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Transparency troubles: The Global Disinformation Index faces scrutiny over government ties and biased practices

More controversy surrounding the pro-censorship group

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | January 31, 2024

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a US government-funded pro-censorship organization, has come under fire for lacking transparency, ironically the same issue it labels non-mainstream websites for.

Despite hypocritically casting aspersions on sites that reject the mainstream narrative on many issues, the GDI, as per a report by the Washington Examiner, exhibits a conspicuous absence of this very transparency in its operations.

Billing itself as nonpartisan and objective while routinely favoring leftist narratives, the GDI has received over $100k from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Part of the score it assigns to online platforms stems from the possibility of controversial interests emerging from shadowy ownership structures—a principle it doesn’t appear to abide by itself.

According to Mike Davis, founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, the GDI is in breach of the law by keeping its disclosures hidden. The Washington Examiner also mentioned that the GDI is currently under congressional investigation. Adding to the mystery is the GDI’s refusal to disclose its “dynamic exclusion list,” a tool reportedly used by businesses like Microsoft and Oracle to hamstring ad placements on right-leaning outlets, thereby achieving a sort of financial strangulation of these sites.

Despite providing heavily concealed tax information for its two U.S. subsidiaries, Disinformation Index Inc. and the AN Foundation, upon request from the Examiner, details from the GDI’s tax filings on ProPublica reveal a closer relationship between the organization, the US Government, and left-wing donors.

The report discloses that the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy and the billionaire George Soros together donated a grand total of $465,750 to the GDI in 2022.

In 2023, Texas along with media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist started legal proceedings against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, alleging governmental attempts to silence the American press through funding the GDI. The action taken was based on GDI’s activities which reportedly included blacklisting conservative media.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

German “Fact Checker” That Received Funding From Government, Facebook, Omidyar Network, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Dismisses German Farmers As “Conspiracy Theorists”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 31, 2024

The expression is, “you can’t make that up” – to signal the level of the absurdity of a situation.

Meanwhile, groups calling themselves “fact checkers” and those bankrolling them keep making things up. And becoming used to it aside, their work still feels as if – “you can’t make that up.”

When names like the Omidyar Network, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and Meta start cropping up in the same sentence, you start believing anything could come out of an “alliance” of the sort.

Here we have yet another supposedly “fact-checking” effort that turned into a smear campaign against people engaged in lawful protest regarding economic, social, and political issues.

In this instance, in Germany. There the economy, and with it the government, has been in serious trouble ever since Germany, for political reasons, cut itself off from affordable gas. Those with the most to lose, such as farmers, have been hit the hardest.

One of the recent consequences, though you may not hear much about it in legacy media, have been mass and ongoing farmer protests. At the same time, efforts are under way to ban one of the country’s most popular parties, AfD. Both have been labeled as right-wing conspiracy theorists, Covid “misinformationists,” and even Russia supporters.

And this labeling work is being done by something called “Correctiv” – a group that says it is a news and fact-checking site. Correctiv gets its money from Omidyar, Soros, Meta, but also the current German government.

In a report on Public, US-based author Gregor Baszak goes into the weeds of the situation, that shows a beleaguered government resorting to decidedly undemocratic moves and pondering shockingly undemocratic ideas, such as banning political opposition.

Baszak talks about a Correctiv article that goes after the farmers as some sort of right wing menace, supposedly spreading not only Russian propaganda and Covid disinformation – just because of expressing anger over their business becoming unsustainable with the government’s fuel and vehicle subsidy cuts.

“The (Correctiv) article does not specify what ‘Covid disinformation’ the farmers spread,” Baszak writes. “Nor does it offer any evidence of ties between the farmers and the Russian government, only that ‘some X accounts’ that support the farmers wrote posts that ‘coincided with the methods of a pro-Russian propaganda network.’”

However, at least for the time being, what left-leaning German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has described as “the stupidest government in Europe” is succeeding in keeping its opponents divided by throwing damning, even false, accusations their way.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Fails to Produce Evidence to Justify Widespread Cemetery Destruction in Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 30, 2024

The Israeli military granted CNN a three-hour tour inside the Gaza Strip to view the destruction of Palestinian cemeteries. The outlet explained that the evidence presented by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did not confirm Tel Aviv’s claims about tunnels under the graveyard. Across Gaza, Israel has damaged over a dozen cemeteries.

An IDF general gave CNN’s Jeremy Diamond a guided tour of the Bani Suheila cemetery. Israel claimed it needed to dig up the bodies buried at the graveyard because a Hamas tunnel ran under it. However, the IDF was not able to show CNN evidence supporting that claim.

Diamond explained the evidence presented by the IDF actually suggested that there was no tunnel beneath the cemetery. The IDF invited Diamond into Gaza after he reported that the Israeli military operations in Gaza had damaged 16 Gazan cemeteries. Palestinian officials report that 2,000 graves in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military.

Janina Dill, co-director at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, told CNN that the desecration of burial sites could be evidence of genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last week it was plausible that Israel was committing a genocide against Palestinians.

Throughout the Israeli war on Gaza, Tel Aviv has attempted to justify destroying civilian infrastructure by claiming below the buildings, Hamas has dug tunnels. Similar to the Bani Suheila cemetery, the IDF has been unable to produce conclusive evidence that the tunnel networks existed.

Still, Washington has not condemned the destruction of hospitals, cemeteries, and universities. The White House has even repeated Israel’s unproven claims regarding the tunnels. President Joe Biden backed the assertion that the Shifa Hospital was above a Hamas headquarters. Additionally, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller suggested the IDF conducted a controlled demolition of Israa University in Gaza because a tunnel was under the building.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel refuses to provide information about Gaza detainees, rights group says

MEMO | January 31, 2024

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the Israeli occupation refuses to disclose any information about detainees taken from Gaza, Quds Press reported.

In a statement issued yesterday, the rights group said the Israeli occupation is carrying out “the crime of enforced disappearance” against Gaza detainees, following a number of military orders and laws specifically enacted for them.

The Israeli Knesset has recently ratified regulations depriving “Gaza detainees” of meeting with a lawyer for another four months.

Images from Gaza show Palestinian men being rounded up from shelters, stripped to their underwear and made to wait in the cold while naked and blindfolded. They are later seen being taken away on trucks to undisclosed locations.

Those who have been released bear signs of torture, exhaustion and malnourishment.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

World public opinion witnessing moral decline, collapse of West in Gaza: Iran

Press TV – January 31, 2024

Iran says the world public opinion is witnessing the moral decline and collapse of the West in the Gaza Strip after the discovery of tens of decomposing bodies of blindfolded Palestinians dumped inside a schoolyard in the northern besieged territory.

“The bodies of many Palestinian civilians have been discovered among the debris and garbage in northern Gaza, where the Israeli occupation forces tied their hands and eyes and then executed them,” Spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kan’ani wrote in a post published on X, formerly known as X, on Wednesday.

In the poignant tableau of Gaza, the global audience bears witness to the decline and moral collapse of the West, the Iranian diplomat pointed out.

Palestinian media outlets reported that the bodies of at least 30 Palestinians were discovered at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.

The bodies were reportedly discovered under a mound of rubble with videos showing several of the body bags tied with white plastic zip ties, normally used for tying cables together.

It remains unclear when the Palestinians were killed; but the school had served as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians before it was bombed and besieged by Israeli forces in early December.

Hamas urges rights groups to document execution of blindfolded Palestinians

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has called on international human rights organizations “to document the horrific crime” of killing of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinians in Beit Lahia.

It said in a statement that the discovery attests to a massacre against civilians as the victims were killed in execution-style after being tortured.

The Gaza-based group further noted that Israel is continuing to “exterminate” Palestinian people in defiance of the decisions of the International Court of Justice, “which demanded that they stop the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

Palestinian foreign ministry demands probe after discovery of mass grave

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also called for the formation of an international investigation team to look into the gruesome discovery.

“They were killed while blindfolded and with their hands tied, as clear evidence that they were executed… in the most horrific forms,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The Ministry believes that the discovery of this mass grave in this brutal form reflects the scale of the tragedy to which Palestinian civilians are exposed, the mass massacres and executions of even detainees, in flagrant and gross violation of all relevant international norms and laws,” it added.

The Israeli war in Gaza has killed at least 26,900 people, most of them children and women. Another 65,949 individuals have also been wounded.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US troops told to prepare for war in Gaza – media

RT | January 31, 2024

US Air Force personnel in Iraq have been ordered to remain on standby in case of “on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war,” The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing a Pentagon memo.

Circulated earlier this month, the memo instructs an unknown number of troops to be placed  “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war,” the news site reported. The standby order applies to troops stationed in Iraq since last year, according to a separate Pentagon document seen by The Intercept.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

The White House has stated on several occasions since October that its support for the Jewish state would not involve American soldiers fighting alongside their Israeli counterparts.

The US responded to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel by immediately dispatching two aircraft carriers to the region and preparing 2,000 additional troops for deployment to the Middle East, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on October 10 that “there is no intention to put US boots on the ground” in Israel or Gaza.

However, US special forces have been active in Israel since October, with senior official Christopher Maier telling reporters at the time that American commandos were “actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things.” The Pentagon has also admitted to flying spy drones over Gaza “in support of hostage recovery efforts.”

Since the conflict began, US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan have come under fire more than 150 times, with Iran-aligned Shi’ite militias subjecting their bases to regular drone and rocket barrages. One such attack on an outpost in Jordan on Sunday killed three US soldiers and injured several dozen others.

American ships and warplanes have also launched several strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, in a bid to break the Houthi blockade on “Israel-linked” merchant shipping passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis have responded by targeting US commercial and military vessels in the area. On Wednesday, the militants announced that they had fired multiple missiles at the destroyer USS Gravely.

US Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said that the Graveley shot down one incoming missile, and suffered no damage or casualties.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Iraqi Resistance announces ‘suspension’ of anti-American operations

Press TV – January 31, 2024

The Islamic Resistance, an umbrella group of Iraqi anti-terror groups, has announced a pause in its operations against American targets across the region.

The group announced the decision through a statement by Kata’ib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades), one of its major members, on Tuesday.

“We announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces,” Hezbollah Brigades’ Secretary-General, Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi said in the statement.

Hamidawi cited “consideration for the Iraqi government” as the reason for the decision, without elaborating.

Over the past years, the resistance has been launching countless attacks against bases housing the US occupation forces across the Arab country and neighboring Syria.

Before announcing the pause, it had escalated its attacks against the targets, citing the United States’ complicity in an October 7, 2023-present war of genocide that has been launched by the Israeli regime against the Gaza Strip.

The statement, however, asserted “we will continue to defend our people in Gaza through other means.”

“We advise the brave fighters of the Hezbollah Brigades to adopt temporary passive defense measures in case of any aggressive American actions…”

The statement, meanwhile, rejected claims made by US officials alleging existence of affiliation between the umbrella group and any foreign party.

“The Islamic Resistance, represented by the Hezbollah Brigades, has resolved to support our oppressed people in Gaza with its own will, without interference from others,” it stated.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Breakthrough on All Fronts Ahead of Schedule

By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | January 31, 2024

When the General Staff have been discussing with President Vladimir Putin the timing of the Russian offensive to force the Kiev regime into capitulation, it has been agreed, understood, and repeated that the strategic reserves of the Ukrainian forces should be destroyed first, together with the supply lines for the weapons and ammunition crossing the border from the US and the NATO allies.

This process, they also agreed, should take as long as required with least casualties on the Russian side, as determined by military intelligence. Also agreed and pre-conditional, there should be no repeat of the political intelligence failures of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) which precipitated the failed special forces operation known as the Battle of Antonov (Hostomel) Airport from February 24 to April 2, 2022.

Taking account of the mistakes made then by the SVR director, Sergei Naryshkin, and the subsequent mistakes of military officers around Yevgeny Prigozhin, the General Staff has also accepted that their tactical operations must run least risk of Russian casualties through March 17, the final day of the presidential election.

Reinforcing these preconditions for the timing of the Russian offensive, General Winter and General Patience have joined the Stavka meetings.

This week military sources believe there has been a turning point – on the Ukrainian battlefield, and on the Russian clock.

The daily Defense Ministry briefing and bulletin from Moscow reported last Thursday, before the Friday weekly summary, that the Ukrainian KIA (killed in action) for the previous twenty-four hours totaled 795, with the ratio of offensive tactics to defence, 3 to 3. On Monday, the KIA total was 680, the ratio 4 to 3. On Tuesday, KIA came to 885, the ratio 5 to 1. The casualty rate is unusually high; the shift to offence is recognizably new, if not announced.

The “Stavka Project”, a military briefing which is broadcast by Vladimir Soloviev, confirms the positional breakthroughs this week on several of the fronts or “directions”, as the Defense Ministry calls them, along the Donbass line; click to watch (in Russian).

In Boris Rozhin’s summary of the Defense Ministry briefing materials, published before dawn on Wednesday morning, the leading Russian military blogger (Colonel Cassad ) identifies “small advances”, “slight movements”, some positional “successes”, other positional “counter-fighting”, and “no significant progress yet”. The adverb is military talk for timing.

According to a military source outside Russia, “the Russian breakthrough is beginning to happen now. It’s being coordinated with strikes and raids along the northern border. The commitment of the ‘crack’ Ukrainian brigades at the expense of other sectors shows how desperate [General Valery] Zaluzhny is to plug the holes. He knows that the target is the isolation of Kharkov, the establishment of a demilitarized ‘buffer zone’, as well as the development of a situation whereby all Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are threatened with being cut off… and he’s quickly running out of ammunition, not to mention cannon fodder.”

“By the end of the winter,” the source has added overnight, “the Ukrainians will barely be able to move along the roads they use to feed the front due to the Russian drone, missile, conventional air, and artillery strikes. Once they can no longer plug the gaps with mechanized units acting as fire-fighting brigades, it’s just a matter of time before the big breakthroughs and encirclements begin. At the current burn rate of Ukrainian forces, I imagine we’ll start seeing Russian tanks with fuel tanks fitted for extended range appearing and Russian airborne troops making air assaults in the Ukrainian rear within weeks.”

In yesterday’s edition of the Moscow security analysis platform Vzglyad, Yevgeny Krutikov, a leading Russian military analyst with GRU service himself and GRU sources for his reporting since, published a report entitled “What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?” “Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region,” Krutikov concluded, “threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.” A verbatim English translation of this piece follows.

January 29, 2024 – 19:10.

What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?
By Yevgeny Krutikov

“The settlement of Tabayevka in the Kharkov region has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry says. We are not just facing the capture of a village: Russian troops are now hacking into the contact lines, which have not budged for a year. Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region, threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.

First, Krakhmalnoye, then Tabayevka – Russian troops have advanced in the Svatovo direction (Kharkov region), pushing the enemy to a new line of defence (to the village of Peschanoye). Slightly to the north, already close to Kupyansk, the enemy’s positions are also gradually moving to the west and southwest.

Along the way, forests are being cleared, which the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] is turning into fortified areas, even giving them names (“Alligator” and “Woodpecker”). The enemy is losing the old lines of trenches, the first line of contact has been destroyed. Something similar is happening directly near Kupyansk, but there the advanced fortified lines in Sinkovka are being held still by the VSU, though the positions on the flanks have gradually begun to sink.

At first glance, we are looking at isolated episodes of positional warfare, since the big, iconic and recognizable geographical names do not appear in the information releases. But this is not quite true.

Firstly, even in this scenario as published so far, strategic threats arise for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example, in the possible drive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to the Oskol River which has far-reaching prospects. Notwithstanding, it is still impossible to predict when this will become possible in practice.

Secondly, the enemy has been demonstrating a systemic defence crisis in the Kupyansk direction during the past week. The defence of Kupyansk has been under construction by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the spring of last year, when the decision was made in Kiev on a ‘counteroffensive’ in the southern direction. New brigades with western armoured vehicles were sent to the southern section of the contact line, and Kupyansk and the area around it were designated for defence with the rest of their forces.

In Kiev, they were convinced that Russian troops were forming an offensive group in the Kupyansk direction, and so the VSU began to wait there for a frontal assault. However, as a result, the Russian Army did not undertake anything of the kind in this area. Instead, the Ukrainian units were gradually ground down by the Russian army in positional battles, while the Kupyansk group of the VSU had to be replenished with whatever troops were left.

Now Ukrainian sources are complaining that as a consequence, a combination of lines has formed in the sinkhole areas (that’s the same Krakhmalnoye and Tabayevka). Into these lines the VSU has herded separate battalions from different units, with the result that unified management and command have been lost, and the performance quality of the troops has left much to be desired.

As a result, the VSU is considering the possibility of transferring the remnants of those forces which participated in the failed ‘counteroffensive”’ to Kupyansk from the southern direction. Before that, they had been sent in great haste sent to Avdeyevka.

But this is already a systemic problem for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since there is trouble in the southern sector. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have gradually regained some of the positions which were left during the so-called counteroffensive, and these forces continue to move forward. We are even talking about possible threats to Orekhov, a rearguard city for the VSU, from which all the communications and command of the ‘counteroffensive’ had been carried out.

Behind the defensive fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an open field for tens of kilometres opens up on a whole group of sites. Kiev’s military reserves are gradually being squandered, and there is practically no human materiel left to plug the holes. Related to these problems there are the panic campaigns in Kiev about total mobilization.

There is another problem: the attrition of officers. Western military personnel cannot replace this crucial resource — they can only be used to service technically complicated weapons systems such as air defence or long-range artillery. Along the line of contact, foreign officers are more likely to interfere due to their ignorance of the language and misunderstanding of the mentality of the [Ukrainian] subordinates.

There are other factors weakening the Ukrainian defence, but they are not directly related to military operations. For example, the Western sponsors are really concerned about the corruption of the Ukrainian leadership. The inspections and audits which are taking place in Kiev on this issue right now are preventing Ukraine from building new defensive lines swiftly enough.

Another non-military factor: political discord among the various factions of the Ukrainian authorities. The premonition of defeat is triggering a drop in morale, not only in the troops, but also in the elites.

All this in general creates a strategic opportunity for Russia to seriously change the situation on the line of contact.

Partial tactical successes must at some point turn into a major breakthrough in the enemy’s defence. Moreover, we are talking about such a breakthrough that will not stop in just two or three days at the next defensive line, but will lead inevitably, precisely, to the collapse of the front. This is exactly what the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces are now aimed at, probing for the weaknesses in Ukrainian defensive positions.

The liberation of Tabayevka is an example of just such an approach. Sooner or later, the VSU will not have time to create a new defensive line behind a particular settlement. And then we will see how the special operation will break the current positional deadlock.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

How Can Russia Stop Ground-Launched Glide Bombs US is Sending to Ukraine?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 31.01.2024

The Pentagon plans to “field test” a new, ground-launched variant of its deadly Small Diameter Bomb design in real world battlefield conditions in Ukraine. What are these weapons? What dangers will they pose to Russian forces and civilians in frontline areas? How can Russia defeat them? Sputnik explores.

Sources told Politico on Tuesday that Ukraine is preparing to receive a delivery of the US’ new Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDBs) as soon as this week.

The deliveries will give Kiev “a deeper strike capability they haven’t had” and “complement” the Ukrainian military’s “long-range fire arsenal,” a US official familiar with the transfer boasted. The weapons, which even the US military doesn’t have in its arsenal yet, will serve as “an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more,” the official said, without elaborating.

What is the Small Diameter Bomb?

Developed in the mid-2000s by US aerospace and defense giant Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division, the original GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was envisioned as an air-dropped glide bomb designed to target an array of stationary ground targets, ranging from bunkers and electronic warfare jamming equipment to airfields, fuel depots, barracks, and troop concentration.

The GBU-39 is equipped with a 285-pound (130 kg) bomb and has a 206-pound (93 kg) penetrating blast fragmentation warhead – enough to punch through up to three feet of steel-reinforced concrete, and can be guided by a combination of active radar homing, laser guidance, GPS, and inertial navigation, depending on configuration and model. The system boasts a circular error probable of about one meter, and has a range of between 75 and 110 km.

The GBU-39 is a glide weapon, which, as the name suggests, means the bomb glides to its target along a pre-designated flight path at low speeds, without the assistance of rocket engines. The system’s comparatively low cost (as little as $40,000 apiece compared to $3.2 million for the Storm Shadows Kiev has been receiving from Britain and using to terror bomb Donbass, for example, combined with its small radar signature and comparatively short flight time makes it difficult to detect and intercept using traditional air defenses.
What is the Ground-Launched Variant of the Small Diameter Bomb?

With Ukraine’s Air Force hard pressed to get its aircraft into the skies due to the constant threat of Russian air defenses and interceptor warplanes, the US and its allies have committed significant resources to converting ordinarily air-launched weapons for launch from ground-based systems (for more information check out the US military-industrial complex’s “FrankenSAM” program for Ukraine).

Besides air defenses, another component of efforts to convert ordinarily air-launched weapons from the ground revolves around rocket artillery. That’s where the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb comes in. Unlike its air-launched cousin, the modified GBU-39 is fitted with an engine from the M26 rocket motor used by the M270 and HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to propel it toward its target.

Developed by Boeing and Swedish defense giant Saab in the mid-2010s, the GLSDB is said to have a range of up to 145 km, and has a reported price tag of about $100,000 apiece.
With the US and its allies having already sent dozens of MLRS artillery platforms to Ukraine over the past two years, the delivery of new ground-launched Small Diameter Bombs is expected to provide Kiev with an instantaneous new long-range strike capability.

How Many GLSDBs Will Ukraine Get?

With US funding for Ukraine running out in December and the Pentagon forced to dip into its own dwindling stockpiles to assist Kiev, it’s not clear how many of the newfangled ground-launched GLSDBs Ukraine will receive. When plans to deliver the weapons were first announced a year ago as part of a $2.17 billion arms package, US media mentioned a figure of two launchers and 24 weapons total.

That would be enough for Kiev to attempt strikes deep behind Russian lines, or to launch terror attacks against cities in Donbass or other Russian border settlements, but not enough to have any serious strategic impact – where quantity of available munitions has proven key.

Where Have Small Diameter Bombs Been Used?

Ukraine’s military will be the GLSDB’s first operator, with the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan expected to follow at a later date.

The original SDB was used by the US and its allies in conflicts across the Middle East and Asia, from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Syria and Gaza (where it has been used by Washington’s Israeli ally), and Yemen (deployed by members of the Gulf-led coalition against the Houthis). In each instance, GBU-39s successfully targeted forces fighting US or allied militaries, but in no case has their deployment resulted in or even contributed to a strategic victory for an aggressor power.

How Can Russia Defend Against Ground-Launched GBU-39s?

As mentioned above, glide bombs’ design characteristics and principle of operation makes them difficult to intercept and destroy, but that doesn’t mean the task is impossible. Russia’s response to GLSDB deployment by Ukraine will likely include:

  • continuing operations to target HIMARS and M270 fire positions, ammunition, supply, and repair depots using artillery and precision missile strikes.
  • deploying radio-electronic jamming equipment to degrade the weapons’ accuracy (although this will not affect onboard inertial guidance systems, without GPS the glide bombs are less precise).
  • shooting the glide bombs down using the dense array of conventional air defenses along frontline areas, from the Tor and Buk missile system to close-in anti-aircraft guns.

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Vaccines: “Just Get Your Damn Shots”

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls | Global Research | August 1, 2017

The title above “Just Get Your Damn Shots” is a verbatim quote taken from any number of seriously uninformed TV physicians, paid trolls and paid celebrities as they have gleefully joined the popular CDC, WHO, AAP, AAFP and AMA-sponsored campaigns that have denigrated (and therefore infuriated) the witnesses of the hundreds of thousands of over-vaccinated, vaccine-injured, vaccine-disabled or vaccine-killed infants, children, adults and soldiers.

Particularly angered are the parents, siblings, neighbors and other loved ones of the vaccine-traumatized victims, for they KNOW FOR CERTAIN THAT THE VACCINES POISONED THEIR LOVED ONES BECAUSE THEY SAW WHAT WAS HAPPENING BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES.

These witnesses knew the truth, even though their physicians (especially, apparently, pediatricians) and their clinics refused to listen to them and often fired them and their families when they logically refused to accept “coincidence” as the reason for the catastrophic vaccine-induced illness that suddenly changed their normal baby into a chronically ill or dead one.

Well-informed parents are beginning to realize – despite the aggressive propaganda campaigns from Big Pharma, Big Medicine and Big Media – that vaccines are NOT necessarily safe. Indeed they are seeing that they can be lethal.

Many parents are also beginning to see that vaccines are NOT necessarily effective long-term either. As opposed to natural childhood infections giving life-long immunity, vaccines for such mild infections as measles, mumps and chickenpox need frequent booster shots to theoretically provide partial immunity.

Parents who can’t expect to get thorough information about the CDC’s and AAP’s over-vaccination mandates from their clinics are having to do their own research on neurotoxicology, and they are beginning to realize (no thanks to their too-busy and relatively un-informed physicians) that the vaccines that are planned for their precious kids contain varieties of neurotoxic ingredients in the cocktails of baby shots. As many as 3 injections at one sitting are supposed to go into the tiny muscles of 6 or 8 or 10 pound babies at their 2, 4 and 6 month well baby check-ups. These injections may contain live viruses, aluminum, mercury or unintended contaminants all of which the vaccine manufacturers admit may cause brain inflammation or infection.

The most brain toxic vaccine ingredient in this era since the year 2000 is aluminum, which is increasingly in many infant vaccines. The most brain toxic metal that was in vaccines in the latter two generations of the 20th century was mercury (thimerosal) – a preservative that was removed from many vaccines around 2000 because pediatricians KNEW that it was the major cause of the pediatric autism spectrum disorder (ASD) epidemic that had no other plausible explanation.

Because of that knowledge, the AAP (the American Academy of Pediatrics that now infamously denies the connection between vaccines and ASD), with no help from the CDC, eventually helped convince the vaccine manufacturers to remove mercury from most vaccines.

Babies, most notably the premature ones, always have immature, leaky blood-brain barriers (and leaky guts) that allow some of these toxic vaccine ingredients to enter the brain. Both aluminum and mercury – even in “trace” amounts – are known to adversely affect both the blood-brain barrier and the placental barrier, with serious implications for pregnant women who are increasingly prompted to submit to expensive and probably fetotoxic vaccinations.(!).

Paid Trolls are Behind Much of the Smearing of the Vaccine-injured

The ubiquitous smear campaigns against what paid trolls pejoratively call “anti-vaxxers” target any and all rational and scholarly skeptics of America’s blatantly over-vaccination agenda – a American national agenda that

1) over-vaccinates the most children in the entire developed world,

2) has the worst infant mortality rate in the entire developed world and

3) has the largest percentage of autistic kids in the entire developed world.

But Big Pharma’s toxic over-vaccination agenda is highly profitable for

1) Big Pharma,

2) Big Medicine,

3) pediatricians,

4) medical clinics and

5) Big Media (which makes billions of dollars per year from Big Pharma advertisers).

The propagandistic smear has been orchestrated by organizations (and their paid trolls) representing the 5 corporate institutions named above, who are drafting laws to make more and more of these toxic vaccines compulsory, as has happened in California in 2016. Even Big Pharma-bribed politicians – all totally ignorant of the neurotoxicology of America’s over-vaccination agenda – are joining the irrational campaign.

What is saddest is how vicious have been the attacks against the independent, non-pharma  scientist-scholars who have actually done well-designed toxicology research that PROVES (to any unbiased physician or otherwise smart person that isn’t conflicted and immobilized by financial or professional conflicts of interest) that what the CDC and  AAP is saying about vaccine safety is untrue.

Sadly, every major media outlet seems to employ attractive, highly indoctrinated, financially- and professionally-conflicted full-time celebrity physicians to only report on medical issues that are favorable to the network’s Big Pharma advertisers. Therefore no news will be effectively reported that might expose any of Big Pharma’s many blatantly fraudulent practices.

Don’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand

And then there are ignorant celebrities who have joined the well-financed and well-organized smear campaign  who know nothing about the science of vaccine neurotoxicology, a science that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that intramuscularly-injected aluminum (which is in most infant vaccines as an “adjuvant” – look it up) and intramuscularly-injected mercury (thimerosal) are common causes of childhood brain damage that can be diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger’s Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autoimmune/inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA), Autoimmune Disorders, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Allergies (and that’s just the list of vaccine-induced disorders that start with the letter “A”), tic disorder, seizure disorder, dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, etc, etc, depending on what age the brain was sufficiently poisoned and what location in the brain was most seriously affected.

The sad reality is that most physicians (including my own) had woefully inadequate medical school training about neurotoxicology, immunology, vaccinology and nutrition, at least partly because Big Pharma has devious influences on medical education – hoping to create endless supplies of prolific prescription-writers and vaccine supporters.

A couple of years ago, prior to his pregnant wife (highly likely) receiving her mercury-laden prenatal flu shot and her aluminum-laden prenatal DTaP shot, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel chimed in with the CDC/AMA/AAP’s “just get your damn shots” campaign that demonized

1) parents and loved ones of vaccine-injured babies and children,

2) unbiased research immunologists,

3) unbiased neurotoxicologists,

4) the 10 – 15% of pediatricians who actually listen sympathetically to their patients, and

5) other scholarly and critically-thinking science-minded folks who know that toxic vaccine ingredients commonly sicken many of America’s over-vaccinated children.

Knowing that the most common neurotoxic vaccine ingredients (aluminum and mercury)

1) are both mitochondrial toxins,

2) are both blood-brain barrier toxins,

3) are both capable of crossing the placental barrier and

4) are both exponentially more poisonous when given together,

it shouldn’t surprise any logical thinker that bad outcomes should be expected when metal-containing vaccines are given in cocktails at the same time, whether they are given to a soldier, a baby, a child, a pre-pubertal girl or an adult heading towards dementia.

Quotes

I conclude with some appropriate quotes that should give some uncertain or blind pro-vaccinators pause and give them interest and the willingness to go to the massive volume of unbiased medical literature to learn the truth about the dangers of over-vaccinating children.

I don’t expect changing the minds of those who have been indoctrinated by Big Pharma and Big Medicine. I also don’t expect influencing paid or unpaid trolls to actually go to the many references and scholars that I have referred to in the past. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. And you can point out the conflicts of interest of the ignorant naysayers and trolls but that won’t stop them from continuing to criticize the science that they are either incapable of understanding or unwilling to listen to.

“You might as well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.” – George Bernard Shaw

 “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair, American anti-fascist, anti-imperialist author

“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Wilson Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies, pediatricians and all vaccine providers from all medico-legal liability when children die, become chronically ill with vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders or are otherwise disabled from vaccine injuries. (That law has led directly to an expected reckless, liability-free development of scores of new, over-priced, potential block-buster vaccines, now numbering over 250. The question that must be asked of Big Medicine’s practitioners: How will the CDC, the AMA, the AAFP and the American Academy of Pediatrics fit any more potentially neurotoxic vaccines into the current well-baby over-vaccination schedule?)

“By Nov. 1, 2016, $3.5 billion had been awarded to more than 3,500 vaccine victims through the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the 1986 NCVIA law.”

“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses … the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.”— Dresden James

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  – George Orwell

Is the Childhood Vaccine Schedule Safe?

1976: 1 child in 30 was learning disabled → 2013: 1 child in 6 is learning disabled.

1980: 1 child in 27 had asthma → 2013: 1 child in 9 has asthma.

1992: 1 child in 500 developed autism → 2013: 1 child in 50 develops autism.

2001: 1 child in 555 had diabetes → 2013: 1 child in 400 has diabetes.

THREE TIMES AS MANY VACCINATIONS FOR CHILDREN

1953: CDC recommended 16 doses of 4 vaccines (smallpox, DPT) between two months and age six.

1983: CDC recommended 23 doses of 7 vaccines (DPT, MMR, polio) between two months and age six.

2013: CDC recommended 50 doses of 14 vaccines between day of birth and age six and 69 doses of 16 vaccines between day of birth and age 18.

MULTIPLE VACCINATIONS GIVEN SIMULTANEOUSLY

In 1983, the CDC directed doctors to give a child no more than 4 vaccines (DPT, polio) simultaneously.

By 2013, the CDC directed that a child can receive 8 or more vaccines at once.

The Institute of Medicine published a report in 2013 stating that “key elements of the entire [CDC recommended childhood vaccine] schedule – the number, frequency, timing, order and age of administration of vaccines – have not been systematically examined in research studies.”

VACCINATIONS DURING PREGNANCY

A new CDC policy directs doctors to give pregnant women one dose of influenza vaccine in any trimester and one dose of pertussis containing Tdap vaccine after 20 weeks during every pregnancy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that large, well-controlled long term studies have not been conducted to confirm that influenza and Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is safe.

“The evidence strongly suggests that it is the vaccines and the vaccinated who are spreading the diseases for which vaccines are given.”

“The real issue is viral shedding. Viral vaccines are vaccines containing live viruses, even if they are weak or attenuated strains. These live viruses shed for varying amounts of time in the body fluids of a vaccinated individual – and can be transmitted to others. You can absolutely catch the virus (or bacterium) from someone who has just been vaccinated against that disease. Not only that, but viral shedding from vaccines is leading to viral and bacterial mutations, helping to create a phenomenon of new and dangerous strains of disease which can evade treatment by becoming accustomed to whatever drugs get thrown at them.”

“The U.S. has maintained one of the world’s highest child vaccination rates and lowest infectious disease rates, even as public health officials have been unable to explain why so many of today’s highly vaccinated children are so sick and disabled. Also unexplained, is why America has the worst infant mortality rate of all developed nations, with 6 out of 1,000 babies dying before their first birthday.

“Maternal mortality in the U.S. has also become one of the worst of all industrialized nations, with between 12 and 28 women in 100,000 dying within one year of giving birth, a maternal mortality rate that more than doubled between 1990 and 2013. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), annually an estimated 1,200 women in America suffer fatal complications during pregnancy and childbirth and another 60,000 suffer near-fatal complications.

“Women having babies in the U.S. today, who represent the most vaccinated generations in our nation’s history, are now also being given influenza, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus vaccines during pregnancy, a federal maternal vaccination policy that was launched in 1997 with administration of influenza vaccine during any trimester and was widened in 2011 with the addition of a pertussis containing TDaP shot after 20 weeks gestation.

“As of 2015, about half of the nation’s pregnant women or nearly 2 million women, were either vaccinated with TDaP vaccine during pregnancy (42 percent) or influenza vaccine before or during pregnancy (50 percent) or received both vaccines.” – Barbara Loe-Fischer, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)

What has happened to the health of children in America since the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed in 1986?

“After drug companies, pediatricians and all vaccine providers were shielded from accountability and liability for vaccine injuries and deaths, U.S. health officials tripled the numbers of vaccinations recommended for children – from 23 doses of seven vaccines in 1986 to 33 doses of nine vaccines by 1997, which has escalated to a current 69 doses of 16 vaccines. States also increased the numbers of vaccinations required for children to attend school and, by 1997, it was obvious that a growing number of highly vaccinated children in America were never well anymore.

“The new and unprecedented child chronic disease and disability epidemic that has perfectly coincided with the expansion of the child vaccine schedule over the past 30 years is having a devastating effect on children, their families and our nation. Today, 1 child in 6 in the U.S. is learning disabled; 1 in 9 has asthma; 1 in 10 has ADHD; 1 in 50 develops autism; and 1 in 400 has diabetes. Millions more are suffering with severe allergies epilepsy, anxiety and depression, and other kinds of brain and immune disorders marked by chronic inflammation in the body.” – Barbara Loe-Fischer

“If we listen to present-day wisdom, we are all at risk of resurgent massive epidemics should the vaccination rate fall below 95%. Yet, we have all lived for at least 30 to 40 years with 50% or less of the population having vaccine protection. That is, herd immunity has not existed in this country for many decades and no resurgent epidemics have occurred. Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.” – Russell Blaylock, MD

“The live polio vaccine… contains live attenuated polioviruses. Those polioviruses, when you take that [live] vaccine, you shed them in your body fluids – your saliva, urine, and stool… Whether you have the a viral infection or you get the live attenuated vaccine, you shed live viruses in your body fluids and you are able to transmit the virus to other people who come in contact with your body fluids.” — Barbara Loe-Fisher

”Curbing civil liberties under the guise of protecting the public health and national security has become big business. In 1982, when the pharmaceutical industry threatened to stop producing government licensed and recommended vaccines for children unless vaccine manufacturers got a product liability shield, Congress gave Big Pharma most of what it wanted in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.  It was tort reform legislation sold to parents and the American public on the backs of children legally required by states to get federally recommended vaccines to attend school.

“Even though by Nov. 1, 2016, $3.5 billion had been awarded to more than 3,500 vaccine victims through the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the 1986 law, two out of three claims have been denied throughout the entire history of the law’s implementation.  Most of the compensation awards today are for adults injured by flu vaccine – not for children required to get vaccines to go to school.

“While the government denies compensation to many children, whose lives have been destroyed by state mandated vaccines, in the past five years liability-free drug companies have joined forces with politically powerful medical trade groups to change state vaccine laws. They are lobbying state legislatures to severely restrict the medical exemption and eliminate the non-medical religious, philosophical and conscientious belief exemptions for children attending school.” — Barbara Loe-Fisher

“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in a life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of ASD, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“ — C A Shaw, PhD

“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects, at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science. Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” – C. A. Shaw, PhD

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant…research clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.” (From Tomljenovic and Shaw’s journal article “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?”, published in Curr Med Chem 2011;18(17):2630-7.)

“The CDC says that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US. But actually, it’s closer to 20. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing our gigantic psyop. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows…and, by the way, we’d all be put in prison for fraud.” – Jon Rappoport

“A 2007 [Zika] outbreak on Yap Islands in Micronesia is estimated to have affected nearly 75% of the (island’s) population of some 12,000 people, and a 2013 outbreak in French Polynesia affected nearly 28,000 of 270,000 residents. Neither epidemic caused a spike in microcephaly.” — qz.com

“The correlation between a) the presence of Zika and b) babies with the microcephaly birth defect is so weak and sparse, it constitutes counter-evidence for Zika as the cause…the overwhelming majority of birth-defect cases show no presence of Zika. Therefore, the Zika-carrying mosquitoes have no business being the target of toxic spraying. But they are. And the spraying increases the risk of neurological damage in babies.” – Jon Rappoport

“Microcephaly may result from any insult that disturbs early brain growth…Annually, approximately 25,000 infants in the United States will be diagnosed with microcephaly…” – From the Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Practice Committee of the Child Neurology Society. (Neurology 2009 Sep 15; 73(11) 887-897)

“…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.” – Dr Peter Doshi (from a British Medical Journal review article, “Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease” 2013 (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037)

“…It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t, work because most diagnosed cases of the flu aren’t the flu.” – Jon Rappoport

“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” – Dr Peter Doshi, from in his 2005 BMJ report, titled, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412

“Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data showed an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).” – Dr Peter Doshi

“Official data shows that large scale vaccination has failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection” — Dr Sabin, developer of Polio vaccine

“The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation…..There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.” — Dr Robert Mendelsohn, MD

“The only safe vaccine is one that is never used.” — Dr. James A. Shannon, National Institutes of Health

“No batch of vaccine can be proved safe before it is given to children.” – Dr Leonard Scheele, Surgeon General of the United States, addressing an AMA convention in 1955

“It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated.” — Dr Glen Dettman

“The decline in infectious diseases in developed countries had nothing to do with vaccinations, but with the decline in poverty and hunger.” — Dr Buchwald, MD

“There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunisation of children does more harm than good.” – Dr. J. Anthony Morris (formerly Chief Vaccine Control Officer at the US Federal Drug Admin.)

“There is insufficient evidence to support routine vaccination of healthy persons of any age.” — Paul Frame, MD, Journal of Family Practice

“I think that no person would permit anybody to get close to them with an inoculation if they would really know how they are made, what they carry, what has been lied to them about and what the real percent of danger is of contracting such a disease which is minimal.” — Dr Eva Snead

“The evidence for indicting immunisations for SIDS is circumstantial, but compelling. However, the keepers of the keys to medical-research funds are not interested in searching this very important lead to the cause of an ongoing, and possibly preventable, tragedy. Anything that implies that immunisations are not the greatest medical advance in the history of public health is ignored or ridiculed.   Can you imagine the economic and political import of discovering that immunisations are killing thousands of babies?” — Dr William C. Douglass, MD (Honored twice as America’s ‘Doctor of the Year’)

“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has been reported following the administration of DPT. The significance is unclear. 85% of SIDS cases occur in the period 1 through 6 months of age, with the peak incidence at age 2 to 4 months.” (From the accompanying insert to Connaught Labs’ DPT vaccine) — Jane Orient, MD, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

“If you want the truth on vaccination you must go to those who are not making anything out of it…My aim has been to show that you have a powerful body to fight in the medical profession. We cannot be stirred without great effort. We are a kind of Juggernaut; we have to be dragged; we will not go. Let each one take his doctor, or, if he be so fortunate as not to need one, the doctor who lives nearest to him, and try and instruct him (about the dangers of vaccination). Send him the literature of the subject; he may not read it, but he may. Every little helps. – Instruct the people by means of public lectures and meetings. Show them as plainly as you can the uselessness and dangers of vaccination. Teach them that they must not go to the medical profession for counsel on the matter. If cases of small-pox were isolated and the clothes of the sufferers disinfected, the disease would not spread. If you wish to avoid smallpox, you must live pure and simple lives. If we crowd together we must expect disease; if we keep our skins closed, the impurities of the body are retained, and these impurities are the food upon which small-pox thrives. If your constitution is in a bad, state and you come in contact ‘with small-pox, you will probably have it.” — Dr T. R. Allinson

“The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation…There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.” — Dr Robert Mendelsohn, MD

“Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.” – Russell Blaylock, MD

“the 271 vaccines in development span a wide array of diseases, and employ exciting new scientific strategies and technologies. These potential vaccines – all in human clinical trials or under review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – include 137 for infectious diseases, 99 for cancer, 15 for allergies and 10 for neurological disorders.” — PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), the pharmaceutical industry’s trade association and powerful lobbying group

***

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the planet and the populace. Many of his columns are archived at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2; or at

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

January 31, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Scientists Call for Global Moratorium on mRNA Vaccines, Immediate Removal From Childhood Schedule

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 29, 2024

Governments should endorse a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines until all questions about their safety have been thoroughly investigated, according to the authors of a new, peer-reviewed article on the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the global vaccination campaign published last week in Cureus, Journal of Medical Science.

Cureus is a web-based peer-reviewed open-access general medical journal using prepublication peer review.

The authors surveyed published research on the pharmaceutical companies’ vaccine trials and related adverse events. They also called for the COVID-19 vaccines to be removed immediately from the childhood immunization schedule.

After the first reports from vaccine trials claimed they were 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, serious problems with method, execution and reporting in the trials became public, which the paper reviewed in detail.

Evidence also shows the products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing, and since the vaccine rollout, researchers have identified a significant number of adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs).

Authors M. Nathaniel Mead, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., Russ Wolfinger, Ph.D., Jessica Rose, Ph.D., Kris Denhaerynck, Ph.D., Steve Kirsch and Dr. Peter McCullough detailed the vaccines’ potential serious harms to humans, vaccine control and processing issues, the mechanisms behind AEs, the immunological reasons for vaccine inefficacy and the mortality data from the registrational trials.

They concluded, “Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA injectable products on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits.”

They also called for the vaccines to be immediately removed from the childhood immunization schedule and for the suspension of the boosters.

“It is unethical and unconscionable to administer an experimental vaccine to a child who has a near-zero risk of dying from COVID-19 (IFR, 0.0003%) but a well-established 2.2% risk of permanent heart damage based on the best prospective data available,” they wrote.

Finally, the authors called for a full investigation into misconduct by the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory agencies.

It is the first peer-reviewed study to call for a moratorium on the COVID-19 mRNA products, Rose told The Defender.

“Once a proper assessment of the safety and efficacy claims was made herein — upon which the emergency use authorization (EUA)’s and ultimate final authorizations were granted — it was found that the COVID-19 injectable products were neither safe nor effective,” she added.

According to McCollough, “mRNA should never have been authorized for human use.”

Lead author Mead told The Defender, “Our view is that any risk-benefit analysis must consider how much the presumed benefit in terms of reduced COVID-19 related mortality is offset by the potential increase in vaccine-induced mortality.”

Here are six takeaways from the review:

1. The COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ are reclassified gene therapies that were rushed through the regulatory process in a historically unprecedented manner

Before the seven-month authorization process for the mRNA vaccines, no vaccine had ever gone to market without undergoing testing of at least four years, with typical timelines averaging 10 years.

To speed the process, the companies skipped preclinical studies of potential toxicity from multiple doses and cut the typical 6-12 month observation period for identifying longer-term adverse effects and the established 10-15-year period for monitoring for long-term effects such as cancer and autoimmune disorders, the authors wrote.

The trials prioritized documenting effective symptom reduction over SAE and mortality. This was particularly concerning, the authors argued, because mRNA products are gene therapy products reclassified as vaccines and then given EUA for the first time ever for use against a viral disease.

However, the gene therapies’ components have not been thoroughly evaluated for safety for use as vaccines.

There is an uninvestigated and major concern that the mRNA could transform body cells into viral protein factories — with no off-switch — that produce the spike protein for a prolonged period causing chronic systemic inflammation and immune dysfunction.

The spike protein in the vaccine, the authors said, is associated with more severe immunopathology and other AEs than the spike protein in the virus itself.

The authors suggested that massive government investment in mRNA technology, including hundreds of millions before the pandemic and tens of billions once it began, meant, “U.S. federal agencies were strongly biased toward successful outcomes for the registrational trials.”

The financial incentives along with political pressures to deliver a rapid solution likely influenced a series of flawed decisions that compromised the integrity of the trials and downplayed serious scientific concerns about risks with the technology, they added.

2. Steps were taken in trials to overestimate vaccine efficacy 

Because the trials were designed to assess whether the mRNA vaccine reduced symptoms, they did not measure whether the vaccines prevented severe disease and death. Yet the vaccine makers repeatedly claimed that they do.

“No large randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials have ever demonstrated reductions in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, hospitalization, or death,” the authors wrote.

Additionally, the number of people who contracted clinical COVID-19 in both the placebo and intervention groups was “too small to draw meaningful, pragmatic, or broad-sweeping conclusions with regard to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”

Pfizer’s 95 % efficacy claims were based on 162 of 22,000 placebo recipients contracting PCR-confirmed COVID-19 compared to eight of 22,000 in the vaccine group. None of the placebo recipients died from COVID-19. In the Moderna trials, only one placebo death was attributed to COVID-19.

There was also a much larger percentage of “suspected COVID-19 cases” in both groups, with participants showing COVID-19 symptoms but a negative PCR test. When factoring in those cases, measures of vaccine efficacy drop to about 19%.

The trial subject pool was comprised of largely young and healthy individuals, excluding key groups — children, pregnant women, elderly and immunocompromised people — which can also obscure the vaccine’s actual efficacy and safety.

Findings from reanalyses of data from the Pfizer trials can be interpreted as showing the vaccines made “no significant difference” in reducing all-cause mortality in the vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups at 20 weeks into the trial, the authors wrote.

Even the six-month post-marketing data Pfizer presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed no reduction in all-cause mortality from the vaccine.

The authors reanalyzed that data, adjusting the analysis of deaths to better account for the fact that when Pfizer unblinded the study people from the placebo group took the vaccine, and found the vaccine group had a higher mortality rate (0.105%) than the unvaccinated group (0.0799%), which they said was a conservative estimate.

One of the most glaring issues with the registrational trials, they noted, was that they exclusively focused on measuring risk reduction — the ratio of COVID-19 symptom rates in the vaccine group versus the placebo group — rather than measuring absolute risk reduction, which is the likelihood someone will show COVID-19 symptoms relative to people in the population at large.

According to FDA guidelines, accounting for both approaches is crucial to avoid the misguided use of pharmaceutical products — but the data were omitted, leading to an overestimation of an intervention’s clinical utility.

While both vaccines touted an approximately 95% risk reduction figure as their efficacy figure, the absolute risk reductions for Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines were 0.7% and 1.1% respectively.

“A substantial number of individuals would need to be injected in order to prevent a single mild-to-moderate case of COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

As an example, using a conservative estimate that 119 people would need to be vaccinated to prevent infection, and assuming that COVID-19 had a 0.23% infection fatality rate, they wrote that approximately 52,000 vaccinations would be necessary to prevent a single COVID-19-related death.

However, “Given trial misconduct and data integrity problems … the true benefit is likely to be much lower,” they wrote.

And, they added, one would need to assess that benefit along with harms, which they estimate to be 27 deaths per 100,000 doses of Pfizer. That means, using the most conservative estimates, “for every life saved, there were 14 times more deaths caused by the modified mRNA injections.”

They also noted that post-rollout evidence confirmed the efficacy claims were overstated. For example, two large cohort Cleveland clinic studies showed the vaccine could not confer protection against COVID-19 — instead, in those trials, more vaccinated people were more likely to contract COVID-19.

One study showed the risk of “breakthrough” infection was significantly higher among people who were boosted and that more vaccinations resulted in a greater risk of COVID-19.

A second study showed adults who were not “up-to-date” with their shots had a 23% lower incidence of COVID-19 than their “up-to-date” colleagues.

3. The trials underestimated the adverse events, including death, despite evidence in the data. 

Harms were also underreported and underestimated for a number of reasons, according to the authors, a practice that tends to be common in randomized industry-sponsored vaccine trials in general and “exceptionally evident” here.

First, because Pfizer unblinded the trial within just a few weeks of the emergency use authorization and allowed people in the placebo group to take the vaccine, there was not sufficient time to identify late-occurring harms because there was no longer a control group.

“Was this necessary, given that none of the deaths in the Pfizer trial were attributed to COVID-19 as the primary cause, and given the very low IFR [infection fatality rate] for a relatively healthy population?” they asked.

Also, trial coordinators were “haphazard” in their approach to monitoring AEs. They prioritized documenting events thought to be related to COVID-19 rather than to the vaccines for the first seven days and only recorded “unsolicited” AEs for 30-60 days. After that period, even very SAEs, like death, were not recorded. Even for the AEs recorded in the first seven days, they only solicited data from 20% of the population.

None of the trial data was independently verified. “Such secrecy may have enabled the industry to more easily present an inflated and distorted estimate of the genetic injections’ benefits, along with a gross underestimation of potential harms,” they wrote.

Subsequent analysis by Michels et al. revealed that deaths and other SAEs — like life-threatening conditions, inpatient hospitalization or extension of hospitalization, persistent or significant disability/incapacity, a congenital anomaly, or a medically significant event — did occur after the cutoff period and before the FDA advisory meeting where emergency authorization was recommended.

During the first 33 weeks of the Pfizer trials, 38 subjects died, according to Pfizer’s own data, although independent research by Michels et al. estimated that that number is only approximately 17% of the actual projected number due to missing data.

And after that, the rate of deaths continued to increase. Michaels et al. found Pfizer failed to report a substantial increase in the number of deaths due to cardiovascular events. They also found a consistent pattern of reporting delays on the date of the death on subjects’ case reports.

Overall, the review authors reported that there were “twice as many cardiac deaths proportionately among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated subjects in the Pfizer trials.”

In their discussion, the authors wrote “Based on the extended Pfizer trial findings, our person-years estimate yielded a 31% increase in overall mortality among vaccine recipients, a clear trend in the wrong direction.”

This raises serious red flags about how the registrational trials were conducted, Mead said. “Assessments of the safety profile of the COVID-19 modified mRNA injections warrant an objective precautionary perspective, any substantial upward trend in all cause mortality within the intervention arm of the trial population reflects badly on the intervention.”

4. Numbers of SAEs in the trials and post-rollout reporting are well-documented, despite claims to the contrary.

Both Pfizer and Moderna found about 125 SAEs per 100,000 vaccine recipients, or one SAE for every 800 vaccines. However, because the trials excluded more vulnerable people, the authors note, even higher proportions of SAEs would be expected in the general population.

The Fraiman et al. reanalysis of the Pfizer trial data found a significant 36% higher risk of SAEs, which included deaths and many life-threatening conditions in the vaccinated participants.

Official SAEs for other vaccines average around only 1-2 per million. Fraiman et alestimated 1,250 SEAs per million vaccines, exceeding that benchmark by “at least 600-fold.”

After the vaccine rollout, analyses of two large drug safety reporting systems in the U.S. and Europe identified signals for myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, cardio-respiratory arrest, cerebral infarction, and cerebral hemorrhage associated with both mRNA vaccines, along with ischemic stroke.

And millions of AEs have been reported to those systems.

Another study by Skidmore et al. estimated the total number of fatalities from the vaccines in 2021 alone was 289,789. Autopsy studies have also provided additional evidence of serious harms, including evidence that most COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-related deaths resulted from injury to the cardiovascular system.

In multiple autopsy studies, German pathologist Aren Burkhardt documented the presence of vaccine-mRNA-produced spike proteins in blood vessel walls and brain tissues. This research helps to explain documented vaccine-induced toxicities affecting the nervous, immune, reproductive and other systems.

The Pfizer data also showed an overwhelming number of adverse effects. According to a confidential document released in August 2022, Pfizer had documented approximately 1.6 million AEs affecting nearly every organ system, and one-third of them were classified as serious.

In Pfizer’s trial, Michels and colleagues found a nearly 4-fold increase (OR 3.7, 95%CI 1.02-13.2, p = 0.03) in serious cardiac events (e.g., heart attack, acute coronary syndrome) in the vaccine group. Neither the original trial report nor Pfizer’s Summary Clinical Safety report acknowledged or commented on this safety signal.

“The serious adverse events are all well documented,” Mead said. “Yet it’s surprising to see so many in the medical field continue to ignore or dismiss outright the latter half of the equation when considering all cause mortality trends.”

5. The failure to appropriately test for safety and toxicity poses serious problems. 

Researchers have raised concerns that the mRNA technology is inherently unstable and difficult to store, which leads to batch variability and contamination linked to different rates of AEs.

Recent findings by McKernan et al. that found Pfizers’ mRNA vaccines are contaminated with plasmid DNA that shouldn’t be present — and wasn’t present in the vaccines used in the trials – raising serious safety issues.

That’s because “Process 1,” used in the trials to generate the vaccines involved in vitro transcription of synthetic DNA — essentially a “clean” process. However, that process isn’t viable for mass production, so the manufacturers used “Process 2,” which involves using E. coli bacteria to replicate the plasmids.

Removing plasmids E coli. can result in residual plasmids in the vaccines and the effects of their presence is unknown.

McKernan’s work also revealed the presence of DNA from simian virus 40 (SV40), an oncogenic DNA virus originally isolated in 1960 from contaminated polio vaccines, induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals, raising other safety concerns.

Researchers from Cambridge published a paper in Nature in December 2023, where they found an inherent defect in the modified RNA instructions for the spike protein in COVID-19 immunizations that causes the machinery that translates the gene to the spike protein to “slip” about 10% of the time

This process creates “frameshifts” that cause cells to produce “off-target” proteins in addition to the spike. These proteins, which developers either failed to look for or did not report to regulators, cause undesirable immune responses whose long-term effects are unknown.

6. There are many different possible biological mechanisms that cause AEs and vaccine ineffectiveness.

The review points readers to a series of papyrus that explain a number of different theories to explain the high number of AEs from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

“The mechanisms of molecular mimicry, antigen cross-reactivity, pathogenic priming, viral reactivation, immune exhaustion, and other factors related to immune dysfunction all reinforce the biological plausibility for vaccine-induced pathogenesis of malignant and autoimmune diseases,” they wrote. And these mechanisms of immune activation are distinct from the body’s response to a viral infection.

They also note the toxic effects of the primary adjuvant, PEG, and of the spike protein itself.

They close their analysis of the vaccines with a complex explanation for the different immunological basis for protection provided by the vaccines versus natural immunity through infection. They explain the mechanisms for vaccine failure and problems generated by the ability for the mRNA vaccines to perpetuate the emergence of new variants.


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 30, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

2024 election candidates join thousands of doctors in opposing dangerous COVID shots

‘Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma’

By Calvin Freiburger | Life Site News | January 29, 2024

More than 100 candidates for public office and nearly as many current officeholders across 35 states have publicly declared that they believe the COVID-19 vaccines should be “immediately discontinued” in the interest of public safety, according to a group of medical freedom advocates.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an otolaryngology and sleep medicine specialist who is also president of the group Americans for Health Freedom (AHF), announced Sunday that the tally of public figures who have signed their COVID declaration is up to “106 candidates, 103 elected officials and 1 Surgeon General [Dr. Joseph Ladapo of Florida] from 35 states.”

“Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma,” she added. “Over 17,000 physicians stand behind them.”

She shared the list of the newest signatories in her announcement post on X (Twitter). Most were state-level candidates, though three are currently running for Congress.

The complete list of signatories can be found at AHF’s website, which also contains the declaration itself.

“We declare, and the data confirms that COVID-19 experimental genetic therapy injections must end,” it reads. “All COVID-19 and other modified mRNA ‘vaccines’ must be immediately discontinued. We demand that Covid-19 vaccines be removed from the pediatric vaccine schedule […] We declare injury from COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ must be recognized. Compensation must be provided for those injured by these injections. Funding must be allocated to the study of these syndromes and the development of diagnostics and treatments should be pursued.”

“We declare Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca studies were severely flawed, and they withheld safety and efficacy information from patients and physicians. They should face legal consequences for their dereliction of scientific duty which resulted in countless unnecessary disability and deaths,” the declaration also says. “We declare governments, media, global regulatory bodies, and medical agencies, such as CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID, MHRA, NHS, TGA, SAPRA etc., and unelected international bodies including but not limited to WHO, WEF, UN, GAVI, and EcoHealth Alliance must be held accountable for mandating policies and procedures, and directing funding for reckless gain of function research that resulted in massive harms.”

The public health establishment has been overwhelmingly averse to investigating problems with the mRNA-based COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under former President (and likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, yet concerns persist thanks to a large body of evidence affirming they carry significant health risks.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 36,986 deaths, 213,536 hospitalizations, 21,335 heart attacks, and 28,052 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of December 29, among other ailments. An April 2022 study out of Israel indicates that COVID infection itself cannot fully account for the myocarditis numbers despite common insistence to the contrary.

Jab defenders are quick to stress that reports submitted to VAERS are unconfirmed, as anyone can submit one, but U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

A 2010 report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS’s) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) warned that VAERS caught “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events.” On the problem of under-reporting, the VAERS website offers only that “more serious and unexpected medical events are probably more likely to be reported than minor ones” (emphasis added).

In 2021, Project Veritas shed light on some of the reasons for such under-reporting with undercover video from inside Phoenix Indian Medical Center, a facility run under HHS’s Indian Health Service program in which emergency room physician Dr. Maria Gonzales laments that myocarditis cases go unreported “because they want to shove it under the mat,” and nurse Deanna Paris attests to seeing “a lot” of people who “got sick from the side effects” of the COVID shots, but “nobody” is reporting them to VAERS “because it takes over a half hour to write the damn thing.”

Further, VAERS is not the only data source containing red flags. Data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).

Leading COVID shot manufacturer Pfizer donated more than $8.5 million to political candidates, leadership PACs, trade associations, and party committees representing both parties in 2022, fueling suspicion as to why only a handful of nationally prominent GOP officeholders, such as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are opposed to the company’s vaccine.

January 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment