New study shows low-carb diets would save BILLIONS currently wasted on drugs. But will Big Pharma allow it?
By Dr Malcomb Kendrick | November 3, 2020
If you want to avoid dying of COVID19, one of the most important things you can do, if you are overweight, is to shed the pounds
‘…. in the first meta-analysis of its kind, published on 26 August in Obesity Reviews, an international team of researchers pooled data from scores of peer-reviewed papers capturing 399,000 patients. They found that people with obesity who contracted SARS-CoV-2 were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die.’ 1
Why? Well, the ‘why’ centres around the damaging effect of raised blood glucose on endothelial cells and… it gets complicated.
For now, though, the most important thing is not to understand the complex metabolic and physiological pathways involved, it is simply to help people to lose weight, and this is where Dr David Unwin comes in.
For years now he has believed, as I do, that the main driver of weight gain, leading on to type 2 (T2) diabetes, is a high carbohydrate diet.
This, of course, is the exact opposite of what we have been told for decades by the ‘experts’ who demonise fat and promote carbohydrates. We have the ‘eat-well’ plate, and the ‘food pyramid’, and hundreds of thousands of dieticians around the world, all promoting carbohydrates as the ‘healthy’ option.
Dutifully following this advice, the entire population of the western world has become fatter, and fatter… and fatter. By the way, this is not a coincidence; it is cause and effect.
Getting back to Dr Unwin, years ago he despaired of ever getting any of his patients to lose weight. It was so disheartening that he furtively studied his pension plan, and dreamed of retirement, so fed up was he becoming. Then one day a patient came in who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off.
At first this woman was reluctant to say how she had done it, as she feared the inevitable criticism. In the end, she told Dr Unwin that she had lost weight, and kept it off, by eating a low carbohydrate diet. In Dr Unwin’s own words:
‘A few years ago, I was interested to find out how a patient had improved her diabetic control. She confessed she had ignored my advice and learnt a much better way to look after herself, from the internet. I suppressed my wounded pride and looked at the Low Carb Forum on Diabetes.co.uk There were thousands of type two diabetics on there ignoring their doctors – and getting great results (now that is just not allowed).’ 2
Yes, Dr Unwin did not criticize, instead he was intrigued. Could this possibly be true? It went against everything he had been told about healthy eating, and weight loss, and T2 diabetes. Fat has twice the calories, per gram, as carbohydrates and suchlike. Eating fat, he believed, makes you fat, and then you develop diabetes, and heart disease.
Dr Unwin did more research, then he made the decision to work with patients, mainly those with diabetes, to see if a low carbohydrate diet could be beneficial. Lo and behold, it was … very beneficial. It was like a miracle cure.
In 2014 he published a paper on his results on a small number of patients.
‘Low carbohydrate diet to achieve weight loss and improve HbA1c in type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes: experience from one general practice.’
‘It was observed that a low carbohydrate diet achieved substantial weight loss in all patients and brought about normalisation of blood glucose control in 16 out of 18 patients. At the same time, plasma lipid profiles improved, and BP fell allowing discontinuation of antihypertensive therapy in some individuals…
Conclusions Based on our work so far, we can understand the reasons for the internet enthusiasm for a low carbohydrate diet; the majority of patients lose weight rapidly and fairly easily; predictably the HbA1c levels are not far behind. Cholesterol levels, liver enzymes and BP levels all improved. This approach is simple to implement and much appreciated by people with diabetes.’ 3
Now, he has published results of a much larger study, on nearly two hundred patients over a six-year period. It is called. ‘Insights from a general practice service evaluation supporting a lower carbohydrate diet in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and prediabetes’ Published in BMJ nutrition 4.
Here are the main findings, which I nicked directly from the press release:
- 46% drug-free T2 diabetes remission
- Significant improvements in weight, blood pressure and lipid profiles
- 93% remission of prediabetes
- £50,885 annual saving on the Norwood GP practice NHS diabetes drug budget
- If every GP practice in England spent the same on drugs for diabetes per patient as Norwood the NHS could save £277 million!
- Older patients can do as well as younger ones with a low carb approach.
- The participants who started with the worst blood sugars saw the greatest improvements in diabetic control
- Four individuals came off insulin altogether
- Total weight loss for the 199 participants was 1.6 metric tons!
This paper will be attacked, of course. There are massive financial interests involved here. As stated, if every GP practice in the UK used the low carb approach, the NHS could save £277 million (~$350m) in drug costs. Scaled up to the US, with much higher drugs costs, one could be looking at around $2Bn/year. Around the world, who knows, but vast sums of money.
So, you can imagine the joy that this paper will be met with in pharmaceutical company boardrooms around the world. The words ‘lead’ and ‘balloon’, spring to mind. Equally the massive low-fat, high carb food manufacturers will be throwing their hands up in horror – ‘my bonus, my bonus… nooooo.’ You can take your low carb yoghurts and….
As for the rest of us. I can assure you that Dr David Unwin has only ever been interested in one thing. Working out how to help people lose weight and control their diabetes. He has achieved this.
Will his research now be taken up by the authorities around the world? Will we move away from promoting a high carbohydrate diet? You have to be joking. There is far too much money to be lost by companies who exert tight control over the world of medical research, and whose lobbyists swarm around the politicians in rich countries.
Which is a damn shame, because more than ever in this endless COVID19 pandemic, obesity represents a health crisis. This paper, and the tireless work by Dr David Unwin, clearly tells us what we need to do, now, urgently. His approach won’t work instantly, and it won’t work for everyone – nothing ever does. However, it represents hope. It could save hundreds and thousands of lives. Better than any vaccine?
Thank you, once again, Dr Unwin. A man who I think of as a friend. Your research should be shouted from the rooftops. I can only do my bit.
1: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/why-covid-19-more-deadly-people-obesity-even-if-theyre-young
4: https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/02/bmjnph-2020-000072
Israel Wins U.S. Election
Congress and White House work together to reward the Jewish state
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 3, 2020
The U.S. election will end today, more or less, and we Americans will suffer another four years of putting up with serial nonsense out of a White House and Congress that could care less about us no matter who is elected. Whether the party where everything changes or the party where everything remains the same wins the inevitable result will be further aggrandizement of authoritarian power combined with increased distancing of government from the people who are ruled.
Amidst all the gloom, however, there is one great success story. That is the tale of how Israel and its friends in politics and financial circles have been able to screw every possible advantage out of both major parties simultaneously and apparently effortlessly. Israel might be the true undisputed winner in the 2020 election even though it was not on the ballot and was hardly mentioned at all during the campaign.
Jewish billionaires with close ties to Israel have been courted by the two major parties, both to come up with contributions and to urge their friends in the oligarch club and media to also respond favorably. The Democrats’ largest single donor is entertainment mogul Haim Saban while the Republicans rely on casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It is estimated that 60% of the political contributions for the Democrats comes from Jewish sources and Saban is the single largest contributor. He is also an Israeli holding dual citizenship. Adelson, who may also hold dual citizenship and is married to an Israeli, is the major supporter of the Republicans, having coughed up more than $100 million in recent elections.
Both Saban and Adelson have not been shy about supporting Israel as their first priority. Saban is on record as supporting Joe Biden “because of his track record on supporting Israel and its alliance with the United States.” Adelson, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in the 1950s, has said that he would much rather have served in the Israel Defense Force. Saban and Adelson are joined in their love fest with Israel by a number of Israel-firsters in Congress and the Administration, all eager to shower unlimited political support, money and weapons on the Jewish state.
In the latest manifestation of noblesse oblige, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stopped off in Israel last week to present his counterparts with a significant bit of assistance, all funded by the American taxpayer, of course. According to sources in Washington and Jerusalem, the U.S. “will grant Israel direct access to highly classified satellites such as the missile detection birds known as SBIRS and ensure Israel gets critical defense platforms in a very short time by using production slots planned for the U.S armed forces.” Israel will also be given “deeper access to the core avionic systems” of the new F-35 fighter that it has been obtaining from Washington.
The claimed rationale for the upgrade is the Congressionally mandated requirement for the U.S. to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in light of the impending sale of the F-35 to Arab states that have recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. At the time, Israeli sources were suggesting that the Jewish state might need $8 billion in new military hardware upgrades to maintain its advantage over its neighbors. It is presumed that the American taxpayer will foot the bill, even though there is a serious financial crisis going on in the U.S.
The satellite detection system operates from aerial platforms that are deployed on helicopters. The astute reader will notice that no U.S. security interest is involved in the latest giveaway to Israel. On the contrary, Israel will be receiving material from “production slots planned for the U.S. armed forces,” reducing America’s own ability to detect incoming missiles. And there will also be considerable damage to American defense interests in that Israel will inevitably steal the advanced F-35 technology that they will be given access to, re-engineer it for their own defense industries and sell it to clients in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They have done so before, selling U.S. developed missile technology to China.
Congress is also doing its bit. A bill, the so-called “U.S.-Israel Common Defense Authorization Act,” is making its way through the House of Representatives and will authorize the provision of U.S. manufactured bunker buster bombs to Israel. As the bombs would only be useful in Israel’s neighborhood to bomb hardened sites in Iran, the message being sent is obvious. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator weighs 30,000 pounds and is capable of destroying targets located deep underground. Oddly, Israel doesn’t have a plane capable of carrying that weight so the presumption is that the White House will also have to provide the bomber. The bill is co-sponsored by two leading Israel firsters in Congress Democrat Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Republican Brian Mast of Florida.
Israel is also seeking an upgrade of some of its other fighter aircraft. It reportedly has approached the Pentagon seeking to buy the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, a single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft that was originally developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). Its stealth capability, top speed, maneuverability combined with advanced air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon systems, makes it the best air superiority fighter in the world.
Unfortunately for Israel, the F-22 is not currently available and is only operated by the USAF. Current U.S. federal law prohibits the export of the plane to anyone to protect its top secret advanced stealth technology as well as a number of advances in weaponry and situational awareness. But if deference to Israel’s wishes is anything to go by, one might safely bet that the Jewish state will have received approval to acquire the plane by inauguration day in January. And it is a safe bet that Israeli defense contractors will have reverse engineered the stealth and other features soon thereafter.
The U.S. government has been pandering to Israel in other ways, to include labeling, and sanctioning, prominent human rights groups that have criticized the Jewish state as anti-Semitic. It has also strengthened existing sanctions against Iranian financial institutions, reportedly in an attempt to make it more difficult for a President Biden to reinstate the suspended Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that sought to monitor the Iranian nuclear program. The sanctions come on top of other moves to destroy the Iranian economy, to include “… that the U.S., along with Israel, has in recent months carried out sabotage attacks inside Iran, destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical factories, a medical clinic and 7 ships at the port of Bushehr…”
Other recent developments favoring Israel include Congress’s legislating Israeli government veto authority over U.S. sales of weapons to any other Middle Eastern nation. The bill is called “Guaranteeing Israel’s QME [Qualitative Military Edge] Act of 2020” (H.R. 8494). There has also been the expansion by Executive Order of U.S. funded illegal West Bank Jewish settlements’ science development projects that will eventually compete with American companies.
In truth, the United States has become Israel’s bitch and there is hardly a politician or journalist who has the courage to say so. Congress and the media have been so corrupted by money emanating from the Israeli lobby that they cannot do enough to satisfy America’s rulers in Jerusalem. And for those who do not succumb to the money there is always intimidation, career-ending weaponized accusations of holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism. It is all designed to produce one result: whoever wins in American elections doesn’t matter as long as Israel gets what it wants. And it almost always gets what it wants.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Congress cranks out legislation for Israel: The details
By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | October 31, 2020
Since Israel’s founding in 1948, it has received (adjusting for inflation) more than $252.7 billion from the U.S. – an amount that the majority of Americans consider excessive. In spite of its consistent, long, documented history of frequent human rights violations (often not reported in US media) and discrimination, Congress seeks to reward Israel and chastise Israel’s victim (read more about aid to Israel here and here).
The sheer quantity – and expense – of the advocacy work that our Congress has done on behalf of this pariah state are staggering: consider the hours spent in meetings, negotiation, research, and floor debates, the trips and calls to Israel, to name a few.
And while only a handful of the almost one hundred proposed bills will become law, our legislators will have spent their time (and our money) on them, instead of addressing American needs and concerns – especially in this time of pandemic, economic crisis, and civil unrest. Plus, the legislation that is enacted inevitably cost Americans taxpayers massive amount of money.
Skim the partial list below to get a taste of what our legislators have been doing in the last two years on behalf of Israel; for more detail, please read this, this, and this – commentary on the legislation we have provided throughout the congressional session.
Another useful tool is the congressional scoreboards created by If Americans Knew. These track all Israel-related legislation and who supported it in the current session.
LEGISLATION FOR MORE WEAPONS TO ISRAEL
A study of military aid to Israel uncovers a bottomless pit that only starts with $3.3 billion per year (recently changed from a “maximum” to a “minimum” amount of assistance), guaranteed for the next ten years. Another $500 million is immediately added each year, specifically for Israel’s Iron Dome, a massive (and expensive) anti-missile defense weapon.
On top of this, some bills expend an additional $9 million per day on behalf of Israel, making the combined total $19 million per day on behalf of Israel (and this estimate may be low).
Iron Dome battery in Ashkelon, April 2011 (Flickr)
Iron Dome is used to counter small projectiles shot from Gaza, the main form of resistance coming from Palestinians in the Strip. Rockets from Gaza have killed a total of 30 Israelis in the past twenty years, while Israeli airstrikes again Gaza have killed thousands of Palestinians.
S.3176 and H.R.1837 lay out the basic premise for the $3.3 billion a year. In addition, the legislation would give the President authority to provide Israel with unlimited weaponry and assistance if “needed” without prior authorization from Congress.
These bills also lay the groundwork for millions in new funding for various additional programs benefiting Israel (which will be discussed below). (Read more about some unscrupulous Congressional actions related to S.3176.)
These bills defy the Leahy Laws, which clearly state that, “when credible evidence of human rights violations exists, US aid must stop.” (For more on the Leahy Laws, read this.)
Other military aid bills include S.4049, S.4474, H.R.8494, S.Res.669, H.R.7617, H.R.7608, and H.R.1795.
LEGISLATION ON US COLLABORATION WITH ISRAEL
Collaboration with Israel (i.e. entangling us with a foreign pariah country) is a recurring theme in Congress. Below are several examples among many.
H.R.1459 endorses collaboration in security and law enforcement training between the US and Israel to “promote security against terrorism, peaceful resolutions to community disputes, and the protection of spaces for civil society.”
American law enforcement personnel have received training from Israel for years – in spite of the brutality of its military and police.
S.3775 seeks, in the words of Foundation for Defense of Democracies (recognized as an arm of the Israel lobby) reports that this bill seeks to create a “permanent and dedicated forum” for “[sharing] intelligence-informed military capabilities.”
H.R.2488 and S.2309 and H.R.7148 seeks to bring the US and Israel together to collaborate on cybersecurity and defense technology, in spite of Israel’s history of spying on the US, infringing on the decisions of our President, and attacking an American Naval ship.
S.4228 stresses binational collaboration between the US and “Middle Eastern countries, such as Israel” in developing hydropower technology – adding an irrelevant caveat that prioritizes countries with trade relationships with Israel.
H.R.7613 would set aside money for many American projects, including hurricane preparedness, clean energy. Inexplicably, it includes millions for a “US-Israel Cooperative Energy Center.”
S.3722 and H.R.6829 authorize funding for the US to collaborate with Israel in the development of health technologies, including COVID-19. Ironically, Israel has shut down or destroyed a number of Palestinian COVID clinics in recent months.
S.4537, a pandemic economic recovery bill, includes sections on safely returning Americans to work; job creation; retirement security; safely returning kids to school; COVID cures and treatment; and miscellaneous. Israel is embedded in this bill too. Under “COVID cures and treatment,” the bill proposes $12 million over a three-year period to collaborate with Israel (a tiny country funded by American taxpayers) vis-a-vis the coronavirus.
H.R.5063 is legislation seeking to increase US-Israel collaboration on anti-drone weapons – specifically for use against Iran. (Israel has been targeting Iran for decades.) The bill would bankroll Israel’s already lucrative development of cyberweapons, which would then be tested on Palestinians and sold around the world – including to human rights violators and enemies of the U.S.
S.4522 seeks to authorize “such sums as are necessary” for a US-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund. (Some Americans might wish this money to instead go to struggling American farmers.)
H.R.5605 proposes funding for a US-Israel PTSD Collaborative Research Program. If Americans Knew and B’Tselem are among many organizations that have reported on Israel’s victim-blaming and whitewashing of Palestinian suffering and extensive PTSD.
Vox reports that between 2005 and 2014, 23 out of every 24 conflict-related deaths have been Palestinian. Tragically, Palestinians’ experiences would provide a more abundant field for PTSD research than Israelis’. 54% of Gazan children who experienced heavy bombardment in the 2014 Israeli incursion known as Operation Protective Edge, suffer from severe PTSD. (Fyi – Vastly more Palestinians are killed than Israelis.)
In case some potential areas of collaboration had been overlooked in all of these bills, Res.324 “Recognizing the importance of the US-Israel economic relationship,” makes a blanket statement “encouraging new areas of cooperation” (and US money funneled to Israel).
LEGISLATION ON ANTI-SEMITISM AND HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
S.852, H.R.4009, H.R.221, H.Res.72, H.Res.241, S.Res.189, H.Res.183, H.R.943, S.2085, H.Res.782, and H.Res.837 cover various angles of an important topic: anti-Semitism. The issue turns a corner in each of these bills when they improperly equate anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel (an Israeli official once explained that the antisemitism accusation is a “trick” to cover up Israeli crimes.) The US staunchly defends Israel against all reproof, whether from the UN, journalists, or private citizens (see BDS, below). (For more, read this, this, this, and this.)
LEGISLATION DEMONIZING ISRAEL’S ENEMIES, CONGRATULATING ITS “FRIENDS”
S.2132 is designed to put Palestine in an impossible situation: choosing between financial solvency and international legitimacy. The bill would make the Palestinian government liable in potentially devastating lawsuits – unless it stops its quest for justice and recognition in the world (read about the bill here).
International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands
S.Res. 570 opposes the possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court of both Americans and Israelis validly accused of war crimes. Instead of calling for due process, the bill calls for impunity and considers the ICC a foe. (One of the few bills not on behalf of Israel, H.Res.855 points out that the US has never become a member of the ICC, and encourages it to do so.)
H.R.28 seeks to withhold aid from any country that disagrees with the US at the United Nations – referring specifically to the official American position of defending Israel’s atrocities.
H.Res.727 affirms US support for Israel’s “right to defend itself from terrorist attacks” and condemns Hamas rockets (without condemning Israel for the violence that brought on resistance).
In the year before the resolution was introduced, four Israelis had been killed by rockets from Gaza; Israeli snipers and airstrikes had in the same period killed over 150 Gazans.
H.R.2343, the so-called “Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act,” addresses the alleged failure of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA to keep Palestinian textbooks free from incitement or intolerance toward Israeli Jews.
These allegations have persisted for years thanks to a faux, pro-Israel “peace” organization called the “Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace” (more info here). In fact, the opposite is true: Israeli textbooks consistently “marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.”
H.R.1850, S.2680, H.R.4411, and H.Res.1131 all address the issue of terrorism – a word that means different things to different groups. What Israel considers terrorism is, to Palestinians, resistance against illegal occupation; what Israel considers military action, Palestinians see as state terrorism – consider this and this.
The most basic fact that these bills ignore is that while Israel’s 53-year occupation of Palestinian territories violates international law, resistance against that occupation is a protected right. (They also ignore the way the state of Israel was established.)
The charge of Palestinian “terrorism” is problematic to say the least, given the relative impotence of Palestinian weapons and the low number of Israeli victims, vs. Israel’s advanced military and the high number of Palestinian victims it creates (read more about terrorism here and about Israel’s actions here).
Israel has been named an exporter of terrorism, as reported by Amnesty International. Two of its first prime ministers had led terrorist groups.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that, between 2000 and 2019, Palestinian militants killed a total of 301 Israeli civilians, while Israeli security forces killed over 5,200 Palestinians who were not involved in hostilities.
S.4482 seeks to police the Arab world, hunting down governments that punish their citizens who engage in personal relationships with Israelis. While the US wants to scold Arab countries for resentment toward Israel, it allows Israel to attack its Palestinian neighbors and violate their human rights daily.
H.R.7850 seeks to police Iran and the resistance groups that it may support. The bill is part of the ongoing effort by Israel and its partisans to target Iran (read more about Iran here and here).
S.Res.709, S.Res.713, H.Res.1110 declare that the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are historic achievements, and encourage other Arab countries to follow suit, ignoring the issue of justice for Palestinians.
The normalization of relations with Arab countries gives Israel a veneer of legitimacy while giving them access to US-made weapons – and giving the US and Israel access to Arab money.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was jubilant: “Everyone can see the fruits of this peace accord. The UAE committed to bringing massive investments to Israel, hundreds of millions of shekels. It’s already happening and it will happen even more..”
More treaties are expected, bought and paid for by the US.
H.Res.138, H.Res.258, and S.Res.121also celebrate improving Arab-Israel relations.
MISCELLANEOUS PRO ISRAEL LEGISLATION
H.R.3723 addresses the issue of aiding drought-stricken areas of the US, and prioritizes projects that have worked with international partners “such as the state of Israel.”
There is great irony in the idea of Israeli experts assisting with water projects in the US: is simple: Israel provides plenteous water to its Jewish residents for free (including the 600,000 that live illegally on Palestinian land), but is perpetrating a water catastrophe in the Palestinian territories – refusing to provide water to some areas, selling it at exorbitant prices to others. In Gaza, water is “scarce and mostly unfit for human use.”
In several pieces of legislation – including H.Res.326, H.Res. 518, S.Res.234, and S.567 – Congress attempts to impose decisions about land in Middle East countries (some of the decisions contravene international law).
H.R.5595, S.Res.120, H.R.336, H.Res.314, H.Res.348, and H.Res.246 seek to extinguish the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which puts nonviolent pressure on Israel to obey international law. BDS patterns itself after the movement that aided in ending apartheid in South Africa, and “upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.” Much has been written about BDS (for example, read this and this).
S.Res.745 and H.Res.1173 honor “the life, legacy, and example of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 25th anniversary of his death” – a man whose life’s work has been whitewashed to erase atrocities against the Palestinian people.
H.R.7900 addresses the issue of organ donation in the US, and gives a shout-out to Israel for its “exemplary” program – although Spain’s is considered the best in the world, and Israel made improvements only to reform its reputation as a favorite destination for illegal organ trafficking.
S.3409 and H.R.6392, S.919, H.R.914, H.R.336, H.Res.12, S.Res.153, and H.Res.310 propose various other perks for Israel.
LEGISLATION THAT APPEARS TO BE PRO-PALESTINE, BUT ISN’T
S.Res.171 seeks to restore economic aid to the Palestinians without bringing an end to the programs that caused Palestinians to be in need of aid – thus enabling Israel to continue unchecked in its oppression.
H.R.3104 promotes “joint economic development and finance ventures between Palestinian entrepreneurs and companies and those in the US and Israel.” Rep. Chris Coons, one of the bill’s sponsors, explained, “job creation is the best way to turn people away from violence” – implying that unarmed Palestinians are the violent party, and that employment – not freedom or self-determination – is the solution.
PALESTINIAN RIGHTS RECOGNIZED
H.R.8050 would prohibit the US government from recognizing Israel’s claim of sovereignty over parts of the West Bank, or assisting Israel with those efforts – because it violates international law. The international community, many Israelis, and many staunch Israel partisans, agree.
H.R.2407 seeks to protect Palestinian children from incarceration and torture by Israel using US aid money. It seeks not to end the practice, but only American complicity in it. (Read more about the bill here.) Although its language is mild and pro-child, the bill has been attacked aggressively by pro-Israel groups.
H.Res.496, the only pro-boycott bill, supports the right of Americans to take part in a political practice long used by Americans across the political spectrum. The bill does not mention Israel or Palestine – yet it has been denounced as “anti-Semitic.”
If Americans Knew has checked every legislator’s voting record on every Israel-related bill since January 2019, and reported them for your information. We hope you will make your voice heard in this election – and throughout the next congressional session – to bring accountability to our government vis-a-vis Israel, and to Israel vis-a-vis Palestine.
To see how Senators have been voting view this detailed Scoreboard.
Kathryn Shihadah is staff writer for If Americans Knew. She also writes for MintPress News and blogs at Palestine Home.
Mysterious Hillary Emailgate Whistleblower & FBI’s Apparent Decades-Long Cover-Up Ploy
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 30.10.2020
The Hunter Biden scandal recently propelled by the Trump campaign has much in common with the controversy surrounding the Clintons, Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel says, shedding light on a story of a mysterious high-profile whistleblower who was apparently ignored by the FBI in 2016.
Days before The New York Post dropped a bomb on the Bidens alleging that the Democratic presidential contender and his son were involved into a “pay-to-play” scheme, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson and Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel published two separate stories about a neglected State Department whistleblower who informed the FBI about the potential harm to US national interests posed by Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified data in January 2016.
High-Profile Whistleblower’s Report Overlooked by Comey
The whistleblower’s letter dated 10 January 2016 was sent to then-FBI chief Jim Comey. It detailed how the ex-secretary of state used her unclassified server system to conduct government business, thus exposing US secret intelligence information, and suggested that her entourage and other government officials were aware of that the entire time.
In addition to this, the whistleblower, who, according to the document, had served in the Armed Forces and the Department of State for many years, provided specific recommendations as to who the bureau needed to interview in order to get further evidence and expressed willingness to testify before the agency officials having “certain TS/SCI clearances.”
After sending the letter on 10 January, the individual in question personally visited the FBI’s premises in Washington on 27 January 2016 to find out whether the exposé reached its destination and provided his credentials to intelligence officers.
An FBI report describing this visit was written only a month later, on 22 February 2016, with copies sent to FBI agents Jonathan Moffa and Peter Strzok. The rest is history: on 5 July 2016 then FBI Director James Comey announced that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton for the emails.
Judging from the whistleblower’s credentials, knowledge of the matter and the provided evidence, his letter was worth examination and required certain investigative activities, argued CIA veteran Johnson and Wall Street analyst Ortel in their op-eds.
“Failure by Comey to even interact with the whistleblower in January 2016 stands in stark contrast to anti Trump efforts launched by the FBI before, during and after the 2016 election”, says Charles Ortel. “Moreover, decisions to let Hillary Clinton and others off for mishandling classified information also appear deeply suspicious.”It appears strange that the bureau declined to learn more from the whistleblower given that it had started investigating the Clinton email server on 10 July 2015, according to the analyst.
“Then, when the determined whistleblower followed up by visiting the FBI Washington Field Office later in January 2016, why did it take so long to write an internal FBI report explaining what happened and what the concerns were?” asks Ortel. “More recently, did US Attorney John Huber examine the whistleblower materials? If not, why not? And, is John Durham evaluating all relevant records? I certainly hope so.”
Whistleblowers Apparently Ignored or Intimidated
Apart from investigating the Clinton email case, Jim Comey also started to look into the Clinton Foundation in January 2016, exactly when the whistleblower filed his complaint, the Wall Street analyst notes.
According to Ortel, who has been conducting a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud, the charity supposedly worked as a vehicle in the Clintons’ “pay-to-play” operations with foreign governments. Hillary’s unsecured email server potentially could be used to conduct this business while avoiding the Freedom of Information Act provisions since the FOIA requires the full or partial disclosure of the United States government’s documents upon request.
The FBI has an almost two-decade record of overlooking the Clintons’ questionable activities and their charity’s messy financial documentation under former FBI directors Robert Mueller (2001 – 2013) and Jim Comey (2013 – 2017) and later on, according to the analyst.
The aforementioned State Department whistleblower was not the only one who has stepped forward to report the Clintons to the US authorities.
In June 2018, FBI whistleblower Nate Cain delivered 450 pages of documents concerning Hillary Clinton’s supposed role in the Uranium One deal to Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. In November 2018, 16 FBI agents stormed Cain’s Maryland home, ignoring his argument about whistleblower protection and accused him of possessing “stolen federal property”.
How High Political Offices Were ‘Monetised’
The FBI’s alleged cover-up of political power clans’ questionable activities has not been limited to the Clintons and apparently involved the Department of Justice as well, Ortel believes.
“Going all the way back to 1992, the Clintons and their backers seem to have monetised high political offices to enrich themselves”, he suggests. “Along the way, it seems likely that national security was compromised, and that other dynastic political families emulated the Clintons. The evolution of unregulated globalism and coordinated lowering of benchmark interest rates from 1988 forward created too many opportunities for oligarchs of all nationalities to exploit under-paid but powerful politicians, investigators, judges, and influence shapers.”
The recent scandal surrounding the Bidens’ alleged quid-pro-quo schemes involving foreign businessmen and officials has also triggered public debate over what some see as the FBI’s inaction. Bombshell emails released by The New York Post came from the so-called “hard drive from hell”, a copy of the one allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI has acknowledged that it has had possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop for quite a while. It still remains unclear whether the “damning” messages, emails and photos circulated by The Post came from the original hard drive. If they did, the bureau’s silence appears suspicious, according to the analyst.
“If President Trump wins re-election – a strong likelihood at this moment – Durham’s major challenge will be to break the will of co-conspirators to fight at trials, rather than to negotiate guilty plea agreements”, Ortel deems. “The public record strongly suggests that many once-powerful politicians and bureaucrats committed serious crimes. Managing through this will require airing lots of “dirty laundry”. I hope President Trump and his team take the courageous decision to release information that implicates these traitors and details their crimes, little of which may shock thinking members of the electorate.”
The Guardian can try rewriting the history of White Helmets’ James Le Mesurier, but the truth is there for all to see
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | October 30, 2020
A fetishistic Guardian article seeks to rehabilitate the life and death of the former British soldier turned ‘humanitarian’, but cannot explain away his lavish lifestyle, missing money, and all the other financial irregularities.
On the morning of November 11, 2019, James Le Mesurier, founder of Syria’s controversial White Helmets, was found dead in Istanbul. Since then, the Western establishment has struggled to get its story straight on the man, his professional history, the group he founded, and how he died.
The latest example of mainstream media narrative management in the ever-mysterious case came in the Guardian on October 27, in the form of a 6,000-word hagiography of Le Mesurier, authored by its veteran Middle East reporter Martin Chulov.
Many at this point will be familiar with the idolatrous portait it paints of its subject – a heroic humanitarian committed to benevolent causes who saved untold lives, tragically driven to suicide by a “disinformation campaign led by Russian and Syrian officials and peddled by pro-Assad bloggers, alt-right media figures and self-described anti-imperialists.” Nonetheless, it marks the first time the significant controversy surrounding his financial dealings has ever been explored, let alone mentioned, by a British news outlet.
In July this year, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published a long-read of its own, explosively revealing how, three days prior to his death, Le Mesurier ‘confessed’ via email to the White Helmets’ many international donors, who’d funded the group to the tune of hundreds of millions over the years, that he’d committed fraud.
The disclosure was prompted by an internal audit by a Dutch accountant of the finances of Mayday, the foundation started by Le Mesurier to find, train, and support the White Helmets. The audit found, among other things, that he had been paying himself and his wife, long-time UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) operative Emma Winberg, “excessive” salaries and supplementing the totals with unjustifiably vast cash bonuses; that his employment of his wife represented a potential conflict of interest; and that he might be guilty of tax evasion.
While claiming this malfeasance wasn’t intentional, Le Mesurier took full and sole responsibility, and expressed fears that further investigation could expose yet more “mistakes and internal failures.”
Monetary misconduct
Damning stuff indeed, but De Volkskrant’s seismic disclosures have been curiously ignored by all other Western media outlets until now. The Guardian’s article deals with the damning revelations, both directly and indirectly – Le Mesurier, whom Chulov knew personally, and with whom he clearly maintained an intense affinity, is acquitted on all charges. Indeed, the White Helmets founder is said to have simply “unravelled under the weight of claims that would later prove to be false.”
The author is at pains throughout to frame “disinformation” as fundamental to Le Mesurier’s untimely demise, in terms of causing him immense “stress,” which led to him “disintegrating” mentally, damaging his reputation and that of the White Helmets in the eyes of world opinion, and, in turn, stoking erroneous suspicions in donor countries that he and his company were engaged in various improper activities.
The question of how a battle-hardened military veteran could be so deleteriously impacted mentally and emotionally by “attacks on Russian television and social media,” particularly if they were entirely without substance, is unasked and unanswered.
There’s little doubt Le Mesurier wasn’t in a good state during his final weeks. It’s been widely reported he was taking sleeping pills and psychiatric medication. Less well amplified were Turkish news reports alleging he and his wife had “fought violently” while dining out together the day before his death.
Chulov alleges “a distressed Le Mesurier” told friends just before he died that claims of Mayday’s monetary misconduct “seemed to come from nowhere.” In fact, questions about what purpose the vast sums donated to the company were put to, and where they all ultimately ended up, had long circulated.
While his article states that donor countries maintained their support for the White Helmets “despite the disinformation surrounding the group’s work,” this isn’t true. In September 2018, the Dutch government ended its backing, after a damning Ministry of Foreign Affairs report outlined serious concerns about Mayday’s financial practices, including an almost total lack of oversight over, and even awareness of, how its money entered Syria, and precisely whose pockets it eventually lined.
However, Chulov feels confident dismissing any and all suggestions of embezzlement, for he’s in possession of a report by forensic auditors Grant Thornton, conducted at the request of Mayday’s donors, which concluded there was “no evidence of misappropriation of funds” by Le Mesurier and Winberg.
Except that he isn’t, because it hasn’t been made public, at donors’ express request. Instead, he relies on the claims of a nameless “source familiar” with the report – which could conceivably, of course, be Winberg herself.
Excessive salaries plus bonuses
It’s clear Grant Thornton’s report isn’t an unalloyed clean bill of health, either – the auditors found “significant gaps in the administrative organization and internal control environment of Mayday” and “identified significant cash transactions that have not been (fully) recorded in the cash books and/or general ledger.”
Moreover, due to Mayday’s “informal” working environment, many key discussions took place “orally and over WhatsApp,” meaning auditors “had to reconstruct a number of financial events and are unable to provide certainty in those cases.”
Chulov is quick to dismiss the significance of these failings as nothing more than “shoddy” bookkeeping, contending “auditors found nothing to support the far more serious allegations made” against Le Mesurier – despite apparently not having actually read the report himself.
Likewise, he concedes Mayday’s executive salaries had been “higher than industry standards”, although his anonymous source familiar with the report is on hand to reassure him, and readers, “they were not off-the-scale high.” In 2017, Le Mesurier informed the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs he was paying himself a salary of €24,000 per month, before bonuses – several orders of magnitude higher than the designated salary ceiling at other Dutch government-funded enterprises. And considerably more than the $150 a day the White Helmet rescuers on the ground received.
References to Le Mesurier founding three separate companies named ‘Mayday Rescue’ – Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai, Mayday Search and Rescue Training and Consultancy Services Ltd in Turkey, and Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in the Netherlands – are predictably absent from the Guardian’s article.
Accounts aren’t publicly available for any of them – the Dutch entity, while not registered as a charitable organisation, is characterised as being ‘without commercial enterprise’, so doesn’t have to file accounts at all. Dutch ‘stichtings’, or foundations, are openly advertised by Dutch law firms as ideal ways for wealthy individuals and corporations to minimize tax liabilities and distribute funds internationally.
The company nonetheless complied with governance and transparency requirements, appointing a Secretary and Treasurer. As such, the UK government could plausibly claim that Mayday Rescue, to which London funneled £43 million between 2015 and 2018, was, to the best of its knowledge, fully above board.
Tax havens and tangled webs
Except the £43 million actually went to Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai – something only begrudgingly admitted by the FCO in March 2019, in response to a Freedom of Information request, after much heel-dragging and obfuscation.
Dubai is a notorious tax haven, and FZ-LLCs – Free Zone Limited Liability Companies – aren’t subject to any taxes on dividends, so they can be used to easily and opaquely repatriate profits. The entities are required to maintain accounting records, which can be inspected by authorities, but aren’t required to file accounts of any kind.
It may be significant that one of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation’s three directors, alongside Le Mesurier and Winberg, was a British Army veteran, Rupert Davis, who, in April 2016, founded the company Chameleon Global. Dissolved in October 2020, it was categorised as dormant – that is, non-operational – for the duration of its existence. Le Mesurier also founded other companies, with indeterminate connections to his assorted Mayday entities. For instance, in April 2017 he established Sisu Global BV in the Netherlands. It has never filed accounts, in breach of Dutch law. Le Mesurier resigned in November 2018, but Winberg apparently remains a director.
In January 2019, Le Mesurier registered My Zahara Limited as a dormant company in northern England, at an address belonging to a company formation agent specializing in, among other things, compliance with money laundering regulations, suggesting he intended to use the firm to repatriate money from his overseas firms.
Davis was also, until April 2019, connected to Sisu Global BV, a company in the Netherlands founded by Le Mesurier in April 2017. It has never filed accounts, in breach of Dutch law. Le Mesurier himself resigned from it in November 2018. Winberg apparently remains a director.
Chulov also, again predictably, dismisses as “disinformation” allegations that the White Helmets were “created by governments determined to remove Assad from power”; that Le Mesurier was “an agent of western intelligence, using a rescue organisation as a Trojan horse for regime change”; and that the organization was in any way affiliated to violent extremist groups.
What are matters of public record, however, is that the White Helmets were funded by the very governments avowedly committed to ‘regime change’ in Syria via covert and overt means; that Le Mesurier’s professional history included spells as a military intelligence operative; and that the group has openly collaborated with the Al-Nusra Front, among other jihadist elements, and engaged in violent activity.
In a June 2015 speech discussing his founding of the White Helmets, Le Mesurier cited a market research agency study which found that, in fragile environments, security forces garner low levels of public trust while first responders have the highest as a key motivating factor in his decision to establish a “humanitarian aid group.”
Untold millions for propaganda
That the White Helmets’ benevolent image was very carefully constructed and promoted by a government attempting to achieve ‘regime change’ is amply underlined by FCO documents leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous.
The documents reveal that ARK, a firm founded by FCO veteran Alistair Harris where Le Mesurier worked between 2011 and 2014, played a pivotal role in promoting the White Helmets, developing“an internationally focused communications campaign to raise global awareness” of the group to “keep Syria in the news.”
Along the way, ARK, among many other endeavors, produced a documentary on the White Helmets, and ran its various social media accounts, among them the Facebook page for Idlib City Council, at one time mooted as a potential interim government to replace Bashar Assad. When Al-Nusra took the city, the White Helmets were filmed celebrating the ‘victory’ with the group’s fighters in its main square.
ARK profited to the tune of untold millions of pounds from these and other information-warfare efforts. The same illicit file tranche also reveals InCoStrat, founded by none other than Emma Winberg, also reaped large bounties for manipulating public perceptions about Syria, within and without the country. In one file, the firm boasted of surreptitiously “initiating events to create media effect” and of “using media to create events.”
One example of the former strategy saw InCoStrat produce mock Syrian currency, in three denominations, imploring Syrians to “be on the right side of history.” It was intended to ensure that international opinion remained arrayed against Assad, at a time “media attention has shifted almost exclusively towards ISIS and some influential voices are calling for co-operation with the Syrian regime to combat ISIS.”
The file states: “The notes are due to be smuggled into regime-held parts of Syria once formal clearance has been authorized by HMG officials … We will engage the international media to create a story around the event … The message to the regime [is] covert but active resistance continues.”
Another document indicates that Winberg’s InCoStrat also established Basma – “a media platform providing human interest stories and campaigns that support [UK government] policy objectives” – and engaged in propaganda operations in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, training and maintaining a network of journalists who were “instrumental in reporting on events in Basra.”
On the subject of propaganda, establishment efforts to rehabilitate Le Mesurier are scheduled to continue apace in future.
Starting on November 9, the BBC will transmit a 15-part radio documentary on Mayday Rescue. Over the summer, Chloe Hadjimatheou, a reporter on the project, approached a number of journalists and researchers who’d publicly raised questions about the White Helmets, asking if they wished to contribute to the program.
Several of the individuals targeted subsequently published their correspondence with Hadjimatheou, showing that the program’s preordained agenda and objectives couldn’t be more blatant.
What is clear is that any suggestion Le Mesurier was a British intelligence operative surreptitiously attempting to foster regime change in Syria, or that the White Helmets weren’t an entirely benevolent, independent humanitarian organization will be rubbished, and all voices critical of the group will be smeared as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian and Syrian governments.
By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept
An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept
By Glen Greenwald | October 29, 2020
I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden — the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept’s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me — to shorten it, fix typos, etc — but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not “edit” but completely gut as a condition to publication:
TITLE: THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS
Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden’s work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family’s pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.
One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions — the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election — journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.
After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.
Individuals included in some of the email chains have confirmed the contents’ authenticity. One of Hunter’s former business partners, Tony Bubolinski, has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden’s brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the published email chains, appeared to confirm the authenticity as well, though he refused to answer follow-up questions about it.
Thus far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall Street Journal says that it found no corporate records reflecting that a deal was finalized and that “text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.”
But nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated — so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.
Beyond that, the Journal’s columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents and “found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post,” including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday reached a similar conclusion: while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, “records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy,” and “make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his ‘family’s brand’ as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture.”
These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, “that the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president.” Strassel noted that “a May 2017 ‘expectations’ document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for ‘the big guy’—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.” And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden’s attempt to replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.
All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son’s business associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation’s most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.
Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the censorship and reversed the policy that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two weeks.
After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donated almost entirely to the Biden campaign, it was the nation’s media outlets and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin responsibility for the story.
Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept, quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the “classic trademarks” of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times reported that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”
The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed — by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged conspiracy theories — that contained this extraordinary proclamation: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
Even the letter from the former intelligence officials cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:
Despite this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,” said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate. Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: “if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.”
The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a “smear.”
That it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor, in an anazing statement representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week’s newsletter➡️ tinyurl.com/y67vlzj2 
To justify her own show’s failure to cover the story, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different justification. “It can’t be verified,” the CBS reporter claimed when confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program’s failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply repeated the same phrase: “it can’t be verified.”
After the final presidential debate on Thursday night, a CNN panel mocked the story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow — a self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network’s media reporter Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned either on CNN or MSNBC. As the New York Times noted on Friday: “most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails…. CNN’s mentions of “Hunter” peaked at 20 seconds and MSNBC’s at 24 seconds one day last week.”
On Sunday, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC’s Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: “We’re not going to do your work for you.” Watch how the U.S.’s most mainstream journalists are openly announcing their refusal to even consider what these documents might reflect about the Democratic front-runner:
These journalists are desperate not to know. As Taibbi wrote on Sunday about this tawdry press spectacle: ” The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.”
All of those excuses and pretexts — emanating largely from a national media that is all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win — served for the first week or more after the Post story to create a cone of silence around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden. As a result, the front-running presidential candidate knows that he does not have to answer even the most basic questions about these documents because most of the national press has already signaled that they will not press him to do so; to the contrary, they will concoct defenses on his behalf to avoid discussing it.
The relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know, including:
- whether he claims any the emails or texts are fabricated (and, if so, which specific ones);
- whether he knows if Hunter did indeed drop off laptops at the Delaware repair store;
- whether Hunter ever asked him to meet with Burisma executives or whether he in fact did so;
- whether Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant and,
- how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective.
Though the Biden campaign indicated that they would respond to the Intercept’s questions, they have not done so. A statement they released to other outlets contains no answers to any of these questions except to claim that Biden “has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any business overseas.” To date, even as the Biden campaign echoes the baseless claims of media outlets that anyone discussing this story is “amplifying Russian disinformation,” neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign have even said whether they claim the emails and other documents — which they and the press continue to label “Russian disinformation” — are forgeries or whether they are authentic.
The Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:
First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified — the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and Christiane Amanpour, among others — is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.
With an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed, proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of the email or text conversations in which they participated. One investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.
This is the process that enabled the largest and most established media outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.
The Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake.
Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting’s authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.
The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
Second, the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the published emails and texts were “Russian disinformation” was, from the start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none — has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim that this was “Russian disinformation” was published in countless news outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA officials.
Worse is the “disinformation” part of the media’s equation. How can these materials constitute “disinformation” if they are authentic emails and texts actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about “Russian disinformation” is alarming in the extreme. But they did it because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and that the materials were “disinformation,” became their placeholder until they could figure out what else they should say to justify ignoring these documents.
Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden’s aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.
But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son’s highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden’s motive — offered both by Biden and his media defenders — is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption.
“Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as,” wrote the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in what the Post calls a “fact-check.” Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima, not good for it. “The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky,” Kessler claims.
But that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been. Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.
Beyond that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden’s goal in working to demand the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all, had “no legal background as general prosecutor,” was principally known only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in 2009 to “resign as interior minister after being detained by police at Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly,” and “was subsequently jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said the sentence was politically motivated.”
Is it remotely convincing to you that Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that’s exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his appointment was announced. Whatever Biden’s motive was in using his power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting Ukrainian corruption was not it.
As for the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied — that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not justify that assertion.
It is true that no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden’s motive in demanding Shokhin’s termination was to benefit Burisma. But nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and, while noting that “no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal,” this is what its reporters concluded about Shokhin and Burisma:
[Biden’s] pressure campaign eventually worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was voted out months later by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
The Times added: “Mr. Shokhin’s office had oversight of investigations into [Burisma’s billionaire founder] Zlochevsky and his businesses, including Burisma.” By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by Vice President Biden, “initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking office.”
So whether or not it was Biden’s intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin’s firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly inexperienced Lutesenko “cleared [Burisma’s founder] of all charges within 10 months of taking office.”
The new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:
For all the negative press about Shokhin, there’s no doubt that there were multiple active cases involving Zlochevsky/Burisma during his short tenure. This was even once admitted by American reporters, before it became taboo to describe such cases untethered to words like “dormant.” Here’s how Ken Vogel at the New York Times put it in May of 2019:
“When Mr. Shokhin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering. Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.”
Ukrainian officials I reached this week confirmed that multiple cases were active during that time.
“There were different numbers, but from 7 to 14,” says Serhii Horbatiuk, former head of the special investigations department for the Prosecutor General’s Office, when asked how many Burisma cases there were.
“There may have been two to three episodes combined, and some have already been closed, so I don’t know the exact amount.” But, Horbatiuk insists, there were many cases, most of them technically started under Yarema, but at least active under Shokin.
The numbers quoted by Horbatiuk gibe with those offered by more recent General Prosecutor Rulsan Ryaboshapka, who last year said there were at one time or another “13 or 14” cases in existence involving Burisma or Zlochevsky.
Taibbi reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing. In sum, Taibbi concludes, “one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky’s assets] that got him fired.”
And, Taibbi notes, “the story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular.” In sum: “it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month.”
The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar or worse scandals the Trump family has.
But the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice President’s misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S. media. As Taibbi’s headline put it: “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.”
The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.
It takes an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable of separating such an intense partisan preference from their journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win.
But much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies were suggesting Russia was responsible, not negate the newsworthiness of the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly reported on their contents.
Nonetheless, journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic — large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeniety:
Joe Biden has outraised President Trump on the strength of some of the wealthiest and most educated ZIP codes in the United States, running up the fund-raising score in cities and suburbs so resoundingly that he collected more money than Mr. Trump on all but two days in the last two months….It is not just that much of Mr. Biden’s strongest support comes overwhelmingly from the two coasts, which it does…. [U]nder Mr. Trump, Republicans have hemorrhaged support from white voters with college degrees. In ZIP codes with a median household income of at least $100,000, Mr. Biden smashed Mr. Trump in fund-raising, $486 million to only $167 million — accounting for almost his entire financial edge….One Upper West Side ZIP code — 10024 — accounted for more than $8 million for Mr. Biden, and New York City in total delivered $85.6 million for him — more than he raised in every state other than California….
The median household in the United States was $68,703 in 2019. In ZIP codes above that level, Mr. Biden outraised Mr. Trump by $389.1 million. Below that level, Mr. Trump was actually ahead by $53.4 million.
Wanting to avoid a repeat of feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles, national media outlets have spent four years inventing standards for election-year reporting on hacked materials that never previously existed and that are utterly anathema to the core journalistic function. The Washington Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron, for instance, issued a memo full of cautions about how Post reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their authenticity is not in doubt.
That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump’s tax returns and — despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? — the Times reported on its contents.
When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source’s motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions — (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? — but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them:
Why NYT’s David Barstow does not care who leaked us Trump’s tax return, or what the motivation was. Listen: 
The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.
A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.
As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: “The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.” Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it’s true.”
Vaccines – Who Needs Them?
By David Macilwain | American Herald Tribune | October 28, 2020
It’s a serious question that few have asked, and there’s no clear answer. Up till this point in the Coronavirus play, discussion on vaccines has been limited to one perspective – how effective might they be, and how long before one is available. Thanks to the rigors of lock-downs and upending of society necessitated – we are told – by the need to avoid the virus and “save lives”, interest in a vaccine that might save us from this hell has been intense, not least amongst the shareholders of pharmaceutical companies vying for a share of the global market.
This massive financial interest, hardly denied even by those who claim philanthropic concerns are their real motivator, has nevertheless led to some perverse outcomes and corrupt manipulation. The suppression and distortion of the true worth of Hydroxychloroquine is the greatest crime amongst these, as its leading advocate – Professor Didier Raoult of Marseilles – continues to observe; a worth that has been demonstrated globally by those countries where it has been approved or prescribed.
It now appears almost beyond doubt that the campaign against the use of HCQ, driven by pharmaceutical companies and their agents in governments and institutions, is because of its efficacy in treating COVID 19 infections, and so taking away the market for both other drugs and for vaccines. Prof Raoult has made this claim – and allegation against the French government of serious negligence that has cost many lives – since April. But just last week the case has become a nationally significant conflict following the prohibition against Raoult’s Mediterranee Infection Institute on using Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin treatment for COVID patients.
Not only is this prohibition quite contrary to principles of care and the doctor-patient relationship, but Raoult’s record of success in treating patients with the protocol is undeniable, and proven by his results – out of nearly 9000 patients attending the Marseilles hospital, of which 5,800 were treated with the HCQ/AZM protocol, just 30 deaths were recorded. A regional health official and regional MP have now made official protests in support of Prof Raoult’s right to continue the treatment, as described in this interview as well as in a rather bad English translation.
Prof Raoult, who repeatedly notes that he cannot predict the future behaviour of the epidemic and the changes in the virus, but has unfailingly correctly forecast its progress and likely developments, has recently also made some highly pertinent observations on vaccines. Unlike many of those who are sceptical or opposed to vaccines, Prof Raoult’s reservations on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 are based on purely scientific observations of the behaviour of this virus and the particular characteristics of the infection it causes. Of these the most important feature is in the vastly different susceptibility of different age groups, which may be seen as a fatal weakness in the virus that can be exploited to defeat it.
The ability of younger people to “suffer” SARS-2 infection unscathed, and often without any symptoms – immunity effectively – forms the basis of the “Great Barrington Declaration” – a proposal for the safe development of natural immunity amongst the younger part of the population while older and more vulnerable people are isolated and protected. Although most sections of the health fraternity and mainstream media persist in wilfully ignoring this feature, instead emphasising all the cases of young and healthy people suffering serious illness or “long-Covid”, the statistics are unambiguous and unchanging since the start of the pandemic.
While sidestepping the claims in some quarters that no-one has actually died of COVID, because 99% of deaths are of people with some other serious illness, it is an incontrovertible fact that those who die from or with the Virus are overwhelmingly very old – and the majority in their eighties. The proportion of younger people developing serious illness or dying may be higher in some countries – notably in the US – where those age groups normally have greater morbidity from the diseases of affluence and indolence – diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
Importantly however, and regardless of these varying conditions, the apparent immunity of children to SARS-CoV-2 infection is most striking, and another “weakness” of the virus that may well play a part in limiting its dangers. This is yet another area on which Prof Raoult has focused in the past, when looking for an explanation for the relative immunity to the virus in adults under 50. He considers that children act as reservoirs or carriers of respiratory viruses and so may encourage generalised latent immunity in their parents to related Coronaviruses.
And it is the existence of this natural resistance to the novel Coronavirus which has important implications for the use of a vaccine, and whether its use will be justified or advantageous for some sections of the population, or even contra-indicated. The latter possibility, raised recently in a conversation with Prof Raoult, comes about because of the extremely low mortality from COVID 19 amongst younger people – rated at around 10,000 times lower than in those in their mid 80s – the predominant group of those dying with or from COVID.
Considering this feature of the epidemiology, he concluded that for a vaccine to be safe for younger people, it must be shown to cause lower mortality than the untreated viral infection. Clearly this applies to all age groups and all vaccines, if preventing deaths is their main function. And it is an ever more important consideration with many different types of vaccine now being developed and trialled, and with the possibility of unusual or unpredicted side effects.
Raoult concludes that if a vaccine is to be considered suitable for all, and including younger adults with a minimal chance of serious disease or death, then it must be safety tested on tens or hundreds of thousands of people, which is way beyond the limits currently imposed on potential vaccines thanks to the relative urgency and speed of their development. It is an exquisite irony that the prohibition of the literally life-saving drug Hydroxychloroquine has been based on claims of serious but extremely rare side-effects.
So what if the vaccine is only given to those at greater risk of death from SARS-2 infection, where the danger of vaccine side-effects is outweighed by the life-saving benefits? This may seem sensible, and is rather the practice with current flu vaccines, available free to the over 70s – but here a different factor comes into play. Vaccines mostly depend on the body to produce an immune response that will combat a subsequent viral infection, but this immune response gets weaker as you age. Consequently the benefits of vaccination are far less for older people, and marginal for those over 80 and with weakened systems – the very ones most likely to die following viral infection.
While this relative ineffectiveness of vaccines for the old gets little attention, it is often enough said that a vaccine may only be 50 – 60% effective, as if to avoid raising peoples’ expectations, but this is hardly a minor point. Who would drive a car whose brakes couldn’t always be relied upon, even if they knew it?
So I repeat the question – who actually needs a vaccine to protect them from contracting this not very dangerous respiratory virus? We can rule out anyone under the age of 30, whose chance of dying as a result of CV19 infection is less than 1 in 20,000. For those under 50 this chance may be around 1 in 5000, so a vaccine showing no deaths amongst 10,000 volunteers will have a marginal benefit for this group. In fact the only real benefit of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 might be amongst those in their sixties and seventies, particularly if they have other serious health issues, or are more exposed to infection – as is the case for older health-care workers.
But there is another factor that comes into play here. In order to protect the most vulnerable sectors of the population from infection, a significant percentage of the whole population must be made immune, either from vaccination or from their natural immune reaction to infection. The current path being pursued is to prevent infection and natural immunity developing, so such levels of herd immunity can only be achieved by mass vaccination, subjecting half the population to unnecessary dangers from vaccine side effects.
It would seem hard to make a sound scientific case for such a policy, or an economic one – the cost of vaccinating millions or billions of people around the world is barely calculable. But what is a cost to governments and the taxpayers who support them is a benefit to the pharmaceutical industry and private health industry, and it appears as though they will be driving policy to suit their interests.
There is one last aspect to this question, which only further emphasises the point; the significantly lower death rate associated with the currently circulating strains of the virus. Whether the escalation in positive-testing case numbers is partly due to oversensitive tests, or previously unaccounted asymptomatic cases, associated deaths have barely risen, and remain below 1% of total infections – roughly one tenth of the mortality rate during the “first wave” in Europe.
If science were allowed to prevail, then it would follow the prescriptions of the Great Barrington Declaration, abandoning the great vaccination project and allowing “nature to take her course”. But clearly she will not be allowed to, in a way epitomised by the Indian Government’s announcement last week that all citizens will be vaccinated. This was accompanied by news that India’s rapidly climbing infection rate was levelling off – most probably because herd immunity levels are now being reached.
‘Pseudo-expert’: College dropout billionaire Bill Gates attacks Trump adviser Dr. Scott Atlas over Covid-19 stance
RT | October 26, 2020
Self-styled Covid-19 authority and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has weaponized media demands to “trust the science” to tear into Trump adviser (and actual medical doctor) Scott Atlas for not backing stricter Covid policies.
“We now have a pseudo-expert advising the president,” Gates snarled during an interview at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Monday, denouncing Atlas – who, unlike the billionaire software tycoon, completed both college and medical school – as an “off the rails” bad influence on the Trump administration.
“The most malign thing is where you start to attack your own experts and suggest that maybe politicians know better than disease experts,” Gates continued. The billionaire is neither a politician nor a medical doctor, despite the vast sums he has spent through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its affiliates in an effort to vaccinate the developing world. Atlas, on the other hand, has a medical degree from the University of Chicago and has taught healthcare policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
While Gates’s words might seem to apply to his own denunciation of Atlas, the billionaire meant them as a condemnation of the Trump administration over its alleged line-by-line tweaks to health guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May. He has bemoaned the “politicization” of both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for months, blaming the White House for both their loss of public trust and unspecified yet “very unfortunate” setbacks to the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine.
However, medical experts have insisted for years that both institutions were co-opted long ago by the pharmaceutical industry, of which Gates is both a significant funder and a well-remunerated beneficiary.
Yahoo (and other media organizations, many of which have received and avoided disclosing funding from Gates’ foundations) have almost universally backed the avuncular software tycoon in his dispute with Atlas, suggesting it is the trained medical expert who stepped out of his place in dissenting from prevailing orthodoxy. Forbes even called Atlas a “bad scientist” for not deferring to Gates’ favorite expert, US corona czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Atlas has long been seen as a thorn in the side of Gates and his ideological cheerleaders for his refusal to toe the lockdown line, however. A tweet “falsely” downplaying the effectiveness of masks and an article warning the US’ pandemic-related economic shutdowns will have lasting consequences far worse than the deaths thus far attributed to the virus have been held up as proof Atlas knows not of what he speaks – even as experts in other countries have echoed his economic concerns and the science remains far from settled on masks.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gates has been hailed by the media as a venerable expert on viral outbreaks for a 2015 Ted Talk in which he bemoaned the lack of epidemic preparedness among the world’s governments. However, Gates was far from the only person to predict a pandemic (or the societal upheaval it would trigger).
The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Global Business Network, predicted in a 2010 “scenario” that a devastating viral outbreak would bring about an authoritarian crackdown, devastating entire industries while making totalitarianism palatable to the populations of previously democratic countries. And Fauci himself predicted in 2017 that Trump’s administration would be faced with a deadly pandemic it was unprepared for. The US military and private sector partners have also run several simulations of major pandemics, each time finding (yet never doing much to fix) that the government is woefully unprepared.
Cracking the Ghislaine Maxwell redactions
By Cory Doctorow | Pluralistic | October 23, 2020
Since the earliest days of digital legal records, redaction failures have been a source of perpetual mirth and chaos. The most common failure is simply adding black boxes over text in PDFs; the text can be easily recovered by selecting the underlying text and copying it.
I first encountered this in the early 2000s, and it was the stupid mistake that no one ever learned from. Not the TSA in 2009:
https://cryptome.org/tsa-screening.zip
Not the DHS in 2016:
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/government-error-just-revealed-snowden-target-lavabit-case/
Nor Facebook’s legal opponents in 2018:
This 2011 study by Timothy B Lee for Public Resource reveals how widespread the problem was a decade ago:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2011/05/25/studying-frequency-redaction-failures-pacer/
It’s only gotten worse since. Better redaction systems – blurring and pixelation – turn out be vulnerable to machine learning attacks that unblur these elements:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.00408v2.pdf
But this week revealed a new kind of redaction failure, in the spectacular, high-profile case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman accused of being the procurer for the child rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell was deposed on Epstein’s crimes in 2016. Yesterday, a federal court released a redacted transcript of her deposition, in which the names of high profile individuals who’ve been accused of collaborating with Epstein in sex-crimes were redacted.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article246624308.html
Within a few hours, journalists at Slate had reversed many of these redactions! Their secret weapon was the deposition’s index, which was also redacted, but which nevertheless served as a key for uncovering the masked-out names.
For example: the journalists saw that a redacted word that fell alphabetically between “client” and “clock” appeared on several pages. They know that this is a name that starts with “Cl.” But only some instances of that name have been redacted.
On page 135, line 7, that name appears in the clear: “President Clinton.” Now we know that all the places in which that name is redacted, it can be unmasked as “President Clinton.”
A similar method revealed the places where Alan Dershowitz’s name had been blacked out: a word that comes between “Airport” and “Alcohol” appears before a word that comes between “Depth” and “Describe” on several pages.
The inference that the A-word is “Alan” and the D-word is “Dershowitz” is validated through context.
A related technique reveals the blacked-out instances of Prince Andrew’s name.
All in all, the journalists de-redacted mentions of 15 people, from Chelsea Clinton to Marvin Minsky to Kevin Spacey to Al Gore. Note that their presence in this record is not proof of their direct complicity in sex-crimes.
Epstein’s method involved mixing legitimate business (particularly scientific research) with child rape in ways that blended people who suspected his crimes, knew of his crimes, and participated in his crimes, all together in a jumble of varying complicity and knowledge.
I don’t know if we’ll ever know the full truth of the crimes committed (and abetted) by wealthy, powerful people.
But this de-redaction attack is noteworthy irrespective of the Epstein case. In some ways, it militates for a heavier hand in redaction, blocking all instances of a term (even those that don’t reveal sensitive info) and/or redacting indexes.
As to the Maxwell deposition, the Slate journalists are seeking help in reversing the remaining redactions in the document.
FDA Approves Gilead’s Remdesivir To Treat COVID-19 Despite Data Showing Drug Doesn’t Work
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/22/2020
Despite reams of data from an international WHO study raising serious questions about its efficacy, the FDA has finally approved the use of Gilead Science’s remdesivir – a powerful antiviral originally developed to treat ebola – for the treatment of COVID-19, making it the first such drug approved to treat the virus in the US.
The FDA first granted the drug emergency authorization in May, allowing hospitals and doctors to use the drug even though by all accounts it wasn’t that widely used.
President Trump received one course of remdesivir along with several other COVID-19 therapies after contracting the virus. Doctors also gave the president dexamethasone, a steroid that has a much better track record for treating the virus, according to the available data. Trump also received an experimental drug from Regeneron, which, along with Eli Lilly, has filed for emergency use approval for its COVID-19 antibody treatment.
Gilead has been waging a PR campaign against the WHO, which recently publicized the results of its global trial of remdesivir, producing data that was widely hailed as definitive by other scientists.
But Gilead had a lock on approval seemingly from the very beginning, as US officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, praised the drug. Dr. Fauci once said the drug would “set a new standard of care” for COVID-19.
Back in August, Gilead said the company planned to produce more than 2 million courses of the drug by the end of the year, with “several million more coming in 2021.”
Initially, Gilead says it will initially focus on meeting “real-time demand” in the US.
Oddly, none of the initial coverage of the FDA’s decision included much discussion of the WHO’s trial data, which pretty clearly branded the drug a flop. Even the evidence that Gilead has managed to marshal in remdesivir’s defense has been pretty unconvincing.
‘Big Guy’ Joe Biden was PERSONALLY involved in China venture, Hunter Biden’s business partner says
RT | October 23, 2020
Investor Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss a joint venture with a Chinese company, accusing his son Hunter and the Biden family of using the endeavor as a “personal piggy bank.”
In a statement to the press on Thursday night, shortly before the presidential debate in which Democratic nominee Biden and President Donald Trump will face off, Bobulinski affirmed media reports that the emails between him and Hunter Biden are authentic.
Bobulinski said he was approached in 2015 about a joint venture with CEFC China Energy and “one of the most prominent families in the US.” This led to a May 2, 2017 meeting with Joe Biden, his brother James, and his son Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
At the hour-long meeting, Bobulinski said, they discussed the Biden family’s business plans with the Chinese, with which Joe Biden “was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.”
The venture was to be named “SinoHawk,” Bobulinski explained, combining China and the favorite animal of Biden’s late son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015.
Bobulinski further said he received an email from Hunter on May 13, 2017 in which 10 percent of the equity in the company would be reserved for “the Big Guy,” which he said stood for Joe Biden. He later objected to Hunter’s request that the company should wire $5 million to entities controlled by the Biden family, saying SinoHawk “could not be Hunter’s personal piggy bank.”
According to Bobulinski, he found out that the money had indeed been wired from last month’s Senate report.
Responding to Bobulinski’s announcement, Biden’s campaign said that Barack Obama’s former vice-president and current Democrat presidential candidate “has never even considered being involved in business with his family nor in any overseas business whatsoever.”
The campaign also called the accusations a “smear” and claimed it was a “desperate, pathetic farce.”
Bobulinski told reporters he had never been political and had previously donated to Democrats, but decided to go public so “the American people can decide for themselves.” At the event, he held up three cell phones he said contained messages from the 2015-2018 time period, which he was going to turn over to the FBI as evidence. He left without taking questions.
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In 2014, Michael Parenti Wrote A Prophetic Article About Ukraine
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
This week, the influential left-wing scholar Michael Parenti passed away at the age of 92.
Parenti was well known for his sharp criticism of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. imperialism throughout his life, waking up many to the reality of it and the lies used to justify it.
This is best underscored in one of his last published articles, “Ukraine and Regime Change”, which was published in the book “Flashpoint In Ukraine: How the U.S. Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III”, where he predicted to a tee what the result of the 2014 U.S. backed coup in Ukraine would be. … continue
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Aletho News- Iran, China and Russia sign trilateral strategic pact
- After Years Of Denial, The IDF Admits The Gaza Health Ministry’s Numbers Are Accurate
- Riyadh and Hezbollah: A rapprochement forged in fire
- Criminal Conspiracy: How the U.S. and Israel Turned Iran into a Proving Ground for Bloody Experiments
- EU labels Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ‘terrorist organization’
- Security Guarantees Supported by Russia Agreed on in Istanbul in 2022 – Lavrov
- Russian oil major agrees sale of foreign assets to US firm
- European Union Sanctions Russian Journalists and Artists
- Fānpán – Is China Turning the Tables on the ‘Democratic’ West?
- Davos, Mark Carney’s frankness, and the Euro-American rift
- If Americans Knew
- “Hey ChatGPT, is Israel building a concentration camp?” (spoiler: yes) – Not a ceasefire Day 111
- “The Gaza ceasefire is a minefield” – Not a ceasefire Day 110
- Israel to seek new security deal from US, official says
- Leaked “Board of Peace” Resolution Outlines U.S.-Led Plan to Rule Over Gaza
- Jonathan Greenblatt Rolls Out Plan to Activate Hispanic Evangelical Golems
- Violence against hundreds of Gazan remains to find one Israeli – Not a ceasefire Day 109
- Greenpeace Demonstrator Exposes Folly of Protest Restrictions
- From CBS to TikTok, Pro-Israel Ellison is now in the driver’s seat
- Israel pays for UK advertisements attacking Doctors Without Borders
- Israel accused of extracting billions from Gazan people to pay for their own genocide
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
- Polar Colding…Antarctica Saw Its Coldest October In 44 Years!
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
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