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Kentucky Judge Invalidates All of Governor Bashear’s State of Emergency Actions

By John H. Bryan | The Civil Rights Lawyer | June 8, 2021

Today my colleague from Kentucky, Chris Wiest, received an awesome ruling from the Circuit Court of Boone County declaring that all of Governor Andy Bashear’s emergency orders and actions are unconstitutional and void. The ruling was in the state-court challenge to the governor’s emergency powers executive orders, filed by Wiest on behalf of Beans Cafe’ & Bakery.

Dr. Stephen Petty, an actual expert in masks, testified at the trial about their uselessness under the circumstances in which they’re being idolized. Here’s an excerpt from the order pertaining to Dr. Petty. For those bureaucrats and social media tyrants who would censor this, this is from an actual court order issued today. Not that you care:

Stephen E. Petty, P.E., CIH, testified as an expert and was accepted as such without objection. Mr. Petty has served as an expert witness in approximately 400 cases relating to toxic or infectious exposure, personal protective equipment (“PPE”), and as a warning expert. He also served as an epidemiology expert for the plaintiffs in the Monsanto “Roundup” cases, and for those in the Dupont C8 litigation. In connection with his service as an expert, he was deposed nearly 100 times and has provided court testimony in approximately 20 trials. Mr. Petty holds nine U.S. patents, has written a book comprising nearly 1,000 pages on forensics engineering, is a certified industrial hygienist, and a recognized expert with the Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Mr. Petty helped write the rules on risk assessment for the State of Ohio and has trained Ohio’s risk assessors.

Mr. Petty explained that the field of his expertise is “to anticipate and recognize and control things that could hurt people, everything from making them sick to killing them.” He testified that, in this context, he has analyzed the use of masks and social distancing in connection with Covid-19. He testified that both the six-foot-distancing rule, and mask mandates, are wholly ineffective at reducing the spread of this virus. Masks are worthless, he explained, because they are not capable of filtering anything as small as Covid-19 aerosols. In addition, masks are not respirators and lack the limited protections that respirators can provide.

The N-95 respirator, which he states is in the bottom class of what may be classified as a respirator, is rated to filter 95% of all particles that are larger than .3 microns. However, a Covid-19 particle, which is only between .09 to .12 micron, is much smaller. Mr. Petty further explained that an N-95 will not even filter above .3 microns if it is not used in accordance with industry standards. Among the requirements, respirators must be properly fitted to seal along the face, and they also must be timely replaced. Mr. Petty stated that N-95 masks, which he said are often utilized as surgical masks, are “not intended to keep infectious disease from either the surgeon or from the patient infecting each other” but only to catch the “big droplets” from the surgeon’s mouth.”

According to Mr. Petty, masks have no standards, are not respirators, and do not even qualify as protective equipment. In contrast, respirators have standards, including rules that state respirators may not be worn by persons with facial hair, must be fitted to ensure a seal, and must be timely replaced—or, as in higher end respirators, the cartridges must be replaced to prevent saturation. In addition, standards for respirators also require users to obtain a medical clearance because the breathing restriction can impair lung function or cause other problems for persons having such limitations. Putting those persons in a respirator can harm their well-being.

Concerning the effectiveness of respirators, Mr. Petty explained that it comes down to “big stuff” versus “small stuff.” Big stuff can be taken out by the body’s defenses, such as its mucus tissue, where droplets can be caught and eliminated. The small stuff, however—like aerosols—are more dangerous. Masks cannot filter the small stuff. According to Petty, because Covid-19 particles are comprised of aerosols, it is really, really, small stuff. And, as he pointed out, an N-95 is designed to filter larger particles. Even for particles as large as .3 micron, Mr. Petty testified that an N-95’s effectiveness is in direct proportion to its seal. In fact, he stated it becomes completely ineffective if 3% or more of the contact area with the face is not sealed.

Mr. Petty testified that masks leak, do not filter out the small stuff, cannot be sealed, are commonly worn by persons with facial hair, and may be contaminated due to repetitive use and the manner of use. He emphatically stated that mask wearing provides no benefit whatsoever, either to the wearer or others.

He explained that the big droplets fall to the ground right away, the smaller droplets will float longer, and aerosols will remain suspended for days or longer if the air is stirred. Mr. Petty testified that the duration of time that particles remain suspended can be determined using “Stoke’s Law.” Based on it, for particles the size of Covid-19 (.12 to .09 micron) to fall five feet would take between 5 and 58 days in still air. Thus, particles are suspended in the air even from previous days. And so, he asks, “If it takes days for the particles to fall, how in the world does a six-foot rule have any meaning?”

Mr. Petty acknowledged that both OSHA and CDC have recommended that people wear masks. However, he called this “at best dishonest.”61 As an example on this, he pointed to CDC guidance documents where, on page 1, it recommends wearing a mask; but then on page 6, admits that “masks, do not provide . . . a reliable level of protection from . . . smaller airborne particles.”62 According to Mr. Petty, those agencies have smart individuals who know better. Mr. Petty points out that, even before March 2020, it was known that Covid-19 particles are tiny aerosols. And on this, he states that he insisted that fact early on. He also points to a more recent letter by numerous medical researchers, physicians and experts with Ph.D.s, asking the CDC to address the implications of Covid-19 aerosols. During Dr. Stack’s subsequent testimony, he also acknowledged that Covid-19 is spread “by . . . airborne transmission that could be aerosols . . . .”

Finally, Mr. Petty pointed to another recent study by Ben Sheldon of Stanford University out of Palo Alto. According to that study, “both the medical and non-medical face masks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious diseases, such as SARS, CoV-2 and COVID-19.”64 The Court finds the opinions expressed by Mr. Petty firmly established in logic. The inescapable conclusion from his testimony is that ordering masks to stop Covid-19 is like putting up chain-link fencing to keep out mosquitos. The six-foot- distancing requirements fare no better.

The judge summarizes the situation nicely:

It is obvious from even a cursory review that the orders issued over the past fifteen months “attempt to control” and seek “to form and determine future rights and duties” of Kentucky citizens. These included ordering the closure of all businesses, except those the Governor deemed essential. He ordered churches closed, prohibited social gatherings, including at weddings and funerals, prohibited travel, and through CHFS, even prohibited citizens from receiving scheduled surgeries and access to medical care. And then there is the order that everyone wear a mask. These are, undeniably, attempts to control, set policy, and determine rights and duties of the citizenry. Except in those instances where the federal courts have stepped in, Defendants assert authority to modify or re-impose these orders at their sole discretion. Consider, for example, the recent modification of the mask mandate. It orders persons who did not get vaccinated for Covid-19 to wear masks but lifts that requirement for others. That is setting policy and determining future rights and duties.

At the hearing, Defendants took exception to the Attorney General’s characterization of the Governor’s actions as a “lockdown,” and argued that prohibiting persons from entering those restaurants is not the same as ordering that they be closed. But that doesn’t minimize the impact on those who lost their businesses as a result, or those in nursing homes condemned to spend their final hours alone, deprived of the comfort from loved ones (or even any real contact with humanity), or those citizens who the Governor prohibited from celebrating their wedding day with more than ten persons, or those he forced to bury their dead alone, without the consoling presence of family and friends (and who likewise were deprived of paying their final respects), or those persons who were barred from entering church to worship Almighty God during Holy Week, and even Easter Sunday, or those persons who were denied access to health care, including cancer-screenings, or those denied entry into government buildings (which they pay for with their taxes) in order to obtain a necessary license, and who were forced to wait outside for hours in the sweltering heat, or rain, purportedly to keep them from getting sick.

What the people have endured over the past fifteen months—to borrow a phrase from United States District Judge Justin R. Walker—“is something this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel.” Yet, Defendants contend that the Governor’s rule by mere emergency decree must continue indefinitely, and independent of legislative limits. In effect, Defendants seek declaratory judgment that the Constitution provides this broad power so long as he utters the word, “emergency.” It does not. For this Court to accept Defendant’s position would not be honoring its oath to support the Constitution; it would be tantamount to a coup d’état against it.

Here’s the order itself:

View this document on Scribd

Yes, life is now a dystopian novel. Let’s hope this patriot judge’s order stands up on appeal in the state appellate courts in Kentucky. And thanks to Chris Wiest and the AG of Kentucky for fighting the good fight. The order notes that the permanent injunction against the governor goes into effect on June 10, 2021 at 5:00 p.m.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

New Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine Boosts Covid Survival By More Than 200%

By Richie Allen | June 10, 2021

US scientists have claimed that a malaria drug can increase the survival rate of patients with severe Covid-19 by as much as 200 per cent. Doctors found that when ventilated patients were given hydroxychloroquine with zinc, their condition improved rapidly.

The study was conducted by Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey. 255 patients were involved. The results were published two weeks ago here.

Friends and supporters of former US President Donald trump were quick to jump on the findings. Trump was a strong advocate for treating severe Covid-19 with hydroxychloroquine.

Trump was widely criticised for pushing the drug. Scientists labelled him reckless. His adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said at the time, that all the evidence to hand suggested that the treatment was ineffective against covid.

In March this year, the World Health Organization warned against using the drug to treat coronavirus. The WHO produced data which alleged hydroxychloroquine was ineffective.

Yet the authors of the new report claim:

“We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients.”

Last December, a study published by the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents showed 84 per cent fewer hospitalizations among patients treated with the drug.

In January this year, a study carried out by Hackensack Meridian Health, showed encouraging results in patients with mild covid symptoms who were given hydroxychloroquine.

As I write this, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock is facing a committee in Westminster. He’s answering questions about his government’s handling of the pandemic. It’s a walk in the park for Hancock. It’s one softball question after another so far.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a committee member to ask him if he’d considered sending hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to care homes and hospitals, to treat those who had to be ventilated for severe covid.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Debunked, the myth of asymptomatic Covid transmission

By Abir Ballan and Helen Tindall | The Conservative Woman | June 10, 2021

ACROSS the globe, official public health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic has been underpinned by the concern that people without disease symptoms may transmit the virus. This has led to recommendations such as universal mask-wearing, social distancing, mass testing, stay at home orders and school and business closures.

As the BMJ said in December: ‘Searching for people who are asymptomatic yet infectious is like searching for needles that appear and reappear transiently in haystacks, particularly when rates are falling.’

The concern that SARS-CoV-2 could be spread by people without symptoms originally came from a single case report. It was alleged that an asymptomatic woman from China had spread the virus to 16 other contacts in Germany. Later reports showed that, at the time of contact, this woman was taking medication for flu-like symptoms, invalidating the evidence provided for the theory of asymptomatic transmission. As with other common respiratory viruses, SARS-CoV-2 spreads by being exhaled, coughed or sneezed into the air. The largest droplets fall quickly and settle on the ground whilst the most lightweight particles, known as aerosols, may remain suspended in the air for days. Once the virus is present in the environment, it spreads by finding its way into the respiratory tract of new hosts in a large enough quantity (known as the ‘viral load’ or ‘infectious dose’) to infect them. The theory of fomite transmission (touching contaminated surfaces and then touching the face) is not supported by scientific evidence. 

The most significant risk factor for Covid-19 disease is advanced age and the presence of underlying health issues such as cardiovascular disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Both factors contribute to a frail immune system. In addition to the health status of the exposed person, the environment in which exposure occurs also affects the probability of that person falling ill. Infectious aerosols remain suspended for longer in cold, dry air. Hence respiratory viruses transmit most efficiently during colder seasons. People spend more time indoors during cold weather, where poor ventilation leads to higher concentrations of infectious aerosols remaining in the air. Spending time in crowded indoor spaces also increases the risk of transmission. Furthermore, lack of exposure to the sun in colder weather results in lower Vitamin D levels, and greater susceptibility to illness if infected.

Infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes some individuals to become ill with Covid-19. Many people have had previous exposure to other related coronaviruses. These individuals develop mild or no symptoms following infection with SARS-CoV2, most likely due to protection conferred by this exposure. Cross-immunity has been demonstrated in multiple studies.

People presenting with symptoms of Covid-19 are almost exclusively responsible for transmitting SARS-CoV-2. Serious infection usually results from frequent exposure to high doses of SARS-CoV-2, such as health care workers caring for sick Covid-19 patients in hospitals or nursing homes and people living in the same household.

A person showing no symptoms of Covid-19 may test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR test, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are infectious. There are four ways in which this can happen:

● The test may give a false positive result due to several faults in the testing process or in the test itself (the person is not infected);

● The person may have recovered from Covid-19 in the last three months (the person is not currently infected but dead debris of the virus are being picked up by the test);

● The person may be pre-symptomatic, i.e, the person is infected but still in the early stages of the disease and has not yet developed symptoms;

● The person may be asymptomatic, i.e. the person is infected but has pre-existing immunity and will never develop symptoms.

In asymptomatic individuals, the viral load is typically very low and the infectious period is also short in duration. They may still exhale virus particles, which another person may encounter. However, the overall likelihood of transmitting the disease to others is negligible. Thus asymptomatic cases are not the major drivers of epidemics. As Dr Anthony Fauci of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stated in March 2020: ‘In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.’

A study in May 2020 found that all 455 contacts of an asymptomatic individual did not become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and the researchers concluded that ‘the infectivity of some asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers might be weak’.

A recent study shows the minimal effect of asymptomatic transmission within the same household. One thousand asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals led to seven new infections, while 1000 symptomatic individuals led to 180 new infections. The real impact of asymptomatic transmission is likely to be even smaller than this figure because the study combines asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals. The risk of asymptomatic spread outdoors would be even more insignificant.

The recently debunked theory of asymptomatic transmission as an important driver of outbreaks has been responsible for healthy people being considered to be walking biohazards. The testing, quarantining and masking of healthy people is not supported by scientific evidence and is therefore unethical. Masks, for example, do not protect anyone from contracting the virus. The size of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is 1/10,000 mm and can easily pass through medical or cloth masks with each inhalation and exhalation. According to a review of the literature published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, ‘We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.’ Empirical evidence from (otherwise similar) masked vs unmasked states, regions and countries has also failed to demonstrate any beneficial effect.

A sensible recommendation is to ask sick individuals to stay at home until they are recovered, which may last for about eight days. This age-old commonsense practice would have saved the world incredible collateral damage. Instead of wasting resources by focusing on the healthy, it’s time to shift our attention to the vulnerable to improve their prognosis and survival. This strategy involves three key components: prevention (Vitamin D supplementation, healthy lifestyle, avoiding crowded indoor places during the peak of outbreaks and safe and efficacious vaccination), early treatment of symptoms in the high-risk group and effective treatment protocols in the event of hospitalisation.

This article was written for and first published by PANDA, pandata.org a group of multi-disciplinary professionals which promotes open science and rational debate, replacing flawed science with good science and aims at retrieving liberty and prosperity from the clutches of a dystopian ‘new normal’. It is republished by kind permission.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

FDA Approves Non-effective New Alzheimer’s Drug Despite Their Own Doctors Recommending AGAINST It

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | June 9, 2021

Big Pharma has been trying to create a blockbuster drug for the very lucrative Alzheimer’s Disease for more than a decade.

But they have repeatedly failed, mainly because they start with the wrong presuppositions on the cause of Alzheimer’s, basing it on “genetics” instead of environmental causes.

The over 55 age population has always been a cash cow for Big Pharma, as the most profitable drug of all time was Pfizer’s Lipitor, a statin drug that artificially lowers one’s cholesterol.

Prior to its patent expiring at the end of 2011, no other drug in human history had racked up more sales than this one single drug, as their advertising campaign against cholesterol resulted in doctors placing nearly one out of every four people over the age of 55 on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol.

But 25% of our body’s cholesterol resides in our brains, so there have been honest researchers over the years, such as Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT, who have linked low cholesterol to a rise in Alzheimer’s Disease. See:

The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins may Cause Alzheimer’s

And so it is no surprise that coconut oil, demonized by Big Pharma, the USDA, the FDA and just about every other regulatory agency in the U.S. since the 1970s, can provide dramatic improvement to Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia, often with dramatic results.

See our body of research provided over the years on coconut oil, along with amazingly dramatic testimonials for curing Alzheimer’s here.

We have covered all the previous failures of Big Pharma to produce a drug to treat Alzheimer’s over the years, but just this week the FDA finally approved a drug for the treatment Alzheimer’s Disease.

But as reporter Andrew Joseph of Stat News writes, the FDA did so in spite of the fact that their own 11 doctor expert panel had 10 of those doctors state that “there was not enough evidence to show it could slow cognitive decline,” and the 11th doctor voted “uncertain.”

And now one of those doctors, Neurologist Joel Perlmutter of Washington University in St. Louis, has resigned. … continue

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Forgotten moments from the history of vaccines; yes, history matters

By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | June 9, 2021

Scientific propaganda about vaccines has reached dizzying heights, as officials point the uninformed public toward the Day of Liberation, when a COVID shot, otherwise known as God, will rescue Earth.

Here, from a chapter in my 1988 book, AIDS INC., is an excerpt exposing some of the infamous moments in vaccination history—hidden by the press, or simply forgotten.

For those denialists who cling to the notion that vaccines are remarkably safe and effective, this article is a pill you can swallow, bitter to be sure, but immunizing against the effects of bald lies from the bent medical establishment.

Understand: this is only a partial history of disasters and revelations, and it stops at 1988.

“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977

“In a recent British outbreak of whooping cough, for example, even fully immunized children contracted the disease in fairly large numbers; and the rates of serious complications and death were reduced only slightly. In another recent outbreak of pertussis, 46 of the 85 fully immunized children studied eventually contracted the disease.”

“In 1977, 34 new cases of measles were reported on the campus of UCLA, in a population that was supposedly 91% immune, according to careful serological testing. Another 20 cases of measles were reported in the Pecos, New Mexico, area within a period of a few months in 1981, and 75% of them had been fully immunized, some of them quite recently. A survey of sixth-graders in a well-immunized urban community revealed that about 15% of this age group are still susceptible to rubella, a figure essentially identical with that of the pre-vaccine era.”

“Finally, although the overall incidence of typical acute measles in the U.S. has dropped sharply from about 400,000 cases annually in the early 1960s to about 30,000 cases by 1974-76, the death rate remained exactly the same; and, with the peak incidence now occurring in adolescents and young adults, the risk of pneumonia and demonstrable liver abnormalities has actually increased substantially, according to one recent study, to well over 3% and 2%, respectively.” Richard Moskowitz, MD, The Case Against Immunizations, 1983, American Institute of Homeopathy.

“Of all reported whooping cough cases between 1979 and 1984 in children over 7 months of age – that is, old enough to have received the primary course of the DPT shots (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) – 41% occurred in children who had received three or more shots and 22% in children who had one or two immunizations.”

“Among children under 7 months of age who had whooping cough, 34% had been immunized between one and three times…”

“… Based on the only U.S. findings on adverse DPT reactions, an FDA-financed study at the University of California, Los Angeles, one out of every 350 children will have a convulsion; one in 180 children will experience high-pitched screaming [can indicate brain damage]; and one in 66 will have a fever of 105 degrees or more.” Jennifer Hyman, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, special supplement on DPT, dated April, 1987.

“A study undertaken in 1979 at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the sponsorship of the Food and Drug Administration, and which has been confirmed by other studies, indicates that in the U.S.A. approximately 1,000 infants die annually as a direct result of DPT vaccinations, and these are classified as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths. These represent about 10 to 15% of the total number of SIDS deaths occurring annually in the U.S.A. (between 8,000 and 10,000 depending on which statistics are used).” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, CW Daniel Company Limited, Saffron Walden, Essex, England, 1987.

“Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr., MD, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, rounded… figures off to 9,000 cases of convulsions, 9,000 cases of collapse, and 17,000 cases of high-pitched screaming for a total of 35,000 acute neurological reactions occurring within forty-eight hours of a DPT shot among America’s children every year.” DPT: A Shot in the Dark, by Harris L. Coulter and Barbara Loe Fischer, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

“While 70-80% of British children were immunized against pertussis in 1970-71, the rate is now 39%. The committee predicts that the next pertussis epidemic will probably turn out to be more severe than the one in 1974/75. However, they do not explain why, in 1970/71, there were more than 33,000 cases of pertussis with 41 fatal cases among the very well immunized British child population; whereas in 1974/75, with a declining rate of vaccination, a pertussis epidemic caused only 25,000 cases with 25 fatalities.” Wolfgang Ehrengut, Lancet, Feb. 18, 1978, p. 370.

“… Barker and Pichichero, in a prospective study of 1232 children in Denver, Colorado, found after DTP that only 7% of those vaccinated were free from untoward reactions, which included pyrexia (53%), acute behavioral changes (82%), prolonged screaming (13%), and listlessness, anorexia and vomiting. 71% of those receiving second injections of DTP experienced two or more of the reactions monitored.” Lancet, May 28, 1983, p. 1217

“Publications by the World Health Organization show that diphtheria is steadily declining in most European countries, including those in which there has been no immunization. The decline began long before vaccination was developed. There is certainly no guarantee that vaccination will protect a child against the disease; in fact, over 30,000 cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United Kingdom in fully immunized children.” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 58.

“Pertussis (whooping cough) immunization is controversial, as the side effects have received a great deal of publicity. The counter claim is that the effectiveness and protection offered by the procedure far outweigh the possible ill effects… annual deaths, per million children, from this disease over the period from 1900 to the mid-nineteen seventies, shows that from a high point of just under 900 deaths per million children (under age 15) in 1905, the decline has been consistent and dramatic. There had been a lowering of mortality rates of approximately 80% by the time immunization was introduced on a mass scale, in the mid-nineteen fifties. The decline has continued, albeit at a slower rate, ever since. No credit can be given to vaccination for the major part of the decline since it was not in use.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 63.

“… the swine-flu vaccination program was one of its (CDC) greatest blunders. It all began in 1976 when CDC scientists saw that a virus involved in a flu attack outbreak at Fort Dix, N.J., was similar to the swine-flu virus that killed 500,000 Americans in 1918. Health officials immediately launched a 100-million dollar program to immunize every American. But the expected epidemic never materialized, and the vaccine led to partial paralysis in 532 people. There were 32 deaths.” U.S. News and World Report, Joseph Carey, October 14, 1985, p. 70, “How Medical Sleuths Track Killer Diseases.”

“Despite (cases) in which (smallpox) vaccination plainly failed to protect the population, and despite the rampant side-effects of the methods, the proponents of vaccination continued their attempts to justify the methods by claims that the disease had declined in Europe as a whole during the period of its compulsory use. If the decline could be correlated with the use of the vaccination, then all else could be set aside, and the advantage between its current low incidence could be shown to outweigh the periodic failures of the method, and to favour the continued use of vaccination. However, the credit for the decline in the incidence of smallpox could not be given to vaccination. The fact is that its incidence declined in all parts of Europe, whether or not vaccination was employed.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, pp. 6-7.

“Smallpox, like typhus, has been dying out (in England) since 1780. Vaccination in this country has largely fallen into disuse since people began to realize how its value was discredited by the great smallpox epidemic of 1871-2 (which occurred after extensive vaccination).” W. Scott Webb, A Century of Vaccination, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898.

“In this incident (Kyoto, Japan, 1948) – the most serious of its kind – a toxic batch of alum-precipitated toxoid (APT) was responsible for illness in over 600 infants and for no fewer than 68 deaths.”

“On 20 and 22 October, 1948, a large number of babies and children in the city of Kyoto received their first injection of APT. On the 4th and 5th of November, 15,561 babies and children aged some months to 13 years received their second dose. One to two days later, 606 of those who had been injected fell ill. Of these, 9 died of acute diphtheritic paralysis in seven to fourteen days, and 59 of late paralysis mainly in four to seven weeks.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization, Athone Press, University of London, 1967.

“Accidents may, however, follow the use of this so-called killed (rabies) vaccine owing to inadequate processing. A very serious occurrence of this sort occurred at Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, in 1960. No fewer than 18 out of 66 persons vaccinated with Fermi’s carbolized (rabies ) vaccine suffered from encephalomyelitis and every one of the eighteen died.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.

“At a press conference in Washington on 24 July, 1942, the Secretary of War reported that 28,585 cases of jaundice had been observed in the (American) Army between 1 January and 4 July after yellow fever vaccination, and of these 62 proved fatal.” Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.

“The world’s biggest trial (conducted in south India) to assess the value of BCG tuberculosis vaccine has made the startling revelation that the vaccine ‘does not give any protection against bacillary forms of tuberculosis.’ The study said to be ‘most exhaustive and meticulous,’ was launched in 1968 by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.”

“The incidence of new cases among the BCG vaccinated group was slightly (but statistically insignificantly) higher than in the control group, a finding that led to the conclusion that BCG’s protective effect ‘was zero.’” New Scientist, November 15, 1979, as quoted by Hans Ruesch in Naked Empress, Civis Publishers, Switzerland, 1982.

“Between 10 December 1929 and 30 April 1930, 251 of 412 infants born in Lubeck received three doses of BCG vaccine by the mouth during the first ten days of life. Of these 251, 72 died of tuberculosis, most of them in two to five months and all but one before the end of the first year. In addition, 135 suffered from clinical tuberculosis but eventually recovered; and 44 became tuberculin-positive but remained well. None of the 161 unvaccinated infants born at the time was affected in this way and none of these died of tuberculosis within the following three years.” Hazards of Immunization, Wilson.

“We conducted a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial to test the efficacy of the 14-valent pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide vaccine in 2295 high-risk patients… Seventy-one episodes of proved or probable pneumococcal pneumonia or bronchitis occurred among 63 of the patients (27 placebo recipients and 36 vaccine recipients)… We were unable to demonstrate any efficacy of the pneumococcal vaccine in preventing pneumonia or bronchitis in this population.” New England Journal of Medicine, November 20, 1986, p. 1318, Michael Simberkoff et al.

In the spring of 1955, Cutter Labs started selling their standard polio vaccine. The vaccine was infective, and 200 cases of polio resulted among recipients. Of these, there were eleven deaths. About 100 cases of paralysis resulted. JR

“But already before Salk developed his vaccine, polio had been constantly regressing; the 39 cases out of every 100,000 inhabitants registered in 1942 had gradually diminished from year to year until they were reduced to only 15 cases in 1952… according to M. Beddow Baylay, the English surgeon and medical historian.” Slaughter of the Innocent, Hans Reusch, Civitas Publish ers, Switzerland, and Swain, New York, 1983.

“Many published stories and reports have stated, implied and otherwise led professional people and the public to believe that the sharp reduction of cases (and of deaths) from poliomyelitis in 1955 as compared to 1954 is attributable to the Salk vaccine… That it is a misconception follows from these considerations. The number of children inoculated has been too small to account for the decrease. The sharp decrease was apparent before the inoculations began or could take effect and was of the same order as the decrease following the immediate post-inoculation period.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, vol. 20, no. 1, 1987.

“So far it is hardly possible to gain insight into the extent of the immunization catastrophe of 1955 in the United States. It may be considered certain that the officially ascertained 200 cases (of polio) which were caused directly or indirectly by the (polio) vaccination constitute minimum figures… It can hardly be estimated how many of the 1359 (polio) cases among vaccinated persons must be regarded as failures of the vaccine and how many of them were infected by the vaccine. A careful study of the epidemiologic course of polio in the United States yields indications of grave significance. In numerous states of the U.S.A., typical early epidemics developed with the immunizations in the spring of 1955… The vaccination incidents of the year 1955 cannot be exclusively traced back to the failure of one manufacturing firm.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980, vol. 19, no. 4, “Story of the Salk Vaccine (Part 2).”

“Suffice it to say that most of the large (polio) epidemics that have occurred in this country since the introduction of the Salk vaccine have followed the wide-scale use of the vaccine and have been characterized by an uncommon early seasonal onset. To name a few, there is the Massachusetts epidemic of 1955; the Chicago epidemic of 1956; and the Des Moines epidemic of 1959.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980 vol. 19, no. 4.

“The live (Sabin) poliovirus vaccine has been the predominant cause of domestically arising cases of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States since 1972. To avoid the occurrence of such cases, it would be necessary to discontinue the routine use of live poliovirus vaccine.” Jonas Salk, Science, March 4, 1977, p. 845.

“By the (U.S.) government’s own admission, there has been a 41% failure rate in persons who were previously vaccinated against the (measles) virus.” Dr. Anthony Morris, John Chriss, BG Young, “Occurrence of Measles in Previously Vaccinated Individuals,” 1979; presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology at Fort Detrick, Maryland, April 27, 1979.

“Prior to the time doctors began giving rubella vaccinations, an estimated 85% of adults were naturally immune to the disease (for life). Because of immunization, the vast majority of women never acquire natural immunity (or lifetime protection).” Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, Let’s Live, December 1983, as quoted by Carolyn Reuben in the LA WEEKLY, June 28, 1985.

“Adminstration of KMV (killed measles vaccine) apparently set in motion an aberrant immunologic response that not only failed to protect children against natural measles, but resulted in heightened susceptibility.” JAMA Aug. 22, 1980, vol. 244, p. 804, Vincent Fulginiti and Ray Helfer. The authors indicate that such falsely protected children can come down with “an often severe, atypical form of measles. Atypical measles is characterized by fever, headache… and a diverse rash (which)… may consist of a mixture of macules, papules, vesicles, and pustules… ”

The above quotes reflect only a mere fraction of an available literature.

It is criminally deceiving to say, “Vaccines are simple; they stimulate the immune system and confer immunity against specific germ agents.”

Official reports on vaccine reactions are often at odds with unofficial estimates because of the method of analysis used. If adverse vaccine-reaction is defined as a small set of possible effects experienced within 72 hours of an inoculation, then figures will be smaller. But doctors like G.T. Stewart, of the University of Glasgow, have found through meticulous investigation, including visits to hospitals and interviews with parents of children vaccinated, that reactions as severe as brain-damage (e.g., from the DPT vaccine) can be overlooked, go unreported and can be assumed to have come from other causes.

— Well, that was my finding, in 1988, when I looked beneath the surface of the vaccine question.

Now we are in very deep waters. COVID-19 hysteria has been tuned up to the NEED for a vaccine.

WE need to slough off this promoted bad dream and stand firm against the little gods who traffic their vials in every doctor’s office, hospital, school, drug store, and tented parking lot—making them into shooting galleries.

We already have natural immune systems. They work.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Crackdown on Capitol riot ‘terrorism’ means arrests of people in Congress and around Trump: former FBI asst. director

RT | June 9, 2021

A former FBI deputy director has declared hundreds of Americans terrorists, and called for the arrest of sitting members of Congress, all over the notion that the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill was “terrorism.”

Hundreds of participants in the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill in January have been arrested and charged, with many held in deplorable prison conditions ahead of trial. With current FBI Director Christopher Wray testifying to Congress that the riot was an act of “domestic terrorism,” former Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday to call for even tougher action against the MAGA rioters.

“Arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a road block,” he claimed. “In order to really tackle terrorism – and this time domestically – you’ve got to attack and dismantle the command and control element of a terrorist group.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “that may mean people sitting in Congress right now. People in and around the former president.”

The language used by Figliuzzi is more commonly used by officials to describe foreign terror groups, rather than mobs of unruly Americans. However, such words have been liberally deployed by intelligence officials, Democratic lawmakers, and journalists in the wake of the Capitol riot. Despite the hyperbole, many rioters were simply allowed inside the Capitol to loiter and snap selfies, and of the five deaths connected to the riot, only one (the shooting dead of an unarmed Trump supporter by a police officer) has been proven to be directly inflicted by another person.

While many of the aforementioned officials, lawmakers, and reporters have clamored for expanded surveillance powers and domestic terror laws in the wake of the riot, Figliuzzi’s comments come the closest yet to outright accusing Republican leaders of orchestrating “terrorism.”

Figliuzzi’s comments drew outrage from conservatives and opponents of the intelligence community. “We should demand that every senior FBI official, from Wray to the lowest level supervisory agent denounce this talk and make clear this lunacy is unacceptable,” security analyst Kyle Shideler tweeted. “If they do not, shutter the agency forever.”

That the FBI, or at least the agency’s former officials, would associate support for Trump with terrorism is unsurprising. FBI brass broke agency rules to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign and knew no evidence existed linking the Trump team to Russia, but investigated the supposed links anyway.

Figliuzzi was fully on board with the ‘Russiagate’ hoax, telling MSNBC’s Brian Williams after a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2018 that Trump was “compromised financially or personally” by Russia and therefore had “made the decision to side with the other team.” Figliuzzi gave no evidence for his claims.

Even now, long after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence that Trump “colluded” with Russia in the runup to the 2016 election, Figliuzzi still insists that this collusion took place, and parrots the debunked story that Russia allegedly paid Taliban fighters in Afghanistan “bounties” to kill American troops.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed

By Paul Sperry | RealClearInvestigations | June 8, 2021

When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.

Brian Amero: The judge, a donor to Democrats, ordered ballots unsealed for inspection after poll workers swore under oath Biden votes looked fake. https://www.co.henry.ga.us/

Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.

In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.

“All of them were strangely pristine,” said Voyles, who said she’d never seen anything like it in her 20 years monitoring elections in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta.

She wasn’t alone. At least three other poll workers observed the same thing in stacks of absentee ballots for Biden processed by the county, and they have joined Voyles in swearing under penalty of perjury that they looked fake.

Now election watchdogs have used their affidavits to help convince a state judge to unseal all of the 147,000 mail-in ballots counted in Fulton and allow a closer inspection of the suspicious Biden ballots for evidence of counterfeiting. They argue that potentially tens of thousands may have been manufactured in a race that Biden won by just 12,000 votes thanks to a late surge of mail-in ballots counted after election monitors were shooed from State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

Garland Favorito, vote-integrity advocate: “We have what is almost surely major absentee-ballot fraud in Fulton County involving 10,000 to 20,000 probably false ballots.” LinkedIn

“We have what is almost surely major absentee-ballot fraud in Fulton County involving 10,000 to 20,000 probably false ballots,” said Garland Favorito, the lead petitioner in the case and a certified poll watcher who runs VoterGa.org, one of the leading advocates for election integrity in the state.

He said the suspect ballots remain in the custody of the election officials and inaccessible from public view.

“We have confirmed that there are five pallets of shrink-wrapped ballots in a county warehouse,” Favorito said in an interview with RealClearInvestigations.

He and other petitioners were ordered to meet at the warehouse May 28 to settle the terms of the inspection of the absentee ballots. But the day before the scheduled meeting, the county filed a flurry of motions to dismiss the case, delaying the inspection indefinitely.

“We will be in court on June 21 to resolve these motions,” said Favorito, calling them another “roadblock” the county has tried to throw in their way. He expects talks over the logistics of the inspection to resume after the Fourth of July holiday.

As part of his May 21 order, Superior Court Judge Brian Amero requested officials guard the warehouse around the clock until an inspection date can be set. But just eight days later, a breach in security was reported after sheriff’s deputies left their post for a couple of hours.

“The front door was [found] unlocked and wide open in violation of the court order,” Favorito said.

County officials confirmed that a motion-detection alarm was triggered Saturday, May 29, shortly after the deputies drove away from the building in their patrol cars around 4 p.m. But they said a locked room where the ballots are kept “was never breached or compromised.”

Favorito is not convinced, and his lawyer is seeking to obtain the video footage from building security cameras. “How do we know for certain there was no tampering with the ballots?” asked Favorito, who said he did not vote for Donald Trump.

News of the security lapse caught the attention of the former President, who has claimed his loss to Biden was marred by fraud. In a statement, he implied election officials in the Democratic-controlled county are trying to hide evidence of fraud. “They are afraid of what might be found,” he asserted.

Trump is also closely monitoring the ongoing election audit in Arizona, another red state that turned blue in 2020. If evidence of fraud is found in these key swing states, it might help confirm suspicions the election was “stolen” from Trump and the 74 million who voted for him — as a recent poll found 61% of Republicans believe — as well as provide the proof of voter fraud that Democrats and major media have long claimed doesn’t exist.

Georgia Voter Guide

The 38 drop boxes Fulton distributed throughout the county in the November election will be cut to eight in the future. The boxes had been largely unregulated and unattended. Georgia Voter Guide

The cases could potentially give other battleground states incentive to take steps to tighten election security and root out fraud, including passing legislation to limit the use of controversial mail-in drop boxes and require the verification of signatures on such ballots. In Georgia, relatively few mail-in ballots were rejected for invalid signatures in the November general election, even though several thousand had been disqualified for signature issues in the primary election.

In a move that inspired national boycotts alleging voter “suppression,” Georgia recently passed a law limiting, but not removing, the drop boxes. The state had installed them for the first time in 2020 under pressure from Democratic groups, who argued officials needed to make voting easier for minorities who didn’t trust the mail and feared going to the polls during the COVID scare.

The 38 drop boxes Fulton distributed throughout the county in the November election will be cut to eight in the future. The boxes had been largely unregulated and unattended — located outdoors, open 24 hours a day and available for drop-offs until the evening of Election Day, prompting complaints of ballot stuffing and double voting. But now they have to be located inside election offices or early voting locations, and can only be available during the hours when early voting is permitted. The new law also requires ballots be printed on special security paper.

Voting by mail traditionally was limited to voters who had clearly defined and well-documented reasons to be absent from the polls. But Democrats in key swing states lobbied to relax the rules in the middle of the election and amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mail-in or drop-off ballots create opportunities for voter error and fraud. In a typical election, one in 20 mailed ballots are rejected, according to recent studies. More than 534,000 mail-in ballots were rejected during the 2020 Democratic primaries alone.

(AP Photo/Ron Harris)

Robb Pitts, Democratic chairman of Fulton County commissioners: “This is nothing more than a circus that’s being put on by those who promote the ‘big lie’” that Trump won the election. (AP Photo/Ron Harris)

Still, both Republican and Democratic officials in Georgia say they have found no credible evidence of widespread fraud in the general election. Democrats, as well as many major media outlets, have written off Favorito’s group’s allegations of fraud as “conspiracy theories.”

“This is nothing more than a circus that’s being put on by those who promote the ‘big lie’ ” that Trump won the election, said Robb Pitts, the Democratic chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. “Where does it end? The votes have been counted. The elections have been certified. It’s over.”

Pitts effectively controls the county elections board through his Democratic appointee Mary Carole Cooney, who runs the board. They are in charge of securing the pallets of disputed Biden mail-in ballots awaiting inspection in the county warehouse.

But Judge Amero, who federal elections records show is a Democratic donor, felt compelled to unseal the ballots for a forensics review after reading the sworn affidavits submitted by election monitors. Here are key witnesses in the case:

  • Suzi Voyles, a veteran Fulton poll manager who audited the Nov. 14 recount at Georgia World Congress Center, testified she examined several stacks of ballots of about 100 ballots each from a cardboard box marked “Box No. 5 — Absentee — Batch Numbers 28-36.” She said these ballots “came from the ballot [drop] boxes that had been placed throughout Fulton County.”LinkedIn
    Suzi Voyles, poll manager: “One batch stood out. It was pristine.” LinkedIn

    “Most of the ballots had already been handled; they had been written on by people, and the edges were worn. They showed obvious use,” she wrote in her Nov. 17 affidavit. “However, one batch stood out. It was pristine. There was a difference in the texture of the paper,” and these mail-in ballots hadn’t been folded even though they ostensibly had been removed from envelopes.

    All but three of the 110 ballots in the bundle — which had been labeled “State Farm Arena” — were marked for Biden and appeared to be “identical ballots.”

    The most “alarming peculiarity” was the identically marked ovals next to Biden’s name. In every ballot, “The bubble next to ‘Joseph R. Biden’ had a slight white eclipse in the bubble,” she said, leading her to believe that the batch of 107 Biden ballots had been “copied” from a single ballot.

    Voyles speculated that “additional absentee ballots had been added [for Biden] in a fraudulent manner” at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta on election night.

    The void she and other auditors witnessed in the exact same spot of the oval filled in on 107 ballots for Biden “was alarming to us,” Voyles said in an RCI interview. “Every single bubble was precisely alike. I had never seen that before in 20 years” of election monitoring.

    But when she and other recount workers raised concerns with county election officials, “we were told not to worry about it,” she said. “They seemed uninterested in the [integrity of the] ballots.”

    After Voyles later blew the whistle in affidavits and state election hearings, she was fired as a poll manager by the Fulton County Department of Elections. “I got the boot for speaking the truth,” she told RCI.

  • Robin Hall, a certified Fulton County recount observer, also testified she witnessed a number of boxes of absentee ballots marked “100% for Biden” that appeared to be “perfectly filled out as if they were pre-printed with the presidential candidate selected.” She stated: “They did not look like a person had filled this out at home.  All of them looked alike.”
  • Judy Aube also worked at the World Congress Center on Nov. 14 where she observed the same thing: “suspicious batches” of mail-in ballots for Biden whose markings appeared identical, as if they had been duplicated by a machine and not filled out by a voter at home.
  • Barbara Hartman, another election official auditor, also doubted the authenticity of absentee ballots she handled that she said were never folded, as would normally be the case for ballots returned in an envelope by mail or dropped in a box. “The absentee ballots looked as though they had just come from a fresh stack,” she swore in her affidavit. “I could not observe any creases in the ballots and [it] did not seem like they were folded and put into envelopes or mailed out.”  Also, “The majority of the mail-in ballots that I reviewed contained suspicious black perfectly bubbled markings for Biden,” Hartman stated, adding that “they looked as if they were stamped.”

The veteran poll watchers found no plausible explanation for the anomalies other than possible fraud.

However, election officials have offered an explanation for why the mail-in ballots examined in the stacks did not have folds or creases. They say ballots are sometimes copied onto other paper when they are too damaged to be fed through one of the scanning machines during tabulation. The mailed ballots can be torn or crumpled by postal workers during delivery or by poll workers while opening them and removing them from envelopes, which could prevent the machines from reading them.

WSB-TV/YouTube

But Favorito suspects the hundreds, if not thousands, of allegedly duplicate absentee ballots for Biden might be connected to spikes in votes for Biden he observed late on election night in Fulton County after election officials cleared monitors from State Farm Arena and pulled cases full of ballots out from under tables and began scanning them.

“There’s always the chance it was an inside job,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who’s been a leading advocate for Georgia election integrity over the past two decades.

On Nov. 3, Fulton County elections officials informed monitors that they were shutting down the State Farm tabulation center before midnight, only to continue counting throughout the night while no one was watching.

“Election workers don’t bring ballots in after the supervisor has delayed processing until the morning, hide them under a table and then bring them out for scanning and tabulation after the supervisor tells [monitors] they are done scanning for the evening and they go home,” Favorito said.

“Once scanning [was] completed, an election line feed showed an unprecedented vote spike that turned the election in favor of Biden,” he added. In fact, “just over a half hour after workers scanned the potentially fraudulent ballots, an election line feed showed a 100,000-plus vote spike for Biden.”

“Where did those ballots come from and why did they handle them so suspiciously?” Favorito asked.

Voyles noted that the county elections supervisor who oversaw the secret scanning of the cases full of ballots also helps run the warehouse where the suspect ballots are being stored.

Phone calls and emails to Fulton County went unanswered.

Similar Anomalies, Other Counties

Favorito pointed out that the potential for counterfeit ballots exists in other Georgia counties, not just Fulton.

In fact, two Democrat poll workers blew the whistle on similar anomalies they witnessed in neighboring DeKalb and Cobb counties, where the election process also is controlled by Democrats.

Carlos E. Silva, for one, declared in a Nov. 17 affidavit that he observed a similar “perfect black bubble” in absentee ballots for Biden during the recount he worked in DeKalb County. And while overseeing the Cobb County recount, he swore he “observed absentee ballots being reviewed with the same perfect bubble that I had seen the night before in DeKalb. All of these ballots had the same characteristics: they were all for Biden and had the same perfect bubble.”

Added Silva, a registered Democrat: “There were thousands of [mail-in] ballots that just had the perfect bubble marked for Biden and no other markings in the rest of the ballot.”

Another registered Democrat, Mayra Romera, testified that while monitoring the Cobb County recount, she noticed that “hundreds of these ballots seemed impeccable, with no folds or creases. The bubble selections were perfectly made … and all happened to be selections for Biden.”

In a recent article pooh-poohing complaints of fraud in Georgia, as well as Arizona, the New York Times portrayed Favorito as “a known conspiracy theorist” and suggested he was a 9/11 truther. As evidence, it cited a 2002 book he published “questioning the origin of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Asked about it, Favorito responded: “My book did not propose any theories on what happened on 9/11. I don’t mention anything about explosives” planted in the World Trade Center, as truthers have baselessly speculated. Rather, he said, he questioned Bush family business connections with the bin Laden family and other wealthy Saudis, and argued that the war on terror benefited the Bushes. He also faulted the Bush administration for “obstructing” FBI investigations into the attacks.

Favorito says he is a “constitutionalist” and neither a Republican nor a Trump supporter.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Yet Another Media Tale — Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op — Collapses

CNN with Anderson Cooper and Jim Acosta, June 1, 2020
By Glenn Greenwald | June 9, 2021

For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.

This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples. “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op,” read the NPR headline on June 1. The New York Times ran with: “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.” CNN devoted multiple segments to venting indignation while the on-screen graphic declared: “Peaceful Protesters Near White House Tear-Gassed, Shot With Rubber Bullets So Trump Can Have Church Photo Op.”

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos “reported” that “the administration asked police to clear peaceful protesters from the park across the White House so that the President could stage a photo op.” The Intercept published an article stating that “federal police used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House,” all to feature a video where the first interviewee said: “to me, the way our military and police have behaved toward the protesters at the instruction of President Trump has almost been Nazi-like.” Nazi-like. This was repeated by virtually every major corporate outlet:

At a June 2 Press Conference, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) proclaimed with anger: “last night I watched as President Trump, having gassed peaceful protesters just so he could do this photo op, then he went on to teargas priests who were helping protesters in Lafayette Park.” Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed: “What is this, a banana republic?,” when asked about NBC News’ report that “security forces used tear gas and flash-bangs against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators to clear the area for the president.”

There were some denials of this narrative at the time, largely confined to right-wing media. ABC News mocked “hosts on Fox News, one of the president’s preferred news media outlets, [who] have spent the days since the controversial photo op shifting defenses to fit the president’s narrative.” Meanwhile, The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway — in an article retweeted by Trump as a “must read” — cited sources to assert that the entire media narrative was false because force was to clear the Park not to enable Trump’s photo op but rather “because [protesters] had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night” and the Park Police decided to build a barrier to protect it.

But as usual, the self-proclaimed Superior Liberal Truth Squad instantly declared them to be lying. The Washington Post‘s “fact-checker,” Phillip Bump, mocked denials from Trump supporters and right-wing reporters such as Hemingway, proclaiming that a recent statement from the Park Police “brings the debate to a close,” as it proves “the deployment of security forces using weapons and irritants to clear a peaceful protest so that the president could have a photo op.”

All of this came crashing down on their heads on Wednesday afternoon. The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office’s findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama’s Commerce Department.

The letter released by Greenblatt’s office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was:

Over the course of this review, our career investigative staff conducted extensive witness interviews, reviewed video footage from numerous vantage points, listened to radio transmissions from multiple law enforcement entities, and examined evidence including emails, text messages, telephone records, procurement documents, and other related materials. This report presents a thorough, independent examination of that evidence to assess the USPP’s decision making and operations, including a detailed timeline of relevant actions and an analysis of whether the USPP’s actions complied with governing policies.

The IG’s conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway’s widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “ the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day.”

The detailed IG report elaborated on the timeline even more extensively. It was “on the morning of June 1” when “the Secret Service procured anti-scale fencing to establish a more secure perimeter around Lafayette Park that was to be delivered and installed that same day.” The agencies had “determined that it was necessary to clear protesters from the area in and around the park to enable the contractor’s employees to safely install the fence.” Indeed, “we found that by approximately 10 a.m. on June 1, the USPP had already begun developing a plan to clear protesters from the area to enable the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fence” — many hours before Trump decided to go.

The clearing of the Park, said the IG Report, had nothing to do with Trump or his intended visit to the Church; in fact, those responsible for doing this did not have any knowledge of Trump’s intentions:

The evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31. Further, the evidence showed that the USPP did not know about the President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June 1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the fencing contractor had arrived in the park.

Beyond that, planning for that operation began at least two days before Trump decided to visit the church. “The fencing contractor told us and emails we reviewed confirmed that on May 30, the assistant division chief of the Secret Service’s Procurement Division discussed with the contractor how quickly the contractor could deliver anti-scale fencing to Lafayette Park,” the Report found.

Plans for the fence were finalized at least the day prior to Trump’s walk: “the fencing contractor’s project manager told us that she learned on May 31 that the Secret Service had contacted the fencing contractor about an anti-scale fence.” And while Attorney General William Barr did visit the Park shortly before Trump’s walk and saw what he viewed as unruly protesters, causing him to ask Park Police commanders whether they would still be there when Trump arrived, the order to clear the Park had been given well before that and was unrelated to Trump or to Barr: there is “no evidence that the Attorney General’s visit to Lafayette Park at 6:10 p.m. caused the USPP to alter its plans to clear the park.”

Indeed, none of the key decision-makers had any idea Trump was coming when they implemented plans to clear the Park:

The USPP operations commander, the USPP incident commander, and the USPP acting chief of police told us they did not know the President planned to make a speech in the Rose Garden that evening. The USPP incident commander told us he was never informed of the President’s specific plans or when the President planned to come out of the White House. He said, “It was just a, ‘Hey, here he comes.’ And all of a sudden I turn around and there’s the entourage.”

The USPP acting chief of police also told us he did not know about the President’s plans to visit St. John’s Church and that the USPP incident commander told him the President might come to the park to assess the damage at an unspecified time. The USPP acting chief of police and the USPP incident commander told us this information had no impact on their operational plan, and both denied that the President’s potential visit to the park influenced the USPP’s decision to clear Lafayette Park and the surrounding areas. Numerous other USPP captains and lieutenants and the ACPD civil disturbance unit commanders also told us they received no information suggesting that the USPP cleared the area to facilitate the President’s visit to St. John’s Church. The DCNG major we interviewed told us that his USPP liaison appeared as surprised as he was when the President visited Lafayette Park, stating, “We [were] both kind of equally shocked.”

Of the dozens of people who participated in the investigation, “no one we interviewed stated that the USPP cleared the park because of a potential visit by the President or that the USPP altered the timeline to accommodate the President’s movement.”

In sum, the media claims that were repeated over and over and over as proven fact — and even confirmed by “fact-checkers” — were completely false. Watch how easily and often and aggressively and readily they just spread lies, this one courtesy of CNN‘s Erin Burnett and Don Lemon:

With the issuance of this independent debunking of their claims, the journalists who spread this latest lie have started to come to terms with what they did — yet again. “A narrative we thought we knew is not the reality,” NBC News’ chief CIA Disinformation Agent Ken Dilanian awkwardly acknowledged on Meet the Press Daily. Shortly before publication of this article, Politico begrudgingly admitted that while “the department’s Park Police failed to give Black Lives Matter demonstrators proper warning before it cleared them from Lafayette Park,” their primary media claim was untrue: “its actions were unrelated to President Donald Trump’s photo-op appearance at a nearby church.” Time will tell how readily others who spread this lie will account for how they — yet again — got this story so wrong.

Over and over we see the central truth: the corporate outlets that most loudly and shrilly denounce “disinformation” — to the point of demanding online censorship and de-platforming in the name of combating it — are, in fact, the ones who spread disinformation most frequently and destructively. It is hard to count how many times they have spread major fake stories in the Trump years. For that reason, they have nobody but themselves to blame for the utter collapse in trust and faith on the part of the public, which has rightfully concluded they cannot and should not be believed.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

WHO’s Chief Scientist Served with Legal Notice for Disinformation and Suppression of Evidence

By Colin Todhunter | OffGuardian | June 9, 2021

On 25 May 2021, the Indian Bar Association (IBA) served a 51-page legal notice on Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), for:

[H]er act of spreading disinformation and misguiding the people of India, in order to fulfil her agenda.”

The Mumbai-based IBA is an association of lawyers who strive to bring transparency and accountability to the Indian justice system. It is actively involved in the dissemination of legal knowledge and provides guidance and support to advocates and ordinary people in their fight for justice.

The legal notice says Dr Swaminathan has been:

Running a disinformation campaign against Ivermectin by deliberate suppression of effectiveness of drug Ivermectin as prophylaxis and for treatment of COVID-19, despite the existence of large amounts of clinical data compiled and presented by esteemed, highly qualified, experienced medical doctors and scientists,”

And:

Issuing statements in social media and mainstream media, thereby influencing the public against the use of Ivermectin and attacking the credibility of acclaimed bodies/institutes like ICMR and AIIMS, Delhi, which have included ‘Ivermectin’ in the ‘National Guidelines for COVID-19 management’.”

The IBA states that legal action is being taken against Dr Swaminathan in order to stop her from causing further damage to the lives of citizens of India.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist

The notice is based on the research and clinical trials carried out by the ‘Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’ (FLCCC) and the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) Panel. These organisations have presented an enormous amount of data that strengthen the case for recommending Ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

The IBA says that Dr Swaminathan has ignored these studies and reports and has deliberately suppressed the data regarding the effectiveness of Ivermectin, with an intent to dissuade the people of India from using it.

However, two key medical bodies, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi, have refused to accept her stand and have retained the recommendation for Ivermectin, under a ‘May Do’ category, for patients with mild symptoms and those in home isolation, as stated in ‘The National Guidelines for COVID-19 management’.

It is interesting to note that the content of several web links to news articles and reports included in the notice served upon Dr Swaminathan, which was visible before issuing the notice, has either been removed or deleted.

It seems that the vaccine manufacturers and many governments are desperate to protect their pro-vaccine agenda and will attempt to censor information and news regarding the efficacy of Ivermectin.

The legal notice can be read in full on the website of the India Bar Association.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Support for Lockdowns: A ‘Bootleggers and Baptists’ Phenomenon

By David McGrogan | AIER | June 8, 2021

One of the most striking characteristics of ‘lockdownism’ – though one which, seen in the cold light of day, is hardly surprising – is that support for it has been generated through confluences of interests. The most obvious example of this is the way in which the aims of public health bodies (preventing excess deaths) have aligned so closely with those of certain big, incumbent market actors, such as supermarkets, social media giants, and online marketplaces (that is, profit). Lockdowns appear to suit those with self-consciously virtuous motives; they also very often suit those who want to make money. When people stay at home, they stop the virus spreading – but they also spend more time online, buy more from online stores, and rely on big ‘essential’ supermarkets rather than small, independent ‘mom and pop’ nonessential retail.

In light of this, are we at all surprised that it is very often the big social media firms, streaming services and the like that have been most strongly in favor of restrictions? There is nothing conspiratorial about this, nor probably even anything intentional. It is just the straightforward application of one of the most fundamental lessons of classical economics: incentives matter, and the incentives of these actors just tend to point in the same direction. It’s not that these businesses consciously support lockdowns due to a naked profit motive, in other words; it’s simply that their incentives to reject lockdownism are not strong, or are lacking entirely, because their interests are not in conflict with it.

One of the most important, helpful, but least well-systematized concepts in the study of regulation is the ‘bootleggers and Baptists’ phenomenon, coined by Bruce Yandle. Yandle observed that political activism in favour of the prohibition of alcohol sales and Sunday closing laws in the US was often a combination of high and low motives. Baptists are in favor of restricting the selling of alcohol because it is ‘good for society.’ Bootleggers are in favor of it because, for their purposes, the less alcohol that is lawfully available the better. The two groups do not conspire with one another, openly or otherwise. But the alignment of their interests is a kind of pincer movement which regulators find difficult to resist.

Bootleggers’ and Baptists’ coalitions, then, are circumstantial alignments between virtue and the profit motive. And they are everywhere in public life. To pick just one example, the Scottish and UK governments increasingly regulate the consumption of alcohol and sugar, through a variety of price floors, mandatory packaging requirements, and surcharges. These measures satisfy public health advocates, whose motives are pure (if probably misguided). But they also satisfy big incumbents, who can usually swallow increased costs much more readily than smaller operators, and who are adept at finding ways to sell smaller portions of familiar brands for the same price. Is there a conspiracy taking place? No: it’s just that incumbents are not strongly incentivized to lobby against the measures in question, because those measures are not actually very harmful to them.

The alignment of interests between public health advocates and certain market actors during the Covid period is, then, readily conceptualized in bootlegger-and-Baptist terms. It isn’t that there is any conniving or ‘backstairs intrigue’ going on. It’s simply that public health advice has gone strongly in one direction, and there has been no real incentive for certain sections of the corporate world to push back against it – rather the opposite.

This is not an entirely novel observation, and will have been evident to many observers. What has been less well-noticed is that there is something of a psychological bootlegger-and-Baptist phenomenon taking place within individuals’ minds as well – and that this has been particularly important in building support for lockdowns among the professional classes.

This was brought home to me early on in the pandemic, when an acquaintance sent me an email proclaiming how important the stay-at-home message was, but also saying that he regretted the fact that, having recently bought a new house, he was (I quote directly) ‘too busy to enjoy lockdown.’ This person’s rather blithe allusion that lockdown was something one should be enjoying was strikingly indicative, I thought, of the general mood among professional people that I knew. And indeed this was hardly the only person who, accidentally or openly, admitted to me that they rather liked the prospect of being shut at home. (I am sure that most readers of this post will have noticed the same phenomenon.) Many people seem to have relished the opportunity to get lots more work done. Others have found the release from stressful commuting or other commitments blissful. Being able to work from home, and often having quite nice homes, a lot of professional people have felt that lockdown gave them a better work-life balance. In other words, lockdown simply wasn’t a great hardship for a certain chunk of the population – and in fact came as something of a blessing.

This is not to suggest for a moment that support for lockdowns has been selfish, of course. Far from it. Rather, it is simply to observe that there has, again, been a strong confluence of interests – except here it is within the individual mind. I do not doubt that people have generally felt that all the restrictions they have been subjected to have been morally right (the ‘Baptist’ motive). But it is also true that they have had self-interested reasons for finding that the measures have not been all that bad of an idea, as well (the inner ‘bootlegger’).

It is the combination of the bootleggers and the Baptists working in tandem that is so effective, in Yandle’s sketch, and the same is true within us, as well. Our internal respective bootlegger, and Baptist, impulses are strong in their own right, and if they had been at odds during the pandemic, they would have tended to cancel each other out and there may have been more of a pushback against the restrictions. But because they have been working together, they are very powerful. This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of white collar professionals during the pandemic: they have been acting out of a genuine sense of virtue, but they have also done rather well out of doing so, at least in the short term. It’s not one or the other, and high and low motives are not mutually exclusive – it’s both in combination that does the trick.

David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. Before entering academia, he lived and worked in Japan for the best part of a decade. His research focuses on human rights law and the law of contract, in respect of both of which he tends to adopt a classical liberal perspective.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Is there a Problem with the Lopez-Medina, Colombia-based Study Implicating Ivermectin?

Major Pharma Companies Including Merck Funding the Trial Site during the Study

By Michael B. Goodkin MD, FACC | TrialSite News | June 9, 2021

Although a great majority of ivermectin-based studies have indicated real promise, one particular study conducted by a small trial site in Colombia received unprecedented media attention when the study results indicated negligible impact. What hasn’t been disclosed by media is the seriously questionable pharmaceutical industry support of this one trial site. During the study, a handful of some of the largest drug companies in the world gave this site money. What’s not clear is why this occurred and whether the funds are correlated to some nefarious agenda. This author suggests that the publisher should have scrutinized this industry funding perhaps more carefully.

On March 4th, 2021, an article appeared in JAMA titled, “Effect of Ivermectin On Time To Resolution of Symptoms Among Adults With Mild COVID.” It concluded, “The findings do not support the use of ivermectin for treatment of mild COVID-19, although larger trials may be needed to understand the  effects of ivermectin on other clinically relevant outcomes.”

Dr. Eduardo Lopez-Medina et al. from Cali, Colombia, randomized 400 mildly ill patients, averaging 37 years old, to ivermectin 0.3 mg/kg or placebo. The time to resolution for ivermectin-treated patients was 10 days and placebo patients 12 days, which was not statistically significant.

Much has been written about the methodologic problems of the study but few read to the bottom of the article to see this:

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr. López-Medina reported receiving grants from Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, and Janssen as well as personal fees from Sanofi Pasteur during the conduct of the study. Dr. Oñate reported receiving grants from Janssen and personal fees from Merck Sharp & Dohme and Gilead outside the submitted work. Dr. Torres reported receiving nonfinancial support from Tecnoquímicas unrelated to this project during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.

Considerable press outlets noted this study, we suspect due to the fact that the ivermectin results were negligible, but none of the media addressed the possibility of conflict with industry.

Absolutely nothing has been written about the fact that the study was sponsored by Centro de Estudios en Infectogía Pediatrica and the authors were paid by 3 drug companies making COVID vaccines–Sanofi  Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, and Janssen– and two making COVID  therapeutics–Gilead and Merck.

We have some questions about this. Why did the authors disclose that they were receiving industry sponsor funds during the conduct of the study? Were these funds to actually direct the ivermectin study? That would most certainly be a conflict of interest material.

Merck’s expressed their intent on competing against the ivermectin generic approach. Why would this company be funding this small trial site operation in Colombia?

How could JAMA even think about publishing an article sponsored by 5 drug companies centering on a study targeting a generic competitor? Any layperson seeing this could think that this was highly suspect.  

The potential conflict of interest was so severe that no journal should have published it.

Why would anyone do this study?  

Was there a pressing need to know if 37-year-old patients got better sooner with ivermectin than placebo? There were a lot of resources put into this study. The only possible reason to do the study was for drug companies to have a vehicle to publish negative data about ivermectin. Is there anyone who believes the study was sponsored to add to the scientific knowledge about ivermectin for the treatment of COVID?

On February 4th, 2021, Merck, who had the original patent on ivermectin, put out a  statement regarding ivermectin for COVID:

• No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;

• No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease; and

• A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.

If Merck believed these statements to be true, why would they feel the need to go public with them?  

Merck’s vaccine had failed. Merck had bought a company, Oncoimmune, for $425 million and gotten $356 million from HHS in taxpayer money to develop a therapeutic agent, CD24c. They had a material conflict of interest. Later, the European Medicines Agency and World Health Organization both quoted Merck’s statement while ignoring the conflict of interest and science in recommending against the use of ivermectin for COVID, other than for research. Were they influenced by Merck? CD24c was dropped, and Merck has oral antiviral molnupiravir in a phase II-III trial. Why would Merck sponsor a trial of ivermectin?

Why would JAMA publish an article showing that young patients who are expected to recover quickly don’t get better much more quickly with ivermectin?  

This article did not warrant publication in JAMA. The only possible reason to publish it was to present false, negative information about ivermectin to readers.

Why was the age of the patients not mentioned in the key findings or conclusions? 

The age of the patients made the article irrelevant. It could not have been an accident that the age was not mentioned in the key findings and conclusions. That would never happen at JAMA. The authors anticipated that many readers would miss the age of the patients and conclude that ivermectin is ineffective in early COVID. Dr. Adfarsh Bhimraj at Cleveland Clinic who heads the committee writing COVID recommendations for the Infectious Disease Association of America spoke with Helio Medical News on ivermectin. He had a similar observation in the Washington Post.

“This was a well-done, but small trial in patients with mild or moderate disease,” Bhimraj said. He suggested that this is a negative study for a non-mortality outcome, but because the numbers were small, it might not have produced a statistically significant difference in effect size. The evidence is not enough to warrant a recommendation for the use of ivermectin. Other US experts who commented on the article have failed to notice the age of the patients and drug company sponsorship. It has crossed few American physicians’  minds that JAMA could be corrupted and knowingly publish a study with deceptive results in order to help drug companies.

Was the data fraudulent? 

If the purpose of the article was to make it appear that ivermectin was ineffective in mild COVID, there is no reason to believe the data was real. There is no published randomized data for comparison. In the Dominican Republic, Dr. Jose Natalio Redondo reported that in 1300 patients with all degrees of illness, the length of illness went from 21 days to 10 days with ivermectin treatment.

Was JAMA aware that there was concern they had been corrupted and the article unreliable?

Sixteen members of the AMA Board of Directors were emailed that it appeared that JAMA had been infiltrated and the article fraudulent on March 10th, 2021. Eleven JAMA editorial board members were emailed about it April 12th. And one was spoken to. The same email was sent to executive editor Dr. Phil Fontanarosa April 13th. This reply was sent:

“Your message was brought to my attention.    

I will look into these issues as outlined in your letter.    

Please bear with me, as this will take some time, given the number of issues and the complexity of the concerns you raise, as well as other urgent issues and priorities we are addressing right now.” 

As of 6/8/21, the article has been read online 759,000 times. How many of those readers concluded that ivermectin is ineffective for mild COVID and, as a result, did not prescribe it for their patients? To put things in perspective, Uttar Pradesh, India, with 210 million people, started ivermectin in August. By December, their mortality rate was 0.26 per 100,000. In the US, in December, it was 11 times higher at 2.8 per 100,000. Admissions in Mexico are down 75% due to ivermectin.

The JAMA article of 3/4/21 was a cleverly devised drug company creation designed to create the false impression that ivermectin was ineffective in mild COVID by claiming it didn’t shorten the duration of illness significantly. They knew people would miss the age of the patients and not read to the bottom of the article to see that it was sponsored by 5 drug company competitors. They knew people would leap to the conclusion that ivermectin was completely ineffective for COVID, not realizing that the article could not address its effects on hospitalization and death. An infectious disease doctor friend sent it to me as proof that ivermectin does not work. Drug companies would not have gone to these lengths if they did not fear ivermectin as a competitor.

JAMA reviewers could not possibly have missed the obvious conflict of interest. It was obviously their intention to spread misinformation. Leaving out the age of the patients was intentional to make readers think it was ineffective in everyone. The article has not only led to patient care being adversely affected but the article has been widely quoted as evidence against the use of ivermectin. WHO says it is the number one article in support of its position.

Doctors should contact JAMA to understand what is going on with the investigation. JAMA should report on their findings as they committed to this author to undertake an investigation.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

10 mine-clearing workers killed in Afghanistan, Taliban denies responsibility for attack

RT | June 9, 2021

Gunmen stormed a camp of a UK-based mine clearance group in Afghanistan, killing 10 people. Afghan officials blame the Taliban for the attack, while the militants deny this.
The non-governmental organization HALO Trust said that 10 of its workers were killed and 16 wounded on Tuesday evening when gunmen attacked their camp in Afghanistan’s northeastern Baghlan Province. The group said than around 110 people from local communities were at the camp.

The Baghlan governor’s spokesperson, Jawed Basharat, told AFP that the gunmen wore masks. Ariana News cited locals saying that all victims were from the Baghlan Province.

Afghanistan Interior Ministry spokesperson Tariq Arian said militants from the Taliban were behind the attack. He posted what he said were photos of the wounded mine-clearers lying on hospital beds.

The Taliban denied targeting the mine clearance team. “We condemn attacks on the defenseless & view it as brutality,” the group’s spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a tweet, adding that the militants have “normal relations” with NGOs.

Arian said the Taliban was lying and that its fighters have attacked aid workers and civilians in the past.

The Taliban claimed to have shot down an Afghan military helicopter on Tuesday. However, the country’s Defense Ministry said the M-17 chopper crashed due to technical problems, killing three of its crew and injuring one.

June 9, 2021 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | | Leave a comment