Media Blackout: The Federal Court Case To End Water Fluoridation!
Spiro Skouras | June 14, 2020
As we are inundated with headlines about violent riots and looting being passed off as mostly peaceful protests, or how the dreaded virus continues to spread in communities around the world. There is another story taking place which directly effects hundreds of millions of people globally that is being blacked out by the mainstream corporate media.
Unlike the aforementioned crisis’ which are being sited as the justification for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. This public health crisis actually has a rather simple solution. To end water fluoridation by no longer adding the toxic substance to the nations water supply.
You would think this would be a straightforward process considering the mountains of studies which conclude fluoride is a harmful neurotoxin attributed to lower IQ’s and ADHD. Unfortunately government regulatory agencies have been not only defending this practice for generations, they champion the forced medication as a great achievement in medical history.
Right now, in perhaps one of the most important trials of our time. The Fluoride Action Network is taking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head on in an unprecedented court case that could lead to the end of water fluoridation in the US and possibly worldwide as other nations would likely follow suit.
In this interview, Spiro is joined by Dr. Paul Connett of the Fluoride Action Network to discuss the current court case against EPA and water fluoridation as the first week of the trial has come to an end and the second, possibly final week is about to begin.
Fluoride Action Network http://fluoridealert.org
Link & Times To Watch The Trial Live http://fluoridealert.org/issues/tsca-…
Spiro’s Interview with Dr. Paul Connett & his Son, Attorney Michael Connett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQAjW…
Financial Conflicts & the Retracted COVID Research
Lead author, paid by drug companies, gives the all-clear to products those companies sell. World’s leading medical journal fails transparency test.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | June 22, 2020
Mandeep Mehra is a professor at Harvard Medical School, and the medical director of a Boston hospital department. That city being a coronavirus hotspot, life hasn’t been normal there for some time.
He’s also the lead author of two COVID-19 research papers that were retracted shortly after being published in prestigious medical journals. Lancet boss Richard Horton calls the one published in his journal a “monumental fraud.”
The other, which has received less attention, appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Titled Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19, it runs to seven pages and was retracted because its authors now admit the data on which it relies cannot be validated.
During this pandemic, physicians have been desperate for information to help guide their decisions. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the NEJM, recently explained to the New York Times,
I’m an infectious disease doctor, I treat Covid-19 patients. I’ve been in the hospital recently treating patients, and we have no idea what to do. I’m the primary driver at the journal of saying, ‘We have to get data out there that people can use.’ [bold added]
Many hypotheses have been advanced. Many questions remain unanswered. For example, there’s uncertainty about whether some widely prescribed medications might be complicating the picture. Are people who take high blood pressure pills – ACE inhibitors and ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers) – at higher risk? Should they switch to alternatives until the pandemic is over (see here, here, and here)?
Similarly, should people on cholesterol-lowering statins follow advice published in the British Medical Journal and stop taking these drugs if they develop a serious case of COVID-19? Statins are, after all, prescribed for preventative purposes, to help avert heart problems longer term.
Mehra’s paper claimed to have examined patient records from three continents and to have found no evidence that any of these drugs increase the death rate of those who had heart issues prior to the coronavirus. Indeed, it declares that “the use of ACE inhibitors, and the use of statins were associated with a better chance of survival” in women.
But even if this data was 100% reliable, there would still be two enormous problems with this research:
#1: The lead author has financial ties to companies that sell those drugs.
#2: Neither the authors nor the journal informed us of this salient fact up front, in a transparent manner.
The paper reports, on page 1, that the research was “Funded by the William Harvey Distinguished Chair in Advanced Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”
Mehra’s Harvard e-mail address also appears on page 1. Readers are told that’s where reprint requests should be addressed (reprints are frequently distributed to third party doctors by drug companies as marketing material, and can be a considerable source of revenue for medical journals).
At the very end of the paper, on page 7, in fine print, we’re reminded that the research was supported by the William Harvey Distinguished Chair. Only then are we advised that “Disclosure forms by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.”
One must go to the trouble of tracking down the online version of the paper, and downloading that separate 16-page PDF, to discover the lead author has a serious conflict of interest. There, on page 12, we read:
Dr. Mehra reports personal fees from Abbott, personal fees from Medtronic, personal fees from Janssen, personal fees from Mesoblast , personal fees from Baim Institute for Clinical Research, personal fees from Portola, personal fees from Bayer, personal fees from Triple Gene, personal fees from Leviticus, personal fees from NupulseCV, personal fees from FineHeart, other from Riovant, outside the submitted work;. [sic, bold added]
Abbott Laboratories sells statins and ACE inhibitors. The company is described as a “top key player,” a “major giant,” and a “leading player” in those global marketplaces.
Likewise, Bayer AG is a major global player in the ARB market.
So a lead author who has financial relationships with two companies that sell certain classes of drugs took the time, during a pandemic, to give those drugs an all-clear.
On it’s website, the New England Journal of Medicine calls itself “the world’s leading medical journal.” Why did it choose to bury this vital piece of information?
Retracted Papers Written by Journal VIP
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | June 17, 2020
The lead author of two retracted COVID-19 papers is editor-in-chief of an Elsevier medical journal.
Earlier this month, two high-profile research papers were retracted on the same day. One, published in The Lancet, had concluded that coronavirus patients treated with malaria drugs were more likely to die. Published on May 22, it was officially withdrawn 13 days later.
Another, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found no evidence that widely prescribed medications increase the death rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with pre-existing heart problems.
The lead author in both instances was Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the person in charge of the Heart and Vascular Center at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The second listed author was Sapan Desai. An online bio describes him as an “internationally-recognized double board certified vascular surgeon.” Desai is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation, a data analytics firm which claimed to have acquired 96,000 highly-detailed electronic medical records of COVID-19 patients from 671 hospitals on six continents.
The Lancet paper’s dramatic findings interrupted drug trials and changed government policy in multiple countries. It also increased the anxiety of coronavirus patients who’d been participating in those trials.
But six days after the paper appeared, more than 100 “clinicians, medical researchers, statisticians, and ethicists” addressed an open letter to the authors, and to Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton, questioning the integrity of the cited data.
Why were the hospitals which supplied this data not identified? Why weren’t standard statistical practices employed? Why no ethics review? Why didn’t the paper invite other researchers to examine for themselves the underlying data and computer code?
According to these experts, the medication dose sizes discussed were odd, drug ratios sounded “implausible,” the Australian data was obviously erroneous, and the African data seemed “unlikely.”
Yet none of The Lancet‘s peer-reviewers apparently noticed. “In the interests of transparency,” said the signatories of the open letter, “we also ask The Lancet to make openly available the peer review comments that led to this manuscript to be accepted for publication [sic].”
An article in the New York Times says these events “have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process.” Lancet editor Horton, it reports, now describes the retracted paper as a “fabrication” and “a monumental fraud.”
A headline in the UK Guardian says The Lancet has made one of the biggest retractions in modern history. How, asks the article that follows,
did a paper of such consequence get discarded like a used tissue by some of its authors only days after publication? If the authors don’t trust it now, how did it get published in the first place?…the sad truth is peer review in its entirety is struggling…
Neither of those articles mentioned an astonishing fact. Lead author Mehra is himself the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. Part of Elsevier’s scholarly publishing empire, this monthly journal hires editors for five-year terms. Mehra’s second term is coming to end, and last year the search for a replacement began.
As the posted job description explains, the editor-in-chief is responsible for overseeing the peer review of papers submitted to that journal. He or she is constantly evaluating research, sorting solid science from weak science. The new editor-in-chief, we’re told, must have “a demonstrated understanding of statistics and statistical methods.”
So how could a man who has spent the past 10 years in such a role have authored this pair of retracted papers? How could anyone with any statistical sophistication have taken such dodgy data at face value?
“No matter which way you examine the data, use of these [malaria] drug regimens did not help,” Mehra declared in a press release when The Lancet paper was published. But it now appears he didn’t directly examine the data at all. On the day the paper was retracted, he explained in a subsequent statement:
Dr. Desai, who served as a co-author and whose team maintained this observational database, conducted various analyses. As first author, these were provided to me, and on the basis of these analyses, we published two peer-reviewed papers…
In other words, this longtime editor-in-chief took someone else’s word for it. He failed to ask elementary questions. He took it on faith that the analyses had been properly conducted. Mehra continued:
It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the vaunted peer review system in action. Naive trust. Blind faith. By Mehra. By The Lancet. By the New England Journal of Medicine. Even when real lives, right now, hang in the balance.
Four years ago, I authored a report demonstrating that peer review is merely a sniff test. Typically performed by unpaid volunteers, it’s based on wholly subjective criteria, and is highly influenced by the pre-existing beliefs of those doing the reviewing. My report contains this paragraph:
In 2014, Science announced measures to provide deeper scrutiny of statistical claims in the research it publishes. John Ioannidis, the author of a seminal 2005 paper asserting that most published research findings are false, called this announcement “long overdue”. In his opinion, statistical review has become more important than traditional peer review for a “majority of scientific papers”.
In many places, statistical review still doesn’t occur. Even in our current situation, when COVID-19 research has the power to halt drug trials and change history, the vetting process at medical journals is a joke.
COVID-19 Cold War: Will the 2nd Wave Come from Vaccine Trials?
By Dady Chery | teleSUR | June 18, 2020
If the English-language press had done its job, and not parroted press releases that promote vaccination as the only escape from the social isolation we’ve endured the last three months, the public would be asking many questions about the ongoing protests and their relation to the logistics of vaccine trials. To test a vaccine, typically a pharmaceutical company recruits healthy volunteers for several phases of a clinical trial with a defined endpoint.
I have previously noted that an FDA “fast-track” designation has essentially accorded a carte blanche to a set of vaccines that are financed by CEPI, an alliance of Bill Gates with the six biggest pharmaceutical companies, and in many cases also by the U.S. Homeland Security and Department of Defense concerns BARDA and DARPA.
In the fast-track system, a pharmaceutical company hardly examines the results of a phase one trial before moving on to phases two and three, even though phase one is supposed to identify the best dose for safety on a small group of 15 to 50 healthy volunteers, and phase 2/3 is supposed to follow up with a test of efficacy and an expansion of the test for safety to a larger group. For any vaccine worth its name, the endpoint is a dose that is not only safe in the short and long term but also protects the volunteers from the infectious agent.
Yes, this does imply that the volunteers get exposed to the infectious agent as part of the trial, even though I would challenge you to find this fact being spelled out anywhere in the news. Since the volunteers are typically young and healthy, the expectation for a vaccine candidate against COVID-19 is that, if it fails, as most vaccine candidates do, the volunteers will not become deathly ill on exposure to the virus but will merely turn into asymptomatic carriers. Enter the WHO, which declares on June 8, 2020, without any obvious prompting, that asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be “very rare.” The WHO “doth protest too much, methinks.” This is much too convenient a discovery right now.
The WHO statement contradicts numerous observations and at least one recent review of the coronavirus literature. The review states that “asymptomatic persons seem to account for approximately 40 to 45 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections, and they can transmit the virus to others for an extended period, perhaps longer than 14 days.” It is actually 21 days but never mind all that. The WHO has found another paper, not yet in the press, that says what it likes. A CDC-approved vaccine typically guarantees over US$1 billion in profit for its manufacturer. When it comes to that kind of money, it appears that any report may be concocted. One important reason for the WHO to make this declaration is probably to absolve from liability the manufacturers that are, as I write this article, injecting their potential vaccines into volunteers and then exposing them to SARS-CoV-2, without any provision whatsoever for a quarantine period or the facilities for one.
Some manufacturers might pretend that their endpoint is a demonstration that the volunteers have produced “neutralizing antibodies” against the virus, as determined from assays of their serum in test tubes. If so, then people are being deceived, and the supposed vaccines may offer no protection at all in a real encounter with a virus. In vitro results quite often do not hold up to their promise. After all, every drug that has failed in animal and human trials would not have been tried if it had not first worked in vitro.
The three major potential anti-COVID-19 vaccines that are in the run right now and zipping right along to phase two or three, are arguably Moderna’s mRNA-1273, Astra Zeneca’s AZD1222 (previously ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), and Sinopharm’s BBIBP-CorV.
Moderna’s project is a much-touted mRNA vaccine, for which a phase one trial began in mid-March with 45 human volunteers, and a phase two trial with 600 volunteers was approved a mere six weeks after the start of phase one. The company enjoys US$483 million from BARDA, an apparent blank check from CEPI to get its drug to phase two, plus funds from DARPA and Anthony Fauci’s NIAID. During the phase one trial, three healthy volunteers who received 250 micrograms of mRNA-1273 developed “grade three adverse effects,” meaning that they became so sick that they could not function for one day or more. One 29-year-old man vomited, fainted, and developed a more than 103 F fever that lasted about five hours. The phase two trial will presumably use 50 or 250 micrograms of mRNA-1273. It gives little confidence to know that Moderna’s top executives have cashed out US$89 million of their shares of stock as its value has climbed from US$20 in early January to US$87 on May 22. Currently, the public is being prepared for a flare-up of COVID-19 in Seattle and Atlanta, presumably because of massive anti-racism Black Lives Matter protests. No one is asking about the Moderna vaccine trials in Seattle and Atlanta that have potentially created many asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2.
Astra Zeneca has developed its potential vaccine, called AZD1222, together with the University of Oxford, although the company controls about eight percent of Moderna’s stock. Astra Zeneca got a whopping US$1.2 billion from BARDA on May 21, 2020, and is a darling of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which has promised to deliver hundreds of millions of doses of a supposedly efficacious vaccine to Americans by January 2021. Their immunization approach is to administer an injection of 50 billion particles of a chimpanzee adenovirus that has been engineered to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. In an initial animal study, five out of six supposedly immunized monkeys developed COVID-19 symptoms: specifically, they became infectious, with viral RNA in their nasal passages, after they were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 four weeks “post-vaccination.” Such results would normally kill a project, but not for Astra Zeneca. They spun their damning results by boasting that their injections had prevented illness because the monkeys did not get pneumonia. They are plowing through a 1,000-volunteer phase one study in southern England that started on April 23 and pushing phase 2/3 trials with more than 10,000 volunteers. Interestingly, about 10,000 protesters marched through Brighton, on the southern coast of England, on June 13 in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Might we expect a COVID-19 surge there too?
Last but not least is Sinopharm, a Chinese State project that involves the China National Pharmaceutical Group, together with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and other major health concerns based in Beijing. Sinopharm has been secretive about its plans and merely announced that it was working on a potential vaccine based on the inactivated virus, with promising results in animals and “early human tests” underway. But the group just published a paper in the journal Cell that describes the animal studies. Their potential vaccine is called BBIBP-CorV, and some aspects of it should have raised more questions with Cell. For example, the same dosage is reported to work on mice, rats, rabbits, and monkeys. Sinopharm also claims to have observed no Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of disease (ADE). In other words, it is among the first to assert that the supposedly immunized animals did not become gravely ill – worse than the controls — after they were exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Considering that ADE has routinely been observed in laboratories that have attempted to vaccinate animals against coronaviruses, the paper should have explained how Sinopharm met this challenge. Coincidentally, Beijing has so far had a surge of about 80 new COVID-19 cases. Chinese health authorities are mandating extreme lockdown and blaming the cases on the Xinfadi market, the city’s largest wholesale food market. Conveniently, all the tests of recent visitors to the market have turned up positive, though this is actually an impossibility.
We have been promised a second wave of COVID-19, and we will surely get one. I propose that it will not happen because of the popular uprisings, winter cold, or any of the other hypotheses that have been put forward to prepare us for it. Instead, it will probably be due to the free circulation of tens of thousands of volunteers from various failed vaccine trials. In the U.S., China, and several Western countries, pharmaceutical concerns are becoming an arm of the military-industrial complex. In the West, the main motivation is a desire for a piece of the large pie of military budget. In China, it is an aspiration for greater prestige in the world and conquest of the hearts and minds of citizens of other countries, particularly the global south. The supposedly greater race consciousness that has erupted from the Black Lives Matter protests could soon turn into a racist call for the mandatory vaccination of mostly black and brown low-wage workers, for their own good. Racism is alive and well, and the Vaccine Cold War is on. What we are experiencing is analogous to the fallout from the atmospheric nuclear tests of the first Cold War. We are being played like fish near a hook.
Dr. Dady Chery is an Associate Professor of Biology, Co-Editor-In-Chief of News Junkie Post, and the author of We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.
Hungary’s NGOs will have to disclose foreign funds despite EU top court’s ruling: Orban
RT | June 19, 2020
Civil organizations involved in Hungarian politics will still have to disclose their foreign donors, PM Viktor Orban said on Friday. He made the statement after the European Union’s top court said Hungary’s stance on overseas funding violated EU law.
The Hungarian legislation was part of measures against what the government sees as unfair foreign influence, linked to its disagreements with US billionaire George Soros, who was born in Budapest.
On Friday, reacting to the ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU for the first time, Orban said Hungary would respect the decision about the funding of NGOs but transparency rules would continue to apply.
“All Hungarians will know about every and each forint worth of funding sent here from abroad for political purposes,” the PM told state radio.
Epstein Case: Documentaries Won’t Touch Tales of Intel Ties
By Elizabeth Vos | Consortium News | June 17, 2020
Investigation Discovery premiered a three-hour special, “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” on May 31, the first segment in a three-part series, that focused on Epstein’s August 2019 death in federal custody. The series addresses Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, his links with billionaire Leslie Wexner, founder of the Victoria Secrets clothing line, and others, as well as the non-prosecution deal he was given.
The special followed on the heels of Netflix’s release of “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” a mini-series that draws on a book of the same name by James Patterson.
Promotional material for “Who Killed Jeffery Epstein?” promises that: “… exclusive interviews and in-depth investigations reveal new clues about his seedy underworld, privileged life and controversial death. The three-hour special looks to answer the questions surrounding the death of this enigmatic figure.” Netflix billed its series this way: “Stories from survivors fuel this docuseries examining how convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein used his wealth and power to carry out his abuses.”
Neither documentary however deals at all with Epstein’s suspected ties to the world of intelligence.
Absent from both are Maxwell’s reported links to Israeli intelligence through her father, Robert Maxwell, former owner of The New York Daily News and The Mirror newspaper in London. Maxwell essentially received a state funeral in Israel and was buried on the Mount of Olives after he mysteriously fell off his yacht in 1991 in the Atlantic Ocean.
In an interview with Consortium News, former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe said Epstein did not work with Mossad. “Military intelligence was who he was working with,” said Ben-Menashe. “Big difference,” he said. “He never worked with Mossad, and Robert Maxwell never did, either. It was military intelligence.”
Ben-Menashe claimed Robert Maxwell was Epstein’s “tie over. Robert Maxwell was the conduit. The financial conduit.”
In “Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” a book published in December, Ben-Menashe is quoted as saying he worked with Robert Maxwell who introduced his daughter and Epstein to Israeli intelligence, after which they engaged in a blackmail operation for Israel. “[Epstein] was taking photos of politicians f**king fourteen-year-old girls — if you want to get it straight. They [Epstein and Maxwell] would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that,” he says in the book.
Ben-Menashe also claims that Robert Maxwell had attempted to blackmail Mossad. “He really lost his compass once he started playing these games with people,” he told Consortium News.
Prince Andrew
About a week after both documentaries premiered, the U.S. Department of Justice approached the U.K.’s Home Office requesting that Prince Andrew answer questions in the U.K. over his links to Epstein, The Mirror reported. If he refuses, the paper said, U.S. prosecutors would ask that he be brought to a British court to respond to their questions. Andrew’s lawyers say he three times agreed to be questioned by U.S. authorities, but it is not known if Andrew attached conditions, such as immunity.
Both documentaries mention Prince Andrew in the context of allegations about him from one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But neither film goes into much detail about Andrew’s role in the Epstein operation, which Ben-Menashe said, was to lure powerful men into Epstein’s orbit.
“One of the things that are really key to this is that he [Epstein] befriended a very useful idiot called Prince Andrew,” Ben-Menashe told CN. “Now what really happened was that this Prince Andrew, with nothing to do, was having fun with this, and Prince Andrew brings in the fancy people, invites them to play golf with him, and then takes them out for fun. Then Epstein shows up, and these people are basically blackmailed.”
“The only person that can talk, that probably knows quite a bit, is the great prince,” Ben-Menashe said. “He was with him [Epstein] all the time. I really don’t know what his future is going to be like, either.”
Since a number of influential figures were named in a lawsuit filed by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell the day before Epstein was found dead in his federal prison cell in New York, Ben-Menashe said: “I’m starting to think that lawsuit was his death sentence, because people didn’t want to be named. That’s my guess, it’s just a guess. Obviously, somebody decided that he had to go.”
Epstein’s death was ruled a “suicide” by New York’s chief medical examiner. A pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother said it was homicide.
An Angry Call
Just before Ben-Menashe spoke to Consortium News on Monday, he said he had received an angry telephone call from Israel’s Channel 13 television station.
“They called me, and they went wild: ‘What, you believe Israel would use little girls? You are saying that? You are insulting the nation, you are making us anathema around the world.’ I said, ‘The truth is the truth.’ And Jeffrey Epstein’s story is something that nobody wanted to hear. He was working with the Israelis, he was working with Maxwell,” Ben-Menashe said.
He added: “It’s a very bad story, and I can see why the Israelis are so concerned about it. I believe [Channel 13] were expressing anger, and I believe this was a message. I don’t like messages like that… it has to do with the timing and these stories coming out about Epstein. They [Israel] are starting to become anathema to the world, this adds to it — the Epstein story.”
Victims’ Voices
The Netflix and Investigation Discovery productions allow survivors to recount their experiences in interviews as well as taped police recordings and focus on the sweetheart plea deal provided to Epstein by former Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta during Acosta’s tenure as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
Each series outlines Epstein’s relationships with Wexner, Maxwell, and a variety of elite figures. Investigation Discovery focuses on the controversy surrounding Epstein’s death while Netflix’s “Filthy Rich” examines the second attempt to prosecute Epstein in the context of the Me Too movement.
The Netflix series describes the initial investigation of Epstein as it shifted from the state to the federal level, and airs allegations that Florida journalists covering the story were threatened. Netflix also interviews psychologist Dr. Kathryn Stamoulis, a specialist in adolescent sexuality, who gives a description of Epstein’s targeting and grooming of young girls. Epstein survivor Giuffre later describes in the film being groomed to tolerate exploitation and sex trafficking as part of a “deranged family.”
The final section of the fourth episode in Netflix’s miniseries includes a survivor stating that this was not simply an Epstein operation, but an “international sex trafficking ring that reached all over the world.” Epstein is described as a “very small piece in a huge network.” But the documentary goes no further than that.
As in the Belgian Dutroux case, victims alleged that multiple abusers acted in concert with each other, using blackmail to keep each other in line. In both instances, authorities and the media portrayed the abuse as chiefly the product of an aberrant lone predator.
“This wouldn’t be the only time this happened, but this guy got way over his head,” Ben-Menashe told Consortium News. “He probably was blackmailing too many people, too many powerful people. And then, this is a story the Israelis wouldn’t want to come out, anyway.”
Thriving in Murky Waters
Another angle the documentaries did not approach was the environment in which Epstein thrived like an algae bloom in stagnant water, that is, within a long history of child trafficking rings linked with intelligence agencies, often with the aim of gathering blackmail material. It was within this reality that Epstein appeared to be rendered untouchable.
Omitting the intelligence aspect of Epstein’s history allows the Establishment media to portray his case as a mysterious and unsolvable aberration, rather than perhaps a continuation of business-as-usual amongst those in power.
The glaring refusal to address Epstein’s intelligence involvement becomes clear when Investigation Discovery and Netflix’s programs discuss the role of Acosta in securing Epstein’s “sweetheart” plea deal, but do not reference Acosta’s widely reported explanation as to why Acosta agreed to the deal. As reported by The Daily Beast, Acosta claimed that he cut the non-prosecution deal because he had been told that “Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
Independent journalist Whitney Webb has reported on Epstein’s many ties with intelligence, telling CNLive! in August last year that there is evidence this included with the CIA.
Webb spoke about Iran-Contra links to Epstein via his and billionaire Wexner’s efforts to relocate Southern Air Transport (formerly the CIA’s Air America) from Florida to Ohio: “What’s significant here is that out of all the airlines in the United States, Wexner and Epstein choose the airline, the only airline that is outed, publicly known at the time, to be a CIA cut-out. Out of all the airlines that exist, that’s the one they go for,” she said.
Webb also cited reporting by Nigel Rosser, a British journalist, who wrote in the Evening Standard in 2001 that Epstein claimed he worked for the CIA in the 1990s.
Lip Service
Investigation Discovery and Netflix give lip service to Wexner’s ties with Epstein, omitting that Wexner gave Epstein the largest private residence in New York City — essentially for free. Investigation Discovery does not mention that the residence was extensively wired with surveillance equipment, per Webb and The New York Times.
“James Patterson, before writing his book on Epstein, ‘Filthy Rich,’ on which this documentary [by Netflix] is based, wrote a novel [‘The President is Missing’] with Bill Clinton , who is of course quite close to the Epstein scandal, so that definitely, in my opinion, raises some eyebrows,” Webb told Consortium News.
“I think that one of the goals of this [Netflix] documentary is to basically imply that Epstein was the head of the operation and that now that he is dead, all of that activity has ceased,” Webb said. “If they had actually bothered to explore the intelligence angle, in some of the more obvious facts about the case, like Leslie Wexner’s role, for example, it becomes clear that Epstein was really just more of a manager of this type of operation, [and] that these activities continue.”
Webb said a main reason for avoiding discussion of the intelligence angle is that mention of state sponsorship would lead to calls for accountability and open inquiry into a history of sexual blackmail by intelligence agencies. “So if they had given even superficial treatment of those ties, it would have exposed threads that if anyone had bothered to pull on a little bit, would start to unravel a lot of things that obviously these powerful people and institutions don’t want exposed,” Webb said.
More than nine months since Epstein’s death, no alleged Epstein co-conspirator has been arrested or charged with a crime despite reports of an active criminal investigation of Maxwell (who has disappeared), and multiple failed attempts of alleged Epstein victims to serve her with civil suits.
“The criminal case against him, and all the evidence that was gathered against him as part of that, will never be made public unless someone else is charged,” said Webb. “So, the fact that they’re not charging anyone else is quite telling, and the fact that the mainstream media isn’t pushing back against that, I think is telling as well.”
The omissions of major aspects of the Epstein case by the media, specifically its links with the intelligence community, seems to be yet another example of a buffer between justice and those responsible for rendering Epstein untouchable.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and co-host of CN Live.
Cut Overseas Police Training Programs
Photograph Source: Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States – CC BY-SA 2.0
By Jeremy Kuzmarov | CounterPunch | June 15, 2020
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has ignited protests across the United States and calls to demilitarize and defund the police.
A similar demand should be made to cut overseas police training programs including in Afghanistan.
The U.S. government has long adopted overseas police training as a cornerstone of nation building and counterinsurgency programs.
The idea is that American police will instill professional and democratic standards, including a respect for civil liberties among foreign counterparts and help stabilize violence prone countries.
The Floyd killing has exposed, however, that American police lack professional and humane standards and need to be retrained and reformed. They are ill suited to improve other countries’ police.
In Afghanistan, where the U.S. has spent an estimated $87 billion dollars over nineteen years training security forces, the police are notorious for corruption, sectarianism, incompetence and brutality.
In an interview quoted in the Afghanistan Papers, Thomas Johnson, a Navy official who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in Kandahar province, said that Afghans viewed the police as predatory bandits, calling them “the most hated institution” in Afghanistan.
This latter outcome resulted in part from the militarized tactics promoted by American advisers and their importation of police technologies which could be used for repressive ends.
In Honduras, where the U.S. expanded police aid following a 2009 coup d’états that ousted the mildly progressive José Manuel Zelaya, American trained units have been implicated in torture and drug related corruption, and carried out predawn raids of activists involved in protesting contested elections.
These units were trained under an initiative promoted by President Obama and extended by Trump that provided hundreds of millions of dollars for law enforcement training and assistance, mostly under the War on Drugs.
In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration created the United States Agency for International Development’s infamous Office of Public Safety (OPS), to modernize the police forces in countries considered vulnerable to communist subversion.
Headed by CIA agent Byron Engle, who combined a deep commitment to civilian police work with an appreciation for the darker areas of political police intelligence, the OPS initially employed liberal reformers.
As political policing gained primacy, however, OPS agents became contemptuous of human rights and imported policing technologies that were used to hunt down dissidents and violently quell protests.
Charles Maechling Jr., staff director of the Special Group on Counterinsurgency under Kennedy, acknowledged that in failing to “insist on even rudimentary standards of criminal justice and civil rights, the United States provided regimes having only a façade of constitutional safeguards with up-dated law enforcement machinery readily adaptable to political intimidation and state terrorism. Record keeping in particular was immediately put to use tracking down student radicals and union organizers.”
By 1973, the OPS was abolished by Congress because of its connection to torture carried out by U.S. trained police forces in South Vietnam and Brazil.
Many OPS veterans subsequently returned to work for police forces back in the U.S., where some continued to promote tactics that encouraged police abuse, including in the suppression of urban riots.
Unfortunately, there is a long pattern of abuse in American police forces, that overseas police programs have helped to compound.
As momentum grows for a transformation of the police, activists should be demanding an end to the practice of exporting police repression and a change to the American approach towards foreign policy more broadly.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018) and Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting for the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).
Washington Struggles to Manage the Crisis, But Israel Continues to Benefit
Florida Senator Rick Scott, who previously served as the state’s governor, visited the Kosel in August 2019. Credit: Rick Scott/ Twitter
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | June 13, 2020
The self-inflicted cultural defenestration of what passes for Western Civilization in the United States continues apace. As George Orwell described the process in 1984 “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present…”
Ironically, even as America’s Founding Fathers are being pilloried through the prism of contemporary values, not every bit of customary behavior is being challenged. Even though the United States is going through a devastating health care and national identity crisis, the Federal Government continues to grind out legislation that is favorable to Israel and to certain Jewish interests. “The Never Again (Holocaust) Education Act,” for example, passed through the House of Representatives (H.R. 943) by a 395-3 vote followed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on S.2085 on May 13th. It will help to indoctrinate school children regarding an easily challengeable narrative of perpetual victimhood which in turn generates billions of dollars for the racist state of Israel, but it was described by Congressional supporters as merely an instrument to support the already existing educational resources at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which is also taxpayer funded.
The House bill’s sponsor Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York preened that “Combatting hate and intolerance must always be a priority and I’m glad that the Senate agrees. Passing this bill by unanimous consent today sends a strong message that the Congress is overwhelmingly united in combatting antisemitism…” and the Senate bill’s sponsor Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada explained how “…the Never Again Education Act will give schools needed resources to cover one of the darkest chapters in our history. Through education, we can provide insight into the past, and use it to prevent anti-Semitism now.”
If Americans Knew has documented how there were 68 pieces of legislation focused on providing goods and services to Israel in 2019, with 18 more added, identified here, so far this year. The most well known piece of legislation is S.3176, “US-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 (To amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 to make improvements to certain defense and security assistance provisions and to authorize the appropriations of funds to Israel, and for other purposes),” which is the upper chamber’s version of House bill H.R.1837, which was passed last July. S.3176 passed out of committee on May 21st and is scheduled for a floor vote. The Senate bill was sponsored by Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of the Israel Lobby and its oligarch funders.
The House and Senate bills derive from an agreement entered into by President Barack Obama committing the U.S. Treasury to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion a year for the next ten years. The current version of the legislation has tweaked the language to make that $3.8 billion Danegeld a minimum, subject to increase as circumstances dictate. The bill also provides Israel additional military equipment off the books, funds several co-production arrangements and basically commits Washington to supporting Israel militarily even if the Jewish state starts the war.
Other pro-Israel bills include H.R.5595 – the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act (To impose additional prohibitions relating to foreign boycotts under Export Control Reform Act of 2018, and for other purposes),” which includes criminal penalties to target businesses, organizations and individuals who attempt to boycott or disrupt commercial activity operating out of Israel’s West Bank settlements. It was drafted in response to the publication of a United Nations database identifying over 100 Israeli companies doing business in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. S.Res. 570 “A resolution opposing and condemning the potential prosecution of United States and Israeli nationals by the International Criminal Court,” meanwhile is an attempt to block any consideration by the international court of Israeli as well as American war crimes.
Other legislation (S.3775 “The United States Israel Military Capability Act” involves developing and sharing military technology even though Israel frequently steals what is developed and H.Res.837 “Reaffirming the need for transatlantic cooperation to combat anti-Semitism in Europe” encourages European countries to do more to teach about the so-called holocaust and anti-Semitism.
But the most bizarre resolutions currently circulating on the Congressional circuit are S.3722 and H.R.6829 “To authorize funding for a bilateral cooperative program with Israel for the development of health technologies with a focus on combating COVID-19.” The respective bills were introduced on May 12th and 13th and are now in committee. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been lobbying Congress hard by playing the China-as-threat card. The House version is consequently dubbed the “Expanding Medical Partnerships with Israel to Lessen Dependence on China Act.”
What the bills will do is establish a partnership with Israel to develop a vaccine and other medical responses to the pandemic virus. The costs will be shared, but Israel’s pharmaceutical industry will market the products, which promises to be enormously profitable if the endeavor succeeds.
And finally, there is Iran, Israel’s bête noire. On June 8th U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran’s shipping network took effect, months after they were announced in December following claims made by the State Department relating to alleged Iranian support for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Commercial and maritime industries and even governments now risk U.S. sanctions if they do any business with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and/or its Shanghai-based subsidiary, E-Sail Shipping Company. The new sanctions are being touted by Republican Congressmen as the “toughest ever.”
So, what is the average American citizen to do confronted by an avalanche of Congressional action benefitting Israel while the United States is going through its most trying time since the Great Depression? Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have large budgets, hundreds of staff and full and immediate access to Congressional offices. They even write the legislation that is then rubber stamped by the House and Senate, and although they are clearly agents of Israel, they are never required to register as such under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
One can always contact a Congress-critter and complain but that is generally speaking a waste of time. A brave man and friend of mine who was a survivor of the brutal Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 did write to his Senator and ask why, when the nation is in crisis, Congress is spending so much time and money on Israel. This was the reply he got from Senator Rick Scott of Florida:
“Thank you for contacting me regarding our greatest ally, Israel. Florida has maintained a strong relationship with Israel for many generations and I have always worked to improve policies and investments between our two countries.
During my time as Governor of Florida, I visited Israel three times. My first two visits were to promote Florida and to build international trade relationships between Israel and Florida. My third visit was for the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, for which I strongly advocated.
I also signed anti-BDS legislation, secured $2 million for security at our Jewish schools, and I opposed the reckless Iran Deal.
As your United States Senator, I will continue to work every day to protect and support our greatest ally and fight to take actions against those who wish to do them harm.
Again, thank you for your insightful correspondence. I am proud to represent every citizen in Florida and I appreciate the time you took to provide your position on this matter. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me.”
Clearly Senator Scott claims to be proud of representing “every citizen” in Florida, but he regards some citizens as more important than others. Concerning his trade missions, one might be interested in knowing what the balance of trade and job creation between Israel and Florida actually is, as these arrangements are generally heavily loaded to favor Israeli businesses and investors. Also, the good Senator might recall that it was a Florida public school that recently was on the receiving end of a mass shooting, so perhaps the money he so proudly gave to Jewish schools for security was not exactly well spent. And Scott seems to be unaware that Jewish organizations already get over 90% of Department of Homeland Security discretionary grants, so they hardly need more taxpayer money.
Acting on behalf of a foreign country, Senator Scott also is willing to shut down the First Amendment for most Americans in his zeal to crush the non-violent BDS movement. And his rejection of the “Iran Deal” demonstrates that he does not support policies that actually enhance the security of the United States, presumably out of deference to the interests of Israel and at least some of his Jewish constituents.
Finally, Senator Scott should perhaps look into the treaties that Washington has entered into with foreign powers. There is no defense treaty with Israel and the Jewish state is no ally, much less a “greatest ally.” It is, in fact, a major strategic liability, involving Americans in regional wars that need not be fought and demonstrating to all the world the risible reality of a military and economic superpower that is being led to perdition during a time of crisis by a ruthless and irresponsible client state.
Time to End Israeli Tyranny over Western Halls of Power: Zarif
Al-Manar | June 12, 2020
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif lashed out at the Zionist lobbies for “poisoning” US politics, saying the time has come to end Israeli influence on the Western decision-making bodies.
In a post on his Twitter account on Thursday, the top Iranian diplomat pointed to an article published in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Israel’s influence over the US Congress, saying, “If there were ever any question of WHO dictates US—& Western—policy in the Mid East, this headline screams it loud & clear.”
“AIPAC has poisoned US politics for years, overtly giving instructions to Congress,” Zarif added.
“Time to end #APARTHEID Israel’s tyranny over Western halls of power,” the top Iranian diplomat wrote in the message.
Zarif has also attached a picture to his post, showing the title of an article published in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The article has admitted that AIPAC “the leading pro-Israel lobby in the United States is telling lawmakers that they are free to criticize Israel’s looming annexation plans.”
Big Tech Pandemic
By Leo Goldstein | Watts Up Wth That? | June 8, 2020
Patients in Wuhan, China, are being saved with high-dose vitamin C. In the U.S., you can get your Twitter or Facebook account deleted or your video scrubbed for even talking about it. – American Association of Physicians and Surgeons
The Statistics
Strikingly, the 10 countries with the highest COVID-19 mortality rates are large Western countries, including the US, UK, France, Spain, and Italy. The non-Western country with the highest mortality rate is Ecuador, ranked at #13. Ecuador only has 195 deaths/million, however, compared with the median of around 450 deaths/million in the “top 10”. No Asian countries make the top-20 list despite being close to the epicenter of the epidemic and having high population densities. No African country makes the list despite many having much traffic from China.
Table 1. The 20 countries with the highest COVID-19 mortalities (2020-06-03)
| Country | Cases/M | Deaths/M | Population | |
| 1 | Belgium | 5,065 | 822 | 11,585,802 |
| 2 | Spain | 6,139 | 580 | 46,753,443 |
| 3 | UK | 4,097 | 580 | 67,858,826 |
| 4 | Italy | 3,862 | 555 | 60,468,295 |
| 5 | Sweden | 4,042 | 450 | 10,094,432 |
| 6 | France | 2,319 | 443 | 65,262,729 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 2,728 | 349 | 17,132,042 |
| 8 | Ireland | 5,081 | 336 | 4,933,409 |
| 9 | USA | 5,693 | 327 | 330,854,064 |
| 10 | Channel Islands | 3,223 | 265 | 173,737 |
| 11 | Switzerland | 3,572 | 222 | 8,649,729 |
| 12 | Canada | 2,450 | 196 | 37,716,316 |
| 13 | Ecuador | 2,293 | 195 | 17,621,217 |
| 14 | Luxembourg | 6,431 | 176 | 625,142 |
| 15 | Brazil | 2,628 | 147 | 212,442,762 |
| 16 | Peru | 5,310 | 145 | 32,934,728 |
| 17 | Portugal | 3,261 | 142 | 10,198,850 |
| 18 | Germany | 2,198 | 104 | 83,763,806 |
| 19 | Denmark | 2,033 | 100 | 5,790,665 |
| 20 | Iran | 1,915 | 95 | 83,906,701 |
Worldometers, 06/03/2020, 9:30 am CT
*Eliminated from the comparison are countries with less than 100k population (San Marino, Sint Maarten, Montserrat, Monaco, Bermuda, Isle of Man, and Andorra).
Possible Explanations
The popular hypotheses, such as the use of anti-malarial drugs in some countries and anti-tuberculosis vaccination of children in others, do not explain these differences.
Chloroquine and similar drugs are not widely used for malaria prevention in India and other malaria-affected countries. Travelers do take anti-malarials for prophylaxis, but locals acquire some immunity from exposure to it in childhood. If they do contract malaria, they are treated with chloroquine or artemisinin combo for a few days. India uses less HCQ per million population than the US.
One observational hypothesis posits that full national anti-tuberculosis vaccination (BCG) correlates with lower COVID-19mortality. BCG is typically given to babies at birth, sometimes with boosters in late childhood. This hypothesis suggests that BCG provides some degree of long-term immunity to COVID-19. Even if there is correlation, however, it is not relevant here. The UK had full BCG from 1953–2005. Belgium had it from about 1953–1995 and France from 1950–2007. Ireland started mandatory BCG vaccination in the 1950s and still has it.
Other factors exist. Less developed countries might not detect and report cases and deaths from COVID-19 as completely as more developed countries. They also have lower ratios of older people and have low urbanization.
Amplifying Factors
On the other hand, population density in the cities of non-Western countries is typically higher than in Western ones. Mumbai has 32 thousand persons per km2, while New York City has just 10,000 persons per km2. People in non-Western countries also tend to have less physical distance between them. There are more persons per area at work and home, and multiple generations often live together in the same households. Even in developed Russia and Ukraine, the typical physical distance between persons is about three times less than in the US, which should translate to a much higher transmission speed, and exponentially higher rates of cases and deaths.
Many non-Western countries also have low hygienic standards. Many suffer from bad nutrition, cold weather, lack of UVB sunlight, and other immunity-compromising factors. Less developed countries also have much lower capacities to hospitalize and treat those who are severely ill.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The top dozen Western countries share another distinguishing factor: information flow dominated by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and their accomplices (here, Masters of the Universe or “MOTUs”). The media are downstream of them, depending on information, clicks, and even cash handouts from them. These companies collaborated with the WHO, spread panic (like Google’s SOS Alert), misled government health agencies and the public about coronavirus mortality (e.g., calling COVID-19 a pandemic was wrong). They have been removing helpful medical advice and even opinions simply because they were not endorsed by the WHO or confused government agencies. Notice that this debate ban prevents scientists and clinicians from communicating helpful information to government agencies, and even communicating among themselves. Many governments censor information, such as the Soviet Union. With all the inferiority of such a model, the Soviet government developed and possessed all the anti-epidemic expertise and capacities it wanted. In the US, most expertise and capacity in this and other fields is with its citizens, from whom the government can receive help and advice when needed. Citizens do provide such help and advice, but the MOTU use their physical control of the communications channels to block and remove information helpful to fight the epidemic. For example, Google blocked access to the scientific paper An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19) by James Todaro and Gregory Rigano, which made a case for CQ and HCQ on March 13–15.
Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation in the US
In the US, most COVID-19 deaths happened in the New York cluster. NYC also spread COVID-19 nationally and internationally. These are some main mistakes made by NYC in handling the epidemic:
- It blocked early HCQ treatment of COVID-19 victims.
- It failed to recommend and, where relevant, implement nutritional and environmental mitigation measures to slow the epidemic.
- It allowed COVID-19 patients to mix with other patients and unprotected healthcare personnel in hospitals.
- It sent young COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.
None of these mistakes was caused by material factors or a lack of knowledge in the public domain. None of these are obvious only in hindsight. All were caused by incorrect assumptions about COVID-19 and/or by panic, both of which were spread by the MOTUs (General incompetence and the politics of NYC have just aggravated these mistakes, I hope).
The resistance to recommending vitamin C, which was caused by misinformation spread by the MOTU directly and through their proxy “fact-checkers,” is an example of how much damage they inflicted.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C has always been recommended as safe and helpful for many health conditions, including the prevention and treatment of respiratory infections. An abundance of evidence and studies supports the use of vitamin C to prevent and alleviate respiratory diseases.
Despite this, in February, the WHO published a Q&A on COVID-19 advising against taking vitamin C, even comparing taking vitamin C to smoking:
“The following measures ARE NOT specifically recommended as 2019-nCoV remedies as they are not effective to protect yourself and can be even harmful:
* Taking vitamin C
* Smoking
* Drinking tradition herbal teas
* Wearing multiple masks to maximize protection
* Taking self-medication such as antibiotics
With all the incompetence and power hunger of the WHO, this is bad copywriting rather than bad judgment. An ordinary person can easily recognize that. However, the MOTU “fact-checkers” interpreted it in the worst conceivable way.
Apparently, it started in the article “These are false cures and fake preventative measures against coronavirus. Help fact-checkers spread the word” (February 13) published by the Poynter Institute (the entity that certifies the fact-checkers used by Google, Facebook, and Microsoft):
Aos Fatos reported that the World Health Organization says on its website that taking vitamin C is not recommended as a way to prevent coronavirus. It is actually dangerous, just like smoking and taking antibiotics without a prescription.
The linked Aos Fatos article did not say that. The Poynter Institute omitted the “not specifically recommended” clause. “Fact-checkers” are in the clickbait business, too. This “advice” went beyond Google and Facebook: the New York Times (NYT) article “Coronavirus Myths” (March 17) said:
You might be tempted to bulk order vitamin C or other supposedly immune-boosting supplements, but their effectiveness is a long-standing fallacy. Even in the cases of colds or flus, vitamin C hasn’t shown a consistent benefit.
Unlike Google, the NYT is supposed to have human editors. Where were they? Its other article with the strange title “Supplements for Coronavirus Probably Won’t Help, and May Harm” (March 23) called vitamin C “a purported immune booster.”USA Today was even worse: “We rate the claim that vitamin C can help cure or prevent the novel coronavirus FALSE because it is not supported by our research”—as if it conducted research.
It seems that Google and Facebook forgot that these fact-checkers were intended as proxies to justify their politically motivated editorializing by pretending it was third-party information. They started using them as authoritative sources. By May 20, it was easier to find “stabilized oxygen” than vitamin C in Google searches including the word COVID-19.
The MOTU financially benefited from their misdeeds. More people were forced to use Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, YouTube, and Microsoft Skype instead of meeting face-to-face.
Facebook and Twitter Examples
The MOTU have been collaborating and colluding with the WHO to misinform the public and government in the US and other countries since early February. The NYT article “W.H.O. Fights a Pandemic Besides Coronavirus: an ‘Infodemic’” (Feb 6) wrote
Google launched what it calls an “SOS Alert,” which directs people who search for “coronavirus” to news and other information from the W.H.O., including to the organization’s Twitter account . . .
The health agency has worked especially closely with Facebook. The company has used human fact-checkers to flag misinformation, which can come to their attention through computer programs that identify suspicious keywords and trends. Such posts can then be moved down in news feeds, or, in rare cases, removed altogether.
These are some results of this close work. “Coronavirus: World leaders’ posts deleted over fake news” (BBC, 2020-03-31),
Facebook and Twitter have deleted posts from world leaders for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. Facebook deleted a video from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro that claimed hydroxychloroquine was totally effective in treating the virus.
Brazil is the sixth-largest country of the world by population. By that time, the use of CQ or HCQ for COVID-19 had been endorsed to some degree by the governments of China, India, and the US. Did Facebook and Twitter executives think they knew better?
Facebook: Combatting COVID-19 Misinformation
We regularly update the claims that we remove based on guidance from the WHO and other health authorities.
Once a post is rated false by a fact-checker, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it, and we show strong warning labels and notifications to people who still come across it, try to share it or already have.
Facebook: An Update on Our Work
Informing People Who Interacted With Harmful COVID-19 Claims
We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed. These messages will connect people to COVID-19 myths debunked by the WHO …
Twitter: An update on our continuity strategy during COVID-19
Broadening our definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information. . . . [W]e will require people to remove tweets that include:
* Denial of global or local health authority recommendations to decrease someone’s likelihood of exposure to COVID-19 . . .
* Description of alleged cures for COVID-19, which are not immediately harmful but are known to be ineffective . . .
* Denial of established scientific facts . . .
* [The list is going on and on]
It is incredible: denial of recommendations … global health authority … alleged cures … denial of established scientific facts. “Require people to remove tweets” means temporary disabling their accounts until they remove the tweets that Twitter dislikes.
The global conversation about COVID-19 and ongoing product improvements are driving up total monetizable DAU (mDAU), with quarter-to-date average total mDAU reaching approximately 164 million, up 23% from 134 million in Q1 2019 . . .
… manufacturing delays in China have compromised the supply chain, resulting in delays in deliveries to our data centers.
Have they de-platformed critics of the Chinese government to avoid “manufacturing delays” or something else?
Most people would think that if Google, Facebook, or Twitter deleted information related to treatment or prevention of the pandemic, they were 100% sure it was false and harmful. Few would believe that they did that on a whim or based on the opinion of entities like Snopes. And they would be branded “conspiracy theorists.”
Remarks
Other Possible Factors
Anti-tuberculosis vaccines and their administration schedules vary by country, and some countries might have COVID-19 protective effects from them.
Another hypothesis is put forward in the following papers:
“Have the malaria eradication measures been behind the COVID-19 pandemic?” Elnady Hassan M., Sohag Medical Journal, opinion article
“Parasites and their protection against COVID-19—Ecology or Immunology?” Ssebambulidde et al., preprint:
One plausible hypothesis for the comparatively low COVID-19 cases/deaths in parasite-endemic areas is immunomodulation induced by parasites.
I consider these hypotheses too exotic to discuss here and just mention them. Many confounding factors remain when comparison among countries is done.
Miscellaneous
- Another commonality among the highest-mortality countries is climate alarmism taking over the scientific community.
- The “fact-checkers” seem to be the original sources of some of the worst hoaxes on the Internet.
- Yes, the MOTUs used artificial intelligence to misinform the public and governments about COVID-19.
- Besides the direct effects of bans, removals, and the deplatforming of information and speakers who knew more about COVID-19 than the WHO, these actions had chilling effects on discussions related to COVID-19.
- Coughing into one’s elbow is outright harmful advice because it makes the sleeve a virus-spreader.
US Department of Justice demands UK hands over Prince Andrew for questioning over Epstein links – reports
RT | June 7, 2020
The Southern District Court of New York has asked Prince Andrew to testify in the ongoing criminal investigation into Epstein’s alleged accomplices via a Mutual Legal Assistance request filed with the UK Home Office, ABC News reported on Sunday. According to the Sun, which first broke the story, the request was formally lodged last month.
Prince Andrew could be forced to provide testimony under oath in a UK court if the Home Office approves the US court’s request. Should he refuse to either give a signed statement or provide evidence under oath, US prosecutors could issue a summons that would compel him to answer questions in person. The royal has categorically denied any wrongdoing in relation to his friendship with the jet-setting sex offender, who supposedly committed suicide in prison last year while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
As recently as January, head prosecutor for the Epstein case Geoffrey Berman had expressed frustration with the Prince’s failure to assist in the ongoing probe of Epstein’s criminal associates, noting: “Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation.” The royal had pledged during a BBC Newsnight interview in November that he would help with the US investigation if his “legal advice was to do so.” Shortly after that TV appearance, branded disastrous and “cringe-worthy” by many, he was demoted within the royal family, stepping back from public life.
While Prince Andrew has denied witnessing anything illegal while palling around with Epstein, accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre has claimed they had sex three times when she was 17. A photo of Giuffre with the Prince has been widely circulated. Andrew claims to have met Epstein in 1999, having been introduced by socialite and alleged Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell – who is still at large despite supposedly being wanted for questioning by the FBI.
The Home Office has refused to confirm or deny the existence of the request, while the royal family has not commented.
Five Epstein accusers are reportedly eager to give evidence regarding the Prince in US courts, and pre-trial subpoenas could be served regarding those cases should he enter the US.
While the criminal case against Epstein closed with his death, his victims have ongoing civil litigation against his estate. However, because of a last-minute change he made to his will, they will have years of legal wrangling ahead of them if they hope to get any sort of payout.
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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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