The United States’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.
Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.
Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath – the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.
The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.
This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.
After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.
As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as “historic” but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?
The EU membership talks were granted no doubt as a way to distract from the fact that the EU funds were not forthcoming and especially following the miserable response from U.S. lawmakers.
The whole sorry saga indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine has become a deplorable black hole for Western public money. Given the military debacle and the futile bloodshed, it is becoming politically untenable for Washington and Brussels to keep shovelling billions of taxpayer money into this abyss.
Up for the asking this week was a total of nearly $100 billion between the U.S. and Europe for Ukraine. How many badly needed public services in Western states could do with – and are denied – that kind of financial sustenance?
The spectacle of Zelensky touring the world scrounging for more money is as shameful as it is sordid.
Official figures show that the Western governments have already donated a combined total of $200 billion to Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022.
To put that largesse into perspective, it is estimated that the U.S. Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of the whole of Europe following World War Two was equivalent to $173 billion in today’s money.
Think about that. The Western funding to Ukraine already exceeds this historic salvage package by some $30 billion. And yet Western governments are trying to muster another $100 billion on top of that.
There are several conclusions to be made. First of all, the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia is indisputably a calamitous failure. Despite the unprecedented financing of weapons and other support to the Kiev regime, the war is a dead-end for the Western powers. The 30-member NATO military alliance is staring at a defeat unparalleled in its 75-year history.
Secondly, it is patent that the Kiev regime is only being propped up by the transfer of colossal flows of aid from the West. Without those transfusions of weapons and capital, the regime is finished. It has already lost grievous numbers of troops on the battlefield. Conscription drives are scraping the barrel. Without the lifeline of aid, the regime is finished. The Kiel Institute for World Economy reported last week that Western capital pledges to the Kiev regime have fallen off a cliff since the summer.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week in his annual marathon televised Q&A with the public and journalists that Russia will push on with its objectives of eradicating the NATO-backed Nazi forces in Ukraine. There seems little doubt that the objective will be achieved given the parlous state of the Kiev regime.
Another conclusion to draw is the scale of corruption that Ukraine is mired in. For all the funds pumped into this regime so much of it has been siphoned off from the stated purposes.
The obscenity of this war racket is the inordinate corruption, deaths and destruction of economies across Europe while Western weapons corporations have raked in mega-profits.
Zelensky’s global begging tour is a desperate attempt to keep the war racket going for a while longer. He and his wife Olena have enriched themselves with overseas properties and shopping trips to Paris and New York. Zelensky and his cronies have been paid off with blood money for their role in peddling the biggest war scam in modern history. A scam that is funded by hard-pressed and hoodwinked Western taxpayers who have been gaslighted by their politicians and media about “defending democracy and freedom”.
To keep this grotesque charade going, Western politicians in the pay of arms companies and NATO think tanks are resorting to desperate scaremongering and blackmail.
President Biden has repeatedly warned that if extra funds were not released to Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression” the rest of Europe will be overrun by Moscow.
In Washington this week, U.S. lawmakers who refused to pass the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine were, in effect, accused of being traitors by helping Russia.
Zelensky appealed to European leaders by saying that Putin would exploit any negativity towards Ukraine, and he pleaded with the EU to not “betray” Ukrainians.
On the eve of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, the European Commission declared that it was finally releasing €10 billion in withheld funds to Hungary. That was a bribe to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to concede to the proposed €50 billion in extra aid for the Kiev regime. In the end, Orban did not concede to the multi-billion-euro handout, however, he gave way to his objection to talks for Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Such is the shoddy business of propping up the Kiev regime that arm-twisting and bribery are the order of business in Brussels.
The horrendous waste of lives and financial resources in Ukraine by the Western elite – instead of pursuing diplomacy and peace – is the hallmark that these regimes are terminally corrupt and doomed to failure.
The conflict in Ukraine has recklessly stoked tensions between nuclear powers and has condemned generations of Americans and Europeans to debt. The war in Ukraine is a historic dead-end for the U.S. and its European vassals. Zelensky’s begging bowl is a death rattle.
December 16, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | European Union, NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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Acclaimed filmmaker Mikki Willis documented the disinformation campaign that discredited ivermectin around the world. Now updated and rebranded, the movie exposes their wicked tactics.
Covid may be fading faster than last week’s sunburn (likely to make way for the “next pandemic”), but the war on ivermectin rages on. And it’s no wonder, as we continue to discover its efficacy against increasing numbers of viral illnesses and now, even cancers. Of course, the more ivermectin threatens these insanely lucrative markets, the more enemies it racks up. (If you thought the Covid market was massive, in the end, cancer may be even bigger – the global chemotherapy market alone is expected to reach $330 Billion by 2029.)
Mikki Willis is a bestselling author, investigative filmmaker, and now, a friend. (He also used to be an old lefty/progressive like me – emphasis on the “used to be.”) In 2020, he released the first installment of his documentary series, Plandemic. The micro-budget documentary was watched and shared by over one billion people world-wide, making it the most seen independent movie in history. Plandemic 2: Indoctornation, set a streaming world-record with 2 million viewers attending the online premiere. Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening, was released in June of 2023 and is being hailed by critics as, “the most important movie of this era.” Note that the Plandemic trilogy can be seen for free at PlandemicSeries.com.
More relevant to my cause is that last year, Mikki released a short but powerful documentary detailing how ivermectin, the now infamous Nobel Prize-winning medication, had been slandered during the COVID pandemic. Well, a lot has happened in the year since, so Mikki has masterfully updated the film and rebranded it The War on Ivermectin to selflessly help support my book with explosive new clips and critical legal developments.
Check out the film below:
December 16, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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U.S. poison control centers are reporting a sharp increase in calls related to semaglutide, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity, CNN reported Wednesday.
Developed by drugmaker Novo Nordisk, semaglutide is sold under the brand names Ozempic for diabetes, and Wegovy for weight loss. According to Medscape, Novo Nordisk said the two drugs are not interchangeable — although Ozempic is often taken off-label for weight-loss.
According to CNN, America’s Poison Centers said that between January and November, it responded to nearly 3,000 calls — a more than 15-fold increase since 2019 — about semaglutide. In 94% of those calls, semaglutide was the only substance reported, while 6% of the callers reported taking semaglutide plus one or more other drugs.
Also this week, an investigation by The BMJ highlighted examples of potentially illegal marketing of semaglutide in the U.K., suggesting the marketing may be a contributing factor to growing hype and ongoing shortages of the drug.
According to the BMJ report, webpages promoting semaglutide may violate U.K. laws, which prohibit the direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers.
The New York Daily News reported that celebrities have publicly promoted Wegovy, helping to fuel the growing demand for the drug. According to Medscape, physicians looking to prescribe Ozempic are struggling to locate the medication for their patients due to shortages.
The hype — and the subsequent shortages — have arguably contributed to a growing market for semaglutide knock-offs and an online black market for the drug, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, the high cost of Ozempic — partially fueled by growing demand for Wegovy — has resulted in an increasing reluctance of insurers and employers to cover the drug. Reuters reported a growing number of employers are instead hiring virtual healthcare providers to implement weight-loss management programs for employees.
Aside from the drugs’ high cost and the reluctance of insurers to pay for semaglutide drugs, weight-loss medications also have been associated with potentially serious side effects — including suicidal thoughts, thyroid cancer and gastrointestinal problems, and pose a serious but little-known risk for pregnant women.
Accidental overdoses behind many of the calls to poison control centers
Semaglutide, first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) in 2017 as a diabetes medication, works by reducing blood-sugar levels and slowing down the passage of food exiting the stomach, CNN and the BBC reported.
According to CNN, among the nearly 3,000 reports of semaglutide poisoning this year, many have involved accidental overdoses.
Julie Weber, director of the Missouri Poison Center, told CNN that as of October, it had received 94 calls relating to semaglutide this year, as compared to 28 calls for all of 2021. Dr. Joseph Lambson, director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, told CNN semaglutide calls nearly quadrupled between 2021 and 2022.
CNN reported the largest increase in calls occurred among adults ages 40 through 70 and, in particular, the 60-to-69-year-old age group.
In remarks to CNN, Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director of America’s Poison Centers, said most calls this year concerned dosing errors.
In some cases, callers had to be “hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain,” CNN reported. Other warning signs of a semaglutide overdose are dizziness or lightheadedness, feeling jittery, sweating and chills, irritability, headache, weakness, fatigue, nausea, seizures, confusion, hypoglycemia and passing out.
Semaglutide, a GLP-1 agonist, has been associated with potentially severe adverse events even in cases not involving overdoses.
According to JAMA Medical News, clinicians are increasingly observing more serious gastrointestinal side effects associated with Ozempic and Wegovy, in addition to self-harm behavior, anesthesia complications, serious vision problems and cancer cases among people taking the drugs to either to lower their blood sugar or lose weight.
The FDA said Ozempic and Wegovy may pose a risk to pregnant women and warned they should discontinue taking these medications at least two months prior to pregnancy. However, those warnings are buried and long-term testing won’t be completed for years.
Semaglutide also has been linked to an inducement of suicidal thoughts among some users, and to serious digestive problems such as stomach paralysis, pancreatitis and bowel obstruction.
According to CNN, “There’s no specific antidote for a semaglutide overdose. The drug has a half-life of about a week, meaning it takes one week to clear half of it from your body.”
Celebrity promotion of Ozempic leads to shortages, online black market
According to the BBC, demand for Ozempic “spiralled last year after it hit the headlines for being Hollywood’s secret weight loss drug — nicknamed the ‘skinny jab,’” because users must inject it.
In addition to celebrity endorsements, an “elite” and influential group of prominent doctors and obesity specialists have received nearly $26 million in payments from Novo Nordisk to promote weight-loss drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to a Reuters investigation and a report by investigative journalist Lee Fang.
“After celebrities began openly embracing Ozempic on social media in 2022 as a way to lose weight, demand overwhelmed supply,” CNN reported, adding that the FDA officially recognized a shortage of the drug in 2022.
This opened the door for certain qualified pharmacies to make compounded versions,” according to CNN. It also led to a rise in off-label prescriptions for weight loss, which “triggered global supply issues and created a shortage for diabetes patients in the U.K,” the BBC reported.
There are differences between the patented and compounded versions of semaglutide, CNN reported, noting that compounded versions have often not been tested for safety and are frequently sold in unapproved dosages.
According to the BBC, “Doctors say drugs bought from unregulated sources are dangerous and could contain potentially toxic ingredients.”
The name-brand versions of semaglutide “are sold in pre-filled pens, which come with some safeguards,” but the compounded versions “typically come in multidose glass vials,” for which “patients draw their own doses into syringes.”
Packages delivered by mail usually contain needles and two vials — one containing a white powder and the other a liquid — which have to be mixed together before the drug can be injected, according to the BBC.
According to CNN, some callers to poison control centers overdosed despite using the pre-filled pens — in at least one instance “giving themselves an entire month of doses at once.”
The BBC reported that the hype surrounding the use of semaglutide for weight loss fueled an “online black market” driven by “unregulated sellers offering semaglutide as a medicine, without prescription, online,” in the form of “diet kits.” The drug was also “being offered in beauty salons in Manchester and Liverpool.”
“These compounded versions are popular because they may cost less out-of-pocket, especially if the treatment isn’t covered by insurance,” CNN reported.
In June, the FDA issued a warning against taking compounded versions of semaglutide if the prescription version is available, stating the agency received adverse event reports connected to administration of the compounded versions of the drug.
The FDA has also sent letters to two online sellers asking them to stop selling the drug. Novo Nordisk sued six medical spas, medical clinics and weight-loss clinics for selling knock-off versions of semaglutide.
According to CNN, data collected by poison control centers regarding reported symptoms of semaglutide do not provide a clear indication as to whether the patented or compounded versions were taken, “but some state poison center directors say they believe that compounded versions are behind many of the calls.”
Shortages spur new virtual weight loss management programs
The shortage of Ozempic and Wegovy also created difficulties for physicians, Medscape reported. Kevin Huffman, D.O., a board-certified bariatric physician and CEO of AmBari Nutrition told Medscape physicians “must now prioritize patients at the greatest risk who stand to benefit considerably — a complex decision-making process.”
Physicians also “face a bias from private insurers and Medicare,” who typically won’t cover weight loss medications for patients without Type 2 diabetes, and who “would prefer patients try and fail at every diet plan and weight loss medication, many with serious cardiovascular side effects, before being approved for newer drugs.” Huffman said.
The high cost of semaglutide has dissuaded employers and insurers from offering coverage for those drugs, Reuters reported.
Instead, companies like Boeing, Fortune Brands and Hilton “have signed up for or expanded deals with virtual healthcare providers,” who implement “weight-loss management programs” which “may require diet and exercise before granting access to the medicines.”
According to Reuters, drugs such as Wegovy “have list prices of more than $1,000 a month,” leading insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to offer employers the option to sign their patients up for weight loss programs offered via virtual telemedicine platforms.
Reuters quoted Truist analyst Jailendra Singh, who forecast that the market for virtual obesity drug management may reach $700 million by next year and $9 billion “longer term.”
American Medical Association President Jesse Ehrenfeld, M.D., MPH, told Reuters that telehealth providers “should be a supplement to, not a replacement for, in-person provider networks” and that a reliance on telehealth may drive patients away from their current physicians.
But in a statement provided to The Defender, Brandon Welch, Ph.D., an associate professor in public health sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and co-author of Telehealth Success: How to Thrive in the New Age of Remote Care, said “telemedicine has the potential to create better patient outcomes” regarding weight loss.
Potentially illegal advertising practices of semaglutide investigated by The BMJ
Despite shortages and the drugs’ high cost, companies like Novo Nordisk are reportedly planning to market drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to children as young as 6, even though the drugs’ long-term risks are unknown and despite some experts’ warnings that the drugs may exacerbate our “toxic diet culture.”
Notably, in January, just weeks after the FDA approved Wegovy for use in children, the American Association of Pediatrics issued new childhood obesity recommendations, advising that children as young as 8 can be treated with weight loss drugs, including those containing semaglutide.
Novo’s new marketing plan comes despite an investigation by The BMJ finding inappropriate and possibly illegal marketing of semaglutide.
The BMJ’s investigation focused on the U.K., and according to Fierce Pharma, the findings “rais[e] questions about the effectiveness of regulatory oversight of materials on the weight loss and diabetes treatment.”
According to The BMJ, online searches for terms like “Wegovy” turned up results including “pharmacy websites unrelated to the drugmaker,” some of which appeared to be directly marketing the prescription drug to consumers, which violates the U.K.’s Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and is illegal in most of Europe.
One such example was a blog post by Pharmadoctor, which according to The BMJ is “a website that supports pharmacists in providing services for patients.”
According to The BMJ, the Pharmadoctor post stated that “Wegovy is a weekly weight loss injection made famous by celebrities such as Elon Musk and Boris Johnson. If Wegovy is suitable for you, your pharmacist will be able to provide it.”
“With celebrity fans and proven weight management benefits, Wegovy is the weight loss jab that has everyone talking,” Pharmadoctor also stated.
Examples such as this led Shai Mulinari, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Lund University in Sweden, and Piotr Ozieransk, Ph.D., senior lecturer of social and policy sciences at the University of Bath in the U.K., to file a complaint Oct. 10 with the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), for the alleged illegal promotion of a prescription drug.
The complaint stated that they were “appalled” to find that Pharmadoctor was marketing Wegovy “directly to the public.”
In a response dated Nov. 22, the MHRA said that following an investigation, the Pharmadoctor page in question was “removed in line with our guidance.” But according to The BMJ, what Mulinary and Ozieranski discovered was that “a link and the word ‘Wegovy’ had been removed” but “the blog post remained online.”
The BMJ’s investigation found that the MHRA has not issued a single sanction for prescription drugs in the past five years. Among 16 cases where the MHRA took action by requesting changes to advertisements for weight loss drugs from June 2022 to July 2023, all were” triggered by external complaints, not internal mechanisms, and none resulted in sanctions.”
Dr. James Cave, editor in chief of the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin, a BMJ journal with a focus on drug safety, filed multiple complaints about semaglutide advertising with the MHRA and the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority in the past year, but according to The BMJ “was disappointed with the results.”
For instance, the ASA “would not consider websites that were not being promoted through paid advertising on search engines,” while actions taken by the MHRA were often “minor,” sometimes involving “only a few words.”
Cave told The BMJ that such lax regulation and oversight creates only weak incentives for companies to follow regulations and abstain from the advertising of prescription drugs.
Regardless of how the drug is marketed, some doctors warn that reliance on medications to lose weight is dangerous.
In April, for instance, Dr. Joseph Mercola wrote,“By relying on medication to get thin, you rob your body of the chance to balance its weight naturally, in the way biologically intended, and expose yourself to untold side effects in the process.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
December 15, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | Ozempic, UK, United States, Wegovy |
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By Drago Bosnic | December 15, 2023
The mainstream propaganda machine’s (ab)use of the term “conspiracy theory” (coined by the likes of the CIA in an attempt to stifle and discredit any information that could hurt their interests) has made it virtually impossible to talk about election fraud in the United States. Anyone even remotely suggesting that this could be possible in the “lighthouse of global democracy” was considered a “conspiracy nut”. Former president Donald Trump was even threatened with legal action if he doesn’t drop the idea. Worse yet, some Democrats have even accused him of supposed “treachery”, as the claims of election fraud could further undermine the otherwise “impeccable” image and reputation of the US.
However, the latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, based in Illinois and New Jersey, respectively, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admit to participating in at least one kind of voter fraud. Heartland and Rasmussen claim that when asked, “During the 2020 election, did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?”, 21% of respondents who said they voted by mail answered “yes”. It should be noted that filling out a ballot on someone else’s behalf is illegal in all US states (although some allow people to assist others with voting).
In addition, 17% of mail-in voters said they voted “in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident”, while the same percentage also admitted to signing a “ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member”. Both actions are illegal and automatically invalidate votes. The report further points out that over 43% of voters cast ballots by mail, which is by far the highest percentage in US history. Another 10% of all respondents — not just those who said they voted by mail — claimed that they know “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted … that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence”.
However, more disturbingly, 8% of all respondents said “a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party” offered them “pay” or a “reward” for agreeing to vote in the 2020 election. The results of the poll show that election fraud was not only present during the 2020 election, but was actually quite common, particularly in the case of mail-in ballots. It also shows that Trump’s claims were certainly not exaggerated, much less a “conspiracy theory”. However, the troubled Biden administration will certainly keep insisting on this notion, for obvious reasons, of course. And yet, this isn’t where their troubles end, as President Joe Biden is faced with an impeachment inquiry.
Namely, on December 13, the House of Representatives approved the launch of a formal impeachment probe, just hours after Hunter Biden refused a Congressional testimony. According to the Wall Street Journal, formalizing the impeachment process will give Congress additional power by improving the likelihood that a court will authorize access to grand jury materials, as well as boosting the chances that the GOP will be able to overcome objections such as executive privilege. The White House has been trying to torpedo Congressional subpoenas and demands for transcribed interviews with Biden family members since they were launched back in September.
These refusals were based on the grounds that the existing impeachment probe was invalid because the House didn’t vote to authorize it. However, with a 221-212 vote in favor of the inquiry, the Biden administration can’t use this as an excuse anymore. House Speaker Mike Johnson even directly accused the White House of impeding the investigation, which has so far been two-pronged. Namely, the House Oversight Committee is focusing on the Biden family’s corruption, while the House Judiciary Committee is investigating the weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI, as both are being used by the DNC to prosecute political opponents, with a particular focus on Donald Trump.
The sheer number of cases launched against him is absolutely unprecedented. No president has ever been indicted in the US, but Trump now has over half a dozen major cases and a plethora of smaller ones, including for alleged “election subversion”. Trump’s business-minded approach to politics and geopolitics has made him quite a lot of enemies among the political elites in Washington DC, which he, ever so “endearingly” (but not without reason), likes to call “The Swamp”. His statements about Putin and Russia are effectively considered “heresy” among both Democrat neoliberals and his “fellow” Republican neocons. Trump’s aversion toward warmongering is his “gravest crime”.
While in office, he had tremendous problems with warhawks within his own administration, resulting in several high-profile sackings, such as the case of the infamous John Bolton, one of the leading members of the so-called “war party” in Washington DC. Trump’s realpolitik approach stands in stark contrast to the warmongering elite’s overly ideological and completely impractical foreign policy framework that has not only created enemies everywhere, but has also effectively united them. He regularly criticizes his political opponents for underestimating Russia, a resurgent global superpower, rightfully calling it dangerous for US and global security.
However, Trump’s repeated warnings have not only been ignored, but simply rejected by the political establishment. It seems that high-profile US political figures committing any crime can get away with it, including sexual misconduct with minors, as long as they support the official narrative, even when the said narrative leads to a world-ending thermonuclear exchange. However, fighting the narrative in order to prevent such a conflict will almost certainly result in years of incessant and largely unfounded slandering (at best) or even land one in jail on trumped-up (no pun intended) charges. Either way, the current political situation completely dispels the illusion that the US is a democracy.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
December 15, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | Joe Biden, United States |
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Almost 4 years later, things are going swimmingly for the virus panic corps.
The White House Coronavirus Task Force was spun up on January 29, 2020. Shortly thereafter, the federal government began to deploy countless billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies with the ostensible hopes to mitigate a much-hyped incoming pandemic.
Now, almost four years later, our hindsight presents a much clearer picture to the fog of virus mania we experienced in realtime.
Instead of mobilizing an effective public-private response to the advertised problem, Operation Warp Speed and the Task Force served as a vehicle for further panic and the facilitating of taxpayer cash that ended up enriching the pharmaceutical industry. These taxpayer-funded, Covid-related slush funds ballooned to astronomical heights across two presidencies, delivering record profits to Pharma companies that took pains to bring themselves onsides with the people in charge in Washington, D.C.
Tragically, the government-backed mechanical (ventilators) and pharmaceutical (remdesivir, mRNA shots, etc) interventions didn’t work to remedy the respiratory illness problem. Instead, they added an additional layer of chaos on top of the virus mania that had captured the world.
Operation Warp Speed and the resulting Task Force operation was, by all objective accounts, a catastrophic blunder, but that didn’t stop many of its members from parlaying their roles on the high visibility government detail into successful post service gigs.
So we thought now would be a good time to take a look at some of the healthcare/pharma-related government officials responsible for some of those fateful decisions, and where they are today.
Mike Pence:
He was primarily responsible for staffing the Trump Administration’s Covid response team. Pence launched his presidential bid in June, but gave up by October. He is perhaps the only Task Force member who did not benefit from the operation, as his political career is effectively over.
Anthony Fauci:
The most notorious member of the Task Force, Fauci’s wealth increased multiple times over while serving as the Pharma kingmaker over at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He recently took a no-show professorship at Georgetown University and is said to be working on a book.
Deborah Birx:
The second most infamous member of the Task Force, Birx, a protege of the Bill Gates network, has also cashed in on her time in the spotlight. She has since joined multiple pharmaceutical boards and wrote a book attempting to generate even more virus hysteria.
Moncef Slaoui
Technically not a member of the Task Force but the leader of Operation Warp Speed. Slaoui succeeded in delivering preferential treatment to Moderna, where he had a board seat and $10 million in stock options. Moderna stock would jump 20x from January of 2020 to late 2021. Slaoui left Operation Warp Speed in January 2021 to join a GSK-owned pharmaceutical company. He was later fired due to a sexual harassment claim.
Alex Azar
A former president at Eli Lily, he briefly chaired the White House Task Force. As the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Azar facilitated billions of dollars in funding to vaccine companies. Like his colleagues, Azar has since joined several pharmaceutical and healthcare boards.
Jerome Adams
After leaving the White House, the former Surgeon General became Purdue University’s “Executive Director of Health Equity Initiatives,” sporting a salary of half a million dollars a year for the gig. He also joined the boards of half a dozen healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. The hyper woke activist just penned a book casting himself as a “front line hero” in the fight against Covid-19.
Brett Giroir
The Trump Administration’s assistant secretary for health (succeeded by the transgender identifying admiral “Rachel” Levine) spun right through the revolving door with his colleagues. He now serves as CEO and a member of the board of a respiratory virus treatment company. He also wrote a book on “fighting Covid from the front lines to the White House.”
Stephen Hahn
Hahn served as the FDA commissioner and a member of the Task Force. Only six months after authorizing the Moderna mRNA shot, he went on to serve as the chief medical officer of Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital firm behind Moderna. He has since joined multiple ventures seeking to get products approved for FDA clearance.
Robert Redfield
The former CDC director who once declared masks as superior to vaccines has joined quite a few boards related to Pharma and healthcare.
Seema Verma
As CMS Director, this Task Force member issued the infamous memo leaning on healthcare systems to suspend non elective procedures. After her tenure in the Trump Administration, Verma joined the boards of several healthcare firms and became a Senior Vice President at Oracle Corporation.
December 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Like other aspects of medicine, public health is about dealing with life and death. In the international sphere, this involves big numbers. If, as a group, a few million dollars is allocated here, it may save thousands of lives. Actual people living rather than dying, or grieving. If it’s allocated there, it may even promote death – diverting other resources from a more useful approach or causing direct harm.
Dealing with such issues affects people’s egos. Humans are prone to think themselves important if they seem to have power over the lives of others. With international public health staff this is reinforced by people they meet, and the media glorifying their work. The public hears little of the high, often tax-free salaries or the travels and 5-star hotels that boost these egos still further, but instead are fed pictures of (usually brown) children lining up to be saved by people in (usually blue) vests with nice logos. It all feels good.
The result, inevitably, is an international public health workforce that has a very high opinion of itself. Possessing values that it considers superior to those of others, it feels justified in imposing its beliefs and values on the populations who are the target of its work. As their role seems to them more important than bringing up kids in some random village or working at an airport check-in counter, they can feel virtuous when seeking to impose their superior opinions on others. The WHO’s insistence that countries globally embrace certain Western cultural values supporting abortion on request until time of delivery are a powerful example, irrespective of what one considers its ‘rightness.’ More so as the WHO also claims to support ‘decolonization.’
Things get tricky when the ultimate source of funding has its own commercial or geopolitical priorities. As an example, expenditure of the World Health Organization (WHO) is now over 75% specified by the funder, including those who stand to gain financially from such work. Large organizations that helped the WHO run its Covid-19 response, such as Gavi (vaccines) and CEPI (vaccines for pandemics), were jointly set up by private and corporate interests who are now represented on their boards and directing them.
The interface between these self-interested funding sources and the populations upon whom they seek to impose their will is where the self-righteousness culture of the public health workforce becomes so important. They need enforcers whose culture renders them willing to impose harm and restrictions upon others. Apologists and sanitizers who are in a position of trust.
A Captured but Willing Workforce
If you are going to sell a product, you can advertise it and hope potential buyers are interested. This carries a commercial risk. If a product can be mandated – essentially force the market to buy it – then this risk is eliminated. If you can then remove any liability for harm done, you are simply printing money with no risk at all. This is such a ridiculous and indecent approach that it would never fly in a normal commercial context. You would need a workforce capable, en-masse, of putting aside the moral codes that prevent such practices. A shield between the people being managed and the commercial or political interests standing to gain.
Historically, public health has often provided such a shield – a way of sanitizing vested interests that would otherwise appear repulsive to the public. In the United States, it implemented racist and eugenic policies to sterilize and send into decline ethnic groups it considered inferior, or individuals considered to have lesser mental capacity (or socially inferior).
The Johns Hopkins University psychology laboratory was founded by proponents of just such an approach. The fascists in Italy and Germany were able to extend this to active killing first of the physically ‘inferior,’ then whole ethnic groups claimed by governments and health professions to be threats to the purity of the majority. Examples such as the Tuskegee study show that this attitude did not stop with World War Two.
Most of the doctors and nurses implementing eugenics and other fascist policies will have convinced themselves that they were acting for the greater good, rather than demons. Medical schools told them they were superior, patients and the public reinforced this, and they convinced each other. Having the power to directly save or not save lives does that, while carting trash and repairing sewers (equally important to public health) does not. It enables people to tell others what to do for a perceived greater good (even sterilization or worse) and to then stand together as a profession to defend it. They will do this for those who direct them, as health professionals are also trained to follow guidelines and superiors.
Accepting Humility
The hardest thing in public health is accepting that none of the above is actually for the public’s health. It is about unleashed human ego, a large part of greed, and a trained and frequently reinforced willingness to bow to authority. Hierarchies feel good when you are near the top.
In contrast, health depends on mental and social well-being, and all the multiplicity of influences from within and without that determine whether each person experiences, and how they deal with, disease. It requires individuals to be empowered to make their own choices, irrespective of human rights, because mental and social health, and a large part of physical health, are dependent on the social capital this agency enables. Public health can advise but once it steps over the line to coerce or force, it ceases to be an overall positive influence.
To provide sensible public health, you must therefore be comfortable allowing others to do what you consider to be against their physical interests or some ‘greater good.’ When you are convinced that you have superior intellect, this can feel wrong. It is harder again when deferring to the public means breaking ranks with, and losing standing with, peers who consider themselves superior and more virtuous.
To do this, one has to accept that intellect has no standing when assessing human worth, and that each human has some intrinsic characteristic that puts them above all considerations regarding greater societal good. This is the basis of fully informed consent – a very difficult concept when considered deeply. It has its basis in the Nuremberg Code and post-1945 medical ethics and human rights, and is a concept with which many in our health professions and their institutions disagree.
Facing Reality
We are now entering one of those more extreme periods, where the hierarchy really becomes clear. Those pulling the public health strings have gained enormous power and profit from Covid-19 and are focused on getting more. Their chosen enforcers did their job during Covid-19, turning a virus outbreak that kills near an average age of 80 years and at a rate globally perhaps slightly higher than influenza into a vehicle to drive poverty and inequality. They continue to do this, pushing ‘boosters’ associated with rising rates of the infection they are aimed against, and with unusual evidence of harm, ignoring prior understanding of immunology and basic common sense.
Now public health is moving further in response to the same masters, the Covid profiteers, promoting fear of future outbreaks. With near-total obeisance, they are now supporting a reordering of society and health sovereignty through amending the WHO IHR regulations and negotiating a pandemic treaty to build a permanent health technocracy to sustain concentration of wealth and power through recurrent pharmaceutical profit.
This reordering of our democracies into Pharma technocracies, with the public health bureaucracy being aligned to enforce it, will make the right to travel, work, go to school, or visit sick relatives dependent on compliance to health dictates passed down from a massively wealthy corporate aristocracy. Those health dictates will be enforced by people whose training was funded and careers supported by those who directly profit. The modelers who will produce the numbers needed to scare will be similarly funded, while a sponsored media will continue to promote this fear unquestioningly. The institutions above this, the WHO and the big public-private partnerships, take funding and direction from the same sources. The proposed pandemic regulations and treaty are just cementing all in place, repeating the massively harmful restrictions on human rights applied during Covid whilst ensuring that there is less room for dissent.
We need legislators, and the public, to reclaim public health ethics and to return to credible concepts of health and well-being – as the WHO once did – “physical, mental and social.” This is what was intended when previous generations fought to overthrow dictators, striving for equality and for the rights of individuals over those who would control them. History tells us that public health professions tend to follow self-interest, taking the side of those who would be dictators. If our democracies, freedom, and health are to survive, we must accept reality and address this as a basic issue of individual freedom and good governance for which we are all responsible. There is too much at stake to leave this to self-interested corporatists and the notorious enforcers they control.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
December 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, Johns Hopkins University, WHO |
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An “elite” and influential group of obesity specialists over the last decade pocketed at least $25.8 million in payments from Novo Nordisk, maker of weight loss drugs Wegovy and Saxenda, in exchange for promoting the drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to an investigation by Reuters.
“Those payments are part of a campaign to convince U.S. doctors to make Wegovy one of the most widely prescribed drugs in history — and to persuade skeptical insurers to pay for it,” according to the report.
Wegovy and Saxenda have rapidly transformed the treatment of obesity in the U.S., with a boom in prescriptions so big in 2023 that JP Morgan doubled its 10-year sales projection, predicting sales of $71 million for the drugs by 2032.
Despite the drugs’ serious side effects — including major gastrointestinal issues, self-harm behaviors and cancers — the Association of American Pediatrics recommends the drugs in its new clinical guidelines, the American Medical Association urges insurance carriers to cover the drugs, and the mainstream and medical press heavily promote them.
‘They have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy’
Reuters examined data from the federal Open Payments database, which reports payments made by pharmaceutical companies to doctors, other medical professionals and teaching hospitals for consulting, speaking, research, travel or meals. It analyzed payments for speaking, consulting, food and travel for two of Novo’s obesity drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda.
The analysis also excluded payment for research.
Overall, Reuters found at least 57 U.S. physicians each accepted a minimum of $100,000 from Novo in payments related to the two drugs over 10 years. It also found Novo made other large payments to some of those same doctors, but the payments were not classified as related to a particular drug and were not counted in the $25.8 million total.
Of that group, 41 of the physicians run weight-management clinics, work at academic hospitals, write obesity-treatment guidelines or hold top positions at medical societies.
Collectively, the report said:
“[They] have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy and similar medicines to a large proportion of patients with obesity and for comprehensive coverage by government and private insurers. The company and some of its paid experts have called denying coverage tantamount to discrimination against people with obesity, rooted in the faulty notion that they are to blame for their condition.”
Reuters also analyzed Novo’s spending among experts involved in writing five prominent sets of obesity-treatment guidelines for doctors. Among the 109 guideline writers and editors, 53 had accepted payments from companies selling or developing obesity drugs — $8 million of the total $12.4 million of those payments were from Novo.
In a statement provided to Reuters, Novo said, “Responsible engagement between pharmaceutical companies and the medical community is good for patients and advances care and science.”
Since the Affordable Care Act created the Open Payments system over a decade ago, it has been easier to expose the kinds of financial conflicts of interest identified in the report.
However, the increased transparency hasn’t stemmed the flow of industry money, Reuters found. “Companies’ annual payments have surged from $6.5 billion in 2014, the first full year data were collected, to $12.6 billion last year,” the report stated.
Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a health administrator and former dean of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, the U.S. military’s medical school, told Reuters the investigation sheds light on a long-standing problem in the drug industry.
He called the payments “morally and ethically way over the line,” adding:
“The pharmaceutical industry still sees value in paying medical thought leaders to promote their products, and too many of them are happy to sign up for a six- or seven-figure check …
”As sales grow, Medicare and the insurance industry come under intense pressure to pay for these hugely expensive drugs … The end result is that everybody’s healthcare costs go up.”
Another recent report by investigative journalist Lee Fang similarly found a wide network of celebrities, physicians, patient advocacy groups, public health experts, academics, and community leaders have appeared in dozens of media outlets to tout the drugs without disclosing their financial ties to Novo Nordisk.
Which doctors take money from Novo Nordisk?
The report profiled several key physicians taking money from Novo.
For example, Novo paid Lee Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., chief of obesity medicine at Dartmouth’s medical school, former head of Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, $1.4 million for consulting work and travel related to the two drugs between 2013 and 2022.
It also paid him another $976,019 million during that same period for unspecified reasons.
Kaplan, who teaches a popular obesity course taken by physicians seeking certification in obesity medicine or continuing education credits — for which Novo contributed $10,000 this year — dismissed the idea that he is a mouthpiece for the drugmaker. He told Reuters he accepts money from numerous companies and “that he’s not beholden to any one drugmaker.”
Another physician, Dr. Donna Ryan, former president of The Obesity Society and member of The Diplomate at the American Board of Obesity Medicine, has taken more than $1 million from Novo over the last decade, including $600,691 related to Wegovy and Saxenda.
Ryan was instrumental in persuading the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to cover Wegovy and similar drugs for millions of federal workers, an agency official told Reuters.
In the process, she connected government officials with two key groups: the Obesity Action Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the STOP Obesity Alliance at George Washington University. Both have ties to drugmakers.
Novo is the Obesity Action Coalition’s top corporate donor, paying it more than $500,000 annually.
STOP medical director Dr. Scott Kahan, who will assist in writing The Obesity Society’s new “standards-of-care” guidelines that primary-care doctors commonly use as a quick-reference guide, has accepted more than $300,000 from Novo.
Dr. Jamy Ard, of Wake Forest University, the incoming president of The Obesity Society who will oversee the guideline writing, has taken over $200,000 from Novo.
Ryan told Reuters she had no qualms about taking such payments, “Being a purist isn’t helping anyone,” she told Reuters.
The report also quoted Ryan speaking to a group of doctors at a conference, where she argued that these blockbuster drugs have been positive for both patients and investors. “There is nothing wrong with money,” Ryan said.
She and obesity specialist Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Scripps Clinic Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center in San Diego, have taken 130 Novo-paid trips over the past decade, traveling to make speeches and do consulting.
They said the travel allows them to provide medical advice that is valuable to patients, physicians and the manufacturer.
But other doctors disagreed. Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center who studies pharmaceutical marketing practices, told Reuters :
“These highly paid doctors end up drowning out the voices of people who aren’t being flown around to every medical meeting. As a result, there’s not a lot of resistance to the prevailing industry-funded view.”
‘Serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women’
The 2020 U.S. approval of Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda, a once-daily injection for weight loss, opened a new era of pharmaceutical-based weight management, The Defender reported.
This was followed, in June 2021, by the licensing of Wegovy, and less than a year later of Ozempic, which is indicated for Type 2 diabetes, but contains the same active ingredient, semaglutide, as Wegovy, and is prescribed off-label for weight loss.
Semaglutide drugs are taken as a once-weekly injection, which is considered a benefit compared to a once-daily jab. Liraglutide is a daily shot. Semaglutide is also available as a once-daily pill under the brand name Rybelsus, another Novo drug.
These drugs mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which assists patients in losing weight by regulating their appetite.
In November 2023, the FDA approved Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, another injectable diabetes drug, for weight loss. The active ingredient in Zepbound, tirzepatide, sets this drug apart from Wegovy and Ozempic but it works similarly through a weekly injection.
Tirzepatide is sold by Eli Lilly as a diabetes drug under the trade name Mounjaro.
These approvals were accompanied by what Fang called a Novo Nordisk-driven “aggressive campaign to persuade Americans of the merits of semaglutide.”
According to a KFF Health poll, 45% of adults would take a “safe and effective prescription weight loss drug,” including 59% of those trying to lose weight.
Enthusiasm fell to just 23%, however, when they learned that treatment involved a routine injection, to 16% if either insurance did not cover the high monthly cost or if the drug was not specifically approved for weight loss.
The surging popularity of the medication led to shortages and made Novo Nordisk one of the most valuable global pharmaceutical companies, behind Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.
The shortages raised concerns because the drugs are not made for short-term use. Studies show that when people stop taking them, they regain much of the weight they lost, or potentially gain even more weight. Most people who start taking the drugs and want the effects to last will have to stay on them long-term.
But recent pharmacy claims data shows that most people who start taking Wegovy stop taking it within a year, some because of side effects and some because of the high cost of the drugs.
In addition to suicidal ideation and thoughts of self-harm, pancreatic cancer and gastrointestinal disorders, other adverse effects linked to semaglutide are also becoming apparent. A study using data from EudraVigilance, also found metabolic, nutritional, eye, renal, urinary and cardiac disorders were also reported.
The drugs also carry serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women.
Despite the high drug cost and the associated risks, there is an ongoing debate about whether insurance companies and Medicare should cover the cost of weight loss drugs, which would increase profits exponentially.
Reuters reported that Wegovy’s U.S. prescribing label recommends the drug for anyone with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, the threshold for obesity and for people with a 27 BMI who also have a weight-related medical condition.
That would cover about 46% of American adults — about 120 million people, according to the report.
A study published in March in the NEJM estimated that if Medicare were compelled to cover Wegovy, with an estimated 23% discount, it would cost $27 billion to treat just 10% of patients with obesity enrolled in Medicare. That would equal nearly a fifth of the yearly spending for Medicare’s program covering prescription drugs.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity. All the high voltage lines built in the last century will need to be built again by 2040 to benefit from all the intermittent power produced by the vast number of wind turbines. The ecological costs of all this can only be guessed at. Electricity cables are made of aluminium and copper and strung on giant pylons made of steel and supported by large concrete bases. For their part, wind turbines are a menace to both avian and oceanic wildlife, consume vast quantities of raw materials, have a limited lifespan and are an increasing blight on both inland and offshore landscapes.
If the International Energy Agency (IEA) gets its way, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The roll-out of high voltage lines will be on an unprecedented scale. In a report on global electricity grids issued to coincide with COP28, the IEA states that “an unprecedented level of attention from policymakers and business leaders is needed to ensure grids support clean energy transitions and maintain electricity security”. Major changes in how grids operate and are regulated are said to be essential. Annual investment in grids, which has remained broadly stagnant, needs to double to more than $600 billion a year by 2030.
The Australian science journalist Jo Nova is in no mood to be understanding: “Remember, it’s not their fault that renewables need far more land, more space, more backup and more infrastructure – it’s our fault we didn’t build a world ready for their holy energy.”
The IEA paints a world where electricity grids are becoming a “bottleneck” for transitions to Net Zero emissions. While investment in renewables has been increasing rapidly, global investment in grids “has barely changed”. In Europe, policymakers can speed up progress on grids by “enhancing planning, ensuring regulatory risk assessments allow for anticipatory investment, and streamlining administrative processes”. In plain English this means ripping up local planning laws in over-populated Britain and blanketing the country with millions of giant electricity pylons. These will be required to bring energy to urban areas from power intermittently generated far away in the North Sea and off the Scottish coast.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the British Government recently set out “major plans” to speed up connections and rapidly increase capacity on the electricity grid. The press release cunningly linked it with a £960 million government investment in “green industries”. The new package is “expected” to bring forward £90 billion of investment over the next 10 years. The Government promised that it will “reward” those living closest to new infrastructure with up to £1,000 a year off their electricity bills. In another part of the release, this is downgraded to communities “could” benefit, and the bung is limited to 10 years.
Whatever the money is spent on, it is likely to be chickenfeed compared with the growing £12 billion annual subsidy paid by electricity consumers to the producers of renewable energy. But the next British government will face an empty exchequer and soaring state debt. Lack of finance along with the end of low interest rates and free money printing is likely to kill many of the green fantasises currently being peddled by collectivist Net Zero fanatics. It is becoming clearer by the day, to an increasing number of people, that renewable energy is unreliable and uneconomic, and has an insatiable requirement for financial subsidy.
Emeritus Cambridge Professor Michael Kelly has long been a critic of the blind, un-costed rush to Net Zero. The U.K. electricity grid will require upgrading from top to bottom, he wrote in a recent GWPF essay. Leaving aside the massive roll out of long-distance transmission lines required, he noted the inadequacies of all the local cabling and sub-stations built before the need to charge electric cars and run heat pumps. “The whole distribution system will need to be upgraded… the work will be extraordinarily expensive, but without it there will either be regular brownouts, or drivers will be told where and when they can charge their batteries,” he explained.
Professor Kelly believes it is a failure of the British political machinery, notably the work of the unelected Climate Change Committee. “We have set out to decarbonise the economy without anyone having thought through all the engineering issues, let alone put a cost on the exercise,” he concluded.
But as Jo Nova observes, it is all our fault. “Apparently, we should have paid attention and built the right grid and now due to our laziness we will have to rush in another 80 million kilometres of interconnectors, just like that,” she writes. Tell the children they’ve been lied to, she concludes. “The Green future is an industrial wasteland of concrete and steel built to line the pockets of billionaires and bankers.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | UK |
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In the European Commission, the procurement of Pfizer vaccines has been surrounded by suspicions of corruption for some time, especially regarding negotiations between EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, which were conducted over text messages that subsequently “disappeared.”
“It is clear that these vaccines were ordered and forced on member states in unnecessarily large quantities,” the Hungarian Government Information Center said in response to a request from daily Magyar Nemzet, after it emerged that Pfizer and BioNTech had filed a lawsuit against the Hungarian government in January this year over the purchase of some of the Covid-19 vaccines.
According to documents obtained by Politico, the plaintiffs are demanding payment from Hungary for 3 million BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines worth around €60 million.
Von der Leyen held preliminary talks with the head of Pfizer in March 2021 on the purchase of the coronavirus vaccine, and virtually agreed to the details by text message with the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla. An investigation into the deal, worth around €35 billion, was launched in January 2022, but the European Commission president’s team failed to find the text messages in question.
EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly concluded that von der Leyen had deliberately obstructed her work by claiming not to have found any text message between the EU commission president and Bourla. It later emerged that they had allegedly only reviewed internal document registers, not text messages, saying they were too short-lived and therefore not covered by EU law on the retention of policy documents.
The anti-Hungarian EU commissioner Vera Jourová, also previously suspected of corruption, could only defend von der Leyen, citing the short-lived, ephemeral nature of text messages.
However, according to the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, the behavior of the committee members did not comply with the transparency required by EU rules, and no attempt was made to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the matter.
The European Commission president also defended herself by saying that she was not involved in the negotiations and that the messages did not influence the course of the deal. It is no coincidence that von der Leyen has tried to play down the importance of the text message negotiations, as the purchase of Pfizer vaccines has also caused a financial loss for the European Union: Under the terms of the mega-contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, Brussels will buy 900 million doses of vaccines worth $35 billion between the end of 2020 and 2023, with an option for a further 900 million doses.
December 7, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union |
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Getting the Republican-majority House of Representatives to approve additional funding for Ukraine would require first securing the US border with Mexico, Speaker Mike Johnson told the White House on Tuesday.
The Louisiana Republican was responding to Monday’s public letter from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, who warned that the US was “out of money—and nearly out of time” in terms of aid to Ukraine and Israel. Young argued that cutting off US aid would “kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield” and increase the “likelihood of Russian military victories.”
Johnson first addressed Israel, noting that the House approved the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (HR 6126) on November 2, but that Democrats who control the Senate “voted to block consideration of the bill.”
As for Ukraine, Johnson wrote, the Republican position has remained unchanged since his meeting with Young and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on October 26, when he laid out “two essential prerequisites: security at our border, and critical answers regarding the funds requested.”
Six days prior, President Joe Biden had announced the proposal to bundle the funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and immigration and border enforcement in a $106 billion package, of which about $60 billion would go to Kiev.
Additional funding for Ukraine is “dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws,” Johnson wrote on Tuesday. The House passed the Secure the Border Act of 2023 (HR 2), “more than six months ago,” he noted, but the Senate Democrats have “refused to act” on it.
Pointing to over 6.5 million “illegal alien encounters” along the southern US border since Biden took office, of which 294 involved people “on the terrorist watchlist,” Johnson called the situation “an unconscionable and unsustainable catastrophe.”
In addition to “madness” on the border, Johnson noted that the White House still owed Congress “a full accounting of how prior US military and humanitarian aid” to Ukraine was spent “and an explanation of the president’s strategy to ensure an accelerated path to victory.” He accused Biden of “failure thus far to present clearly defined objectives,” and to provide Kiev the weapons it needed on time.
“Rather than engaging with Congressional Republicans to discuss logical reforms, the Biden Administration has ignored reality, choosing instead to engage in political posturing,” the House speaker said.
Talks on a border security bill in the Senate collapsed earlier in the day, as Democrats denounced the Republican proposal as “extreme,” claiming it would “end asylum as we know it.”
December 5, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism | Ukraine, United States |
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Washington (State) Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is facing a formal legal challenge in the form of a complaint filed by local Republicans, alleging the use of public funds to launch spying and censorship against political opponents (but mostly, it would seem, those opposed to Hobbs.)
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The election period surveillance, introduced through what is known as a sole source contract, was awarded for at least $147,600 and the company was able to put its tools in motion even before the contract was approved.
The Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) on Thursday announced that it, in cooperation with a Long Law office attorney, had submitted its complaint to the Washington State Ethics Board.
Hobbs is accused of spending public money to bankroll the AI company whose “specialty” is voter surveillance via methods like “fact-checking” and subsequent suppression of information unfavorable to the state secretary and her political camp.
The company, called Logically, is registered offshore.
The complaint makes a note of the fact that as secretary of state, regardless of political affiliation, Hobbs has a duty to act in an unbiased and fair manner when it comes to elections.
The state Republicans, however, allege that she violated these (state and federal) constitutional requirements and her oath of office.
Related: AZ Governor Katie Hobbs Asked Twitter To Censor Her Critics, Emails Show
One of the provisions that Hobbs is accused of ignoring is the obligation stemming from the US Constitution, specifically its First Amendment, about the government (i.e., its officials at various levels) not being allowed to take any action that “abridges freedom of speech.”
Proper discharge of office and electioneering at public expense are some of the other unlawful behaviors that the Washington Republicans want her investigated for.
What Hobbs was doing was through a creation of her own, known as Information Security & Response Division; the AI company’s task was surveillance of citizens/opponents of Hobbs’ policy who were expressing themselves on the internet.
According to the complaint, terms as “threats to electoral integrity and (those) targeting the (Washington State) secretary of state or staff” were used as justification for “monitoring voter communications in order to alert Secretary Hobbs of critical or unwelcome ‘narratives’, providing bi-weekly analysis and producing reports of citizen comments, trends, and statistics.”
These bi-weeklies were available to Hobbs, and “outside stakeholders.”
Logically was scouring X, Rumble, Truth Social, Substack, etc, but it was on Facebook where it “conspired to label citizen comments as false, apply warning labels, and suppress distribution of the unwelcome speech” which let Hobbs “suppress and abridge free speech on a massive scale.”
“This is nothing but state-funded electioneering with no public benefit and an Orwellian Totalitarian State promoting the views of the Democrat party and censoring their rivals. WA SoS (secretary of state) actions are part of the destruction of civil society and have absolutely no consideration for the people or the Constitution,” reads the complaint.
December 3, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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Aletho News 