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:
- Can the Trump Administration Ban Big Pharma Advertising? Experts Weigh In
- ‘Ask Your Doctor’: Can’t Someone in Congress Make These Endless Drug Ads Disappear?
- ‘Dangerous’: Global PR Giant Launches Provocative HPV Vaccine Ads Targeting Gen Zers
- ‘Brought to You by Pfizer’: Pharma Giant Spends More on Ads, News Sponsorships, Than Research
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Collapsing Empire: RIP ‘Overt Operations’
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | December 30, 2024
In recent months, a remarkable development in the Empire’s decline has gone almost entirely unnoticed. The National Endowment for Democracy’s grant database has been removed from the web. Until recently, a searchable interface allowed visitors to view detailed records of Washington-funded NGOs, civil society, and media projects in particular countries – covering most of the world – the sums involved, and entities responsible for delivering them. This resource has now inexplicably vanished, and with it, enormous amounts of incontrovertible, self-incriminating evidence of destructive US skullduggery abroad.
Take for example NED grant records for Georgia, the site of recent repeated color revolution efforts, at the forefront of which were Endowment-bankrolled organizations. While still accessible via internet archives, they were deleted during the summer. Today, visitors to associated URLs are redirected to a brief entry simply titled “Eurasia”. The accompanying text describes in very broad terms the Endowment’s aims regionally and the total being spent, but the crucial questions of where and on what aren’t clarified. In a comic hypocrisy too, the blurb boldly states:
“The heart of NED’s work in the region is the need to maintain access to objective information for local populations. Across the region, government actors are attempting to limit the space for citizens to distribute information and communicate freely online.”
Resultantly, independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists have been deprived of an invaluable resource for tracking and exposing the Empire’s machinations. Yet, the Endowment incinerating its public paper trail can only be considered a significant victory for these same actors. NED’s explicit and avowed raison d’être was to do publicly what US intelligence did – and in many cases still does – covertly. Now, after 40 years of wreaking havoc worldwide in service of the Empire, the CIA front has been forced underground, defeating its entire purpose.
‘Spyless Coups’
NED was founded in November 1983, after the CIA became embroiled in a series of embarrassing public scandals. Then-Agency director William Casey was central to its construction. His objective was to create a public mechanism to conduct traditional CIA meddling overseas, except out in the open. Ever since, the Endowment has financed countless opposition groups, activist movements, media outlets, and trade unions to the tune of millions to engage in propaganda and political activism, to disrupt, destabilize, and displace ‘enemy’ regimes the world over.
The NED’s true nature was openly acknowledged by the mainstream media for many years. In June 1986, Endowment’s president Carl Gershman told the New York Times, “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world” to be subsidized by the CIA. The exposure of such connivances meant they had been “discontinued”, and farmed out to NED. Several high-ranking interviewees strenuously denied there was any connection between NED and the Agency, although the outlet acknowledged many Endowment programs seemed “superficially similar” to past CIA operations.
At this time, NED was hard at work killing off Communism in the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia. This included for instance enormous investment in Poland’s famous Solidarity trade union, which became a global emblem of anti-Communist resistance. In September 1991, the Washington Post published a highly laudatory appraisal of these efforts, stating the “political miracles” the Endowment achieved in the former Soviet sphere had ushered in a “new world of spyless coups” and “innocence abroad”:
“The old era of covert action is dead. The world doesn’t run in secret anymore. We are now living in the age of Overt Action… When such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection. Covert funding for these groups would have been the kiss of death, if discovered. Overt funding, it would seem, has been a kiss of life.”
NED proceeded to take down a number of governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s, very overtly. In many cases, mainstream outlets published highly revealing accounts detailing precisely how. In Ukraine in November 2004, Endowment-trained and bankrolled activists forced a rerun of that year’s presidential election. As The Guardian jubilantly reported, the entire effort was “an American creation” and “sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing,” which had been repeatedly deployed in the new millennium to “topple unsavoury regimes”:
“Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations…the operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.”
‘Kiss of Death’
The next year, USAID published a slick magazine, Democracy Rising, bragging extensively about how it and NED were fundamental to a wave of revolutions in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere during the first years of the 21st century. Fast forward to February 2014, and Ukraine’s government once again fell victim to an Endowment-orchestrated coup, in the form of the Maidan ‘revolution’. Yet, the media either ignored the irrefutable US role in fomenting the upheaval or dismissed the proposition as “Russian disinformation” or conspiracy theory.
This is despite contemporary polls never showing majority Ukrainian support for the Maidan protests; ousted President Viktor Yanukovych remaining the most popular politician in the country until his last day in office; every actor at Maidan’s forefront, including the individuals who started the demonstrations, receiving NED or USAID funding; leaders of US-financed organizations in the country openly advertising their desire to overthrow Yanukovych in the years prior; and the Endowment pumping around $20 million into the country in 2013 alone.
This mass omertà, which has intensified since, may be attributable to ever-rising hostility towards NED by foreign governments and populations, and associated efforts to restrict or outright proscribe the organization. The reality of the Endowment’s raison d’être and modus operandi has thus not only become unsayable but must be vehemently denied by Western journalists. Representatively, a July 2015 Guardian report on Russia banning NED quite unbelievably relied on a brief quote from the organization’s own website to describe its operations.
While the mainstream media may have remained silent on the NED’s mephitic influence overseas over the past decade, the same is not true of independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists. The Endowment grant database served as an invaluable tool for keeping a close eye on Washington’s international intrigues and mapping the personal and organizational connections of agents and entities of influence. Meanwhile, NED’s status as a CIA front could be simply proven, via multiple public admissions of its own leaders.
Whenever protests erupted somewhere in the world and received widespread Western news coverage, concerned citizens could consult the NED grant database and find in the overwhelming majority of cases, most if not all individuals and groups quoted in media reports were in receipt of Endowment funding. While impossible to quantify, it would be unsurprising if dissident voices calling attention to this fact have averted color revolution efforts, disrupted external meddling campaigns, protected popular governments and political figures, and more.
Of course, despite NED brazenly purging evidence of its vast operations from the web, that conniving continues apace regardless, covertly. One might even argue the Endowment’s chicanery is all the more dangerous now, given individuals and organizations can conceal their funding sources. But the move amply shows NED today cannot withstand the slightest public scrutiny, which its very existence was intended to exemplify. It demonstrates that “overt operations” with open US funding are now the “kiss of death” the Endowment was meant to replace.
Kiev announces US gift of $15bn from seized Russian funds
RT | December 30, 2024
The US will provide Kiev with $15 billion, leveraging future revenues from frozen Russian central bank assets, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal announced on Monday. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has previously said about Washington’s purported illegal transfer of Russian funds to Kiev that Moscow may challenge it in court.
The American funding is part of a broader $20 billion contribution under the G7’s $50 billion loan framework to Ukraine. The agreement was signed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance and the World Bank under the PEACE in Ukraine initiative, Shmigal claimed, in a post on his Telegram channel.
The G7, comprising the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, initially pledged the $50 billion loan in June 2022, using profits from frozen Russian assets as collateral. Of the estimated $300 billion immobilized, $213 billion is held in the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear.
Euroclear froze the assets of the Russian central bank in late February 2022, shortly after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the conflict escalation in Ukraine. The frozen funds have already generated billions in interest, with the clearinghouse transferring €1.55 billion ($1.63 billion) to Ukraine in July.
Moscow has vehemently criticized the asset seizures. Last Wednesday Dmitry Peskov condemned the measures as theft and warned of legal retaliation. He was reacting to Shmigal’s announcement that the US had already transferred to Ukraine the first installment of the $1 billion from the frozen Moscow central bank funds.
Last month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said there are plans to mirror the West’s actions, using income from frozen Western assets in Russia.
“We have also frozen the resources of Western investors, Western financial market participants and companies. The income from these assets will also be used,” the official said.
The decision to use frozen Russian assets has previously stirred debate among G7 nations. European members of the club such as Germany, France and Italy have raised concerns over financial market stability and about the legal implications of such actions. The IMF has warned that seizing these assets without robust legal frameworks could erode global trust in the Western financial system.
The strange case of Didier Reynders and Ursula von der Leyen
By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 24, 2024
On December 5, various Western media reported that Didier Reynders, a former Belgian EU Justice Commissioner, had been buying lottery tickets with dubious funds in the Belgian National Lottery for approximately ten years in order to launder the winnings into his account. Didier Reynders, who served as European Commissioner for Justice under the current Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, until December 1, 2024, is currently under investigation by Belgian authorities.
This raises questions about Ursula von der Leyen’s awareness of her closest colleague’s money laundering activities. Moreover, this is not the first time such a scandal has surfaced, raising questions about the integrity of EU-MEPs.
We start with Didier Reynders, as the so-called “laundering of lottery money” is just the tip of the iceberg for this extremely corrupt individual. Another investigation into Didier Reynders, former EU Justice Commissioner and a pillar of the Belgian establishment, has linked him to a wider probe into money laundering through state-owned institutions. This has sparked fresh interest in allegations of Belgium’s political interference in Congo and Libya and associated arms deals.
In 2019, Nicolas Ullens, a former undercover Belgian agent, accused Reynders of corruption and money laundering in connection with several projects, including the construction of the Belgian embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo and arms trafficking.
Nicolas Ullens de Schooten is the full name of this former Belgian undercover agent and criminal, who apparently enjoyed high regard in noble circles. This royal criminal and former member of State Security shot his stepmother, Myriam Lechien, dead on March 29, when she and her husband, Baron Guy Ullens, left the driveway of their villa in Ohain, Walloon Brabant. He was acquitted at the request of Didier Reynders, according to the Belgian media. The reason for the shooting was that he did not receive enough inheritance from his stepmother according to her will, which sounds like an old-fashioned crime plot from a real-life crime series.
“The Congo Free State” was a privately governed state by King Leopold II of Belgium through the so-called Association Internationale Africaine, supposedly for humanitarian purposes. However, it was actually a form of colonialism, and to this day, the traces of this brutal Belgian rule can be seen in Congo.
Under the rule of King Leopold II, the so-called Congo Free State became the site of one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century. Colonists brutally exploited the local population in order to produce rubber, which was in high demand due to the growing international market for automobiles and rubber tires. The crimes committed were brutal, and there are no words to describe the suffering endured by the people.
But that’s not all. After the fall and assassination (by Western-sponsored terrorists) of Muammar Gaddafi, the late president of Libya, in 2011, pressure was increased on the then Belgian government over payments of hundreds of millions of euros to unknown recipients. We now know that Didier Reynders received parts of these euros, but how much is not exactly clear. The money came from frozen accounts in Brussels that once belonged to Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi.
These payments from Libyan accounts in Brussels were also used for arms deliveries, according to opposition Belgian politicians. Mr. Reynders also has to explain the disappearance of valuable African artworks (from Libya and the Congo) that came into his possession.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders has been accused of involvement in the loss of Libyan funds from Belgian banks. — The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Didier Reynders, was directly cited by an ex-undercover agent of Belgium, Nicolas Ullens. He accused Reynders of being involved in the disappearance of Libyan funds in Belgium. The media reported that the UN had placed these funds in several banks, including $14 billion in Belgium, where they were frozen.
Despite the ban imposed on banks to lift the freeze on these assets years ago, Belgium ordered the transfer of $1.4 billion, representing 10% of the interest generated by half of the funds placed in Belgian banks. In other words, the Libyan money was stolen and used for weapons deals and private goals, as Didier Reynders allegedly did.
But the story of this individual goes back even further. In 2012, he served as the Belgian Foreign Minister and paid a private visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with Prince Najef bin-Fawaz al-Salan. In 2007, a French court sentenced the prince to ten years in prison for smuggling two tons of cocaine into France during a diplomatic flight. Despite this, the prince remained loyal to Saudi Arabia, as leaked documents from the United Nations show.
Now, we can draw a parallel with the current situation, where frozen assets (money) from Russia were used to purchase weapons for Ukraine and for the so-called “reconstruction” of Ukraine. Additionally, we see the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who is proud of stealing Russian funds with which more weapons are being purchased, just as they were back in Libya. It is likely that there are still millions of euros remaining for corrupt European Union members like Ursula von der Leyen.
The revelations about Didier Reynders supposedly sent shockwaves through Brussels, coinciding with the start of Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as President of the European Commission. She has made it clear that one of her priorities is to strengthen the rule of law in order to protect fundamental rights and ensure the integrity of the EU budget.
But is this really the case? It seems unlikely that she was unaware of Reynders’ criminal activities. After all, she herself has been implicated in criminal activity and money laundering scandals, such as the Pfizergate affair.
Pfizergate is the scandal involving Ursula von der Leyen, the current President of the European Commission, and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer regarding the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The controversy revolves around the lack of transparency in communication and negotiation processes regarding the purchase of a significant number of vaccine doses during the pandemic. Von der Leyen allegedly purchased too many vaccines, and it is alleged that she did not know if they were reliable, safe, or tested for use on humans. However, as it turns out, these vaccines are not safe or reliable, and they are actually biological weapons designed to reduce the population, as demonstrated by the murdered Russian Lieutenant General Kirillov, as several articles have reported.
Even if prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence to bring a case to trial, Reynders’ political background may protect him. As a former minister in Belgium and European commissioner, he would still need to have his immunity lifted if the authorities wanted to arrest him. In Belgium, money laundering carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. Of course, Reynders has done much more than simply laundering money. He has stolen money from Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan president and his people, and more recently, from the Russian government. Freezing funds is illegal, as well as using them for weapons in Libya.
But Reyners and von der Leyen are not the only ones in the EU engaged in money laundering or deleting emails containing suspicious texts and evidence of their criminal activities. In 2015, the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, reached a new low with accusations about Greece and its bailout, with compromising texts. Former Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, (now head of NATO), waited outside closed doors with other European leaders and sent a text message to the European Council President, Donald Tusk, proposing a compromise that would appeal to all parties involved. Within an hour, a deal was reached and the euro was saved. However, according to undisclosed documents, the Greek prime minister was blackmailed by Merkel, Rutte, and most other EU leaders.
In May 2022, a Dutch newspaper reported that Prime Minister Mark Rutte had developed a habit of regularly deleting his text messages. He only forwarded the messages he considered important to his staff, and called this process “real-time archiving”. However, it could more accurately be described as “real-time deletion”. The prime minister is known by the nickname “Pinocchio” in the Netherlands, as he often lies and continues to do so.
We can safely assume that Ursula von der Leyen, as head of the EU, was aware of the criminal activities of Didier Reynders, as she is also involved in Pfizergate, and both of them can be blackmailed. Her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, is also involved in Pfizergate through his role in a biotech company. He is a director of Orogenesis, an American biotech firm, and has benefited from EU funds on two separate occasions. Together, they buy each other’s silence and blackmail one another with money from public funds or simply steal money from state budgets. They have stolen money from Libya, the Congo, and now Russia.
Let’s Retire Overused Words. First, ‘Misinformation’
By Dr. Pierre Kory & Mary Beth Pfeiffer | Real Clear Health | December 16, 2024
In a seismic political shift, Republicans have laid claim to an issue that Democrats left in the gutter—the declining health of Americans. True, it took a Democrat with a famous name to ask why so many people are chronically ill, disabled and dying younger than in 47 other countries. But the message resonated with the GOP.
We have a proposal in this unfolding milieu. Let’s have a serious, nuanced discussion. Let’s retire labels that have been weaponized against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary, and many people like him.
Start with discarding threadbare words like “conspiracy theory,” “anti-vax,” and the ever-changing “misinformation.”
These linguistic sleights of hand have been deployed—by government, media and vested interests—to dismiss policy critics and thwart debate. If post-election developments tell us anything, it is that such scorn may no longer work for a population skeptical of government overreach.
Although RFK has been lambasted for months in the press, he just scored a 47 percent approval rating in a CBS poll.
Americans are asking: Is RFK on to something?
Perhaps, as he contends, a 1986 law that all-but absolved vaccine manufacturers from liability has spawned an industry driven more by profit than protection.
Maybe Americans agree with RFK that the FDA, which gets 69 percent of its budget from pharmaceutical companies, is potentially compromised. Maybe Big Pharma, similarly, gets a free pass from the television news media that it generously supports. The U.S. and New Zealand, incidentally, are the only nations on earth that allow “direct-to- consumer” TV ads.
Finally, just maybe there’s a straight line from this unhealthy alliance to the growing list of 80 childhood shots, inevitably approved after cursory industry studies with no placebo controls. The Hepatitis B vaccine trial, for one, monitored the effects on newborns for just five days. Babies are given three doses of this questionably necessary product—intended to prevent a disease spread through sex and drug use.
Pointing out such conflicts and flaws earns critics a label: “anti-vaxxer.”
Misinformation?
If RFK is accused of being extreme or misdirected, consider the Covid-19 axioms that Americans were told by their government.
The first: The pandemic started in animals in Wuhan, China. To think otherwise, Wikipedia states, is a “conspiracy theory,” fueled by “misplaced suspicion” and “anti-Chinese racism.”
Not so fast. In a new 520-page report, a Congressional subcommittee linked the outbreak to risky U.S.-supported virus research at a Wuhan lab at the pandemic epicenter. After 25 hearings, the subcommittee found no evidence of “natural origin.”
Is the report a slam dunk? Maybe not. But neither is outright dismissal of a lab leak.
The same goes for other pandemic dogma, including the utility of (ineffective) masks, (harmful) lockdowns, (arbitrary) six-foot spacing, and, most prominently, vaccines that millions were coerced to take and that harmed some.
Americans were told, wrongly, that two shots would prevent Covid and stop the spread. Natural immunity from previous infection was ignored to maximize vaccine uptake.
Yet there was scant scientific support for vaccinating babies with little risk, which few other countries did; pregnant women (whose deaths soared 40 percent after the rollout), and healthy adolescents, including some who suffered a heart injury called myocarditis. The CDC calls the condition “rare;” but a new study found 223 times more cases in 2021 than the average for all vaccines in the previous 30 years.
Truth Muzzled?
Beyond this, pandemic decrees were not open to question. Millions of social media posts were removed at the behest of the White House. The ranks grew both of well-funded fact-checkers and retractions of countervailing science.
The FDA, meantime, created a popular and false story line that the Nobel Prize-winning early-treatment drug ivermectin was for horses, not people, and might cause coma and death. Under pressure from a federal court, the FDA removed its infamous webpage, but not before it cleared the way for unapproved vaccines, possible under law only if no alternative was available.
An emergency situation can spawn official missteps. But they become insidious when dissent is suppressed and truth is molded to fit a narrative.
The government’s failures of transparency and oversight are why we are at this juncture today. RFK—should he overcome powerful opposition—may have the last word.
The conversation he proposes won’t mean the end of vaccines or of respect for science. It will mean accountability for what happened in Covid and reform of a dysfunctional system that made it possible.
Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, is president emeritus of the FLCCC Alliance. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author.
Washington trained, armed extremist groups to topple Syrian government: Report
Press TV – December 20, 2024
The United States prepared and bolstered an armed group in southern Syria weeks prior to the offensive that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, a Western media report says.
In the first indication that Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, the group known as Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA) revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad government, the Telegraph reported.
The RCA fighters, trained by Britain and the US, were told “this is your moment” during a briefing by US Special Forces stationed in the Arab country before Assad was toppled on December 8, the report noted.
The RCA fighters said Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, which was mainly led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The RCA was told to increase its forces and prepare for a major attack that could “end” the Syrian government.
Capt Bashar al-Mashadani, an RCA commander said in the weeks preceding the offensive, the RCA’s ranks were expanded by smaller “freelance” units, all of which were briefed at the US al-Tanf air base.
“They did not tell us how it would happen,” al-Mashadani told the Telegraph from a former Syrian army air base on the outskirts of the city of Palmyra.
“We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”
The RCA is an armed group established by defected Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops and is headquartered in the al-Tanf area, near the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border area, in southern Syria.
US forces are also stationed in the al-Tanf area, where they claim to be fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region.
‘On the US payroll’
According to the British newspaper, the RCA remains on the US’s payroll, as Washington claims to require their assistance to prevent the resurgence of Daesh. All members of the force continued to be armed by the US and to receive their salary of $400 a month.
The group has now filled a major void vacated by the former government forces, taking over one-fifth of the country’s territory and pockets north of the capital.
Among the chief targets of the US-backed operation was Palmyra, known for its ancient ruins.
Palmyra was among the main objectives of the US-backed operation, according to the Telegraph. Fighters who captured the Russian-controlled air base in Palmyra were reportedly told to prepare to take such action in early November.
The sources also said that Americans coordinated communication between RCA and HTS during the offensive. The HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, are terror-listed by the US.
The report indicates not only that Washington knew about the offensive led by HTS, but that it had precise intelligence about its scale.
It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the report said.
A senior delegation of US diplomats on Friday arrived in Syria to speak directly to the representatives of HTS, which is designated a terrorist group by Washington.
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From the Archives
The US: The Century of Lost Wars
By James Petras | Global Research | September 12, 2018
Introduction
Despite having the biggest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases – over 180 – in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21st century.
In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Zelensky Refused to Discuss Druzhba Pipeline Issue – Fico
- U.S. General Caine Warns: STRIKING IRAN is a HUGE RISK /Glenn Diesen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
- Israel designates five Palestinian media outlets as ‘terrorist organizations’
- Israel, not America, first: Carlson’s Huckabee interview lays bare US foreign policy priorities
- Israeli troops executed Palestinian aid workers at ‘point blank range’: Report
- Iran war What if today’s Iran is resigned to a long, hellish war with the US?
- Why Israel Is Escalating Its War Crimes Against Lebanon
- Iran in the face of the armed diplomacy of imperialism
- The US build-up around Iran constitutes strategic war option, not ‘deterrence’
- Iran to US: Sanctions and war failed; try diplomacy and respect
- If Americans Knew
- Footage Shows Israeli Troops Waiting in Ambush, Then Opening Fire on a Palestinian Teen
- The US is on the brink of a major new war that Trump has not even bothered explaining
- Latest Epstein document dump is one more cover-up
- No Protection, No Justice: US Citizens Killed with Impunity by Israel
- Maria Farmer: Epstein Victim Reveals Explosive Information Covered Up by Media
- Average of five Palestinians killed by Israel every day in Gaza since ceasefire – Not a ceasefire Day 136
- Palestinian church leaders admonish Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee – Not a ceasefire Day 135
- Ominous messaging from Trump’s “Board of Peace” – Not a ceasefire Day 134
- ‘Christians Out’: Jerusalem Church Tagged With Hate Graffiti, Police Investigating
- Israeli Settlers Kill American Teen
- No Tricks Zone
- New Research Reaffirms Clouds, Aerosols, And Surface Solar Radiation Are ‘Driving The Climate System’
- Germany: Electric Car Catches Fire At Charging Station, Sets Off Local “Inferno”, Widespread Damage
- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
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