Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

This Week in the New Normal #4

OffGuardian | August 29, 2021

1. VACCINE BRAND WARS?

On Friday, a UK coroner confirmed that BBC presenter Lisa Shaw, who died in May, was killed by the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine.

The media have, naturally, gone out of their way to remind their public that “vaccines are safe for most people”, and that Covid is “more likely to give you blood clots than the vaccine”. But that’s hardly surprising.

What’s really interesting is that the story made headlines at all. If the media were 100% dedicated to painting the vaccines as safe, why not just bury it completely?

The AZ brand of experimental Covid therapy has been the acceptable punching bag of the vaccine roll out. From as early as last December, the AZ shot was being described as an “also ran” compared to the products made by pfizer and Moderna.

In the spring of 2021 some countries, including Norway and the Netherlands, stopped using it completely after initial concerning reports of blood clots. The US, still, refuses to recognise those given the AZ jab as “vaccinated”. The Indian-made “Covishield” brand of the AZ shot is not recognised by the EU’s vaccine passport system.

Why is this?

Well, it could be a simple psy-op designed to create, and reinforce, faith in the system. You produce several vaccines all in the space of a year (all with equally unknown long-term effects), and then you repudiate one for “being unsafe”, and you create the illusion that a) the others are safe b) the system works and c) you honestly care about public health.

It should also be noted that the AZ shot is not an mRNA vaccine, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna jabs. So there might be an interest in bad-mouthing it, if your end goal is to study the impact of mRNA technology on humans.

In June the BBC reported that internet “influencers” were being paid to bad mouth Pfizer’s and prop-up AstraZeneca’s. The press blamed “Russian antivaxxers”, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. It was far more likely a marketing agency employed by AstraZeneca.

In fact, Facebook has already banned a UK-based marketing company that has attacked both the Pfizer AND AZ “vaccines” at different points.

And when the headlines about AstraZeneca’s product causing bloodcluts first hit, it was Pfizer that benefited, as their stock value took a jump.

All together I would say that evidence points to a behind-the-scenes catfight between big pharma companies. They’re all fighting each other for the lion’s share of their soon-to-be-mandated market.

It’s funny that, even in a plan as grand as total global control, they can’t put petty greed aside and actually co-operate, and it also tells you exactly the kind of short-term thinking psychopathic minds at work here.

2. AMAZON PAYING FOR PALM PRINTS

This is exactly what it sounds like.

Amazon is installing biometric pay points in their in-person stores, and are giving out $10 gift cards to anyone willing to have their unique palm print scanned into the system. They are pushing it as a way to pay without any physical contact, perfect for avoiding becoming infected by the “pandemic”.

But – shockingly – Amazon might not be entirely trustworthy. They have stated that the biometric data will be used to monitor shopping activity and target ads, which is bad enough, but there are myriad other applications. None of them especially reassuring. For one thing, Amazon could sell the data…to anyone.

As a precedent for that, there is the Amazon facial recognition tech, which they already sold to the US government:

Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.

Still though, if you value your privacy as little as 10 dollars, go for it.

(And yes, we know this story is from earlier this month, but we didn’t see it ’til now, and it’s worth mentioning.)

3. JUDGE TAKES AWAY PARENTAL RIGHTS OVER “VACCINATION” STATUS

Again, exactly what it sounds like.

According to a story from Fox News local Chicago station, at a digital child support hearing over Zoom, judge James Shapiro asked the mother – Rebecca Firlit – if she had been “vaccinated”.

When Firlit answered “no”, the judge awarded full custody to the father and gave the mother zero visitation rights. She is currently not allowed to see her son until she gets “vaccinated”.

Previous to that hearing the divorced couple had shared custody. And the vaccine status of the parents had never been a bone of contention.

BONUS: DISTURBING HEADLINE OF THE WEEK

Not even a write up for this, just a picture of the front page of the Toronto Star :

…. yeah.

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

As you no doubt know, there were more protests this week. In Ireland, Australia, New York, London and many others. There was a great protest against Covid passes in Rheims, where people set-up picnic blankets outside cafes:

Also, Eric Clapton released a new song about the vaccine situation:

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the UK’s media war on parental consent, or the subtle anti-US slant appearing the press following the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan (including renewed calls for an EU army).

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video | , | Leave a comment

How to Use Blood Testing to Increase Your Resilience to COVID

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 29, 2021

In this interview, Thomas Lewis, Ph.D., and Dr. Michael Carter explain how biomarker panels can help you take control of your health by identifying underlying chronic infections that might be sabotaging your health. Lewis is a microbiologist with a Ph.D. from MIT and certifications from the Harvard School of Public Health and Carter is an integrative physician.

They run a company that performs diagnostic testing to guide patients through a process of diagnosing various ailments. Biomarkers such as D-dimer, fibrinogen, clotting factors and auto antibodies, which are largely ignored by the mainstream, can clue you in on where you lie on a health/disease continuum.

Importantly, poor COVID outcomes are rare unless you have two or more comorbidities, and in the last year, they’ve developed a more refined way of assessing an individual’s COVID-19 risk using a panel of specific markers associated with inflammation and blood clotting.

Their testing helps YOU understand where you are on the health-disease continuum. In their model, you are not either sick or well — you are somewhere on this continuum. Find out where you are and then work to improve your status.

“Really, it’s your chronic health status that helps you figure out where you are in the continuum for COVID risk,” Lewis explains. The same goes for the COVID shot. According to Lewis, whether you got COVID-19 or the vaccine, the risk factors that determine whether you’ll have a serious bout of COVID-19 or experience more serious adverse events from the shot are identical.

The Role of Underlying Infections

Underlying or latent infections can play a significant role not only in chronic disease but also in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., has pointed out the role of retroviruses and coinfections with pathogens such as borellia and babesia in leading to less favorable outcomes in COVID.

Her hypothesis is that SARS-CoV-2 in and of itself is not the primary cause of COVID-19. She’s convinced there must be a coinfection along with SARS-CoV-2 that suppresses or compromises your immune system in order for symptomatic COVID-19 to occur.

Carter and Lewis have discovered a number of infectious pathogens that are even more prolific than those highlighted by Mikovits, and which appear central in triggering many chronic conditions that then predispose you to more severe COVID-19.

Primary among those are bacteria involved in periodontal disease (periodontitis). You don’t have to have oral issues or root canals to have a high burden of periodontal pathogens. The Lewis/Carter team test for these pathogens using an oral DNA home test kit.

Another is chlamydia pneumoniae, a respiratory pathogen that 60% to 70% of older adults have antibodies against. Chlamydia pneumoniae plays a role in several common age-related conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately, few are ever tested for the presence of this organism.

According to Lewis and Carter, inflammatory markers and clotting markers such as C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, uric acid, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, D-dimer, and sedimentation (SED) rate are strongly associated with innate immune response activity and chronic infections, which in turn correlate with COVID-19 severity.

“What’s tricky about these organisms is they don’t always show up from the classic acute perspective of diagnostic,” Lewis says. “If you talk to any infectious disease doctor that’s not functional in nature, they’ll say that the IgG antibody is historic. But I can guarantee you they’re completely wrong.

They’re not looking at things from a chronic, stealth [perspective]. Do we think chickenpox, the herpes zoster virus, is the only organism that can cause problems and then go dormant and reactivate when you’re immune-compromised later in life? No.

Every single one of these organisms has a potential opportunity to go from an acute phase to a chronic phase. Some never even express acute disease. They just hang out in biofilms and will express in the chronic phase later in life, causing disease of “unknown” origin!

It’s called crypticity, which makes it extremely difficult to create, in the minds of doctors and researchers, the association between the disease and the exposure. Sometimes these exposures are congenital. They happened pre-birth. So, that’s really the art.”

So, to clarify the hypothesis presented by Lewis and Carter, the conventional view is that these infections, once they’ve generated an IgG antibody response, no longer pose a threat to your body. But this isn’t the case.

They can indeed lay dormant only to later contribute to chronic diseases that, on the surface, appear to have nothing to do with a pathogenic infection. The book by Paul Ewald titled, “Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease,” written in 2000, explains well this conundrum.

How to Identify Underlying Infections

The clinical approach to identifying whether an underlying infection is at play in a particular disease is to look at antibody levels. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) is reflective of long-term protection and also happens to be the most common antibody, found in blood and other body fluids. It protects against both viral and bacterial infections and tends to be elevated when the infection has reached a chronic state.

Immunoglobulin M (IgM) is associated with acute responses to infections and is found primarily in your blood and lymph. It’s the first antibody to be made when your body encounters a new pathogen. Carter explains:

“Everyone has a baseline level of IgG and IgM, especially in the acute phases, but the long-term IgG, once it is above the normal background level, then in many cases, especially in those who are symptomatic with various diseases, there is reactivation of that virus, bacteria, parasite or other pathogen, what have you — any grouping of these organisms that can smolder and cause disease patterns.

The driver is inflammation and tissue destruction. The mechanism is simple. We all have some “wear and tear.” These organisms increase wear and tear so your “repair and recovery” pathways cannot keep up.

We also — even without doing those IgG levels, just on our basic platform of biomarker testing — can see things in the complete blood count where, let’s say our white blood cell count has a ‘normal range’ somewhere between 3.8 and 10.8 depending on the lab. But that’s a very wide normal range.

Really, anything above 6.2, in terms of your white blood cell count, is an indicator that something is brewing. When we start looking deeper at the neutrophils, the lymphocytes, the basophils, the monocytes and eosinophils, when those values are increased or decreased beyond the optimal range, we can tell that there are critters being unruly even though you don’t have fever, chills or a classic increase in white blood cell count.

So, we know that these pathogens are present in everyone. It’s really incumbent upon your own immune system to be vigilant to keep them at bay and stop them from replicating.”

In summary, if you have elevations (or suppressions) in white blood cell markers, then you likely have an infectious process going on in your body. There’s also typically a direct correlation between your antibody level and the risk of disease, so the higher your antibody level, the greater your risk of chronic disease and poor COVID / JAB outcomes.

PCR testing can be useful for identifying a specific pathogen. However, if excessively high cycle thresholds (CTs) are used (as has been the rule when testing for SARS-CoV-2), the test becomes useless, as it can find even a single molecule if run at a high-enough CT. So, the CT needs to be below 26 to avoid false positives.

Review of Lewis and Carter’s Research

Before we go further, here’s how Lewis describes their research, and how it can improve your health and medical decisions:

“Carter and I are not researchers. We like to fancy ourselves translators of best clinical research. There’s really great science published, but medicine is a business decision. Less than 1% of the great medical research makes it to clinical practice.

We had the opportunity to evaluate 100 people at a Fortune1000 company. Based on that, we made an assumption that, because of their health status, 42 of them had some sort of an infectious process.

So, we were given license to test IgM, IgG, bacterial [and] viral. Forty-one of 42 were positive using our testing. Now, we’re not looking for everything in the universe. We’re telling the lab what to look for: what we call ‘usual suspects.’ Some of them had IgM and IgG, and some of them just had IgG with a negative IgM for a single or multiple pathogens.

When we treated them over nine months, everyone got better. What was remarkable is IgG levels [indicative of chronic infection] came down. When someone had a negative IgM but a positive IgG and symptoms, and their IgG level came down, they got better too. This proves that IgG is indicative of the presence of a “hidden” but chronically active infection.

So that’s not an extraordinarily scientific evaluation, but it’s completely consistent with the work of folks like Charles Stratton out of Vanderbilt, who’s written about chlamydia pneumoniae and its three different life forms.”

There are many other researchers and clinicians who have come to this conclusion. Lewis and Carter are in the process of publishing a peer-review medical paper that references many other publications explaining how important an IgG antibody test is.

Treating Chronic Versus Acute Infections

Carter and Lewis have developed a pretreatment program, followed by a variety of treatment strategies aimed at chronic infections. As you might expect, the chronic infection treatments involve more aggressive approaches, and will depend on whether the infection is caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites.

The biggest factor for effective treatment is eradicating pathogens hiding in biofilm, which takes time. (We do not address the use of specific remedies in this interview, as each patient must be tested, seeing how there’s such a broad array of potential causal factors.)

As noted by Lewis, even if you use a broad-spectrum anti-infective, such as ozone, you’ll rarely eradicate enough of the chronic phase of these organisms, as they shelter inside biofilms or inside your cells — including your white blood cells. that are very difficult to get into. These pathogens are often referred to as “obligate intracellular pathogens.” The “obligate” part infers that these harmful organisms rob your energy by mimicing to be your mitochondria. He explains:

“For long periods of time, you have to maintain a physiologically anti-infective dose. The other piece of it that we’ve learned, [and which] everybody knows much better now because of COVID-19, is the inflammatory component. There’s no question that the inflammatory response can override, go too far, even in chronic conditions.

There’s a brilliant paper by Australian groups that talk about cytokines, anti-inflammatory treatments and their clinical relevance.

The biggest problem we face is that, if you bang your elbow and your brain at the same time with the same sort of force, your elbow will recover in a couple weeks, but the brain perpetuates inflammation much longer, and sometimes forever. Consider traumatic brain injury as an example. It happened one time a while ago, but your brain stays “inflamed.”

So, every treatment has to consider an infectious [risk], has to consider lifestyle risks, and help you optimize those things. But generally, there has to be a very strong anti-inflammatory component, which … has to be rigorous and continuous. That’s the big challenge …

Dr. Stratton at Vanderbilt has shown that these organisms can live in an elementary body, a reticular body, and a “cryptic” phase. In some of these phases they’re completely refractory [i.e., resistant] to antibiotic treatment …

J. Thomas Grayson, 95 years old, [a doctor of] preventive medicine at University of Washington … showed that … when it comes to organisms like chlamydia pneumoniae, you have to treat for one year. That’s scary for people, so what we do is we do three-month segments and then retest. Obviously, we measure for symptoms, but also the IgG.”

The Role of Vitamin D

A basic intervention that is really important for shoring up your immune system is vitamin D. Vitamin D is really a pro-hormone and hormones regulate physiological processes. I believe vitamin D optimization — making sure your blood level is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (150 nmol/L and 200 nmol/L) — is one of the easiest, least expensive and most important things you can do to avoid infections of all kinds, including COVID-19.

The activated form of “vitamin” D is produced in your liver when you have an infection and it is strongly antibiotic. Lewis and Carter recently completed a study in which they looked at the vitamin D level compared to neutrophil and lymphocyte ratio. Lewis explains:

“Neutrophils go up with bacteria. Lymphocytes often go down with viral infections, so [your neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio] is sort of a measure of your overall infectious burden.

What we did recently, and we’re putting this into a paper we’ll be publishing, is a study of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio versus blood 25 hydroxy vitamin D levels. We saw a very clear linear relationship between a bad neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio count and low vitamin D, and then just the opposite.”

They’ve also found a similar correlation between chronic infection and free cholesterol (not total cholesterol). This correlation appears particularly strong in those with cancer, who typically have a free cholesterol level of 50 ng/mL and above. An optimal level is thought to be somewhere between 5 ng/mL and 20 ng/mL, with the healthiest of people typically falling between 5 ng/mL and 15 ng/mL.

When free cholesterol is elevated, you’re more prone to tissue destruction, as cholesterol is an important repair molecule. Since your cholesterol level can indicate your tissue repair capability, it is also included in Lewis’ and Carter’s COVID panel.

“Cancer patients are, I think, just the tip of the iceberg in terms of people that have some virulent infectious process that is destroying tissue,” Lewis says. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to see a very strong correlation to your free cholesterol number as part of the portfolio of tests you want to do to investigate what is going on inside your body.”

How Do You Know if an Infection Is Chronic?

One way to determine whether you’re suffering from an acute or chronic infection is to look at the half-life of the factors being measured. Lewis explains:

“If you take a test now and in three months and you see a sustained trend of biomarker elevation, that’s obviously a way to relate it to chronic infection. But in a single test, every biomarker has a half-life. Red blood cell distribution width, because it’s tied to red blood cells, it’ll stick around for four months.

It has a much longer half-life than say C-reactive protein. If you bang your knee, [C-reactive protein] will go way up, then come down with the half-life of one and a half days.

Fibrinogen is seven days. When you understand half-lives, then when you look at a single lab and they’re all elevated to sort of the exact same extent above what we consider our baseline, then we know it’s chronic, or at least with a very educated guess, that it’s in the chronic phase.”

What’s in the Panel?

Speaking to the issue of what the panel Lewis and Carter developed contains, Carter explains:

“A typical panel … is a very concise panel of blood biomarkers. We expand that with the inflammatory markers that really play a role [in chronic infections].

So, if your homocysteine and C-reactive protein are up, these are key inflammatory markers that many people are walking around with that are high and that are really directly causing toxicity to the [blood]vessels, [thereby] leading to coronary artery disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and a whole host of things. Almost every chronic disease starts in the vessels — more specifically the capillaries.

High sensitivity C-reactive protein is another inflammatory marker that when elevated is really indicative of pathogens in the mouth, among other things. That is one thing that is totally missed by traditional doctors [but] is a key component. The oral testing we do includes Interleukin-6 that tracks closely with C-reactive protein.

If you’ve had root canals or wisdom teeth taken out, or have bleeding gums, [we can] test to see the vast array of pathogens that we know are associated with pretty much every disease syndrome out there.

So, we take these things that have been invisible to the masses and bring it at an affordable cost structure. We have a very robust panel of 55 biomarkers that runs about $150, including vitamin D … If you were to take that same panel, it would be $400 to $500 if you were to go directly to LabCorp.

However, we highly recommend you get this testing from us with a one-hour consult included because of our unique way of explaining the “story” behind your biomarkers — and what you can do to take control of your health. Even with the consult, our pricing is less compared to the labs alone from most places.”

In addition to helping you evaluate your chronic disease risk, this panel will also help you assess your COVID-19 risk. They also offer an advanced panel that is even more comprehensive. It costs about $400 and includes a one-hour consultation to help you understand what all the markers mean.

As noted by Lewis, “It’s all about where do you lie on the health/disease continuum. We very accurately are placing people on that, and there’s not a marker we test for that’s not modifiable through lifestyle or other appropriate interventions. We’re not treating symptoms. We’re going right at the disease.”

Where to Get the Panel

If you’re interested in ordering this panel, go to HealthRevivalPartners.com. If you want to get the comprehensive COVID / JAB risk screening panel, go to www.healthrevivalpartners.com/post-jab-tests. You will be asked to fill out a questionnaire, after which you receive a requisition to have your blood drawn at a LabCorp.

The report you get will be a comprehensive and detailed report from Health Revival Partners in addition to the standard lab report. Carter explains:

“It really starts with the initial questionnaire and we give you a grade from A to F. We wanted to make it so that the average person could really see what is going on in a very tangible fashion. Obviously, you answer 125 questions that are much more probing than your traditional questionnaire.

If you end up with a grade of C, D or F, then that tells you your report card of health is not so good. Then we give guidelines on those questions. When you do your biomarker test, we give you a temperature. It’s called your chronic disease temperature and of course 98.6 is a normal temperature.

When we do the biomarkers, we look at optimal ranges, not just normal ranges. We want everyone to be optimal, not just normal. When those values are either too high or too low out of the optimal range, then you get a corresponding increase in your temperature.

Our “normal” ranges are best on early mortality data for each biomarker. Our normal levels are much tighter compared to the standard of care. We are looking for chronic (smoldering) whereas they are only looking to see if you are very sick or acutely sick.

So now you can have a temperature of, say, 103 based on high homocysteine, high C-reactive protein, high fibrinogen, high white blood cell count and various other biomarkers. We’re testing 55 biomarkers, but 21 of them really home in on and create that temperature setting … Even more biomarkers are part of the COVID panel.

When you correlate that to COVID, we have a little analogy of what’s in your glass. If your glass is a quarter-full, half-full, three-quarters full, you could be walking around with all of these different things: toxins, pesticides, subacute infections.

When your glass gets full and overflowing, then generally that’s going to express as disease. We show where people are on that continuum. How full is your glass of these different things? With the biomarker panel, that gives us a great window [into your COVID risk].”

Building a Stronger Foundation for Functional Medicine

Again, to learn more, and to join the Health Revival Partners’ chronic disease support program, go to HealthRevivalPartners.com. In closing, Lewis notes:

“Integrative and functional medicine is like herding cats. They got into that because they’re outliers, but I’ve been trying to get some of the highest-level leadership in functional medicine to create a core standard of labs that every doctor takes because the biggest reason why you’re not getting served well in medicine today is because the dark side is saying we don’t have the evidence.

One of Carter’s and my life’s goals is to herd the functional integrative cats together to build standards, and I think we’ve done a very good job of creating a very important end-point standard that I think anybody could hang their hat on. That’s early mortality. So, we really want to do that.

“The other part of it is we wrote a peer-reviewed paper1 last year, and we coined the term the ‘pre-cytokine storm.’ Carter talked about your glass being a quarter-full, half-full or overflowing. Measuring your pre-cytokine storm — which our panel incorporates, and then our COVID panel expands even more, so either of those panels are available to anybody that comes to our site — will tell you what your risk factors are.

Your blood doesn’t lie. So, what I’m hoping people will do is become part of the solution. Take the COVID and the vaccine survey, get your COVID risks labs drawn, and then we’ll be able to report back to you and publish peer-reviewed articles about this correlation that right now we’re all being marginalized on because we’re not creating enough evidence.

Judy [Mikovits] knows exactly what’s going on, but to convince the world, we’ve got to get more conventional and functional lab data in large sets to prove our point. That’s how we’re going to start winning, with evidence-based functional medicine.”

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Twitter bans Alex Berenson over COVID tweets

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 29, 2021

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has been permanently banned from Twitter for violating its COVID-19 “misinformation policies.”

The author has become well-known as a critic of coronavirus quarantines and mandates.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the commentator’s account was blocked on Saturday due to “repeated violations.”

“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” the Twitter representative stated.

The journalist has repeatedly expressed his views about COVID-19, in particular the efficacy of the vaccines, but a recent tweet apparently triggered Twitter’s decision to ban him.

“It doesn’t stop infection or transmission,” stated the tweet, which casts doubt on vaccine effectiveness. “It doesn’t stop infection or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine.”

“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”

Twitter later claimed the message was “misleading,” resulting in Berenson’s account being deactivated.

After being suspended from Twitter, Benson made an entry on Substack, a newsletter service, which featured the tweet that appears to have caused the issue.

In the post headlined “Goodbye Twitter,” Berenson wrote: “I am officially suspended. This was the tweet that did it. Entirely accurate. I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this. Meantime, guess you’ll be getting more Substacks.”

“We have reached a dangerous moment. Social media companies that have audiences which dwarf any other are now actively censoring reporters at the behest of governments,” Berenson said in a statement.

“I will continue to fight to get out the truth and am considering all legal options.”

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Media addiction to Covid-19 ‘fear porn’ is perpetuating a worsening cycle of societal damage worldwide

© REUTERS / Thilo Schmuelgen
By Eva Bartlett | RT | August 28, 2021

Over the past year and a half, hysterical media reporting on matters Covid-19 has reduced some people to a fearful state of unquestioning compliance – including a great number of otherwise critically-thinking journalists.

With screaming headlines in bold and large font such as, ‘Will this nightmare ever end?’ and ‘Mutant virus skyrockets…’ and ‘Fear grows across the country: VIRUS PANIC’, and ‘Coronavirus horror: Social media footage shows infected Wuhan residents ‘act like zombies’, it is no wonder many people are in a state of panic.

In times when many are suffering mentally and physically under unnecessary and prolonged lockdowns, the incessant fear porn is causing excessive anxiety, which in turn will affect the health & mental well-being of some, if not many.

In government documents from the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) dated from March 2020 advice was given saying:

“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging… This could potentially be done by trained community support volunteers, by targeted media campaigns, social media”

I’d say the UK media campaigns weren’t so much ‘targeted’ as ‘blanket’ but they certainly did the job, and other Western nations got similar directives. The UK government also became the nation’s biggest advertiser in 2020, make what you will of the potential ramifications that could have on cash-strapped newspapers and their supposed ‘independence’.

Having myself been deeply focused on exposing war propaganda and other media lies around Syria, Palestine, Venezuela, and elsewhere over the years, my default position has become one of deep cynicism on mass media reporting. Yes, you can find nuggets of truth, or even excellent journalists in mainstream publications, honestly challenging the narratives.

But those are few and far between, generally you find copy-paste propaganda emanating largely from the bowels of the USA and the UK.

A study by Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR) noted, “most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.”

Those agencies are AP, Reuters, and AFP. SPR notes:

“The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.”

Given all of this, I’ve come to believe that with regard to media reporting on Covid-19, my cynicism is well-deserved. 

Covid-19 reporting has increasingly been utterly absurd, with stories of people dropping dead in the streets, ice rink morgues to cope with the mountains of bodies, footage of an overcrowded New York hospital (that just happened to be of an Italian hospital), claims of animals testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, and more recently reports of people dying post-jab but we are told ‘it could have been worse!’

This campaign of fear caused the public to massively overestimate the lethality of Covid-19, which as un-alarmist voices note has a survival rate of over 99%.

When months into the outbreak it became apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was far less lethal than first predicted, the media and talking heads moved from talking about ‘Covid deaths’ to ‘positive cases’.

Although relatively early on a goat and pawpaw tested positive for Covid-19, instead of then scrutinizing the accuracy of the PCR test as a means of ‘detecting Covid-19’, the media continued to hype the rise in Covid ‘cases’.

In lockstep, ‘Covid testing’ was increased dramatically using the PCR test (recently revoked by the CDC). This inevitably pumped up the number of ‘cases’, which mass media have in turn promoted non-stop, this in turn gave ammunition to those enforcing lockdowns and vaccines.

By now hundreds of vocal doctors, nurses, virologists, immunologists, and other professionals actually worth listening to, whose data and experience counter the hype pumped out in media have very quickly disappeared from social media, or otherwise deemed quacks, and are thus largely silenced. This leaves the general public mainly getting their information via hyped-up media.

Alongside this, there have been relentless ad hominem attacks on journalists who pose legitimate questions and uncomfortable truths about the official narratives around Covid-19.

For offering perspectives which contradict the standard narratives around Covid-19, journalists have been deemed conspiracy theorists, pandemic-deniers, right-wingers, selfish… I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few slurs.

When it comes to matters Covid-19, it is suddenly unacceptable to question ‘The Science’, question the authorities, or question the same media that sold us WMDs in Iraq and chemical attacks in Syria.

Media are the drivers of Covid hysteria, and it is the daily bombardment of fear porn that confuses average people and enables tyrannical powers to be brought in, largely unchallenged.

As it is the responsibility of journalists to expose lies around wars of aggression, it is also the duty of journalists to do so around Covid-19. For some journalists who have stubbornly refused to hold power to account, instead toeing the line on all things Covid, it appears their fear is of losing an audience and not of a virus.

Whether or not you agree with dissenting voices’ questions and criticisms, we have the right to ask and make them. We do so, knowing that remaining silent in the face of the brutal Covid measures is a guaranteed path to tyranny.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

“It’s all for your own good”

By TE Creus | OffGuardian | August 29, 2021

One of the most annoying aspects of the current measures supposedly created “against the pandemic” that we have been subjected to for almost two years now is the insistence that everything is done “for our own good”, as if governments and big companies were strict but caring parents, and we were just unruly or disobedient children who don’t really know what they need.

It brings to mind CS Lewis’ warning about that most oppressive of tyrannies, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims.”

Now, I cannot tell for sure if the vaccines, the lockdowns, the travel restrictions and the masks work or not. My feeling is that they don’t, or at least, not in the way we are being told, but that’s not the issue. The question is why are we being treated like stupid children who cannot simply choose, but have to take a “jab” and then get “green passes” to travel or work or enter any establishment.

Apparently, governments and big corporations worldwide are worried about our “health”.

But are they, really?

Like monomaniacs, they seem to be worried exclusively about Covid.

Not about the incredible amount of mental health issues and the alarming increase of teenage suicides during the various “lockdowns”.

Not about people, like my elderly neighbours, who could not see their family (who live in another country) for over two years and are suffering with solitude.

Not for the people who, afraid of contracting Covid, didn’t go to the hospital to treat other conditions and died.

Not for the people who died or got sick because of side effects of the vaccines.

No, it’s just “Covid”. And even that doesn’t seem to be their main worry. As long as they get their “vaccine passports” and their “tracking apps” and their “cashless society”, they don’t really care if you get the disease or not.

When did this wave of fake concern start? Ok, governments were probably always in the business of being annoying busybodies – “I’m from the government and I am here to help” was a scary sentence since who knows how long. But companies for decades were mostly concerned with selling their product, not with lecturing us.

However, at the peak of the BLM riots, I received dozens of emails from big companies assuring me that, to them, “blacks lives mattered”. In Pride Month, the same companies assured me that they were fighting for transgender rights to use whichever bathroom they wanted. I never asked nor cared what’s their position on those issues, just that they make a good product that I can use.

Now, the same companies send me emails about masks and vaccination and passes. Because, see, they are worried about my health.

Unfortunately, it’s not just governments and big companies. Almost every institution in the culture and the arts is also kowtowing (either by government decrees or to keep being funded, I don’t know) to this literal “new world order”.

For instance, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra now has very strict regulations for entry. They tell us that they want to create “an environment in which we all may confidently discover what it means to be together again.”

And so, in the name of “togetherness”, they are banning all people who are not vaccinated, including all children under 12 years of age who cannot, alas, be legally vaccinated yet. Not even people with a negative Covid test will be allowed entry to the concerts: only the “vaxxed” ones, with their proper certificates. Still, even they will have to endure masks for the whole duration of the spectacle. It’s not clear if also the musicians have to wear masks – I suppose at least the flute players will be exempted.

And yet, despite all those draconian rules which really seem to take out all of the fun out of the process (and in this case it might really be better to just stay home and watch a video streaming online), “these protocols do not offer absolute protection against contracting COVID-19” and the spectators must “voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19.”

Note also that those showing any possible symptoms might not be allowed entry, vaccine or not. (I wonder if anyone who coughs during one of the breaks will be forcefully ejected.)

This is just one example among many of the ludicrous and merciless “new normal” that we are subject to in the name of our health.

But remember, “it’s all for your own good”.

TE Creus is a writer, translator and filmmaker. He is the author of “Our Pets and Us: The Evolution of a Relationship” and the collection of short stories “The Sphere”. He’s the editor of Contrarium.

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

ERIC CLAPTON – THIS HAS GOTTA STOP

Eric Clapton Premier: https://youtu.be/dNt4NIQ7FTA
photoviapop YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEdWoLSXQs
photoviapop Odysee: https://odysee.com/@photoviapop:8/rebel:0?r=4HpyMrefGR3Qvju6KLy5Ym1EBB7y39Qm

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Some are horrified the Taliban seized biometric devices. The real scandal is the extent of US’ data collection.

US soldier scans an Afghan resident with an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission © AFP / TAUSEEF MUSTAFA
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | August 28, 2021

A huge amount of opprobrium was heaped on the Americans for allowing this sensitive data to fall ‘into the wrong hands’. However, surely a better question is why had they gathered all this deeply personal data in the first place?

It’s been reported that the Taliban has seized US military biometric devices in the wake of Washington’s flight from Afghanistan, which could put civilians who assisted coalition forces at significant risk.

The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information – while their primary stated purpose is to track insurgents, biometric data was also collected and stored on Afghans who assisted the US occupation forces.

The story sparked outcry, widely invoked by both opponents and advocates of the 20-year war as yet another deplorable example of Washington leaving its allies high and dry. While it seems clear there was no consideration given to what could happen if the technology fell into the ‘wrong’ hands, critics have nonetheless overwhelmingly failed to consider the terrifying ramifications of this data being in the right hands, and how the US came into possession of it in the first place.

When precisely the practice of collecting Afghans’ biometric data began isn’t certain, although at a 2010 conference in Kabul, US military officials laid out the terms of Afghan 1,000, a program which sought to collate information on 80% of the country’s population, around 25 million people. It was framed in extremely positive terms, not merely as a means to identify terrorists and criminals, but “enable progress in society” due to its “countless applications for the provision of services” to citizens.

It’s uncertain if that target was reached before Washington’s withdrawal, but the strategy remained in operation for over a decade. The next year, it was reported that Washington ultimately sought to gather biometric data on all living Afghans.

To achieve the lofty goal, a policy of mandatory data collection was imposed for every traveler entering the country via any means, and a dedicated Population Registration Department was created, with offices throughout the country. Even foreign journalists covering the war were fingerprinted, and their irises scanned. Moreover, occupation forces conducted innumerable “enrolment missions”, entering towns and villages and forcing locals to hand over their biometric data at literal gunpoint.

A US Army guide states emphatically that “all combat outposts and checkpoints throughout Afghanistan make it a priority to collect biometric data from as many local nationals as possible.” In the aftermath of a bombing or skirmish, soldiers are told to “enroll everyone”, including the dead, their DNA to be collected using buccal swabs to capture cells lining the mouth. The “payoff” for coalition forces was said to be so great, “commanders must be creative and persistent in their efforts to enroll as many Afghans as possible.”

In a section disturbingly titled “Population Management”, the guide recommends that everyone who lives within an operational area “should be identified and fully biometrically enrolled with facial photos, iris scans, and all ten fingerprints (if present).” Soldiers must also record “good contextual data” about individuals, such as “where they live, what they do, and to which tribe or clan they belong.” Citizens were to be told the collection protected them from potentially violent elements and troublemakers.

A lengthy article in the January 2014 edition of Military journal Joint Forces Quarterly offers a glowing appraisal of the “biometric-enabled intelligence” system rolled out in Kabul, declaring it to be a “key enabling factor” in US counterinsurgency efforts, and “an invaluable part of the campaign that has even greater potential in the future.” It documents how enrolment was often carried out using colorful trucks with jingling bells, in the manner of an ice cream van, in order to make the process “more culturally appealing” – particularly in respect of children, presumably.

Also included are several alleged “success stories”, such as one instance in which two Afghan police officers, neither of whom could read or write, spotted an individual on a “biometrically developed insurgent watch list” approaching their checkpoint.

One of the officers is said to have taken the man – identified as having been involved in “multiple IED events” – into custody “with a broad smile,” and the anecdote ends on an upbeat note, hailing how the officers’ illiteracy was no barrier to them removing a dangerous insurgent from the battlefield due to the miracle of biometric intelligence. Cheery stuff, although journalist Annie Jacobsen has exposed in chilling detail just how fallible biometric evidence can be.

In July 2012, US Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance ordered his platoon to shoot three unarmed motorcycle riders in Kandahar province. The next year, a court martial found him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder, wrongfully communicating a threat, reckless endangerment, soliciting a false statement, and obstructing justice, sentencing him to 20 years in prison. However, in November 2019, he received a pardon from Donald Trump.

The then-president released Lorance after he was shown fingerprints and DNA data that purportedly indicated the Afghan men killed were Taliban bomb makers, not civilians. However, after some determined digging, Jacobsen found that one set of fingerprints allegedly found on an exploded IED said to prove one of the dead men was a bomber actually belonged to a police officer, who was likely to have contaminated the evidence in the line of duty. The other set did indeed belong to a bomber – who was still alive.

Lorance isn’t an isolated example either. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is serving life for killing 16 Afghan villagers in cold blood in March 2012. While he pleaded guilty to the charges and admitted his tours of Afghanistan and Iraq had instilled a loathing of the local population within him, he’s now appealing his sentence. The case rests on data provided by a biometrics expert who also worked on the Lorance case, which he claims proves witnesses to Bales’ crimes were Taliban bomb makers who left their fingerprints on bomb components.

Evidently though, Afghanistan was just an experiment – and Washington was enamored with the results. The White House’s proposed Army budget for 2022 seeks over $11 million to purchase 95 new biometric collection devices, meaning the policy will almost inevitably be rolled out again in whichever country is next in the US crosshairs.

Where that will be is unknown, but there’s also the question of what implications the Afghan test run has for the Western world. Governments, police forces, security services and even big business are increasingly using cutting-edge technology to amass, store and analyze vast reams of sensitive personal data – much of it was similarly trialed during the War on Terror, and sold to home audiences on the basis of convenience and security, just as the military’s biometric data harvest was sold to Afghans. Now the troops are finally home, has the fight been brought back with them?

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

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Afghanistan Withdrawal Is Hurting Its Profits. It’s Funding a Pro-War Think Tank.

BY SARAH LAZARE | IN THESE TIMES | AUGUST 25, 2021

On August 12, the military contractor CACI International Inc. told its investors that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is hurting its profits. The same contractor is also funding a think tank that is concurrently arguing against the withdrawal. This case is worth examining both because it is routine, and because it highlights the venality of our ​“expert”-military contractor feedback loop, in which private companies use think tanks to rally support for wars they’ll profit from.

The contractor is notorious to those who have followed the scandal of U.S.-led torture in Iraq. CACI International was sued by three Iraqis formerly detained in Abu Ghraib prison who charge that the company’s employees are responsible for directing their torture, including sexual assault and electric shocks. (The suit was brought in 2008 and the case is still ongoing.)

In 2019, CACI International was awarded a nearly $907 million, five-year contract to provide ​“intelligence operations and analytic support” for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

During an August 12 earnings call, CACI International noted repeatedly that President Biden’s withdrawal from the 20-year Afghanistan War harmed the company’s profits. John Mengucci, president and CEO of CACI International, said, ​“we have about a 2 percent headwind coming into FY 2022 because of Afghanistan.” A ​“headwind” refers to negative impacts on profits.

Afghanistan was mentioned 16 times throughout the call — either in reference to the dent in profits, or to assure investors that other areas of growth were offsetting the losses. For example, Mengucci said, ​“We’re seeing positive growth in technology and expect it to continue to outpace expertise growth, collectively offsetting the impact of the Afghanistan drawdown.”

Similar themes were repeated in an April 22 earnings call, where the company lamented the ​“headwinds” posed by the Afghanistan withdrawal. (Industry and defense publications have picked up on this theme, but framed it in the company’s terms, by emphasizing the offsets to its losses.)

Despite CACI International’s clear economic interest in continuing the war, on the August 12 call, company officials were careful not to editorialize about the Biden administration’s decision. The closest they came was a cautious statement from Mengucci: ​“At least as of today we’ve watched the administration make the decision to completely exit Afghanistan by 9 – 11 and all I can say is they’re executing on that decision.”

But CACI International does not have to broadcast its positions on the war: Instead, it is funding a think tank that has been actively urging the Biden administration not to leave Afghanistan.

CACI International is listed as a ​“corporate sponsor” of the Institute for Study of War, which describes itself as a ​“non-partisan, non-profit, public policy research organization.” Dr. Warren Phillips, lead director of CACI International, is on the board of the think tank. (Other funders include General Dynamics and Microsoft.)

When it comes to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, the think tank is extremely partisan. In an August 20 paper, the think tank argued that ​“Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey are weighing how to take advantage of the United States’ hurried withdrawal.”

Jack Keane, a retired four star general and board member of the Institute for Study of War, meanwhile, has been on a cable news blitz arguing against the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as reported by Ryan Grim, Sara Sirota, Lee Fang and Rose Adams for The Intercept. (The Intercept noted CACI’s International’s backing of the think tank.)

Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War, told Fox News on August 17 that the U.S. withdrawal could cause Afghanistan to become the ​“second school of jihadism.” She warned, ​“It is not clear that the Taliban, which seeks international recognition and legitimacy, is going to want to tolerate or encourage direct attacks on the U.S. from al Qaeda or other extremist groups based in Afghanistan.”

The think tank’s backing from a military contractor was not discussed in these media appearances.

The case of CACI International is not unique. The Intercept notes, ​“Among the other talking heads who took to cable news segments or op-ed pages without disclosing their defense industry ties were retired Gen. David Petraeus; Rebecca Grant, a former staffer for the Air Force secretary; Richard Haass, who worked as an adviser to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”

This cacophony of voices matters because Biden is facing a media uproar over the withdrawal. Pundits and mainstream press outlets that have been ignoring civilian deaths for years are suddenly expressing moral outrage at their hardships now that the war is ending. While there are legitimate concerns about the fate of Afghans as the Taliban seizes control, the vast majority of the firestorm stems from a reflexively pro-war perspective, in favor of the indefinite extension of an occupation that has proven brutal and lethal for civilians. The overwhelming effect is to send the message to Biden, and any future presidents, that they should think twice before withdrawing from a war, lest they have a media revolt on their hands.

But this outcry didn’t materialize out of nowhere. Think tank ​“experts,” whose organizations are financed by the very companies profiting from the war, play a key part. They are trotted out in front of cameras and quoted in major media outlets, presented as above-the-fray observers. They are well-financed, polished and groomed precisely for moments like these. And the companies financing them get to launder their own objectives through institutions that are seen as respectable, academic and rigorous. It’s a grotesque system that is functioning as it was designed.

In its August 12 call, CACI International simply acknowledged the company’s economic interests out loud.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

THE U.S. HAS SPENT $2.313 TRILLION ON WAR IN AFGHANISTAN SINCE 2001

Watson Institute | August 2021

Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.313 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note that this total does not include funds that the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war. This $2.313 trillion spent on Afghanistan is a portion of the total estimated cost of the post-9/11 wars.

The Costs of War Project also estimates that 241,000 people have died as a direct result of this war. These figures do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.

The figures for Afghanistan are part of the larger costs of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, which extend to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. The numbers are approximations based on the reporting of several data sources.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Hezbollah grows stronger in Lebanon amid energy crisis, arranging oil shipments from Iran

By Uriel Araujo | August 28, 2021

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shia Islamist organization Hezbollah has announced more Iranian ships are bringing fuel to Lebanon. The country is under an unprecedented political and economic crisis and is facing massive gasoline shortages – even after the first vessel arrived on August 19. Some worry Iran-funded Hezbollah could thus take the place of the almost collapsing Lebanese state or companies. Others worry the US could impose sanctions on Lebanon due to its relation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US Ambassador to Lebanon in fact stated, hours after Hezbollah’s statement, that Washington was in talks with Jordan and Egypt to find solutions to Lebanon’s fuel crisis, which has affected businesses, hospitals, and homes.

Riad Toufic Salameh, the Governor of Lebanon’s central bank claimed two weeks ago that Beirut simply lacks the foreign reserves needed to release dollars to import fuel. On August 12, Salamesh announced Lebanon decided to change the exchange rate used as a base for importing fuel, thus sharply increasing retail prices. Gasoline prices may rise up to 66% as subsidies were cut in an attempt to ease shortages. This central bank measure clashed with outgoing Prime Minister Hassand Diab’s government, which pledged to keep the subsidies in an ongoing dispute. Diab described Salamesh’s decision as illegal and irresponsible. Several roads were closed by protesters the same day and the demonstrations are still going on. It is in this context that Hezbollah and its network of Shia businessmen arranged for the shipments of oil. This move was criticised by  former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and other political figures as an infringement on the Lebanese state’s sovereignty.

According to the Iranian semi-official Nour News agency, the first fuel shipment was bought by a group of Lebanese Shiite merchants. The same agency reported that the shipment should be considered Lebanese property “from the moment it is loaded”, and described the fuel dispatch as a “strong action taken by Iran and Hezbollah to break the economic siege of the Lebanese people by a western-Arab-Israeli axis”.

According to Laury Haytayan, a Middle East gas and oil expert and a Natural Resource Charter Senior Officer, Hezbollah’s announcement in itself could place Lebanon in danger of being sanctioned for the ships bringing fuel from Iran are carrying a product that is under US sanctions and thus anyone engaging with such product could also be sanctioned under the current regime that targets third parties buying Iranian oil or merely interacting with the Iranian financial sector.

The Lebanese government could of course ask for a waiver of these sanctions (such as the ones that were granted to Iraq pertaining to Iranian gas imports) but the hard truth is that Lebanon today barely has a government. Any political void always invites political entrepreneurship and Hezbollah seems to be showing itself capable of doing what the government can’t.

Furthermore, there have been Israeli attacks on shipments of Iranian fuel to Syria, which neighbors Lebanon. If such were to happen with a shipment heading to Lebanon, this would obviously further increase anti-Israeli sentiment in a country where tensions are already escalating. Some see Hezbollah’s move as a part of a kind of a deterrence equation, that is, the Shia organization would retaliate in case Israel attacks any ship bringing fuel during a major energy crisis.

Nasrallah also said Hezbollah could help bring an Iranian company to drill, if necessary. These remarks were made during his televised speech for Ashura, an Islamic holiday of particular significance for Shias. With the current crisis, Hezbollah is showing itself to be the only faction that can organize the country. This means Iran’s influence on the Levant is to increase which will worry many actors, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this year Iran and Saudi Arabia started a series of talks, urged by Qatar, but they have been suspended. The new Iranian President  Ebrahim Raisi has claimed his foreign policy priority now is to improve relations with the Persian Gulf Arab countries, which are led by Saudi Arabia. The current war in Yemen is a point of contention, though, for Tehran supports the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. Riad leads a major military intervention in the country against the Houthi rebels (in a coalition that includes Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan). This makes the conflict in Yemen a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. If Tehran and Riad could put such differences aside they could help bring peace and stability to the region. But this is not an easy task, as the two rivals still seem to compete in Iraq and Lebanon and might further compete in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal.

Washington and the European powers are losing their influence in the Lebanese political game. Solving the energy crisis in Lebanon is first and foremost a humanitarian issue and if the US chooses to act in terms of sanctioning Lebanon this would greatly harm US President Joe Biden’s narrative of the United States as a champion of human rights worldwide. The current crisis after all is also about Iran – whose economy has been hit hard by sanctions and today has a 45% inflation rate and has reached the highest price for food products.

If the US does not sanction Lebanon, such will serve Hezbollah as a kind of a show of force. If Washington does sanction the country, Hezbollah also wins somehow for it would corroborate its narrative of Lebanon under siege. Under such a scenario Lebanon should further enhance its relations with Iran. Thus, no scenario is good for the US.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Alberta government refuses to take part in digital vaccine passports

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 28, 2021

The government of the Canadian Province of Alberta has refused to share its residents’ vaccination status data with the federal government. Other provinces are cooperating with the government and have even launched vaccine passport plans.

In a press release, the Alberta Institute, a non-profit, said that the provincial government had confirmed to it, and “then later publicly announced, that they will not be providing the federal government with Albertans’ vaccination status and data for use in a federal vaccine pass system.”

“Albertans will be able to opt-in to provide their information to the federal government should they choose to do so,” the press release added.

Alberta seems to be the only province choosing to protect the privacy rights and civil liberties of its residents. The provinces of British Columbia, Quebec, and Manitoba are working on their own vaccine passport programs.

Quebec will launch its vaccination certification system in September.

“Quebec’s Health Department says police complaints have been filed after politicians’ COVID-19 vaccine passport information was allegedly hacked,” stated a report from FM96. “The department said in a statement Friday it is aware of reports that people have managed to steal the QR codes of members of the Quebec legislature and is taking the matter seriously.”

British Columbia is also set to launch a vaccine passport that would be required to access many businesses.

BC’s system will be one of the most restrictive in the world as it does not allow for any religious or medical exemptions.

While on the re-election campaign trail in Ontario on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised, if re-elected (the election is on September 20th), the Liberal government would create a $1 billion fund to be used by provincial governments to develop and launch vaccine passport systems.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

US COVID-19 Vaccines Proven To Do More Harm Than Good

scivisionpub | August 27, 2021

For decades, true scientists have warned that pivotal clinical trial designs for vaccines are dangerously flawed and outdated [1]. Vaccines have been promoted and widely utilized under the false claim they have been shown to improve health.

However, this claim is only a philosophical argument and not science based. In a true scientific fashion to show a health benefit one would need to show fewer overall deaths during an extended period in the vaccinated group compared to a control group.

Less stringent indicators of a health benefit would include fewer severe events of all kinds, fewer days hospitalized for any reason, lower heath care expenses of all types, fewer missed days from work for any health reason. No pivotal clinical trial for a vaccine preventing an infectious disease has ever demonstrated an improvement in health using these scientific measurements of health as a primary endpoint.

Instead, vaccine clinical trials have relied on misleading surrogate endpoints of health such as infection rates with a specific infectious agent. Manufactures and government agents have made the scientifically disproved and dangerous philosophical argument that these surrogate endpoints equate to a health benefit.

True medical scientists, outside the vaccine fields, have embraced the use of true health measurements as the proven proper scientific endpoint of clinical trials. Decades ago, a pharmaceutical manufacturer would only need to show that a chemotherapeutic agent shrank a tumor or reduces cancer deaths to obtain FDA approval. Manufacturers would market their products under the fraudulent philosophical argument that shrinking tumors or reducing cancer deaths equates to improved survival.

However, many of the toxic chemotherapeutic agents would destroy vital organs and actually reduce survival while decreasing cancer deaths at the same time. The FDA and comparable agencies around the world switched to “all cause mortality” as the primary endpoint for pivotal cancer drug trails. The gold standard for marketing approval is to show that those receiving a cancer drug actually live longer than those who do not.

Typically, new “miracle” anticancer drugs only prolong survival about 2 months but this added time may be spent severely ill suffering from adverse events caused by the chemotherapy. Application of true scientific principles often severely deflates the hype promoting pharmaceutical products.

All previous vaccine trials have suffered not only from lacking a proper primary clinical endpoint but also from insufficient perspective follow up of adverse events. The trials have failed to account for the well-established toxicity data and epidemiology data that vaccines are associated with chronic immune mediated disorders that may not develop for years after immunization.

These adverse events, for example type 1 diabetes, are quite common, develop 3 or more years after immunization, and can exceed the reduction in infectious complications induced by the vaccine as was shown with a hemophilus vaccine [1]. Pivotal trials for the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine prospectively recorded adverse events for about 7 days after immunization and newer vaccines typically prospectively follow patients 6 months for adverse events.

Method
Data from all three US COVID-19 vaccines was published in the New England Journal of Medicine [4-6]. Data from these three publications and the accompanying published appendixes provided the bulk of the information analyzed. On rare occasions supplemental data was found on the FDA’s website (https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/advisory-committee-calendar) in briefing documents pertaining to FDA advisory panel committees for COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen.

The scientific primary endpoint, “all severe events”, in the treatment group and controls was calculated by adding all severe or life threatening events reported in the clinical trials by the manufacturers. Severe events included both severe cases of COVID-19 and all other severe events in the treatment arm and control arm respectively.

A Chi square analysis using a 2×2 table was used to calculate statistical p values. An online statistical chi square calculator was used. Statistical calculations ignored small differences in total subject number between efficacy and adverse event populations. The randomized number, shown in Table 1, was used as the study population for statistical calculations.

In general, the population for adverse events was slightly higher than that for efficacy. Given the statistical significant p, values generated (see Table 1), these small differences do not appear to be material. The FDA document entitled Guidance for Industry Toxicity Grading Scale for Healthy Adult and Adolescent Volunteers Enrolled in Preventive Vaccine Clinical Trials, 2007, provided the following definitions for adverse events.

Grades 3, Severe: Prevents daily activity and requires medical intervention.

Grades 4, Potentially life threatening: ER visit or hospitalization.

Results

Moderna
The Moderna pivotal Phase III trial results and protocol are published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) [5]. The primary endpoint was COVID-19 illness starting 14 days after the second dose of vaccine however the trial had a secondary endpoint which was patients developing severe COVID-19 symptoms. This later endpoint allowed for a direct comparison to severe adverse events.

The study randomized 30,420 individuals, 15,210 were randomized to receive injections with Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine and 15,210 were randomized to receive injections with placebo. Two shots were administered 28 days apart. “Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” adverse events were reported up to 28 days after administration of each vaccine or approximately 56 days after the first dose according to protocol.

Because of dropouts, adverse events were recorded on 15,185 vaccinated patients and 15,166 placebo patients (reference 5, appendix table S8). The treatment group had 11 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infections and 0 cases severe COVID-19 infections (reference 5, appendix table S13). There were 234 cases of severe “unsolicited” adverse events in the treatment group (reference 5, appendix table S8), and an additional 3,751 “solicited” severe or life threatening (Grade 3 or Grade 4) adverse events (reference 5, appendix table S3 and S4).

By contrast, the control group had 185 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infections and 30 cases of severe COVID-19 infections. However, only one of these case of COVID-19 out of 15,166 controls required admission to an intensive care unit (see reference 5, appendix table S13). There were 202 cases of severe “unsolicited” adverse events in the placebo group and an additional 711 “solicited” severe or life threatening (Grade 3 or Grade 4) adverse events.

There were 3 deaths in the placebo group and 2 in the vaccinated group (reference 5, appendix table S8).

Pfizer-BioNTech
The Pfizer-BioNTech (Pfizer) pivotal Phase III trial results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine [6]. The Pfizer trial was classified as a Phase 1/2/3 trial. Two shots were administered 21 days apart. The primary endpoint was confirmed COVID-19 infections 7 days after the second dose. A post hoc analysis of severe COVID-19 infections was included in the appendix published by the NEJM. The study randomized 43,548 individuals of which 100 did not receive injections, 21,720 received injections with the vaccine and 21,728 received injections with placebo.

“Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” severe adverse events were reported up to 14 weeks after administration of the second dose. However, median safety follow up for “unsolicited” events was only approximately 2 months after the second dose at the time of publication in the NEJM. In the treatment arm there was 1 case of severe Covid-19 (reference 6, appendix table S5), 240 “unsolicited” severe adverse events and 21 “unsolicited” life threatening adverse events (reference 6, appendix table S3).

In the placebo arm, there were 9 cases of severe COVID-19, 139 “unsolicited” severe adverse events and 24 “unsolicited” life threatening adverse events. Pfizer used a safety subset of approximately 8,183 (both vaccinated and unvaccinated) to record “solicited” adverse events at 7 days. These data that are not shown in Table 1 in part because the data was depicted graphically in the NEJM manuscript.

Janssen
The Janssen pivotal Phase III trial design and trial results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine [4]. The primary endpoint was prevention of molecularly confirmed, moderate to severe–critical COVID-19 14 days post vaccination however a secondary endpoint was prevention of molecularly confirmed, severe–critical COVID-19 14 days post vaccination. This later endpoint allowed for a direct comparison to severe adverse events.

The study randomized 19,630 to receive a single injection with Janssen’s adenovirus COVID-19 vaccine and randomized 19,691 to receive a single injection with placebo. “Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” adverse events were reported up to 28 days after administration of the single dose of vaccine. The treatment group had 21 cases of severe or critical COVID-19 infections while the placebo control group had 78 (reference 4, appendix table S9).

Further analysis shows that only 2 of 19,514 immunized patients needed medical intervention for COVID-19 infections starting 14 days after immunization, while only 8 of 19,544 controls needed medical intervention for COVID-19 infections starting 14 days after placebo injection where the COVID-19 infection was confirmed by a central lab (reference 4, appendix table S10).

There were 83 “unsolicited” and approximately 492 “solicited” serious adverse events in the vaccinated group compared to 96 “unsolicited” and approximately 157 “solicited” serious adverse events in the control group (reference 4, appendix table S7). There were 3 deaths in the treatment group and 16 in the control group (reference 4, appendix table S7).

Discussion

Scientific analysis of the data from pivotal clinical trials for US COVID-19 vaccines indicates the vaccines fail to show any health benefit and in fact, all the vaccines cause a decline in health in the immunized groups. Health is the sum of all medical events or lack there of. COVID-19 vaccines are promoted as improving health while in fact there is no evidence that these vaccines actual improve health in the individual or population as a whole.

The current analysis used the proper scientific endpoint of “all cause severe morbidity”, a true measure of health. By contrast, manufactures and government officials promote the vaccines using a surrogate measure of health, severe infections with COVID-19, and the disproved philosophical argument that this surrogate endpoint equates to health. This substitution of philosophy for science is extremely dangerous and is certainly leading to a catastrophic public health event.

Review of data from the three COVID-19 vaccines marketed in the US shows complete lack of a health benefit and even an increase in severe events among vaccine recipients. The proper scientific clinical trial endpoint, “all cause severe morbidity” was created by combing all severe and or life threatening events, both infectious and non-infectious, occurring in the vaccinated and placebo control groups respectively.

The data (Table 1) shows there are clearly more severe events in the vaccinated groups. The results are highly statistically significant. The use of a true scientific measure of health as an endpoint for a vaccine trial gives a contrasting result compared to the use of a non-scientific surrogate endpoint of heath, severe infections with COVID-19.

There is an old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. This saying can be applied to the COVID-19 mass immunization program. The US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated at US army is Fort Detrick, has demonstrated that there are people in the US government who desire to attack US citizens with bioweapons [10].

According to the chief FBI agent leading the investigation of the US anthrax attack, conspirators were likely not apprehended in part because the investigation was prematurely ended and prior to stopping the investigation, people at the top of the FBI deliberately tried to sabotage the investigation [11]. In the US anthrax attack of 2001, people high in the US government publicly anticipated the anthrax attack as early as 1999 [10].

Similarly with the COVID-19 attack, people high in government anticipated the COVID-19 attack [12,13] several years before the attack took place [10]. There is even data that an effort was made in 2018 to protect certain populations against COVID-19 by immunizing them with MMR vaccine [14].In such a hostile government environment, the citizens need to individually evaluate the science of immunization with COVID-19 vaccines and not rely on philosophical arguments propagated by government officials.

In this case there is no scientific evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines improve the health of the individual, much less of the population as a whole. Mass immunization with COVID-19 vaccines is certainly leading to a catastrophic public health event.

The Bottom Line

These Covid vaccines have been promoted and widely utilized under the false claim they have been shown to improve health, but the claim is only a philosophical argument and not science based, and in a mounting numnber of cases, these vaccines can be shown to be detrimental to your health.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »