trained interrogator, and had a history of behavioral issues – was recommended for a $2,500 cash award for “consistently superior work” four months later.

An Agency Accountability Board eventually decided to take the mild step of suspending the most junior CIA officer involved for 10 days without pay, but even this was overturned by the Agency’s then-Executive Director Kyle Foggo, who wrote to the staffer personally to say, “while not condoning your actions, it is imperative, in my view, that they… be judged within the operational context that existed at the time of Rahman’s detention.” Foggo was subsequently jailed for fraud, having helped friends improperly profit from CIA contracts in Iraq.

The executive summary names Rahman as the only prisoner known to have died in CIA custody – although the Inspector General Review shows this to be untrue. It records how in June 2003, an Afghan citizen allegedly implicated in rocket attacks on a joint US Army and CIA position in the country’s northeast attended Asadabad Base “at the urging of the local Governor,” whereupon he was detained in a facility guarded by US soldiers for four days.

During his brief period in captivity, a CIA contractor “severely [beat] the detainee with a large metal flashlight and kicked him during interrogation sessions,” leading to his death. His body was then turned over to a local cleric and his family, without an autopsy being performed. Neither the contractor nor his Agency supervisor was trained or authorized to conduct interrogations, although he faced no penalty, bar his contract not being renewed.

The review also makes clear that a penchant for extreme violence among CIA staff in Afghanistan, and the impunity with which they committed crimes, wasn’t restricted to its assorted prisons in the country. For example, it records how in July 2003, an officer visited a religious school, to determine if any staff or pupils could offer information related to the detonation of a remote-controlled explosive device that had killed eight border guards a few days earlier.

A teacher reportedly “smiled and laughed inappropriately” while being interviewed by the officer, prompting them to strike the man twice in the torso with their rifle butt, then repeatedly kick him as he lay prostrate on the ground – the incident was said to have been witnessed by 200 students. In response, the CIA simply brought the officer back home, whereupon they were “counseled and given a domestic assignment.”

Still, the review cannot be considered comprehensive, for it merely reflects what incidents were officially recorded. Disturbingly, the document concludes by noting that while documentation of the capture, rendition, detention, and interrogation of “high value detainees” was “comprehensive,” documentation related to detainees of “lesser notoriety” was “far less consistent.”

As the CIA wasn’t compelled to document the capture and detention of all individuals until June 2003, the Inspector General was “unable to determine with any certainty the number or current status of individuals who have been captured and detained.” In other words, the question of how many detainees were actually murdered under the auspices of the CIA torture program remains very much open – which in turn means anyone who could shed light on the matter, such as Zubaydah, can never be at liberty again.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. 

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

YouTube reveals mass problem of false copyright claims

Millions of videos falsely flagged

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 7, 2021

YouTube has published its latest transparency report – this being the first detailing the way the giant deals with copyright claims.

The big takeaway is that the copyright claims system is abused on a mass scale, as many observers believe it to be – 2.2 million videos have been targeted with fraudulent, or “incorrect” as YouTube put it, claims in the first half of this year alone, the report reveals.

Still, this is only a small fraction – under 1 percent – of overall copyright claims filed from January to June 2021, which amounted to a whopping 729 million. And 99 percent of those came from the automated and controversial Content ID system.

When creators decided to contest these bogus claims, their appeals were accepted in 60 percent of cases, YouTube claims, interpreting this number to mean that its copyright enforcement and appeals system represents “real recourse” and brushing off the long-standing, serious shortcomings as “no system being perfect.”

But creators who lose income thanks to false copyright strikes – when their content is blocked, muted, or stripped of ad revenue – are unlikely to be appeased by YouTube admitting to its faults and providing a glimpse into the numbers with the first of its kind copyright transparency report.

Despite being a massive platform and a financial juggernaut, YouTube is still failing to meet the goal set by CEO Susan Wojcicki all the way back in 2019, when she said the Google company was “exploring” how it might find “the right balance” between creators and copyright holders.

In the report, YouTube says that they have worked hard to assist the latter with even better tools to protect what they claimed as copyrighted content, while creators are being given tools and resources to help them “manage” their content.

YouTube also explains that there are three avenues they provide to copyright owners: the webform, which can be used by anyone and rarely results in takedown requests; the Copyright Match Tool available to more than 2 million channels hunting down reposted content; and finally, what YouTube calls its “award-winning” Content ID, which is responsible for 99% of all takedown requests – 722 million in the first six months of this year.

Content ID is geared towards serving “the most complicated rights management environments, like movie studios and music labels,” said YouTube.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Twitter bans largest Ghislaine Maxwell trial tracker account, @TrackerTrial

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 8, 2021

@TrackerTrial, an account with over 525,000 followers that provided regular updates on the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial, has been banned from Twitter, just 10 days after the trial began.

The high-profile trial of Maxwell, who is accused of facilitating the sexual exploitation of girls for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, isn’t being broadcast so people have turned to social media to get updates on the trial. Twitter’s focus on real-time updates and breaking news has resulted in it being the preferred platform for many independent accounts that are covering the trial.

Twitter claimed that the @TrackerTrial account had violated its rules against “platform manipulation and spam” and cited its rules around artificially amplifying or suppressing information when banning the account.

“This is the first censorship that the account has experienced,” The Free Press Report told Reclaim The Net. “No warnings or anything. I woke up this morning and my account was gone.”

However, the account’s creator, pushed back against Twitter’s claims and said: “The account got insane engagement, which by the way, was all organic. There was not outside amplification.”

“The people wanted to hear the truth about the Ghislaine Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein trial and the engagement numbers showed that,” The Free Press Report added. “There were hundreds of millions in impressions and an account that went from zero to over 525,000 followers in a couple of weeks. All we did was report information from the trial that the mainstream media was failing to do.”

The Free Press Report has appealed the suspension and has vowed to continue reporting on the trial via its Substack. It has also encouraged people to follow its Gab account for “a more informal route of communication.”

Additionally, The Free Press Report warned about the power of Big Tech and how it can use its stranglehold over news distribution to determine which news stories are promoted and which news stories are suppressed.

“Big tech has gotten too powerful, and they can silence us anytime they want,” The Free Press Report wrote. “Local blogs and websites are suppressed by big tech algorithms. If you write one thing out of line Google can institute a site-wide ban, making sure you never show up in search algorithms again. Facebook restricts what is posted on their website. Twitter suppresses any outside links, to keep users on their own site. The year is 2021 and big brother is watching.”

This isn’t the first time Big Tech has censored content related to Maxwell and Epstein with Facebook and YouTube censoring and “fact-checking” commentary and memes on Epstein’s 2019 suicide. A roast of Epstein and Maxwell was also removed from Facebook for violating the platform’s rules around “harassment and bullying.”

Twitter has been approached for comment.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

The Omnipotent Power of the Pentagon

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 8, 2021

No matter how you feel about the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, you can’t help but be impressed at how they are able to successfully plunder and loot American taxpayers, no matter how much needless death, suffering, and destruction they wreak on people around the world.

Think about it: They just exited Afghanistan after their 20-year failed war against the Taliban, a war that left thousands of American soldiers and countless Afghans dead and the entire country destroyed. On top of all that death and destruction was the total waste of hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money. It’s also worth mentioning that for those entire 20 years, they intentionally lied to the American people regarding progress in their undeclared forever war.

And what has been the result? They get rewarded! Congress is on the verge of giving them more taxpayer money than ever before! That’s impressive, even if in a negative way!

In other words, they are no longer wasting money in Afghanistan in the form of bombs, bullets, gasoline, oil, medicare care for wounded soldiers, etc. That’s got to mean that a lot of money is now being saved.

So, does Congress reduce the military’s budget by the amount of money that is no longer being wasted in Afghanistan? Are you kidding? Like I say, believe it or not, they are actually upping the amount of U.S. taxpayer money that they are allocating to these people! They are giving them more taxpayer money than when they were in Afghanistan wasting all that taxpayer money!

That is power, sheer power! How can anyone not be impressed by it, even if In a negative way?

The fact is that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA own Congress, lock, stock, and barrel. Not only is Congress filled with national-security state assets, even those members of Congress who maintain the appearance of some degree of independence do not dare to buck the national-security establishment. They know that if they were to buck them, they would soon be targeted with extinction in the next election.

There is another factor that is impressive in a negative way — the ability of the Pentagon and the CIA to engender official enemies to scare Congress into granting the national-security establishment whatever it wants.

Just look how they have succeeded in converting their old Cold War enemies, China and Russia, into new big official enemies of the United States. After milking the “war on terrorism” racket for as much as they could for the past 20 years, they’re now circling back to milk their old Cold War racket against their old Cold War communist enemies.

What’s also fascinating is how they are able to engender these official enemies while convincing people that they are the innocent victims who are forced into defending America and the world from the barbarians at the gate.

Consider how they have done this with Russia. Their strategy has been absolutely brilliant, again in a negative way.

First, they tell Russia that NATO will not expand eastward after Russia called it quits on the Cold War racket. It was a lie. Instead, NATO began gobbling up former members of the Warsaw Pact, moving NATO’s forces and U.S. missiles inexorably closer to Russia’s borders.

When NATO threatened to absorb Ukraine, which would have given the Pentagon and the CIA control over Crimea and also enable the U.S. to station missiles right on Russia’s border, NATO officials and U.S. officials knew precisely that Russia would have to react.

When Russia did react in the predicable way, the U.S. response was brilliant, again in a negative way. Instead of NATO and the U.S. creating the crisis, it was Russia who was presented as the aggressor. NATO, Ukraine, and the U.S. were all seen as the victims of Russian aggression. The only thing that was missing was the threat of “godless communism,” which was the basis of their Cold War racket against Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union.

It’s been pretty much the same with China. While the U.S. government was mired down with its forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was prospering and establishing friendly relations with countries all over the world. The U.S. Empire could not tolerate that. That’s when they launched their vicious trade war against China and began doing everything they could to destroy China’s economic prosperity. Among their favorite weapons was economic sanctions, a foreign-policy tool that targets the civilian population of a country as as way to achieve political ends.

Today, China is portrayed by the U.S. mainstream press as a grave threat to U.S. national security, just like it was during the Cold War racket. In one way, the situation with China is even better than with Russia. Given that China is still a communist regime, U.S. officials and their assets in the U.S. mainstream press can still use the “godless communism” angle that they did during the Cold War racket.

Since the Pentagon and the CIA are still killing people in the Middle East, the threat of anti-American terrorism continues to exist. Combine that with the scary notion that the Russians and Chinese Reds are coming to get us, and you have the perfect justification for the continuation and expansion of the U.S. national-security state and its deadly, destructive, and very expensive rackets.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

“Masks were to soften you up for Plan B”

By Laura Dodsworth | December 8, 2021

‘Masks were a softening up exercise for Plan B,’ according to a government whistleblower. He told me that while there is little appetite in the Cabinet for a full lockdown, Covid Passes are ‘oven-baked’ and ready to go.

In my opinion, the UK government’s Winter Plan was always about Plan B. It displayed a classic ‘foot-in-the-door’ strategy – the raison d’être of Plan A was to prepare you for Plan B. Now winter is upon us, and the nudges fall in a flurry of torpefying snowflakes. Worst case scenarios, big numbers, salutary stories in the media, threats and cajolements are directed at us daily. Plan B is in motion as calls for working from home are heard from the usual suspects and we hear the Cabinet is divided on Covid Passes.

This seasoned government insider plays a key role on a Covid task force and has decided to speak out now because he is disturbed by the unethical reasons for mandating masks. Firstly, ‘It’s a highly political move to reset the Johnson administration’s orientation after bad polling over sleaze and corruption. If Omicron turns out to be super-bad and the public ask what the government did about it, the answer is we implemented masks. The one-way systems, plexiglass screens and masks are to give you an illusion of the government doing something. It’s just theatre. There is no evidence base or proportionality in favour of masks.’

Boris Johnson is a fan of deadcatting, a technique to deflect attention from one issue to another, akin to throwing a dead cat on a table during a heated debate to change the topic.  Masks are a dead cat. In this case rather than throw them on the table, the government have slung them on our faces.

Face masks are increasingly discredited, but certain journalists fell hungrily upon a recent new study which concluded that face masks reduce transmission by 53%. The Guardian, The Times, Metro and New Scientist positively feasted. However, that fragrant soupçon of a percentage was based upon weak evidence, there were confounding factors and caution was required when interpreting the study, as Fullfact explained.

‘The public are annoyingly on board about masks’, said this task force advisor. ‘Journalists have not demanded evidence that they work. But the message from the government and the media is hegemonic – everyone says they do work.’

As I set out in my book A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic masks are a nudge, even described as a ‘signal’ by David Halpern, the director of the UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team. Similarly, Professor Neil Ferguson said that masks remind us ‘we’re not completely out of the woods yet’. They serve as a visible public reminder of the pandemic, turning us back into walking billboards pronouncing danger. My source concurred: ‘Masks are a behavioural psychology policy. We need to stop pretending that it’s about public health. Nudge is a big thing in government.’

Despite ‘a pretty much unlimited budget to run trials’ they didn’t run one for masks ‘because they knew that they don’t work’. In effect, ‘the trial was Scotland versus England. And we found they don’t work.’

For this government insider the implications are now too serious to remain silent because ‘we are lying when we say masks work. They are a signal, a psyop. And we’ve criminalised not wearing them. Masks also transfer the blame onto individuals for the epidemic spreading. We have people counting the unmasked on public transport, policing each other. It is deeply unethical that we have set people against each other in this way. It allows the creation of an “out group” to blame.’ He points out that it is the government we should blame for not increasing healthcare capacity.

The timing of our conversation is interesting. He speaks to me just before the news about Downing Street Christmas parties breaks. People are rightly angry about hypocrisy and the pain of their own cancelled plans last year. The nation suffered last minute restrictions while Downing Street enjoyed revelry. More than one million pounds in fines have been served to nearly 2,000 Covid-19 rule breakers at Westminster magistrates court, including throwing and attending parties, while Boris Johnson evades punishment.

But the real point is not the hypocrisy, or that we suffered while they did not. Rather it is that those who organised and attended the party had a different risk calculus. They did not feel imperilled by parties and gatherings. They knew they were safe, just as they know that masks don’t work. What we are expected to believe is another matter.

As these distasteful double standards are unmasked, Ministers are considering whether to impose Plan B and roll out Covid Passes. When the Winter Plan was published, we were told that the trigger to move from Plan A to Plan B was if the NHS comes under ‘unsustainable pressure’. This was left deliberately vague. If you were watching cases and hospitalisations with an anxious eye, I’m afraid you were missing the more important signs: stories about doctors’ anger at the ‘selfish’ un-jabbed, daily polling via Twitter, TV shows and Yougov about the national appetite for Covid Passes and mandates, and the reintroduction of masks.

There is an army of behavioural scientists, communications specialists and Covid task forces focussed on Covid. The government insider told me there are hundreds of people in this Covid apparatus, even though we are no longer in an emergency. Robert Higgs talks about the ‘ratchet effect’ in his book Crisis and Leviathan whereby the state expands in response to a crisis and then doesn’t recede afterwards to its former level. The aura of emergency will not fade and we risk ever more stringent and unpalatable restrictions unless this apparatus is dismantled. Furthermore, public reputations have been staked on enforcing restrictions, including journalists, scientists and politicians.

The government insider is brutal about the reality of our situation: ‘England is teetering on the edge of a depressing, bureacratic, safety-obsessed society. We’re not at the level of Germany or Austria yet, but we’re on a precipice nonetheless.’ On his primary reason for calling me, he said he is ‘ashamed how much people believe in masks despite the lack of evidence’.

Our leader’s masks are slipping, exposing hypocrisy, psychological manipulation and barefaced lies. Frankly, I am ashamed of them.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

A Constitutional Cure for Covid-19

By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD – December 6, 2021

Covid, Covid, Covid. Variant, variant, variant. Trust me, I’m the government’s highest paid employee, and “I represent science.” Show your papers, wear a mask, take a shot or lose your job. And the beat goes on for an infection where 99.95 percent of infected persons under age 70 years recover. It’s becoming clear that Covid-19 is not merely a disease but an excuse to concentrate power in the government.

It’s time for the political histrionics to stop. Multiple studies have shown that the consequences far outweigh any potential (and illusory) benefits of masks, lockdowns, and school closures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director admitted that the current Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, while helpful in reducing deaths and hospitalizations, do not stop transmission of the virus. “Breakthrough” cases in vaccinated persons are on the rise. Moreover, the current vaccines likely are not effective for the new, likely less lethal Omicron variant. Public health experts opine that the SARS-CoV-2 virus (that causes Covid-19) and its multiple variants are becoming endemic. That means SARS-CoV-2 and its infinite number of variants will not be eliminated, but become a manageable part of the human-viral ecosystem.

Sadly, our government is not responding in accordance with the scientific facts. Instead, federal and some local governments are mandating more vaccines, culminating in proof of vaccination to engage in society and continue living as a normal human being. This is not science. This is nascent totalitarianism.

Two lines from the 1990 Cold War era spy film, The Hunt for Red October foreshadowed our government’s warp speed trajectory to authoritarianism. “Privacy is not of major concern in the Soviet Union, comrade. It’s often contrary to the collective good.” And a White House official casually boasted, “I’m a politician that means I’m a cheat and a liar.”

It didn’t take long for President Biden to tell the big lie. As president-elect, Mr. Biden said there would be no vaccine mandates. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (the third in line for the presidency) brilliantly illustrated the intersection of lying and privacy. As late as August 2021, Speaker Pelosi said, “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated. That’s just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn’t.”

Without skipping a beat, the executive branch issued three separate vaccine mandates: all federal contractors (including remote workers), an Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) requirement for businesses with more than 100 employees, and a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requirement for employees, volunteers and third-party contractors of health care providers certified by CMS.

The judicial branch is fighting back against the President’s attempt to jettison the Constitution’s separation of powers clauses, a large chunk of the Bill of Rights, and Supreme Court precedents on bodily autonomy with these mandates. On November 9th, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the OSHA mandate on hold. The Court reasoned that the mandate “threatens to substantially burden the liberty interests of reluctant individual recipients put to a choice between their job(s) and their jab(s).” And “the loss of constitutional freedoms ‘for even minimal periods of time … unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

Citing the lack of congressional authorization and harm to access to medical care, on November 29th a Missouri federal district court placed a temporary halt on the CMS health care workers “boundary-pushing” mandate. The government planned to enforce the mandate by imposing monetary penalties, denial of payment and termination from the Medicare and Medicaid program. The ruling covers providers in Kansas, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

On November 30th, a Louisiana federal district court blocked the CMS mandate issuing a nationwide injunction in a lawsuit brought by 14 states (Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia). “If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. … [C]ivil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency.”

That same day, a Kentucky federal district court issued a hold on the federal government contractors mandate, citing lack of authority of the executive branch—“even for a good cause”. The court reasoned that if a procurement statute could be used to mandate vaccination, it “could be used to enact virtually any measure at the president’s whim under the guise of economy and efficiency.” The ruling covers Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

The mainstream media finally reported on the toxicity and poor results of Dr. Fauci’s “standard of care” treatment, remdesivir. This prompted families to use the courts rather than watch their relatives needlessly die. Victories for patients are growing. A Chicago area judge recently ordered a hospital to “step aside” and allow a physician to administer ivermectin in an effort to save a dying patient. It worked.

People are tired of lies. When Google employees are signing a “manifesto” to fight the mandates, you know the seeds of revolt have sprouted.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

The crooked, proto-fascist EU President Ursula von der Leyen

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | December 7, 2021

MANY TCW Defending Freedom readers will know Paul Weston from his informed below-the-line comments on the site over the years. Others will know him for his own YouTube video analyses of ‘Covid lies, damn lies and statistics’ and other topics.

It is the latest of these we want to share with you today – his expose of EU President Ursula von der Leyen and the resurrection of fascism in Europe. Paul dismembers the financial malfeasance behind her arbitrary billion-euro vaccine order from her close friend Albert Bourla, the Pfizer chief executive who seems to make a quite a success of chumming up with the gullible great and good  despite his company being fined £2billion in recent years for bad practice.

What never ceases to amaze me is how our woke social justice warriors in the press and on TV manage to turn a blind eye to these, the biggest crimes of all, happening in the here and now. So we have to thank Paul Weston for doing their job for them in the case of the crooked and dangerous von der Leyen. His video, which you need to watch from beginning to end, shows once again that it is fascism in governments we have to fear or beware of, not that of marginal and powerless street groups, such as exist at all.

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Media are gagging challenges to the Government’s Covid narrative

By Mark Sharman | TCW Defending Freedom | December 8, 2021

In his skyscraper office high above New York’s Sixth Avenue, Roger Ailes, then boss of the Right-leaning Fox News, was justifying his channel’s slogan, ‘Fair and Balanced.’

It was a well-rehearsed line. The rest of the US media, he said, were the liberal Left. ‘So we balance it  – and that’s fair.’

Later, an underling added that in America you chose the channel that best fuelled your own views. ‘It just depends on how you take your political medicine.’

On the flight home, I thought how fortunate we were in the UK, with a remit of impartiality in broadcasting; a duty to report fairly and evenly. Less than two decades later, I wonder what’s happened to those intrinsic values.

In all my years around newsrooms, decent journalists have seen it as their right and obligation to seek out the truth, to scrutinise and determine the facts. But on Covid-19, mainstream news outlets have seemingly kow-towed to the Government line, following the ‘official’ science.

Worse, opposing views have been ignored, blocked or summarily dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘misinformation.’ This is not honest journalism as I know it, especially at a time when the Government has extra powers of control over the population. I was taught early that the more someone pushed for or against a story, the more it needed investigating. So what changed?

It’s bad enough that Big Tech acts as the world’s censor, suspending or cancelling any accounts that carry unpalatable comments about the virus or the vaccines. But the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom has also muscled in.

The authority instructed broadcasters to be alert to ‘health claims related to the virus which may be harmful; medical advice which may be harmful; accuracy or material misleadingness in programmes in relation to the virus or public policy relating to it’.

When did it become the regulator’s job to determine debate on Government policy? In effect it discourages investigation of alternative views. And who decides what is accurate or misinformation anyway?

Some media outlets have their own ‘fact checkers,’ but I’m not overly encouraged that BBC News has a Specialist Disinformation Reporter (the title hardly suggests impartiality) or that Sky’s Digital and Forensics team compiled an article that begins: ‘Covid-19 conspiracy groups who have attempted to undermine efforts to bring the pandemic under control are increasingly sharing climate change misinformation.’

The terms prosecutor, judge and jury spring to mind – and try as I might, I couldn’t find any hard evidence that so-called ‘theories’ were bunkum. They weren’t proven either, but that’s not the point.

Maybe the root can be found in Event 201, a simulated global coronavirus pandemic exercise organised by the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, in October 2019.

Advice to world governments included ‘flood the media with fast, accurate and consistent information’ (some would say propaganda), while media companies, for their part, ‘should commit to ensuring that authoritative messages are prioritised and that false messages are suppressed, including through the use of technology’.

We’ve certainly witnessed less-than-overt Government behaviour.

In her best-selling book A State of Fear, Laura Dodsworth charts how proven psychological techniques influenced the Government in frightening and intimidating the population, ‘nudging’ us to comply over Covid. And how mainstream media acted as cheerleaders in weaponising that fear.

It should make uncomfortable reading for any news executive.

Our Government is supposed to serve us, not use fear tactics to bring us to heel. As an industry, we should challenge the narrative much more rigorously, starting with the numbers. At least the BBC carries the small print, that deaths are from any cause within 28 days of positive test. However, these quickly become Covid deaths on many daily score charts. It’s inaccurate reporting. Or should I call it misinformation? Or again, propaganda?

Now the shame-and-blame game has shifted to the unvaccinated (I prefer vaccine-free), those ‘radical anti-vaxxers … spreading fake news’ according to Austria’s Chancellor as he introduced compulsory vaccination.

When did it become acceptable to persecute people who stand up for that most basic of human rights, that of their own body autonomy?

Why are we not outraged that our neighbours in the Netherlands, ordinary citizens, are shot by their own police? Or that Australians are beaten and shot by rubber bullets, or incarcerated in what has become a police state?

Are we ready to accept such a reaction on the streets of London, Birmingham or Sheffield? What angle would the MSM take, police violence or mob rule? Which way would the scales dip?

A recent protest, not widely reported, saw thousands of people marching through London; students, medics, teachers and ex-servicemen, of all ages and races, people with genuine concerns for their children and their democratic freedoms.

They seek the truth and nothing but the truth about the virus and, particularly, the safety of the vaccines. And they have deep convictions that the truth is not forthcoming from the Government or from broadcasters and newspapers.

And that’s the point. If the media continue to stifle alternative views that flourish on various social sites, and continue to follow the censorial state narrative instead of encouraging healthy open debate, they are fuelling the very ‘conspiracies’ they seek to dismiss.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

TV show deletes poll after 89% oppose mandatory vaccination

RT | December 8, 2021

ITV breakfast television show ‘Good Morning Britain’ received backlash on social media after deleting a poll which showed a vast majority of respondents opposed mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.

The poll, which asked viewers whether it was “time to make vaccines mandatory” in response to the spread of the Covid-19 Omicron variant, was posted to Twitter on Tuesday and soon received more than 42,000 votes.

A whopping 89% of those who voted opposed any scheme to make vaccination mandatory, with just 11% in favour.

After the poll went viral, however, social media users noticed that it had been deleted by the Good Morning Britain Twitter account and critics accused the program of trying to cover up the public consensus.

“Why did you delete this poll, is it because you were asked? Or because it shows the people don’t support this sh*t, this tyrannical future your colleagues seem to want. We see you,” reacted one critic, while another suggested, “Guess that wasn’t the answer they were looking for.”

Good Morning Britain – which was hosted by controversial commentator Piers Morgan before his departure in March – did not explain why it removed the poll.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Putin Has Biden’s Attention, Now What?

By Marko Marjanović | Anti-Empire | December 7, 2021

With the US raising alarm about a supposed Russian military buildup opposite of Ukraine, and the Russians denying anything out of the ordinary is taking place it is tempting to conclude that this is just more of the typical NATO scaremongering about Russia. Trouble is that I don’t believe that. On the contrary, I believe that something very serious is afoot.

The reason I think so isn’t that I have been listening to the Americans, but that I have been listening to the Russians. For years and years, the Russians have been complaining about the march of American & vassal missiles, training programs, weapon stockpiles, and units eastward. They have been complaining for so long that the picture of Russia as being all talk and never following up with real-world measures has become a meme among the more cynical Russia watchers.

Then, all of a sudden two things happened:

A.) Any and all talk of taking Donbass by force suddenly stopped in Ukraine. Instead, Kiev seems genuinely terrified it will be routed by the Russian military and is promising numerous Russian casualties (but tellingly not defeat) in a high-stakes attempt to deter the Russians.

B.) Biden initiated security talks with Vladimir Putin days after regime press revealed that something about the Russian military posture sent Washington into panic mode.

That tells me that the Russians finally did something that got Washington’s full attention. I don’t know what they did. Maybe it was the buildup opposite of Ukraine, maybe it was something else that we’re not being told about. Maybe it doesn’t even matter that much.

What does matter is that the Russian expectations of anything coming out of the initial Biden-Putin talk are nil. That means the Russian pressure — whatever it is — will continue.

The Russians aren’t going to be bought out by talks. They held talks with Biden in the Spring, and these were followed up by more provocations in the Summer. Now they want real, tangible appeasement. They have spelled out as much.

Trouble is, between the characteristic fecklessness and cowardice of the White House (whoever it is occupied by), and the vested Cold War interests I have no idea how they get that.

Any American president who works out a deal with the Russians and removes a missile or two will be denounced as “weak” by all the other institutions of the American Empire which stand to lose from peace, and which together are more powerful than a weak-willed presidency.

In reality, it is just the opposite, it is precisely the weakness of American presidents which makes a good deal with Russia impossible. What is better for the American and, say, the Romanian people, having some US missiles in the land of Dracula, or peace in Europe? Obviously the latter. But any president who concedes as much will face resistance and sabotage by the Pentagon, the CIA, NATO, the posturing Congress, the liberal-interventionist State Department, the think tanks, and the media.

Honestly, I have no idea how Putin, Shoigu, and Lavrov get the security guarantees that they want out of this one. If they succeed they are infinitely better strategists than I.

Let’s say it has indeed been a buildup opposite of Ukraine that forced the Americans to the table, now what?

There is no doubt that if Moscow is willing to sustain the cost in lives and in sanctions (and in Ukrainian bitterness and enmity) that the Russian military can take most of Ukraine.

The Russian military is larger than the Ukrainian one and has more firepower per pound, The two also share a long flat border — there are no convenient bottlenecks. The Russians can force the Ukrainian military to stretch out over a long frontline, pin it down in place, then apply defeat in detail to sectors with maneuver and firepower one by one.

Kiev is just 400 kilometers from the Russian border, and the Americans have already said — in so many words — that direct US military intervention almost certainly isn’t on the cards.

Trouble is this. If the DC Empire and the Ukraine were one organic being then guaranteeing the Russians a missile status quo in return for the Russians not overruning Kiev would be an absolute bargain. Problem is that, not only are the Empire and the Ukraine not a single entity, but the American Empire itself is a hydra with many heads, most of which stand only to gain from a Russian war in the Ukraine.

The White House is the only imperial institution that stands something to lose, namely prestige for having failed to deter the Russians. However, it also stands to lose by being painted as appeasing Moscow so it’s something of a moot point.

In all other respects, the Empire and its institutions stand only to gain. NATO can get a huge lease on life, Pentagon could be looking at the return of full US divisions to Europe, and the European vassals would be more regimented behind the US than ever before. As the cherry on top Russia would be left with the odd problem of policing and rebuilding Ukraine — while under a total Western economic embargo. Perhaps the biggest “win” of all would be the endless opportunity for moral condemnation of Russia over its treatment of “subjugated” Malaya Rus’.

So again, I think Russia can relatively easily occupy land in Ukraine, I just don’t know how it can trade pieces of that land in return for NATO guarantees to stop carrying out provocations that are in its self-interest.

The problem is that Russia enjoying peace and stability on its borders is in Russia’s interest but it is not in NATO’s interest. Why do you think that Russia was willing to strong-arm Donbass into abiding by the Minsk Agreement but the West never applied pressure on Kiev to do the same? Because ultimately fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian and seeing the Russian-Ukrainian enmity deepen is the stuff of dreams for NATO.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Putin to Biden: Finlandize Ukraine, or We Will

By Patrick J. Buchanan | December 7, 2021

Neocons and Republican hawks such as the late John McCain sought to bring Ukraine and two other ex-Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, into NATO. Putin, who served in the KGB in the late Soviet era and calls the breakup of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, is now saying: Enough is enough.

Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia — or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves.

This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders.

At the Kremlin last week, Putin drew his red line:

“The threat on our western borders is … rising, as we have said multiple times. … In our dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on developing concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.”

That comes close to an ultimatum. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg backhanded the President of Russia for issuing it:

“It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. … Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.”

Yet, great powers have always established spheres of influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping claims virtually the entire South China Sea that is bordered by half a dozen nations. For 200 years, the United States has declared a Monroe Doctrine that puts our hemisphere off-limits to new colonizations.

Moreover, Putin wants to speak to the real decider of the question as to whether Ukraine joins NATO or receives weapons that can threaten Russia. And the decider is not Jens Stoltenberg but President Joe Biden.

In the missile crisis of 60 years ago, the U.S., with its “quarantine” of Cuba and strategic and tactical superiority in the Caribbean, forced Nikita Khrushchev to pull his intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which could reach Washington, off of Fidel Castro’s island.

If it did not do so, Moscow was led to understand, we would use our air and naval supremacy to destroy his missiles and send in the Marines to finish the job.

Accepting a counteroffer for the U.S. withdrawal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev complied with President John F. Kennedy’s demand. Russia’s missiles came out. And Kennedy was seen as having won a Cold War victory.

Now it is we who are being told to comply with Russia’s demands in Ukraine, or Russia will go in to Ukraine and neutralize the threat itself.

The history?

When the Warsaw Pact collapsed and the USSR came apart three decades ago, Russia withdrew all of its military forces from Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow believed it had an agreed-upon understanding with the Americans.

Under the deal, the two Germanys would be reunited. Russian troops would be removed from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. And there would be no NATO expansion into Eastern Europe.

If America made that commitment, it was a promise broken. For, within 20 years, NATO had brought every Warsaw Pact nation into the alliance along with the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Neocons and Republican hawks such as the late John McCain sought to bring Ukraine and two other ex-Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, into NATO.

Putin, who served in the KGB in the late Soviet era and calls the breakup of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, is now saying: Enough is enough.

Translation: “Thus far and no further! Ukraine is not going to be a member of NATO or a military ally and partner of the United States, nor a base for weapons that can strike Russia in minutes. For us, that crosses a red line. And if NATO proceeds with arming Ukraine for conflict with Russia, we reserve the right to act first. Finlandize Ukraine, or we will!”

The problem for Biden?

In Ukraine and in Georgia, as we saw in the 2008 war, Russia has the tactical and strategic superiority we had in 1962 in Cuba. Moreover, while Ukraine is vital to Russia, it has never been vital to us.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized Joseph Stalin’s USSR in 1933, Moscow was engaged in the forced collectivization of the farms of Ukraine, which had caused a famine and the deaths of millions. We Americans did nothing to stop it.

During the Cold War, America never insisted on the independence of Ukraine. Though we celebrated when the Baltic states and Ukraine broke free of Moscow, we never regarded their independence as vital interests for which America should be willing to go to war.

A U.S. war with Russia over Ukraine would be a disaster for all three nations. Nor could the U.S. indefinitely guarantee the independence of a country 5,000 miles away that shares not only a lengthy border with Mother Russia but also a history, language, religion, ethnicity and culture.

Forced to choose between accepting Russia’s demand that NATO stay out of Ukraine and Russia going in, the U.S. is not going to war.

Biden should tell Putin: The U.S. will not be issuing any NATO war guarantees to fight for Ukraine.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Paucity of Evidence for Mandated Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters

BY ANDREW BOSTOM | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE| DECEMBER 6, 2021

Federal legal challenges have temporarily enjoined the Biden Administration’s sweeping large business, health care worker, and federal contractor covid-19  vaccine mandates. Notwithstanding these injunctions staying primary covid-19 vaccine mandates, “amendments” mandating booster covid-19 vaccinations have already been issued, as examples, for New Mexico healthcare workers, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst students.

Dr. Allon Friedman’s recent Brownstone essay, citing randomized, controlled trial data on primary covid-19 vaccination, demonstrated, “The Pfizer and Moderna trials show that in lower risk populations (which account for most of society) COVID-19 vaccines do not reduce mortality.” Friedman concluded, “Therefore, [covid-19] vaccine mandates, which are enormously costly and terribly divisive, are a cure worse than the disease.”

Why did Dr. Friedman rely exclusively—and appositely—upon randomized, controlled trial data to justify his conclusion? Almost sixty years ago (in 1963) Campbell and Stanley published their seminal monograph on research methodology entitled “Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research.” This work, which shaped research designs ever since highlighted the major threats to validity that are avoided, uniquely, by the randomized controlled trial—a true experimental design.

Observational studies and all other non-randomized designs lacking parallel control groups, which they referred to as “quasi-experimental,” are fraught with known biases investigators attempt to control for, after the fact, with limited success. Worse still are intractable, unknown biases which the randomization process, alone, accounts for. Guyatt and colleagues, in their 2008 British Medical Journal paper “GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations”, updated and reinforced these ideas, appropriately assigning highest priority to randomized, controlled trial evidence.

On Friday, November 19, 2021, CDC Director Dr. Walensky endorsed the expanded recommendations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that booster (third dose) shots be provided to all adults 18 years of age, and older, who received their second Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine second doses, at least 6-months earlier.

What randomized, controlled trial evidence were the basis for this “unanimous decision,” touted by Dr. Walensky?

Although two small, published, randomized, placebo-controlled trials—one in kidney transplant recipients, and another in a general population—revealed enhanced immune responses to boosters, CDC’s recommendation clearly hinged upon a large, unpublished Pfizer randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.

A month before the CDC expanded booster recommendation was announced, Pfizer’s “randomized trial results by press release” were issued (10/21/21). The ~10,000 person, placebo-controlled randomized covid-19 vaccine booster trial, yielded a 95.6% reduction in symptomatic covid-19 infections (i.e., 109 in the placebo group; 9 in the boosted group), after a median 2.5 months of follow-up. The press release also included this important caveat:

“The observed relative vaccine efficacy of 95.6% (95% CI: 89.3, 98.6) reflects the reduction in disease occurrence in the boosted group versus the non-boosted group in those without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

The November 19, 2021, ACIP presentation of Pfizer’s Dr. John Perez included enough data about prior infection to conclude boosters did not reduce covid-19 infections relative to placebo in this clinically relevant, ever burgeoning subgroup. Simple calculations (based upon the slides from pages 16 and 17) indicate there were only 2 symptomatic covid-19 infections among the 524 trial participants with a history of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1/275 who received boosters, and 1/249 given placebo injections (p=0.944 for incidence rate difference of 0.038%).

Moreover, CDC’s Dr. Oliver, in her ACIP review (p. 25) of Pfizer’s booster trial data, acknowledged that within the full cohort of ~10,000 there were no covid-19 hospitalizations or deaths, and no data to assess any impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

These findings comprise a striking paucity of randomized trial evidence on the “efficacy” of boosters—literally none on the most clinically relevant outcomes of serious covid-19 morbidity and mortality. Even the potential effect of boosters on SARS-CoV-2 transmission remains unaddressed.

Rapidly accumulating data strongly suggest prior covid-19 infection, “natural immunity,” is more robust, flexible, and enduring than exclusive covid-19 vaccine-acquired immunity. Pfizer’s covid-19 booster trial data confirm boosters afford no benefit in preventing covid-19 infections among those with natural immunity.

Given these overall randomized trial findings regarding covid-19 vaccine boosters—absence of even a short- term reduction in mild covid-19 infections in those with natural immunity, and no data establishing that boosters prevent covid-19 hospitalizations, deaths, or SARS-CoV-2 transmission—there is no rational, evidence-based justification for covid-19 vaccine “booster mandates.”

Andrew Bostom, M.D. MS, is an academic clinical trialist and epidemiologist, who is currently a Research Physician at the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention of Kent-Memorial Hospital in Rhode Island.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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