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Biden Family Corruption Laid Bare

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | January 23, 2025

For many years, Joe Biden’s corruption has been as well known as his dementia to anyone remotely out of the Democrat Party and MSNBC messaging zone. Throughout his half-century career as an unimpressive politician, his family has accumulated enormous wealth through influence peddling.

This, of course, came to the fore with his son Hunter’s laptop whose authenticity was denied by “51 former intelligence agents,” claiming it was a Russian operation. The truth is Hunter Biden’s corruption is fairly routine. It’s just that other family members of politicians aren’t whoremongering crackheads and are thus able to avoid notice. Despite this, we were constantly demanded to believe that Joe Biden was a portrait of public service who believed deeply in the rule of law. This was also supposed to present a contrast between the entire Democrat and Republican machines, including Donald Trump.

Then, shortly before leaving office, following his legally dubious blanket amnesty granted to Hunter in December, Biden granted amnesty to Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, the January 6 Committee, and worst of all, the rest of his own family. All of this was done with a professed beleif in a fair justice system, claiming none of them had done anything wrong. As I like to say, we live in unsubtle times.

The history of heads of state holding the power of pardon is ancient. The most famous example in Western culture is of course Pontius Pilate—as Augustus Caesar’s representative—freeing Barabbas while condemning Jesus (notably, after getting feedback from the people).

While the public generally loves to see justice, they also like to see mercy from their leaders. It’s something which makes a king beloved. In the United States, it is technically the people who have the power to convict and execute while the executive, both federally and in states, has the power to overturn these convictions for any reason. This is also a “check” on corruption within the judiciary, and the risk that this may itself be used corruptly to assist family members or other cronies was well known. However, the concept of amnesty is also ancient, and if the president had the power to grant amnesty, as opposed to pardons for convictions, this would have been made clear in the Constitution.

It was expected, among those not brain-broken by the Democrats, that Joe Biden would pardon his son. On a human level, one can’t fault him. While I wouldn’t destroy my son’s character by making him earn corrupt profits for my family, had it come to that point and had I the power, I would pardon my son without hesitation. As president, Biden’s power to pardon Hunter’s convictions was absolute; whether or not he should do it was simply a moral and political question. However, his grant of amnesty had no legal justification. But, it being his son people were willing to let it lie. The only prior modern example was President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, which was controversial at the time but had a much stronger justification as a necessity to move forward with the nation’s political life.

Though modern Democrats are a profoundly shameless political faction, I did not imagine that Biden would take his amnesties as far as he did, and thought the whole thing was idle speculation. Biden only acknowledged that his son had problems with drugs and generally irresponsible behavior, not that he was engaging in corrupt political activities. It should be noted that while Biden’s brother James was deeply involved in the corruption business, the other Biden family members he felt compelled to grant amnesty were not even known to be “in the mix.” We are left wondering what guilt Biden is admitting with these pardons, and it is imperative to find out.

More concerning than the dangerous corruption of what can fairly be called the “Biden Crime Family,” are the pardons of those engaged in official government work. With people like Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley, we are supposed to believe these selfless public servants have done no wrong. This is also true of the January 6 Committee, who were ostensibly only taking part in legally protected political activities within Congress.

I may hate Liz Cheney, but it’s not clear what prosecutable activities she would have taken part in. The choice of a retroactive ten year amnesty for all of these people probably has less to do with any specific activities they were engaging in, and more to do with that being the maximum statute of limitations for almost all non-violent crimes. That said, it sure seems convenient that it covers anything any of them would have done since the beginning of Donald Trump’s rise to power, and also the beginning of Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. This covers, of course, not only any laws Fauci broke during COVID, but the entire process of funding labs doing dangerous research. Granting amnesty to the January 6 Committee is meant to prevent uncovering any anti-democratic conspiracies to keep Trump from returning to power.

January 20, 2025 was an incredible day in American political life in that the January 6 Committee was granted amnesty while the January 6 protesters were mass pardoned. It is inspiring because it shows elections do matter. But at the same time, this is all very “Banana Republic” and not the way things would ideally work in a mature, free country. Eight years of using every anti-democratic means to remove Trump and keep him out of power seem to be over, but in attempting to amnesty all of the worst participants—as well as his own family—Joe Biden has has set an insane precedent for protecting every type of corruption. These amnesties must be challenged in the courts and by Congress, because this is completely unacceptable and it’s likely this precedent will haunt our country for decades or even centuries.

On the bright side, with the ultimate, “respectable” Democrat establishmentarian behaving this way, the mask has been pulled back for all to see. Further, we can and should tell the people who write op-eds about “democratic norms” to shut up.

January 23, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

World Council for Health responds to the US Government’s proposed withdrawal from the WHO

World Council for Health | January 22, 2025

The recent decision of the United States government to announce an intended withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) marks a significant shift in international relations and health policy. This move comes amid ongoing debates about the WHO’s role in managing global health crises, financial transparency, and influence on national sovereignty.

Introduction to World Council for Health

In 2021,the World Council for Health (WCH) emerged as a prominent organization that challenges the WHO’s pervasive and damaging influence. The WCH is a coalition of independent health organizations, medical professionals, and advocacy groups that emphasizes a more decentralized, holistic, and patient-centered approach to health care. It advocates for local health sovereignty, individual choice, and the decentralization of power away from large international organizations like the WHO. The WCH has been particularly vocal about opposing what it sees as the WHO’s overreach, particularly in terms of its management of public health policies during crises like the COVID-19 chapter, while ignoring real health issues like heart health, cancer, diabetes, and mental health.

A better way forward for health, rooted in our Better Way Principles, would focus on strengthening local and national health systems, ensuring that decision-making is transparent, accountable, and driven by scientific evidence rather than political or financial interests. This approach would involve greater collaboration between governments, health professionals, and communities, rather than relying on a centralized body like the WHO to dictate policy internationally. By prioritizing national sovereignty, autonomy, and local expertise, a more resilient and responsive international health framework can be developed, one that respects individual freedoms and prioritizes people over institutional power.

A. Concerns about WHO’s monopoly through Collaborating Centres

Our extensive research has revealed WHO collaborating centres in the US, including the CDC and the NIH. As a matter of urgency and priority, to effectively exit the World Health Organization, it is essential to have both critical awareness and transparent knowledge of the arguably binding agreements made between the secretive USA WHO Collaborating Centres and USA GOARN Partner Institutions, with the World Health Organization.

To truly exit the WHO, we must acknowledge the vast network and reach of the designated WHO Collaborating Centres and GOARN Partner Institutions. We must investigate the potential conflicts of interest in public – private collaborations / collaborations that may exist, which affect the delivery of the ultimate healthcare available for the people and the planet.

World Council for Health calls for an Urgent Independent International Review / Investigation of the World Health Organization and its established collaborations and ‘binding’ agreements with WHO Collaborating Centres. This is an essential requirement to assess an honest and transparent benefit and risk of WHO policies being utilised in and against sovereign nations through these established WHO networks. WCH is ready to advise.

B. WCH Country Councils leading the way for health freedom

WCH has established over 30 and growing independent Country Councils around the world.

These Country Councils are linked to over 200 local advocacy organisations in the fields pertinent to health, including medical choice and rights, 5G, sexual engineering, food supplies, agribusiness and climate ‘change’, all of which are tools being used by shadowy globalist corporations to usurp rights and freedoms of people around the world.

These Country Councils and allied grass-roots organisations are a critical counterbalance to the WHO and its puppeteers, advocating for a new, human and planetary wellbeing-focused vision for health care, prioritising the well-being and human rights of men, women and children. Country Councils are driven by ethical individuals, standing together to create the new healthcare paradigm, rooted in transparency and autonomy. This by definition includes freedom and sovereignty. Our country councils recognise that peace is central to health.

C. Our Legal Briefs and Policy Briefs

The WCH published a groundbreaking Legal Brief on Preventing the Abuse of Public Health Emergencies. It explains how governments used the declaration of an unjustifiable state of emergency as a legal instrument to deny people their basic human rights and freedoms and grant themselves extraordinary powers. WCH also published comprehensive policy briefs on Rejecting Monopoly Power Over Global Public Health, as well as Effects of Unregulated Digitalization on Health and Democracy, and Human Trafficking: A Call for Action

Our Resources Include:

Cooperation is the key to achieving shared goals

The WCH recognises the intention of the US government to withdraw from the WHO, urges investigation into the WHO’s collaborating centres, and is open to engage around the work of our country councils, our legal and policy briefs, and our pioneering detox study and guide.

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

The Practicing Physician’s Case for Kennedy

By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | January 20, 2025

I am a practicing physician. I see patients, and I diagnose and treat their illnesses. I have been doing so for more than a quarter of a century. It is how I earn my living.

I heartily endorse Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The fact that I take care of patients distinguishes me from the overwhelming majority of the captured politicians, legacy media pundits, and Pharma lobbyists who are trying to torpedo Mr. Kennedy’s nomination.

The uproar surrounding this nomination is telling in itself. Since when has there been such crying and gnashing of teeth over a nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services? How many Americans can even name the last three HHS Secretaries? I’m a physician who follows these things, and off the top of my head, I could only recall the last two – former Congressman Xavier Becerra and former Pharma executive and lobbyist Alex Azar.

When a public figure is being viciously attacked from all sides, as Mr. Kennedy is at present, we should consider the attackers. Depending on who they are, such extreme disapproval may in fact represent the strongest possible endorsement.

Consider Mr. Kennedy’s Attackers

On the Democrat side, Kennedy has been attacked by the likes of Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss. On CNN, he said that if Kennedy were named HHS Secretary, with respect to American children, Kennedy would “give them polio.”

Auchincloss is a lawyer, so his total ignorance of pathophysiology might be forgivable. However, his father is Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, who served as none other than Anthony Fauci’s right-hand man at NIAID, the NIH agency over which Fauci wielded immense and almost complete power for decades, and through which he funded Ralph Baric and the Wuhan Institute’s genetic manipulations of the SARS CoV-2 virus that caused Covid, using our tax dollars. If there is one HHS department that best exemplifies the capture, corruption, and unaccountability of the present medical-industrial complex, it is NIAID. Hugh Auchincloss left NIAID in 2024.

But wait, there’s more. Auchincloss’s mother is Dr. Laurie Glimcher, former president and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In 2021, the Boston Globe exposed her simultaneously serving on the boards of multiple Big Pharma companies, including Bristol Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline, while in charge of Dana-Farber. Furthermore, in 2024, multiple research papers Glimcher had authored were exposed for falsification of data, and at least 6 of the papers were retracted. Laurie Glimcher resigned as head of Dana-Farber in 2024.

On the Republican side, there is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who stated on television that a Kennedy HHS “will cost lives in this country.”

Many may recall Gottlieb as the FDA commissioner during much of the first Trump administration. Gottlieb left the FDA in 2019, shortly before the pandemic, and quickly joined the Board of Directors at Pfizer, where he remained throughout the pandemic and still is today. A more thorough review of his history shows multiple prior stints at the FDA. Over the years, he has bounced back and forth between that key HHS regulatory agency and Big Pharma and healthcare venture capital firms – the exact industries the FDA should be overseeing.

These are the kinds of people who want to stop Mr. Kennedy from leading HHS. Their prime motivation, it seems, may not be positive reform of medicine or the well-being of patients.

If prominent figures such as these revile Mr. Kennedy, why do I endorse him?

Because medicine desperately needs reform. Mr. Kennedy has been nominated to be a quintessential reformer. He has deep knowledge of the problem, and he has a proven track record of success in reforming corrupt systems. He is being viciously attacked because the last thing that those currently in control of medicine want is meaningful reform.

Medicine Is a Mess, and Desperately Needs Reform

I can tell you from nearly three decades of first-hand clinical experience what the state of medicine is right now.

It’s a mess.

Medicine has been in decline for decades. Autonomy has been gradually stripped away from physicians and patients, as protocols and guidelines have replaced clinical decision-making. Doctors have become employees rather than independent professionals. The doctor-patient relationship has been eroded as care has been fragmented and as the Electronic Medical Record has intruded. Most importantly, control of the entire medical industry has been seized by Big Pharma, captured and corrupt government agencies, and the insurance industry.

Then Covid happened, with two results – one intentional, the other accidental. First, the entire medical system was intentionally hijacked by what was really a military operation. The pretense of a medical emergency was used to shut down both society as a whole, and the routine practice of medicine in particular. Second, this takeover accidentally revealed who actually controls the medical industry – and it sure isn’t doctors and patients.

Patients have caught on. For patients, trust in physicians and hospitals and acceptance of vaccines have both cratered. This is not due to “anti-science” stupidity or “misinformation.” It is due to the fact that patients have simply been lied to too many times. It doesn’t matter how much money and power you have – you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Patients know – some explicitly, others intuitively – that the official narrative of Covid was riddled with lies. They know that they were deliberately made to live in fear. They have friends and family who suffered and even died from the excesses of the lockdown policies, and others who were injured or even killed by the hospital protocols and the mandated shots. They know that Big Pharma and their Government were behind it. They know that their own local hospitals and even their own healthcare providers were complicit to some extent.

Patients also know that health care is captured. Patients know that Big Pharma and other corporate and ideological forces drive health care policy and messaging – all they have to do is turn on their TVs to see the endless barrage of idiotic commercials for drugs.

Patients know the NIH, CDC, and FDA are corrupt, and captured by Big Pharma. Patients have wearied of the constant fear-mongering about “pandemics” that they now know are almost always man-made. Most importantly, patients realize that none of this is intended to improve their health.

How do I know that patients know all this? They tell me every day.

What about rank-and-file doctors? Most clinical physicians I speak with privately acknowledge the excesses of the Covid era. I’m not aware of a single practicing doctor who has taken all the CDC-recommended Covid boosters. I have copious evidence, both from my patients and from communications with other doctors, that the extreme virophobia and vaccine fervor of 2021 and 2022 has faded among my colleagues just as it has in the rest of the population.

Most doctors have heard the news that public trust in them and their profession has nosedived. Most realize that the system is in chaos in many respects – all one has to do is stop by any emergency room to see that. Many acknowledge that the profession of medicine and the healthcare industry have been hijacked by Pig Pharma and other malign forces. Many who can are leaving the profession altogether.

However, beyond those already speaking out, I see few new colleagues calling out for reform. Like many other people, it seems that most rank-and-file doctors just want the nightmare to end. A great many don’t really know how things got so bad. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, they know something has happened, but they don’t know what it is.

For these reasons, meaningful reform of medicine will not come from a groundswell from the rank and file. They saw what happened to those who spoke out during Covid and want no part of that. They wouldn’t know where to begin to fix a system in which they have very little agency. However, I truly believe the great majority of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals would welcome and support meaningful reform.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the very best choice to lead medical reform. If you doubt his expertise on the subjects of the corruption and capture of medicine, and the regulatory capture of agencies like the CDC, NIH, and FDA, I recommend his books The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up. Not only do these books demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of the problem, but as Joe Rogan and others have pointed out, they have never been directly challenged by the medical establishment – because they are factually accurate.

Furthermore, given his experience and successes as an environmental lawyer, including against large corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Ford, Mr. Kennedy has the know-how to affect meaningful reform.

Rest assured that under a Kennedy-run HHS, medicine will not revert to the time of Galen. Polio will not run rampant, although vaccines may finally be held to the same standards as other drugs – which of course should have always been the case. Even a partial reversal of the nearly total capture that Big Pharma and its allies have over medical research, academia, education, medical licensing, and certification will only benefit doctors and patients.

Medicine is in desperate need of thorough reform. It must be decoupled from the control of Big Pharma, captured governmental agencies, and other rich and powerful forces that currently dominate the industry. Patient autonomy and the doctor-patient relationship must be restored as central to the practice of medicine. Informed consent must be re-established as the inalienable and fundamental value of the profession as encoded at Nuremberg.

Humans are autonomous individuals with rights. Patients must not be “managed” like herd animals, as the current population-based public health approach to medicine insists. Covid proved this approach to be a disaster, and it must end.

This is why I, a practicing physician, heartily endorse Robert F. Kennedy as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 4 Comments

Joe Biden issues last minute family pardon

RT | January 20, 2025

Outgoing US President Joe Biden used his last moments in office to roll out a blanket pardon for members of his family, effectively shielding them from potential repercussions they could face under Donald Trump.

Biden claimed on Monday that his family has long been targeted in a concerted effort to harm him politically.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me – the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” Biden said in a statement.

The pardon concerns “any nonviolent offences against the United States” five of Biden’s family members might have committed starting from January 1, 2014 to the end of his term as president.

“I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, [his wife] Sara Jones Biden, [first sister] Valerie Biden Owens, [her husband] John T. Owens, and [first brother] Francis W. Biden,” the outgoing president said, adding that the “pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing.”

The pardon effectively buries the years-long James Biden influence peddling affair, being probed by Congressional Republicans and journalists. While he did not face any criminal charges, Biden’s brother James, a former nightclub owner, broker and political consultant, has been accused by Republicans of lying to Congress, as well as acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

James and the president’s son, Hunter, were subpoenaed over the alleged involvement of President Biden in their business dealings in the US and abroad, namely in China and Ukraine. Hunter Biden was pardoned by his father late last year, months after his conviction on gun and tax charges and as he faced sentencing in a separate case.

The controversial pardon came despite Joe Biden’s repeated promises not to intervene in his son’s criminal cases.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Trump can use corruption scandals to get out of Ukraine conflict and blame Democrats

By Ahmed Adel | January 20, 2025

Since entering the electoral campaign, Donald Trump has criticised the military and financial aid provided to Kiev. As Trump takes office on January 20 and has the right to appoint officials at the highest level of justice, the new American leader could use corruption scandals to pull support from Ukraine and open investigations into the Biden administration.

Even before assuming the presidency of the United States, Trump already boasted a major achievement: a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant movement Hamas. During the election campaign, the then-candidate for a second term stressed that he would continue to support Israel. However, officials and diplomats involved in brokering the ceasefire highlight the pivotal role Trump played in putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop his military incursion into Gaza.

On January 11, Trump’s envoy for Middle East affairs, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Israel. Four days later, the billionaire announced that the parties had reached an agreement. If Trump so quickly achieved a truce in one of the most horrific conflicts of today, without even making it a campaign promise, then there are good prospects to end the Ukrainian conflict, one of the main issues of his election campaign.

The new Oval Office occupant has previously expressed his desire to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss this and other issues of global importance. The Kremlin, however, stressed that it believes the conflict is too complex for an easy solution. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said the same, estimating a period of 100 days for the creation of a peace plan.

Military and financial aid could be one strategy Trump uses to pressure Ukrainian leaders into entering into peace negotiations with Moscow. This stems from a very clear issue – Ukraine’s dependence on Western support to continue the war. Without this support, Kiev’s capabilities to sustain the war effort would be substantially reduced.

Permanent aid is the main factor in the continuation of the conflict and has delayed possible peace negotiations. In particular, it is because of the desire of the US and the Western bloc to inflict this strategic defeat on Russia at any cost.

It is recalled that Russian and Ukrainian delegates met in Istanbul to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict, and they even drafted a peace agreement. However, Kiev was under pressure from its Western sponsors to abandon the negotiations. In October 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky banned any peace negotiations with Russia by decree, thus preventing diplomatic approaches to ending the conflict.

For this reason, reducing aid to Ukraine will help resolve the conflict.

Trump has shown his dissatisfaction with the high costs of supporting Ukraine, arguing that the US should not bear the brunt of this burden. Endless taxpayer money flowing into Ukraine’s treasury is extremely unpopular, evidenced by the strengthening of international parties with inspiration from Trump, whose campaign slogan is the end of this aid. The most notable case now is that of Germany.

Nonetheless, Kiev’s reputation for embezzlement and corruption only worsened when Zelensky admitted in an interview with Russian-American computer scientist Lex Fridman’s podcast that half of the announced $177 billion never reached Ukrainian coffers.

“If we had $177 billion and if we get the half, where is the second half? If you find the second half, you will find corruption,” he said.

This statement is worrying since instead of exclusively meeting the country’s needs, international resources appear to be generating profits for private individuals or foreign companies. This scenario reinforces the debates about the real interests behind international aid.

Late last year, award-winning Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko reported on her social media accounts that as Ukrainians suffer from the severe economic crisis, 13 Rolls-Royce luxury cars, each worth $650,000, were purchased by members of parliament and government officials in 2024.

The conflict is extremely lucrative, not only for the companies of the US military-industrial complex in Ukraine and their executives but also for the Pentagon budget. It is a “black box” that cannot explain where its resources have been allocated. For this reason, it cannot be discounted that there is also corruption on the American side.

Suspicions of improper relations between members of the Democratic Party and Ukrainian officials increased after former US President Joe Biden granted a presidential pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, for all crimes committed since 2014 when he began working with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. In this regard, Trump can use these corruption scandals to distance the US from the conflict and to associate these cases with the Democratic Party.

Trump reclaiming his place in the White House also marks the arrival of his nominees to the highest level of justice in the US, such as the new head of the FBI, Kash Patel, and the new attorney general, Pam Bondi. With so many tools in his favour, there is a real possibility that Trump will use the judicial system to investigate any Democrat’s corruption relating to the Ukrainian conflict.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | 1 Comment

Pharma Spends Billions on Drug Ads, Fears Trump Administration Will Try to Ban Them

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 16, 2025

Drug companies report their biggest concern with the incoming Trump administration is the fear that the government will try to ban direct-to-consumer drug ads, according to a new report from The Lever that examines the industry practice.

Companies said such a ban would “almost certainly” lead to a drop in drug sales, according to a recent report by industry research firm Intron Health, which claims the return on investment for drug ads is as high as 100%-500%, depending on the drug.

The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow drug companies to advertise directly to consumers.

When President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), was running as a presidential candidate, he promised to ban the ads through an executive order on his first day in office.

When he tapped Kennedy, founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense, to lead HHS, Trump criticized drugmakers and Big Food companies, saying they “have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.”

If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which sets policies on direct-to-consumer advertising by pharma.

“We see this as the biggest imminent threat from RFK and the new Trump administration,” the Intron report’s authors wrote.

The Lever predicted the chances the administration can successfully ban these ads are “slim,” but said Big Pharma’s reaction shows how dependent the industry — and the media conglomerates it supports — has become on advertising drugs to consumers.

Critics say the ads “misinform patients and underemphasize treatment risks,” in part because they don’t provide all the information a patient needs to make an informed decision.

The ads also lead to unnecessary drug prescriptions, which The Lever said raises healthcare costs for consumers and taxpayers.

Most heavily advertised drugs don’t provide meaningful therapeutic benefit

Direct-to-consumer marketing in the U.S. began in 1981, with limited success at first because the FDA required drugmakers to list all possible side effects in the ads, according to The Lever’s short history of the practice.

Under the Clinton administration in 1997, the FDA relaxed its policies, allowing drugmakers to list only “major risks” in their ads, paving the way for a new and massive wave of television advertising for prescription drugs.

Spending on ads shot up 330% between 1996 and 2005, reaching $4.2 billion by 2004, and continued to grow after that.

Between 2016 and 2018, drugmakers spent $17.8 billion on ads for more than 550 drugs. Most of these drugs treat chronic medical conditions like arthritis, diabetes and depression.

According to a 2021 report by the congressional watchdog Government Accountability Office, 60% of the $560 billion that Medicare and its beneficiaries spent on drugs went to the advertised drugs.

The Lever claimed there are benefits to such advertising. Citing a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, it suggested that advertising can “somewhat” educate consumers and extend drug care to “undertreated patients.”

However, the report said advertising also increases the number of patients that request an advertised medication and the likelihood their prescriber will give it to them, whether they need it or not.

The ads also lead to greater use of higher-cost drugs over generics, even when those drugs offer no greater benefit.

The Lever cites a 2023 study in JAMA Network Open that assessed the “therapeutic value” — whether a drug led to improved clinical outcomes — of the top 73 most heavily advertised drugs. The study found that only 1 in 4 advertised drugs had a high therapeutic value.

Study author Neeraj Patel told The Lever :

“Many consumers might assume that the drugs they see all the time on TV are for cutting-edge therapies that are groundbreaking advances over the other treatment options on the market …

“Our study suggests that assumption is usually wrong: Heavily advertised drugs often do not necessarily provide meaningful therapeutic benefits as opposed to other therapeutic options.”

Obstacles to ending direct-to-consumer ads

The Lever said it is “relatively unlikely” Kennedy will be able to ban the ads, partly because efforts to merely restrict drug advertising have been defeated in courts on First Amendment grounds.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal made similar predictions. However, The Defender reported that a wider field of experts disagree on whether such a ban is legally or constitutionally feasible.

During Trump’s first administration, a federal judge blocked an HHS rule requiring drugmakers to include prices in their TV commercials, saying it exceeded the agency’s statutory authority.

“Kennedy could continue to push for cost transparency or require FDA review of all drug ads,” The Lever noted, “but any such reform attempts would likely be slow-going and challenged by the industry.”

Big Pharma’s lobbying arm, which spent $294 million lobbying last year on issues like drug ads, is also an obstacle.

TV and radio broadcasters are also expected to fight a drug ad ban because Big Pharma is one of the top advertising spenders. Last year, the National Association of Broadcaster industry lobbying group spent $8.8 million lobbying on issues including direct-to-consumer advertising, according to lobbying records.

Prescription drugs accounted for 30.7% of ad minutes across evening news programs on ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC last year through Dec. 15, according to the WSJ.

The Lever proposed less drastic measures to “mitigate” some of the negative impacts of this advertising rather than banning it altogether.

For example, the FDA could require pharmaceutical companies to include disclaimers about the effectiveness of the drugs versus other drugs already on the market. Or drug companies could offer a “Drug Facts Box” label, that would provide one-page summaries of the risks and benefits of new drugs.

The agency could also extend its requirement, instituted in 2023, that TV and radio drug ads use “consumer-friendly” and “understandable” language to disclose potential side effects, applying it to over-the-counter medicines, dietary supplements or other products, which also account for hundreds of millions of advertising dollars.

“Even if all of those drug ads filling the TV and computer screens aren’t likely to go away soon, advocates hold out hope that regulators could at least require them to be more informative and comprehensible,” The Lever reported.

Related articles in The Defender:

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

January 18, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hungarian think tank calls into question Transparency International report on corruption under Orbán

Remix News | January 16, 2025

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published each year by Transparency International, which is partly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, has come under fire by a local think tank in Budapest, the Nézőpont Institute, reports Mandiner.

The ranking, used as a basis for imposing sanctions on and reports condemning countries around the world, is completely contrary to the EU’s official survey, according to Nézőpont Institute’s analysis, which can be viewed in full on its website.

Aside from the Eurobarometer research being based on a representative survey, while the Transparency index is not, the center claims that the CPI is biased, based solely on the opinions of actors critical of the Hungarian government. The 2023 CPI ranked Hungary 76th overall and last in the EU in terms of its level of corruption. The Eurobarometer survey ranks Hungary seventh in the EU in terms of the perception of the government’s fight against corruption in the country.

The group claims that Transparency does not actually measure the level of corruption, but rather evaluates the subjective opinions of certain experts. It also bases its surveys on research by other organizations, which Nézőpont says, often refer back to the Transparency index.

Going even further, Nézőpont claims that the least corrupt countries on Transparency’s list fund its activities, with Sámuel Ágoston Mráz, head of the Nézőpont Institute, asking if the funding provided is a form of “protection money.”

One example cited is Germany, the ninth least corrupt country in the world, home to the Cum-Ex tax fraud scandal where a dividend payment of listed companies was illegally claimed back by the parties involved, a scandal that also reportedly involves the then mayor of Hamburg and current chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz. According to the allegations, this scheme could have damaged taxpayers across Europe by up to $66 billion. Scholz, claims Nézőpont, did not prevent the suspicious Warburg Bank from issuing a tax refund of €47 million, which the bank had to repay after the scandal broke out. “The legislative body’s investigative committee questioned Olaf Scholz on several occasions regarding the matter,” the analysis reads.

The Nézőpont Institute calls on all public figures, Hungarian and foreign, to refrain from referring to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in the future, Mráz said at a press conference on Jan. 15.

January 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

THE POLIO PARADOX WITH DR. SUZANNE HUMPHRIES

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 9, 2025

Nephrologist and co-author of ‘Dissolving Illusions’, Suzanne Humphries, MD, joins Del to discuss her significant role in the first installment of ‘Jefferey Jaxen Investigates’ on the polio virus. Hear how the dangers of vaccines came to light for her and why the future of humanity depends on people understanding the true history behind the polio vaccine.

January 11, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Film Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | 1 Comment

The Trump Administration Must Bring Moderna to Heel

Brownstone Institute | January 7, 2025

Last week, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported that a preschool-aged child died of “cardio-respiratory arrest” after taking a dose of Moderna’s Covid mRNA vaccine during its clinical trials. Despite federal requirements to report all trial information, the company withheld the truth for years as it raked in billions from its Covid shots.

The extent of the cover-up remains unknown, but Moderna, headed by CEO Stéphane Bancel, disregarded federal law requiring companies to report “summary results information, including adverse event information, for specified clinical trials of drug products” to clinicaltrials.gov. The company, not the government, is responsible for posting all results, and failure to report the death of a child constitutes a clear breach of US law, which threatens civil action against any party that “falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact.”

To this point, pharmaceutical companies have remained largely immune for their role in perpetrating globally-scaled deception resulting in thousands of vaccine injuries and billions in profits. They have enjoyed a liability shield courtesy of the PREP Act, which offers protections for injuries resulting from vaccines; that indemnity, however, does not extend to non-compliance with federal regulations, material misstatements or omissions of fact, or other offenses.

The death of the child only became known because of an obscure European report released last year, which revealed that Moderna has known about the death for over two years while it continues to advertise Covid shots to children as young as six months old.

Moderna’s European filing also revealed that the company withheld trial results demonstrating that children under 12 who received the vaccine were ten times more likely than those who received the placebo to suffer “serious side effects.” Without any evidence, Moderna claimed that the side effects, including the death of a child, were unrelated to the shots.

The incoming Trump administration offers a rare opportunity to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and to investigate the depth of the cover-up.

The FDA is responsible for enforcing the reporting of vaccine trial results, but recent heads of the agency such as Scott Gottlieb and Robert Califf have been fanatical supporters of Big Pharma. Trump’s choice for FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, presents a stark contrast to his predecessors. Makary has criticized the US Government’s reluctance to acknowledge the role of natural immunity in preventing Covid infection, and he opposed the widespread vaccination of children. He testified to Congress, “In the U.S. we gave thousands of healthy kids myocarditis for no good reason, they were already immune. This was avoidable.”

President-elect Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most well-known critic of the Covid vaccines, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. He has named Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, as his choice to head the National Institutes of Health. Further, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Berenson that he plans to subpoena the FDA once Republicans become the majority party in the Senate this month.

President Trump’s first term was ultimately defined by his failure to fulfill his pledge to “drain the swamp.” A corrupt bureaucracy, personified in many ways by Dr. Anthony Fauci, aided and abetted by advisors like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hijacked the president’s agenda. Now, the Trump administration has an unlikely yet monumental opportunity for health reform, which can start on January 20 with an investigation into Moderna’s cover-up.

The Covid response doomed Trump 1.0. Whether one regards this as a monumental error, the betrayal of a president by his advisors, an event beyond the president’s control, or a deeper and more complex plot involving everything and everyone associated with the government, both in the US and around the world, there is no question of the scale of the calamity for the public. The shots are part of that, the capstone failure of a long line of foreshadowing with lockdowns and all that was associated with pre-pharmaceutical interventions. The antidote came not as a cure but, for many, the disease itself.

There must be truth if not justice.

January 11, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

NUMEC: How Israel Stole the Atomic Bomb and killed JFK

Ryan Dawson

This movie is free thanks to members and donors from ANC Report. If you found this informative consider sending a few shekels. This is the only way we can do films. NUMEC Map https://anti-neocon.myshopify.com/

The film exposes how terrorists took advantage of the massive weapons surplus following the end of WWII and created lucrative black-markets for illegal arms trafficking many of which went to the blood thirsty ethno-stater lunatics who created the state of Israel. The weapons theft would escalate to Highly Enriched Uranium for nuclear bombs and the assassination of a US president. The gun running routes doubled as human trafficking routes as the post war climates had created millions of refugees and nations of women with little or no opportunities who were easily exploited. This in turn gave rise to international forced prostitution and pedophile rings that targeted state figures and businessmen for blackmail. The press and policing agencies were forced to capitulate because challenging Zionist power right after the horrors of the Holocaust was political suicide. WWII’s own justification for nuking cities and murdering millions of civilians through bombing and starvation was the made for TV images of the Holocaust, even though Palestine had nothing to do with that, they paid the ultimate price. And by allowing Israeli power to grow out of control the US effectively lost its sovereignty. Especially in regards to foreign policy, Zionist partisans most recently the Neocons have thrown the US into one conflict after another against its own interests to further the personal interest of a criminal cabal. This film, like any Dawson film, names the names and gives the details and documents. The criminal networks of organized crime, sexual blackmailers, arms smugglers, financiers, and political cover up have all been mapped out, literally. Help us at the Anti-Neocon report reach our goal and once again put the establishment and donor class psychopaths under the spot light. The truth will set you free. But Freedom isn’t Free.

“By far the best production value ANC has ever created”- Pug

“When you think having your greatest ally attack you is the worst thing they have done, Dawson drops this bomb” – Oliver

“I think I wet my pants, but I had my underwear on so I couldn’t have raped that girl” -Alan Dershowitz did not say

“With an entire room full of people who have been drinking all night and done a 3 and a half hour conference with Ron Paul and eaten a big meal, not a single person fell asleep, that’s impressive” -Reed Coverdale

“Were done for” – Israeli on Pol

January 10, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | 3 Comments

The Israel Lobby Pays, The U.S. Congress Obeys

If Americans Knew | January 7, 2025

Pro-Israel Lobby contributions sourced from opensecrets.org. The numbers are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All the numbers are for all the election cycles since 1990 and based on Federal Election Commission data released on March 20, 2023.

January 8, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Last ditch media sanctions from the West against Russia are like a sick child crying for help

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 3, 2025

Many analysts will be wondering what Trump will do about Russian sanctions when gets into the Oval office, although there is some optimism that he will try and reverse them. He is cautious not to get into a debate about this subject, which leads me to suspect that this will be one of the bombshells he will drop on the Biden administration which left him the small gift of signing off over a billion dollars of military aid to Ukraine. What almost no Americans understand though, which is largely the fault of mainstream media, is that these military spending sprees are really all about feeding a dual-purpose racket which really has nothing to do with the actual war in Ukraine, which everyone now admits Russia is winning. On one hand, it is of course pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the 5 main arms manufacturers in the U.S. in a move which could arguably be called illegal state aid; on the other hand the kit which is sent to Ukraine from the U.S. – and the UK – is mainly being sold on a number of black markets, with only about 30 percent or thereabouts actually reaching Ukrainian troops. My own investigation has proved that the Zelensky cabal are selling off the heavy equipment like armoured personal carriers (APCs) and lorry loads of American made assault rifles to dealers in the international arms bizarre of Libya – where Middle Eastern terrorists, or their affiliates in the Sahel buy it at bargain prices.

And Trump certainly understands the racket and will want to stop it. Dropping the mother of all bombshells on the Biden legacy by scrapping the sanctions and blocking any more aid would be an effective way to do that.

But it’s the sanctions on Russia media which he should also give priority to, given that, with the state of western media being such a shambles, we had to rely on RT for example, in the UK and U.S., to ask the difficult questions and hold our administrations to account.

The recent news at the end of December that the EU is cracking down even further on Russia media and individuals who are active within it – journalists and others – is another parting shot which smacks of desperation. The West is under no illusions privately that it is losing the war in Ukraine and is wondering how it can tell a fairy tale story to its own voters so as to deflect blame with the sole purpose of staying in power. This is really what media sanctions are all about. Shutting down any narrative that could possibly hold you to account and expose the tawdry reality of the mess the West has made in Ukraine based on the military industrial complex gaining too much power and eating up elites in its path. The Biden administration will be remembered for this. A new dawn in just how much power these arms manufacturers have and what lengths they can go to, to get the big contracts. This will all come out in the Trump administration with documentaries about Biden and his son’s laptop and how Ukraine was a holiday camp for them to go to with empty suitcases and return with a few million dollars. Like a cash machine which keeps churning out cash due to a computer glitch. The lure of Ukraine and corrupt western elites is nothing new. But during Trump’s first term citizens of the West are going to see the dark side to the events which led up to Russia’s invasion. And it stinks.

Part of that racket, going back even to 2013 or 2014 was to try and shut down Russian media. In reality, it was simply RT which elites noticed was gaining popularity in many European countries from people who had lost all faith in their own media which had fallen into the grubby hands of the powerful elites and their dirty games long ago. It used to be the case that in Brussels, the hold that the powerful institutions had on journalists was so strong in such an abusive relationship that what we saw each day on TV and in the newspapers was pure EU propaganda on a scale that even the Soviet Union could not muster. There used to be however the contrast between Brussels and member states where the media were more robust and anti-establishment. But no more. Now the political journalists along with the defence correspondent in the UK for example are practically government propaganda agents who probably think they were journalists once. Their work is to keep the lies about Ukraine, as one example, flowing so that the public are distracted and can’t focus on what is under their nose. Sometimes the plain truth is so close to the person looking for it, that it can’t be seen. Distance is required. When RT operated in the UK, there was this certain environment which questioned more and provided an alternative viewpoint which was needed in any functioning democracy. Trump’s priority should be to finish the sanctions and adopt a more grown-up approach to resolving Ukraine as the Russians want a longer-term solution rather than quick fix buggerydoo. Ending the sanctions on Russian media would be a good message to western elites that have fed from the trough for so long with the lies which have been created that their time is up. Trump’s back.

January 3, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment