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Mark Crispin Miller teaches a course on Mass Persuasian and Propaganda at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development for 20 years. He is now suing 20 department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the dean of his school demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. Today we talk to Miller about his course, his views, his libel suit, and the state of free speech in the era of increasing COVID tyranny.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee / YouTube or Download the mp4
SHOW NOTES:
MarkCrispinMiller.com
“Masks Don’t Work” by Denis Rancourt
Change.org petition: Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom
MCM’s libel lawsuit, complete (thus far)
Help Mark Crispin Miller sue for libel (GoFundMe)
Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without….”
Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance Dehaven-Smith
Masking ourselves to death: Part 1 of 3
The Gray Lady Winked
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | NYU, United States |
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The PM’s proposals for a US-style Foreign Agents Registration Act and strengthening of powers under the Official Secrets Act claim to be about protecting against ‘foreign interference’, but really only stifle freedoms in Britain.
Boris Johnson is set to announce a raft of legislative proposals aimed at curtailing activities of foreign agents in Britain at the forthcoming Queen’s Speech on May 11.
Within the draft bill is a requirement for any individual working on behalf of a foreign government to register with British authorities or face criminal prosecution. This appears to be modelled after the foreign agent registry the United States brought in using the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The proposals also include an expansion of the Official Secrets Act to allow foreign cyberattackers targeting the UK to be prosecuted and a significant widening of what type of intelligence theft is punishable under law.
Though Johnson claims the reason for expanding these powers is the ever present spectre of Russia – the “most acute threat” to British security in Europe, apparently – the real threat to British citizens’ security comes from how the UK government and the governments of its allies are using, and could use, this type of legislation.
According to the current version of the Official Secrets Act, which traces its origins back to 1911, stealing “any sketch, plan, model or note which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” is forbidden. The proposed new designation changes that to any “document, information or other thing” and replaces “enemy” with “foreign powers.” What the Johnson government is really doing here is diverting scrutiny away from its own stifling of individual freedoms under the pretext of battling foreign interference. Here’s how.
The House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) report of 2020, which has formed the basis for much of Johnson’s recent proposals, probed claims of Russian state-supported interference in the British electoral process. This is exactly the type of alleged interference the new bill would presumably address. That report stated, “The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts.”
The problem is, British authorities have already shown themselves to be woefully biased and inept in assessing what is foreign-backed interference. For example, the ISC report alleges that “Russia’s promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas” and included Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik in that bracket. But the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, referred to as a source in the report, merely cites examples of these outlets broadcasting content critical of the European Union. This coverage, which the Commons report documents as having occurred during the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, was grouped under the heading “anti-EU bias” simply for presenting opinions that differed from those of then-Prime Minister David Cameron. This was the same David Cameron whose government so vociferously supported the Remain side of the referendum: he spent £9 million of public money sending out pro-EU propaganda pamphlets to every home.
By this spurious definition of ‘disinformation’ the views of a majority of Britain at the time – i.e., those who supported Brexit – could be considered to have been potentially “fomented by Russian subversion” for contradicting the then-government’s official stance. Johnson’s (who incidentally, supported Leave) proposals, if they used that definition, could open the door to classing any oppositional view as a piece of “information or other thing” useful to “foreign powers,” merely for dissenting with an official stance from Whitehall or Westminster.
But of course Johnson himself is no stranger to spreading the odd bit of ‘disinformation’. At the end of the last decade mainstream British papers and US government-funded troll artists smeared Jeremy Corbyn using tactics the prime minister hopes to enshrine in law. As public support grew for the supposedly socialist economic program of the then-Labour leader, media and government attempts to discredit him as a Russian agent intensified as the December 2019 UK General Election approached.
When in November of that year the Corbyn campaign revealed a lengthy dossier pointing toward the Johnson government’s alleged plans to privatize the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as part of a Brexit deal – despite Johnson’s public promise to the contrary – both the Telegraph and the Guardian released stories that claimed Russian involvement in the dossier’s leak.
Their source for the allegation was Ben Nimmo, a former fellow at the NATO funded Atlantic Council, which has a long standing animosity toward Russia, and director of data-consulting firm Graphika, none of which qualifies him to espouse on where the NHS dossier may have come from.
Even Alba Party leader Alex Salmond – as Boris Johnson has already adamantly refused another referendum on Scottish independence even if nationalist parties win a majority in the Holyrood elections in May – could be classed an abettor of a foreign power under these new laws for working for RT. The 2020 ISC report also details a section on supposed Russian interference in the 2014 Scottish-independence referendum, citing a study by none other than the Russia-baiting Ben Nimmo as a dubious primary source.
Oppositional journalism itself would be under threat if these laws ever came into effect. For example, the British and US thumbscrews already being applied to WikiLeaks and its imprisoned founder Julian Assange could be twisted even tighter. Washington’s ongoing attempt to extradite him from London, on the basis of his leaking classified documents on American war crimes, comprises 18 charges under the US Espionage Act, which is a broadly similar law to the UK’s Official Secrets Act.
An expanded Official Secrets Act would make it even harder for whistleblowing organizations like WikiLeaks and individuals like Assange to conduct their work in the UK or even just while in contact with UK-based individuals. The judge who refused Assange’s extradition to the US on grounds it would exacerbate his mental distress has already indicated that, if Assange had been operating within the jurisdiction of the UK, he would have violated the Official Secrets Act as it currently stands.
Broadening the definition of an “official secret” could accordingly strengthen a British case against Assange and the operations of WikiLeaks, further undercutting what scant protections the British legal system currently offers him. Under the increased powers Johnson wants to go after foreign hackers, Assange and those like him could be grouped as cyberattackers operating from abroad against the UK, whether or not their operations took place on British soil.
Abroad, meanwhile, Johnson’s legal juggernaut is an attempt to smother Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of illegal British operations overseas by whipping up indignation over “foreign interference” in Britain. Johnson remarked in Parliament recently that “the Russian state used a chemical weapon in Salisbury” to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018, despite lacking substantiated evidence to prove the claim.
Johnson is launching verbal salvoes like these because Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of dirty Western tactics has been getting uncomfortable for leaders like him. The Western-backed opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, whose alleged poisoning by the Russian state led the UK, EU, and US to impose a fresh round of sanctions on Russia, was labeled by Vladimir Putin in December 2020 as having “the support of the special services, those of the United States in this particular case.”
In a joint statement delivered in March, Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign ministers of China and Russia, expressed solidarity against Western interference in the sovereign affairs of their respective countries. Wang made the statement even more explicit, noting that “[Western powers] should know that the days of inadvertently interfering with Chinese internal affairs by inventing lies have already passed.”
Russia and China released this statement right after the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada approved sanctions against Chinese state officials over alleged human-rights abuses of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Yet a slew of pro-Xinjiang organizations are actually funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is itself funded by the US government, making these movements, which call for Xinjiang to form a separatist state, effectively agents of Washington.
All of which points to the dangerous dichotomy being furthered in Johnson’s forthcoming bill: while presuming that all manifestations of “pro-Western” illegal activity against rivals like Moscow and Beijing are legitimate and lawful, the UK and US are recklessly smearing legitimate and lawful domestic dissent as criminal fifth-columnist subversion.
Kevin Karp is a commentator, screenwriter, and former political adviser in the House of Commons and the European Parliament. As an EU adviser based in Brussels and Strasbourg, he specialized in international trade, European populism, and Brexit. Find his website at moon-vine-media.com.
April 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, UK |
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More lunacy from the federal government threatens doctors with $10,000 fines if they tell you the science about how vitamins and minerals can help with COVID.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced the first enforcement action against “deceptive marketing” of COVID treatments. The case involves a Missouri chiropractor who is alleged to have advertised that a vitamin D and zinc supplement could prevent or treat COVID—claims that are well-supported in the scientific literature. This is a disturbing and outrageous escalation in the federal government’s actions against doctors and health professionals that inform the public about natural ways of staying healthy during the pandemic, underscoring the need to change the law to allow the free flow of information about foods and supplements.
Previously, the FDA and FTC sent hundreds of warning letters to doctors and clinics discussing the role of natural medicines promoting public health during the pandemic. Then a strategy was put in place to enable the FTC to go after these health professionals with more force. The COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act was introduced on December 20th in the House and Senate, then added to an appropriations bill on December 21. On December 27th it was signed into law.
That’s right: right before the Christmas holiday, when the government knew focus would be elsewhere, this law was introduced, buried in a spending bill to further conceal it, and signed into law—all within seven days.
The law “prohibits deceptive acts or practices associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation or diagnosis of COVID-19,” violation of which can result in civil penalties. Statute allows the FTC to assess $10,000 for each violation; multiple fines can be doled out based on a single claim. State consumer protection laws could also come into effect, allowing potential class actions.
This is a clear warning to those in the natural health profession: either push vaccines and drugs for COVID-19, or keep your mouth shut.
The DoJ’s actions are astounding. For one, we are in the midst of a pandemic and don’t have time to wait for the ongoing RCTs—which can take years—when strong clinical evidence shows that supplements that pose little risk can be helpful. And the evidence we have for things like vitamin D and zinc is strong. We recently reviewed the evidence for vitamin D’s role in COVID, noting the dozens of studies that show COVID patients with higher vitamin D have better outcomes, not to mention vitamin D’s key role in immune function. There are also clinical trials confirming vitamin D’s ability to prevent upper respiratory infections.
Zinc is also incredibly important for immune function. Although more common in the developing world, 12 percent of Americans are estimated to be at risk for zinc deficiency. We know that immune function is compromised with zinc deficiency; indeed, those with low levels of zinc are at much greater risk of being hospitalized and experiencing severe COVID disease. There is increasing evidence for the role of zinc in reducing the severity of COVID-19 disease and also in COVID prevention.
It is incredibly irresponsible for the federal government to target healthcare professionals who disseminate information about these vital nutrients. We can help right this wrong with our legislation that allows the free flow of information about supplements. … Continue
April 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, United States |
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A report from Yahoo News notes that airlines won’t be calling the imminent vaccine passports by that name because “It carries too many connotations,” according to one aviation CEO.
The forthcoming ‘digital certificates’ that will show COVID-19 vaccination status won’t be referred to as vaccination passports says Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, because that would turn people off.
Bastian declared that airlines are “more focused on a credential, travel credential, if you will, to indicate that you’ve been vaccinated and or tested based on the regulatory requirements.”
The CEO added that he expects “Either a vaccination or a test,” to be a requirement to travel, and airlines are “working with a number of technology providers to be able to facilitate that in an open source way.”
Right. A vaccine passport then.
That is exactly what the ID will be, but never mind, just call it something else to placate the sheeple and hope they remain only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
It’s the exact same policy that the UK government is adopting for the system which is slated not only for international travel but also domestically. We are also reliably informed that the vast majority of Brits are willing to accept vaccine passports in order to engage in basic day to day activities, and that they are willing to go along with the digital ID card system PERMANENTLY.
Recent surveys also indicate that almost half of Americans support the introduction of vaccine passports in order to get “back to normal.”
Airline consultant Mike Boyd warned that the companies “would rather not deal with this, but they need to express their points of view very carefully,” adding that creating a global protocol to enforce vaccine passports “could resemble a DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] on steroids.”
The EU is already ensconced on the vaccine passport road, with a bloc wide ‘Digital Green Certificate’ system set to be rolled out in June.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK, United States |
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In late March, Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway explained the following:
Students arriving on campus this fall will be required to be jabbed for covid.
According to Holloway, it’s to “provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students (sic).”
There’s nothing remotely safe and effective about experimental, unapproved, hazardous mRNA technology or vaccines.
Covid is seasonal flu renamed.
Despite years of research, scientists never located an alleged SARS-CoV-2 virus claimed responsible for causing covid.
If not found, perhaps it doesn’t exist.
How then can what may not exist produce a virus or anything else harmful to health?
Covid and seasonal flu/influenza are two names for the same viral illness.
Their symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose, muscle pains, body aches, headache, loss of taste, appetite, and/or smell, and at times vomiting and diarrhea.
Symptoms can be mild or more serious, the latter more likely for individuals over age-70.
Serious complications can include pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cardiac injury, multiple organ failure, worsening of chronic medical conditions, inflammation of heart, brain or muscle tissues and secondary bacterial infections.
When occur, the elderly or others with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable.
Years earlier when flu killed up to 650,000 people worldwide in a six-month season, no shutdowns, quarantines, masks, social distancing, and mass-jabbing were called for and heavily promoted by media propaganda.
Yet all of the above and other draconian policies have been in place in the West and elsewhere since seasonal flu underwent a name change early last year.
In mid-April, Chicago-based Columbia College announced the following covid mass-jabbing policy:
For the fall semester beginning September 7:
Students residing on campus are required to be jabbed for covid before “mov(ing) in (to their) residence halls” this September.
All “Fall 2021” students must be jabbed for covid.
“International students already vaccinated in another country with a vaccine not approved by the (FDA) will not be required to be (jabbed), but (jabbing) will be made available to them.”
“The college’s health experts at Rush University Medical Center… advised… that it is safe (sic) for a person (jabbed) with another (covid drug) to be re-(jabbed) with (an) existing USFDA-approved” one.
There are none at this time, and Columbia failed to explain — FDA emergency use authorization alone when no emergency exists.
“International students who arrive (unjabbed) from another country will be required to begin a (jabbing) course upon arrival to campus.”
“(T)he college expects to start offering (covid mass-jabbing) on campus over the next two weeks.”
“The college anticipates its initial batch of doses to be the Pfizer” experimental, rushed to market, high-risk, DNA-altering mRNA technology Columbia falsely called a “vaccine.”
“Future doses may be Moderna(’s) (mRNA technology) or Pfizer.”
“Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently suspended by federal and local health authorities.”
According to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), nearly 800 — potentially life-threatening — blood clots were experienced by individuals in the US jabbed with Pfizer, Moderna, or J & J covid drugs.
Overall from mid-December to April 8, over 68,000 adverse events and more than 2,600 deaths were reported.
According to HHS, these numbers captured “fewer than 1% of injuries.”
Actual numbers of adverse events over 100-times more than reported totals — harm on a massive scale, rising exponentially as long as this uncontrolled madness continues.
Columbia College added that “faculty and staff will not be required (to be jabbed for covid), but will be strongly encouraged.”
As explained to me by a Columbia faculty member on April 20, “compuls(ory) weekly PCR testing (will be) institute(d) for (unjabbed) faculty and staff…who will be on campus.”
What Rutgers announced weeks earlier, Columbia is now instituting — perhaps many more US colleges, universities, and public schools to follow.
Instituting this policy breaches federal law 21 USC § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III).
It requires that individuals may “accept or refuse administration of” experimental, unapproved drugs.
According to the Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent is required on all things related to health.
The FDA’s Fact Sheet on Pfizer’s mRNA technology states:
“It is your choice to receive or not receive (it). Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care.”
The same holds for other experimental covid jabs.
The Congressional Research Service states:
Private businesses (and other entities) are subject to civil liability unless they comply “with applicable directions, guidelines, or recommendations by the (HHS) secretary…”
Mandating covid jabs with experimental, unapproved drugs flagrantly breaches US federal law and the Nuremberg Code.
Yet unjabbed Columbia students — as well as faculty and staff not complying with weekly PCR tests — most likely will be barred from campus.
These policies — and today’s brave new world regimen — show indifference to health and well-being by ignoring the legal right of individuals to choose on all things related to health and well-being.
A Final Comment
Columbia College, my residential building, and other public places follow draconian/harmful to health federal, state of Illinois, as well as Chicago guidelines and mandates.
They include:
Masks that don’t protect and risk harm to health from longterm use.
PCR tests not designed to diagnose viral infections.
Social distancing that disrupts normal interactions.
Restrictions on numbers of people permitted to gather in public.
Disinfecting public places.
Travel restrictions.
Personal hygiene requirements and recommendations.
Workplace requirements.
Testing, jabbing and tracking.
Federal, state, and local policies are all about instituting social control, along with manipulating people to self-inflict harm.
They’re unrelated to protecting and preserving public health.
If that aim was prioritized, none of the above policies would have been instituted.
Not intended to be short-term, they’re highly likely to be in place longterm — perhaps permanently.
Forever mass-jabbing was planned, promoted by Pharma and their media press agents.
Two jabs aren’t enough. Drug companies called for annual or semi-annual booster jabs instead of flu shots — no longer needed after renaming the seasonal illness covid.
Left unexplained is that repeated jabs increase the risk of serious harm to health near-or-longer-term.
Protecting and preserving health requires refusal to play fast and loose with what’s too precious to lose.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Immoral vaccine passports serve the purpose of creating a biosecurity state with both government and private sector invasion of our rights.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Americans aren’t dying at the hands of police because of racism.
For that matter, George Floyd didn’t die because he was black and the cop who killed him is white.
Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, died because America is being overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
These warrior cops may get paid by the citizenry, but they don’t work for us and they certainly aren’t operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution. As retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis warns, “The system is corrupt. Police really are oppressing not only the black community, but also the whites. They’re an oppressive organization now controlled by the one percent of corporate America. Corporate America is using police forces as their mercenaries.”
Now, not all cops are guns for hire, trained to act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the populace.
However, the unfortunate reality we must come to terms with is that the good cops—the ones who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace—are increasingly being outnumbered by those who believe the lives (and rights) of police should be valued more than citizens.
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.
Indeed, if you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings during encounters with the police.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the right, it doesn’t matter if a cop is in the wrong, it doesn’t matter if you’re being treated with less than the respect you deserve: if you want to emerge from a police encounter with your life and body intact, then you’d better comply, submit, obey orders, respect authority and generally do whatever a cop tells you to do.
In this way, the old police motto to “protect and serve” has become “comply or die.”
This is the unfortunate, misguided, perverse message that has been beaten, shot, tasered and slammed into our collective consciousness over the past few decades, and it has taken root.
This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat “we the people” like suspects and criminals.
At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.
The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is “not that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it’s that authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone.”
Warrior cops—trained in the worst case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—are definitely not making us or themselves any safer.
This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat has all but guaranteed that unarmed Americans will keep dying at the hands of militarized police.
Consider just some of the scenarios in which unarmed Americans have been shot and killed by police:
Killed for taking public transit.
Killed for standing in a “shooting stance.”
Killed for holding a cell phone.
Killed for displaying air fresheners from a rearview mirror.
Killed for behaving oddly and holding a baseball bat.
Killed for opening the front door.
Killed for being a child in a car pursued by police.
Killed for approaching police with a metal spoon.
Killed for holding a tree branch.
Killed for crawling around naked.
Killed for hunching over.
Killed because a police officer accidentally pulled out his gun instead of his taser.
Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey.
Killed for telling police you lawfully own a firearm.
Killed for leaving anywhere at all when a police officer pulls up.
Killed for driving while deaf.
Killed for shopping at Walmart.
Killed for being homeless.
Killed for brandishing a shoehorn.
Killed for playing in a park.
Killed for having your car break down on the road.
Killed for being in your own apartment.
Killed for staying up late.
Killed for holding a garden hose.
This is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.
Making matters worse, when these officers, who have long since ceased to be peace officers, violate their oaths by bullying, beating, tasering, shooting and killing their employers—the taxpayers to whom they owe their allegiance—they are rarely given more than a slap on the hands before resuming their patrols.
Much of the “credit” for shielding these rogue cops goes to influential police unions and laws providing for qualified immunity, police contracts that “provide a shield of protection to officers accused of misdeeds and erect barriers to residents complaining of abuse,” state and federal laws that allow police to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing, and rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats.
It’s happening all across the country.
This is how perverse justice in America has become.
If you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and your property, you should be, because as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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Nick Hudson, an actuary and private equity investor, co-founded Pandemics ~ Data & Analytics (PANDA) in response to the many threats to civil rights and freedoms that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic response. While media and public health institutions have engaged in a campaign of smoke and mirrors — one that is perpetuating paralyzing fear, needlessly, to this day — data and facts don’t lie.
Hudson and his team at PANDA, which include a data analyst, economist, medical doctors, big data analyst and public health experts, are using live data1 and open science to empower the public to exercise freedom of choice and preserve free societies.2
Hudson spoke at the inaugural BizNews Investment Conference in March 2021, and his keynote address is above. He explains the ugly truth about COVID-19, which is that the world is being crippled by fear due to a false narrative. Anyone who challenges that narrative is being labeled as a lunatic, a menace or a danger to society, which is furthering the repression and unjustified fear.
Bringing COVID-19 Truth to Light
George Washington famously said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there are plans taken to bring it to light.”3 With that in mind, Hudson saw the “seeds of a great tragedy” being planted with the false COVID-19 narrative, and has made it a mission to get the truth out. So, what is the reality about the pandemic? According to Hudson:4
- A virus that presents high risk to few and negligible risk to most hit some regions
- Few are susceptible to severe disease
- There are several available treatments
- Asymptomatic people are not major drivers of disease
- Lockdowns and mask mandates haven’t worked and instead caused great harm
- The vulnerable were hurt instead of helped
The misinformation has been spewed from the beginning, including by World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In a March 3, 2020, media briefing, he stated, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”5
But according to Hudson, the 3.4% represents case fatality rate (CFR), which is the number of deaths from COVID-19 divided by the number of cases of COVID-19, while the 1% is infection fatality rate (IFR), or the number of deaths divided by all infected individuals.
“By conflating these two separate points (CFR and IFR),” Hudson said, “Tedros was effectively lying.” Quantitative scientist John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, calculated the IFR for COVID-19 in a review of 61 seroprevalence studies, which was a median of 0.23%, and 0.05% in people younger than 70.6
Based on this, the IFR for COVID-19 is lower than that of the flu. And wouldn’t you know it, in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial published March 26, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and colleagues wrote that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza.”7
The media have suppressed this fact, Hudson noted, along with the fact that there’s a 1,000 times difference in mortality among those younger than 19 and those older than 70 — something that should have been taken into account in the pandemic response.
Is COVID-19 Really a ‘Novel Virus’?
Further inflaming widespread fear is the idea that COVID-19 is a “novel virus,” which makes it sound like it’s something humans have never encountered before. But is it really? According to Hudson:
“The reality is that the coronavirus is a very close relative, not even a separate subspecies, a very close relative of the 2003 SARS virus. There are seven related coronaviruses known to cause disease in humans, probably many others, and four of them are in general circulation.
Annual, global circulation. So the naming of this disease is terribly inconsistent. This is really a rose by any name, SARS. A variant of SARS. It’s not novel.”
One study even found that 81% of people not exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were still able to mount an immune response against it, which “suggests at least some built-in immune protection from SARS-CoV-2 …”8
Nonetheless, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, stated that “a majority of the world’s population is susceptible to infection from this virus.”9 This is the first of two key elements that, Hudson said, lead to “homosapienophobia” — the idea that everyone is dangerous until proven healthy.
The idea of universal susceptibility to COVID-19 is nonsense, Hudson noted, as was demonstrated early on with the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Among the 3,711 passengers and crew onboard the Diamond Princess, 712 (19.2%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and of these 46.5% were asymptomatic at the time of testing. Of those showing symptoms, only 9.7% required intensive care and 1.3% (nine) died.10
PANDA data also showed that, starting in February 2021, there was not universal susceptibility to the virus. Their data showed cumulative COVID-19 deaths per million people. In Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, the population fatality rate was 112 per million compared to 710 per million in Europe and the Americas.
As for Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Hudson said, “the population fatality rate there almost isn’t an epidemic. In a typical year, they’d have 10,000 deaths per million from all causes.”
Fear Mongering Over Asymptomatic Spread
The second element that enables the doctrine of “everyone being a danger” to continue is the idea of asymptomatic spread driving disease. “I was absolutely aghast to find out the poor quality of the science” behind it, Hudson said.
One of the seminal papers involved one woman who reportedly infected 16 colleagues while she was asymptomatic.11 The study was widely used to suggest that asymptomatic spread was occurring, but controversy later ensued over whether the woman was actually asymptomatic when the others were infected or if she was symptomatic and being treated for flu-like symptoms at the time.12
In June 2020, Kerkhove also made it very clear that people who have COVID-19 without any symptoms “rarely” transmit the disease to others. But in a dramatic about-face, WHO then backtracked on the statement just one day later. June 9, 2020, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, quickly backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted or maybe we didn’t use the most elegant words to explain that.”13
“It’s utter, utter nonsense,” Hudson said, adding that Fauci also stated in January 2020, “asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.”14
A JAMA Network Open study later found, in December 2020, that asymptomatic transmission is not a primary driver of infection within households.15 A study in Nature Communications also found “there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts.”16
Lockdown Madness
The myth of widespread asymptomatic spread is what was used to justify worldwide lockdowns of healthy people. “Bruce Aylward will go down in history as a criminal of immense stature,” Hudson said, referring to Aylward’s role as the head of a WHO team that visited Wuhan, China, and concluded lockdowns were working to stop COVID-19 spread.17
“He takes a delegation to China, spends a few days, then comes back and says everyone should follow China’s response, the doctrine of universal susceptibility,” Hudson said. Yet, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic official guidelines for pandemic response plans recommend against large-scale quarantine of the healthy.
In fact, WHO wrote that during an influenza pandemic, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening and border closure are “not recommended in any circumstance.”18
Likewise, in 2021 a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation found no significant benefits on COVID-19 case growth in regions using more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure orders (i.e., lockdowns).19
Data compiled by PANDA also found no relationship between lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths per million people. The disease followed a trajectory of linear decline regardless of whether or not lockdowns were imposed.
What isn’t a lie, however, is that lockdowns cause a great deal of harm. Infant mortality, poverty, starvation and joblessness are on the rise, as are delays in medical treatment and diagnosis, psychological disorders among youth, suicide and deaths of despair.
Education has been disrupted for an estimated 1.6 billion children, Hudson said, and a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults revealed that 1 in 6 Americans started therapy for the first time during 2020. Nearly half (45%) of the survey respondents confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the driving reason that triggered them to seek a therapist’s help.20 According to Hudson:
“Perhaps the hardest thing for me to swallow about all of this is in undergraduate epidemiology, it is a well-known finding that when you are confronted with a disease with sharp edge graduation, as you are with coronavirus, measures to generally suppress the spread of the disease have the effect, reliably, of shifting the disease burden onto the vulnerable, who we should be protecting. They worsen coronavirus mortality.”
Mask Rhetoric Is Misleading
It’s been touted that face masks are essential to stopping the spread of COVID-19 and could save 130,000 lives in the U.S. alone.21 But in 2019, the World Health Organization analyzed 10 randomized controlled trials and concluded, “there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”22
Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.23
You may remember that in the early days of the pandemic, face masks were not recommended for the general public. In February 2020, Christine Francis, a consultant for infection prevention and control at WHO headquarters, was featured in a video, holding up a disposable face mask.
She said, “Medical masks like this one cannot protect against the new coronavirus when used alone … WHO only recommends the use of masks in specific cases.”24 As of March 31, 2020, WHO was still advising against the use of face masks for people without symptoms, stating that there is “no evidence” that such mask usage prevents COVID-19 transmission.25
But by June 2020, the rhetoric had changed. Citing “evolving evidence,” WHO reversed their recommendation and began advising governments to encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult.26 Yet that same day, June 5, 2020, WHO published an announcement stating:27
“At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a similar about-face on mask usage, citing a study of two hair dressers in Missouri, who were reportedly symptomatic with COVID-19 and styled 139 clients’ hair.
None of the clients tested positive for COVID-19, which the CDC suggested was because they and the stylists wore masks.28 Hudson believes, however, that the customers were probably young and not susceptible to the virus in the first place.
Another study published in the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases stated, “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.”29
PANDA data also showed no differences in transmission in states with mask mandates and those without. Still, health officials are now advising you should double or triple up on masks to make them work better.
Vaccines Being Sold as a Ticket to Freedom
People who stand to make countless billions out of COVID-19 vaccines are now selling them as a ticket to freedom, Hudson states:
“How convenient that we now have a logic that tells us that we need to vaccinate 7.8 billion people for a disease that has a mean survival rate of 99.95% for people under the age of 70. The profiteering here is naked. It is transparent.”
It’s a sad situation when teenagers, who aren’t at high risk, are lining up for vaccines just to get their freedoms back, he adds. When you add in all the other inconsistencies and lies — PCR tests that are not capable of diagnosing infectiousness, inflated death numbers, restrictions on travel, media propaganda and arbitrary rules, like the CDC’s recent change in physical distancing in classrooms from 6 feet to 3 feet30 — it’s as though we’re living in an Orwellian reality.
With looming vaccine passports, the loss of personal liberties is at an unprecedented level, while people are generally “enslaved by fear” — fear of infection or reinfection, “long COVID,” resurgence and mutant variants. “The underpinnings of our civilization are under threat,” Hudson noted, and we have a choice. “We’ve been pushed up against a precipice, will we be pushed off or will we push back?”
He urges people to support the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for “focused protection” and finding a middle ground between locking down an entire economy and just “letting it rip.” As of April 4, 2021, the declaration has collected 41,890 signatures from medical practitioners and over 13,796 signatures from medical and public health scientists.31
In addition, the declaration is open for public signatures and has collected 764,089 from concerned citizens around the world. The website allows you to read and sign the declaration, answers many frequently asked questions, shares the science behind the recommendations and explains how the declaration was written.
PANDA also published a protocol for reopening society “to provide a road map out of the damaging cycle of lockdowns.”32 Hudson quoted Nelson Mandela, who stated courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. We all need to strive for courage and support awareness campaigns aimed at stopping the harmful narrative, relieving fear and protecting future freedom.
Sources and References
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Hugh Osmond and Sacha Lord are back in court this week to argue that the Government’s refusal to reopen indoor hospitality is inconsistent with the opening up of “non-essential” retail. I wish them luck, I really do. But I fear that they are battling not against SAGE evidence but against the miserable assumptions on which that “evidence” is based.
Why has this Government gone to war on pubs when the hospitality industry was last year responsible for fewer that 3% of Covid infections? It’s tempting to conclude that the SAGE types are not worried that pubs are possible vectors of transmission, but that they are concerned that hospitality venues are potential theatres of dissent. Or, worse, that they are places where people have the temerity to enjoy themselves.
Heaven forfend.
The Lockdown Sanhedrin, the SAGE clerisy, is itself infected with the virus of puritanism. It’s impossible to look at Chris Whitty without concluding that other people’s enjoyment presents itself to him as a sort of personal Kryptonite. Boris’s self-announced “libertarianism” seems to amount to little more than the thesis that he gets to do what he wants and the rest of us can go hang. But I think it goes deeper than that – the Government and in particular its advisers are in thrall to a metaphysics of joylessness.
At the start of this crisis, the Government decided that it was qualified to make a distinction between those activities which are essential and those which are not. The latter were consequently eliminated from the list of what was permitted. To put it another way, it took upon itself the right to decide what counts as work, and what counts as mere “play”.
But it is not clear that any such distinction exists, and if it does then it does not follow that we should prioritise work over play, even in a pandemic. Aristotle claimed that the “first principle of activity is leisure”: that we work in order to play; that play is a more valuable activity than work because it is something that is done for its own sake. The vulgar utilitarianism which has shaped SAGE’s pandemic response is a crude sanitisation of our understanding of the human soul. Not every worthwhile thing that we do as human persons can be reduced to the requirements of a Downing St data slide.
Pubs matter for reasons that go further than the economics of the hospitality sector, important though those are. They matter because they are playgrounds for adults. They are important because they remind us that not everything has to be geared to the puritanical assumption that we work only to get up and repeat the same day.
And they matter because they have their own internal social grammar, one which has been handed down from generation to generation. The pub has its own set of protocols (the “round”) and its own systems of internal conflict resolution (“let’s take this outside”).
It is in the pub that people can whisper conspiracy against a Government narrative. And conspiracies always require that the like-minded are allowed to gather. It is over a drink that the millionaire and the pauper can come together and compare notes.
Johnson is currently offering us a sinister inversion of what a pub is, one in which you are tracked, traced, audited, judged, and humiliated. The “road map”, in this industry at least, is one that leads you not into “normal” but into a “Twin Peaks” version of it.
This Government needs to be careful. I am not persuaded that it has gone to war against us. But it’s starting to give that impression. Why? Because if you were given carte blanche to construct a police state this is how you’d do it: you would stamp on the enjoyment of the great unwashed and confiscate all mechanisms of dissent. The Government’s war on pubs is ticking both those boxes.
Sean Walsh is a writer and former university teacher.
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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Earlier, Twitter permanently suspended the account of Project Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, as the watchdog continues to release its “Expose CNN” series, including the broadcaster’s director saying that the channel was using “propaganda”.
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, filed a defamation lawsuit against Twitter on Monday, denying platform accusations that he used false pages, considered in Twitter rules as a way to “artificially amplify or disrupt conversations.”
“This defamation action arises from Twitter’s false and defamatory April 15, 2021, statement concerning Twitter’s decision to ban Plaintiff James O’Keefe, an investigative journalist followed by over 926,000 Twitter users as of the time he was banned.”
“Twitter’s false claim that Mr. O’Keefe used ‘fake accounts’ on Twitter has caused Mr. O’Keefe damage and, unless retracted, will continue to cause him damage,” the lawsuit reads.
According to the lawsuit, “Twitter made such claims with knowledge of their falsity in order to distract and detract from Project Veritas’s CNN release of the same day.”
Last week, Twitter banned O’Keefe’s page after accusing O’Keefe of using “fake accounts.”
The ban came shortly after the release of a third Project Veritas revelation which included an interview with CNN technical director Charles Chester recorded clandestinely on a hidden camera. Chester claimed that the broadcaster was aiming to prevent former US President Donald Trump from being re-elected by focusing on negative news about him.
“Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100% going to say it, and I 100% believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out…I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that,” Chester appeared to say during a secretly recorded conversation with a Project Veritas journalist.
Chester also claimed that CNN was only covering US President Joe Biden in a favorable light and asserted that the network had assisted BLM the movement by concealing crimes committed by people of color.
The non-profit conservative outlet Project Veritas was founded in 2010 by O’Keefe and includes a group of journalists who focus on publishing investigative reports on officials they claim are liberal as well as various organizations, including big tech companies.
Project Veritas and the social media accounts of several of its employees have faced a number of bans regarding their reporting about Facebook, Twitter, Google and Pinterest.
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | CNN, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, United States |
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CNN’s invitation to Dr. Anthony Fauci to opine on whether gun violence is a health issue in the US was totally misplaced. He’s not qualified to comment, and after his performance on Covid, few will be prepared to listen anyway.
The president’s chief medical adviser has been the darling of the political left ever since Covid-19 changed our world. He has been pushed and promoted outside his normal sphere to the extent that he was even invited to talk at the Latin American Music Awards alongside Ricky Martin. Boy, do I wish I was kidding…
Now that he’s the poster boy for all things health-related in America, it was perhaps not surprising that he was asked to appear on CNN’s State of the Union program for his opinions on whether or not gun violence is a health issue in America. But there’s a problem with that. Because Dr. Fauci is an immunologist, not a psychologist.
Sure, the good doctor has a right to his opinion. He gets to enjoy that right just as much as any other American. However, some opinions have more value than others. And in this particular case, I think that Fauci’s opinion is worthless. I have nothing personal against him, but I would much rather hear a psychologist discuss this particular topic. After all, there is always an individual or individuals behind the violence, and I think we need to know what goes into the decision-making process to compel someone to kill so many people with a gun.
Then again, I’m also cognizant enough to know that the left does not care at all whether or not Dr. Fauci is qualified to give his opinion. At the moment he is their go-to guy, as opposed to someone like Bill Nye. And, ultimately, the reason that Fauci is given airtime has nothing to do with his actual qualifications, but everything to do with the fact that he is to be used as a cudgel. The administration that he works for declared gun violence a public health epidemic earlier this month. So he is there to make it seem like its decision to make such a declaration is rooted in science.
It’s a rather cynical move, and one that clearly is not very well thought out. Trying to use an overexposed immunologist to push gun control is not exactly going to be something that resonates with a lot of people in America. Many are simply sick of seeing this guy everywhere, so there’s no way that they’ll listen to what he has to say with regard to what should be done with firearms.
Whichever way you look at it, Dr. Fauci is as qualified to comment on this as he is on how to repair a muffler on a semi truck, and everyone knows it. And what makes it even worse is that his contribution to the debate solves nothing.
Right now, Democrats simply do not have the numbers to push through an assault weapons ban on Capitol Hill. And no matter how much data is brought together to show how many people are killed by guns, there is an overarching issue that isn’t being addressed. And that is why people are pulling the trigger in the first place.
In my opinion, this is the question we should be striving to find the answer for. And our failure to do so makes the situation even worse and more depressing. It shows a lack of care for the people who are victims of gun violence, and a lack of desire to figure out what exactly drives people to do such things.
Whether it’s extreme mental duress or an actual mental illness, at some point our culture is going to have to figure out exactly what causes people to kill so freely if we ever want America to get better.
Parading Dr. Fauci around like a prize parrot is going to do nothing more than annoy people… while others lose their lives.
April 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CNN, United States |
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UK council authorities are putting more ‘COVID marshals’ onto the streets to report people to the police for not properly social distancing.
After the government lifted some lockdown restrictions on Monday, bars and restaurants were allowed to open outside.
This prompted the media to once again hysterically point to footage of people daring to enjoy themselves in order to whip up another contrived panic over a ‘4th wave’ of the virus returning despite Britain having one of the lowest case rates in the world amongst major countries.
Local government immediately responded by vowing to put more state spies on the streets.
“Councils across England have boosted the number of Covid-19 marshals patrolling city centres after scenes of overcrowding since outdoor drinking and dining resumed on Monday,” reports the Times.
The marshals have no enforcement power, so their role almost entirely depends on lecturing people about their behavior and then snitching on them to police if they fail to comply.
As we previously highlighted, when the second lockdown was implemented in the UK last autumn, COVID marshals were dispatched to ensure pubs and clubs were closed.
Photographs from the patrols showed marshals peering into windows and letterboxes to ensure gatherings or private parties were not taking place.
Images from London on Monday also showed masked security guards with attack dogs waiting to deal with any trouble caused by overcrowding as shops re-opened.
This is all apparently part of the process of regaining our freedom!
April 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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