Regime change in store for cultural conservatives?
It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change. One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.
And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe. The early February visitor was Samantha Power, currently head of USAID, and a familiar figure from the Barack Obama Administration, where she served as Ambassador to the United Nations and was a dedicated liberal interventionist involved in the Libya debacle as well as various other wars started by that estimable Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he had received his award. The Obama attack on Syria has been sustained until this day, with several American military bases continuing to function on Syrian territory, stealing the country’s oil and agricultural produce.
USAID was founded in 1961 and it was intended to serve as a vehicle for nurturing democratic government and associated civic institutions among nations that had little or no experience in popular government. That role has become less relevant as nation states have evolved and the organization itself has responded by becoming more assertive in its role, pushing policies that have coincided with US foreign policy objectives. This has led some host nations to close down USAID offices. Within the US government itself, participants in foreign policy formulation often observe that USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) now are largely in the business of doing what the CIA used to do, i.e. interfering in local politics by supporting opposition parties and other dissident or even terrorist groups. Both organizations were very active in Ukraine in 2014 and served as conduits for money transfers to the opposition parties and those who were hostile to Russia’s influence for “democracy building.”
Samantha Power, who is married to another Democratic Party affiliated power broker, lawyer Cass Sunstein, traveled to Hungary on her diplomatic passport but took pains to cover her travel as a routine bureaucratic visit to an overseas post. Hungary is undeniably a democracy, is a member of the European Union, and also of NATO, but Power reportedly did not clear the travel with the Hungarian government and apparently did not meet with any government officials, even as a courtesy. She tweeted that her visit was to reestablish USAID in the Hungarian capital, “Great to be here in Budapest with @USAmbHungary where @USAID just relaunched new, locally-driven initiatives to help independent media thrive and reach new audiences, take on corruption and increase civic engagement.”
By “independent media” Power clearly meant that the US will be directly supporting opposition press that is anti-government and which embraces the globalist-progressive view currently favored by the White House. A US Embassy press release on the visit revealed that Power was in town as part of a project to relaunch seven USAID programs throughout Eastern Europe. It did not elaborate on the “corruption” that Power intended to address, which, of course, would have been a direct insult to the local governments wherever she intended to visit, nor did the document reveal that many of the groups that will be supported are likely to be affiliated with “globalist” George Soros.
In Budapest, Samantha Power did indeed meet with opposition political figures and civil organizations and groups, with particular emphasis on the homosexual community including “Joined @divaDgiV, @andraslederer, and @viki radvanyi for lunch in Budapest where we spoke about their work to advocate for LGBTQI+ rights and dignity in Hungary and around the world @budapestpride” as described in one of her tweeted messages after arrival. Power was also accompanied throughout by the highly controversial US Ambassador David Pressman, who is openly homosexual, of course, married to a man, and who has been highly critical of the conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which was reelected in 2022 by a landslide margin in a vote that was considered free and fair. Orban is disliked by Joe Biden’s Washington because he is conservative and a nationalist, not because he is incompetent or dishonest while Pressman was and is a perfect example of the Biden State Department sending a terrible fit as ambassador to an extremely conservative country just to make points with the gay community in the US. Pressman has persisted in telling Hungarians how to behave not only on foreign policy but also on sexual diversity and cultural issues and, for his efforts, was finally told to “shut up” by Hungary’s Foreign Minister.
To be sure, Hungary’s undeniably democratic government, which is politically and economically tied to Washington, does not support the United States-led strategy to prolong and even escalate the Russia-Ukraine war and will not contribute to arming Ukraine. It does not accept “globalist” open immigration that seeks to challenge the established national culture, and also opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds. It does not allow LGBTQ material to be presented to minors in state schools, which it considers to be morally correct anti-pedophilia legislation. For that reason, the time was clearly right, in the “woke” view of the Biden Administration, for Samantha Power to show up with a little dose of regime change in her portfolio. Hungarian officials had already expressed their concern over what they consider extreme pressure coming from the United States, largely because Hungary is a conservative country that values its culture and political independence. The visit by Power sent a signal to the Hungarian government and people that the pressure will likely increase and that Washington will not hesitate to use its embassies and overseas military bases to actively support groups that promote views that are not generally embraced by the local populations.
The Samantha Power story is of interest, to be sure, because it demonstrates that since the United States is the self-appointed enforcer of the “rules based international order” nothing in the world is off limits. Far too many US politicians and media pundits think that other states are not really sovereign and have to submit to US dictates in everything, and if they dare to step out of line they can be punished. If a conservative Christian country or leader – by which one might include Hungary, Russia or Brazil – believes that homosexuality or even abortion on demand are morally objectionable the US now believes that it has a mandate to use federal government resources to change that perception including by actively engaging with a foreign nation and its government on its own soil. To put it bluntly, the United States must certainly be considered the world leader in compelling all nations to conform to the political and moral values that it insists be adhered to.
So if one wants to learn why US Foreign Policy is so inept in terms of actually serving the interests of the American people, look no farther than was has happened and continues to roil in Ukraine as well as the implications of the Samantha Power visit to Hungary. For Foreign Service Posts, providing support for the agendas of the collection of freak shows that make up the Democratic Party has become manifestly as or even more important than promoting genuine national interests overseas or assisting American businesses and travelers.
What is perhaps most interesting is the way the “woke” foreign policy is being largely concealed from the American public and is being run as some kind of stealth operation. One initiative run by USAID in Macedonia in 2016 under President Obama included a $300,000 grant for “suitable” Macedonian applicants to “fund” a program entitled “LGBTI Inclusion” to counter how “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons continue to suffer discrimination and homophobic media content, both online and offline… Considerable efforts are still needed to raise awareness of and respect for diversity within society and to counter intolerance.” How many American taxpayers would be happy to learn that their hard-earned money has been going to support programs run in nonconsenting foreign democracies to make them more “woke?” Of course, no one in the Biden Administration is telling the public about it, nor is the story likely to appear in the mainstream media, so presumably no one will know!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
March 7, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | Hungary, NED, Obama, United States, USAID |
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Virologists who worked to squelch consideration of a lab origin of COVID-19 in early 2020 worked in tandem with leaders in scientific research funding, according to their private emails.
Leaders of the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom played an undisclosed role in persuading virologists to write an influential article asserting a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, according to a memo released Sunday by investigators with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
By mid-February 2020, social media sites in the West and in China buzzed with speculation about a possible connection between the emerging novel coronavirus pandemic and labs specializing in coronaviruses at its epicenter.
The “lab leak theory” cast suspicion not only on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its neighboring labs, but also on their esteemed funders and collaborators in the West.
A March 2020 paper in Nature Medicine titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” assured the public that the virus’ genome demonstrated an origin in wildlife. Hundreds of news organizations cited the article to assert that the lab leak theory was a “conspiracy theory.”
But the new congressional memo shows that the lead author of the article told the scientific journal that the writing had been “prompted” by then-Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar, leader of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and NIH Director Francis Collins.
The virologists met with Farrar, Fauci and Collins in a private teleconference on February 1, 2020, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act have shown — a meeting some scientists have criticized as improper.
“There has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space,” acknowledged lead author Kristian Andersen in a February 12 email, according to the new memo.
“Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origin of the virus,” continued Andersen, a virologist with Scripps Research.
The involvement of heavyweights in scientific funding in the article was not disclosed to the public.
NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan that strengthened SARS-related viruses, an NIH letter confirmed in 2021. Emails exchanged by Collins and Fauci and a private meeting between Fauci and a gain-of-function virologist in February 2020 suggests they were concerned about this connection in the days prior to the article being drafted.
While Wellcome is among the world’s largest philanthropies, a link between Wellcome and the lab complex in Wuhan has not been established. A spokesperson for Wellcome did not respond to a request for comment.
Farrar — who was recently appointed as chief scientist of the World Health Organization — shepherded the paper and made small edits to the article, the new congressional memo shows.
Farrar asked Andersen to change the sentence “it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus.” He suggested changing “unlikely” to “improbable.” Andersen agreed.
Farrar said he would push Nature to publish the article. Its sister publication Nature Medicine would eventually publish the manuscript a few weeks later. Parent company Springer Nature did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The involvement of Collins, Fauci and Farrar in the article was not disclosed until it was made apparent in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in June 2021, 15 months after the article had first made its enormous impact.
The virologists have given shifting explanations of the purpose of the article, the new memo also shows.
When hoping to demonstrate their integrity to the journal, Andersen said discussion of the evidence had been “agnostic.”
However when speaking to gain-of-function virologists who did not want to give credence to the possibility of a lab origin at all, the authors assured them that their purpose was to demonstrate the lab leak theory was outlandish from the jump.
“Our main work over the past couple of weeks has been to disprove any type of lab theory,” Andersen wrote in an email on February 8, 2020.
NIH’s office of the director, NIAID and the Wellcome Trust did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The SARS-CoV-2 sequence was released in mid-January 2020 and by February scientists were trying to tell us where it came from. Actually, where it didn’t come from. That was premature by any call,” said virologist Simon Wain Hobson, an emeritus professor at the Institut Pasteur, who was not involved in the article. “Arguments of authority don’t wash. Data counts. Science needs time.”
The virologists’ article was cited by Fauci and the mainstream media to push back on claims that SARS-CoV-2 was a bioweapon among hawkish politicians in the U.S. But the new congressional memo also shows that the virologists were motivated at least in part by concerns about discussion of the possibility among regular Chinese citizens.
‘Pre-adapted’
The virologists behind the “proximal origin” article have strongly denounced accusations they were improperly swayed by the participation of influential funders of scientific research. They have asserted that they seriously considered the lab leak theory but that evidence accumulated in favor of a natural origin, assuaging their earlier concerns about the Wuhan lab.
However the congressional memo raises new questions about the idea that the virologists ever seriously considered the lab leak theory.
Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin wrote on February 11, 2020, that an early draft of the article “does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan,” citing a “nightmare of circumstantial evidence” at the Wuhan lab.
The new congressional memo shows for the first time that Holmes wrote on February 11, 2020, that he agreed with Lipkin’s assessment, even after he had drafted the first version of the article that would dispel the lab leak theory.
Holmes also said he had concerns about how quickly the virus had emerged in humans, apparently without detection in a likely zoonotic reservoir, in contrast to the SARS epidemic.
“It is indeed striking that this virus is so closely related to SARS yet is behaving so differently. Seems to have been pre-adapted for human spread since the get go,” Holmes said.
The “proximal origin” article nodded to the fact that SARS-CoV-2 appeared pre-adapted to humans.
But scientists who have stated that SARS-CoV-2 appeared pre-adapted to humans in more straightforward terms, and who left open the possibility that the adaptation had occurred in the lab, have received fierce backlash.
The pangolin data
Questions about the integrity of the impactful “proximal origin” article first swirled nearly two years ago.
A series of emails released under FOIA in 2021 and 2022 demonstrated that the authors had expressed private concerns about a lab origin before doing a public about-face.
“Andersen wrote on January 31, 2020, that he, Holmes and Tulane University virologist Robert Garry found that “the genome looks inconsistent with natural evolution.”
Garry wrote on February 2, 2020, that he could not understand how SARS-CoV-2 could have emerged naturally after comparing its genome to a highly similar virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Do the alignment of the spikes at the amino acid level … stunning.”
Yet the “proximal origin” article asserted that any lab origin theory was implausible.
Congressional Republicans have sought answers about whether the private teleconference with powerful funders of scientific research on February 1, 2020, had an improper influence.
The virologists have rebutted that claim in part by pointing to the emergence of data in China describing coronavirus data suggesting a highly similar receptor binding domain in pangolins around the same time they were drafting the article.
Pangolins are highly trafficked in China, though rarely sold live in wet markets.
But the new congressional memo suggests that Andersen, the article’s lead author, did not find that the pangolin data alone provided sufficient evidence in favor of a natural origin.
“The newly available pangolin sequences do not elucidate the origin of SARS-CoV-2 or refute a lab origin,” Andersen said in an email on February 21, 2020. “[T]here is no evidence on present data that the pangolin CoVs are directly related to the COVID-19 epidemic.”
Congressional investigators state in the memo that given the pangolin data was apparently not the compelling evidence in favor of a natural origin theory, the factor that likely pushed the scientists toward the natural origin theory was undue influence by Collins, Fauci and Farrar.
“The pangolin data was not the compelling factor,” the memo reads. “To this day, the only known intervening event was the February 1 conference call with Dr. Fauci.”
Meanwhile, Stanley Perlman, a University of Iowa virologist who edited one of the papers describing the pangolin coronavirus data, said that the new congressional memo has not changed his stance in favor of a natural origin. However the publication did issue a correction stating that pangolins were an unlikely intermediate host in 2021.
The committee also asserts that Andersen’s private statements contradict assertions made by a lawyer for Scripps Research in an August 2021 letter.
Asked about the apparent discrepancies, a Republican aide responded that “the select subcommittee is continuing to evaluate all available evidence, including whether or not Dr. Andersen was truthful to the committee.”
Asked whether the scientists scrutinized in the memo, including Fauci, would be called to testify, the aide said that “the select subcommittee previously requested their testimony and those plans have not changed.”
Despite the scrutiny that has fallen on Fauci — President Joe Biden’s former chief medical adviser — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said in a Face the Nation interview Sunday that the investigation would seek to work in bipartisan fashion.
“I just want to get to facts,” Wenstrup said. “There’s going to be some moments, I’m sure, of some emotions flaring. The last three years have been tough on everybody.”
March 7, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, NIH, Wellcome Trust |
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US lawmakers last year secretly authorized a bailout for weapons makers for unproven inflation burden as part of the record-breaking 2023 annual defense budget, which allotted over $800 billion for defense spending.
The bailout provision, crafted behind closed doors and quietly added to the approved budget, allows for “extraordinary relief” via unchecked price hikes to Pentagon contracts in response to any alleged losses weapons makers experience “due solely to economic inflation.”
However, there are no requirements for defense contractors to prove their costs increased due to inflation alone. Earlier versions of the defense budget did not include this provision, and it was reportedly added by a handful of congressional negotiators without broader congressional input.
“The new law places no restrictions on when contractors may ask for increases in contract prices; the only requirement is that costs exceed the original agreed upon price,” Responsible Statecraft reports.
The bailout was approved despite the senate striking down a similar provision and defense contractors failing to demonstrate to the Pentagon that inflation was threatening their bottom line, as they have managed to report record profits despite the economic effects of the pandemic or the war in Ukraine.
As a result of this, US taxpayer money is now being earmarked to provide “profit insurance” to giant corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.
Their profits are also bolstered by US officials covertly deploying troops and waging secret wars over the past two decades in dozens of countries across the globe.
US defense contractors have repeatedly been accused of having responsibility for countless war crimes committed in West Asia and other regions of the world.
Last week, a group of Yemeni nationals filed a lawsuit against several US weapons makers for their role in the bombing of a wedding and a funeral in Yemen.
“Year after year, the bombs fell – on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats, and a school bus – killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” reads the lawsuit.
March 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, War Crimes | United States, Yemen |
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Former US congresswoman and ex-presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has verbally slammed the Democratic Party establishment and US President Joe Biden himself over the conflict in Ukraine.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Gabbard told the audience that she parted ways with the Democratic Party because it fell “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers, led by the queen of warmongers herself, Hillary Clinton, and embodied by President Joe Biden.”
She accused Biden of pushing the United States to “the precipice of nuclear war,” which may well lead to the destruction of “the world as we know it,” and insisted that the Democratic Party is “focused on filling the pockets of their bosses in the military-industrial complex.”
She pointed at the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, stating that Biden and “warmongers from both parties in the Congress” have already sent over $100 billion to fuel what she described as a “proxy war” waged by the US and NATO through the regime in Kiev against Russia.
“Last week, it was another $500 million. Yesterday, it’s another $400 million of our taxpayer money — continuing to escalate this war that could at any moment spark a direct conflict between the US and NATO and Russia, the world’s most nuclear-armed country,” Gabbard lamented.
Tulsi also blasted the “warmongering elite” in the United States which does not seem to care about the potentially catastrophic consequences of their actions. As she put it, this elite have the means to protect themselves and their families in case of a nuclear attack and they are fine with leaving the rest of the American people to perish in the ensuing armageddon.
“The reality is, though, it doesn’t need to be this way. Our future is in our hands. But we have no time to waste to protect our children, to protect our loved ones, to protect this country that we love,” Gabbard said. “We have to lift our voices and stand up to these cowardly warmongering positions in both parties and stop them from destroying us all.”
March 5, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism | Joe Biden, United States |
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Four of the world’s top experts in environmental health are calling for prevention and precaution when it comes to public exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation.
The scientists — including the former director of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) — last month published a preprint review of the most recent studies on the effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and RF radiation on different life forms and humans, and the epidemiological evidence for cancer due to RF radiation from cellphone use.
The authors concluded there is “substantial scientific evidence” that “RF radiation causes cancer, endocrinological, neurological and other adverse health effects” — and that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has failed to protect public health.
They accused the FCC of ignoring the “Precautionary Principle,” commonly used in toxicology, and also the Bradford Hill criteria, a set of principles commonly used in epidemiology for establishing a causal relationship, in evaluating the risks of RF radiation.
“This article is a clarion call for prevention and precaution,” said Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H., a toxicologist and epidemiologist who co-authored the paper.
“We know enough now to take steps to reduce exposure to this. … It’s time,” said Davis, who also is founder and president of the Environmental Health Trust, and founding director of the Center for Environmental Oncology and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
The paper’s other authors are:
Birnbaum and Taylor are members of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the nation’s premier association of distinguished researchers.
Davis was founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council for the National Academy of Sciences, a private society of distinguished scholars.
Cumulatively, the four authors have published more than 1,600 peer-reviewed articles.
Davis told The Defender there is a “plethora” of experimental and epidemiological evidence that establishes a causal relationship between EMR-RF and cancer.
Studies also have shown that EMR/RF can cause DNA damage, and that it can adversely affect fetal development and the endocrine system.
“EMF/RF functions like a classic endocrine disruptor by impairing both male and female reproductive functions,” the authors said.
They pointed out that senior advisers to the World Health Organization, including Dr. Lennart Hardell, have said that if RF radiation were evaluated based on more current studies, it would likely be upgraded to a probable — if not confirmed — human carcinogen.
Davis said the paper is a “landmark” article — “but the landmark is built on the shoulders of a number of others,” she added.
Many researchers — including James Lin, Ph.D., Louis Slesin, Ph.D., Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., Lennart Hardell, M.D., Ph.D., Cindy Sage, M.A. and Dr. David Carpenter — have worked “relentlessly” on the issue of RF radiation, she said.
‘Industry-affiliated scientists’ distort public discourse on RF radiation
According to the authors, the public discourse around RF radiation has been distorted by some “fundamentally flawed” yet widely publicized reports — written by “industry-affiliated scientists” — purporting to show “no health risk.”
The paper evolved from the authors’ discussions of “several peer-reviewed papers that provided biased analysis, most notably the 2021 review by David Robert Grimes, Ph.D. published in JAMA Oncology,” Davis told Microwave News.
“It is imperative to insist on a complete picture of the evidence and not the whitewashed or distorted version currently promoted,” the authors said.
More independent research on RF radiation — free from bias by the telecom industry — is required. Without this, the authors said, “We are effectively conducting an uncontrolled experiment on ourselves, our families, and our children.”
The authors also criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for dismissing many of the studies that have shown adverse effects from RF radiation, including the $30 million NTP study done in 2018, which showed “clear evidence” that electromagnetic radiation is associated with cancer and DNA damage.
According to Davis, the FDA’s rejection of the NTP study was “deeply flawed” and “deeply hypocritical.”
The FDA in 1999 requested the NTP study cellphone radiation, she said. FDA officials were intimately involved in reviewing the study design plans.
“Then when the results came out and some people didn’t like it, the FDA began to trash talk their own study,” Davis said.
Davis said the scientific and regulatory battle around RF radiation today reminded her and her co-authors of the earlier battle around tobacco.
“We were there in the early days when — believe it or not — 70% of surgeons smoked. And in the 1970s and 1980s, the tobacco industry gave the National Cancer Institute $11 million to study how to make a safe cigarette,” Davis said.
There was a scientific debate “that went on for years longer than it should have” about whether or not tobacco was safe for the environments of children.
“In 1983, when I was the executive director for the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, we put together a committee to answer the question of whether it was okay to have smoking on airplanes,” Davis said.
At the time, that was a scientific question, she said, adding that the committee — after reviewing the research — became the first in the world to issue a ban on smoking in airplanes.
Davis said scientists and the public realized the studies suggesting tobacco was safe were “manufactured” by the tobacco industry — and the same thing is happening now with RF radiation and the telecom industry, she added.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
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.
March 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | FDA, United States |
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All 5 are supposed to “search for the truth,” but increasingly seek to conceal important truths.
The writer who publishes the Eugyppius Substack recently posted a scathing criticism of “academia.”
This essay got me thinking about all the institutions in the world that now seem to be completely captured; more specifically, all the institutions that are supposed to exist to “search for the truth” and now clearly exists to conceal truths and advance untruths.
At the top of this list are these five institutions:
I think tens of millions of Americans would agree with me that mainstream or corporate news organizations should not be trusted to provide fair and balanced coverage of the issues most important to the public.
As I have pointed out in other articles, it’s virtually impossible to find any serious articles that question any of the “authorized” Covid narratives. Not only does the establishment press push and endorse bogus or dubious storylines, they censor and attack people who are skeptical of official pronouncements.
Genuine journalists would be skeptical of the pronouncements of powerful figures and should always “search for the truth.” The fact this objective no longer applies in corporate newsrooms has tremendous and detrimental implications for society … today and in the future.
Those who practice real science are also supposed to make their living “searching for the truth.” By nature, a “scientist” should question, challenge and test accepted theories to see if they are, in fact, true.
Again, thanks to Covid, tens of millions of Americans are now beginning to question whether the majority of credentialed “scientists” are actually performing this vital task.
Many people now believe that scientists are unwilling to debunk false or dubious scientific theories. Instead, many (government-funded) scientists argue that the “science is settled” when it’s clearly not. Just like the corporate journalists, these scientists inflict further harm on society by attacking, censoring, bullying and cancelling their colleagues who do perform this vital role.
In short, they effectively prevent superior science from informing public policy.
For millions of citizens, the difference between false and correct science can be the difference between life and death. Millions of additional citizens are forced to needlessly endure life-altering pain and suffering as a result of “accepted” science that is wrong.
I would argue that journalism and science are the two most important professions and institutions in the world as the public needs to be able to discern what is true and what is not true if correct or wise policies are to be pursued.
Policies based on incorrect premises have the potential to cause harm to virtually every citizen on the planet. The fact “science” now seems to be corrupted – and is no longer interested in “searching for the truth” – constitutes one of the gravest and most ominous developments of our times.
As Eugyppius reinforces with his provocative essay, “academia” is another institution that is supposed to exist to “search for the truth.”
Euggypius focuses on the shortcomings of college academics. Again, I think all would agree that college is the place we send our children so they can increase their knowledge of important subjects. As all the great philosophers tell us, the quest for knowledge is found through a search for the truth.
However, what if large expanses of the “knowledge” these professors are imparting to students is dubious or wrong? What if, just like so many scientists and journalists, these academics are concealing real truths and intentionally or unintentionally spreading dangerous non-truths?
If this is the case, our college system is “educating” our future leaders by promulgating bogus or dubious “accepted truths.” Even worse, they are preventing the spread of ideas that could save lives and improve the quality of life of the world’s citizens.
Of course, it should be noted that the majority of “science” performed in today’s world comes from scientists who work for colleges.
Colleges are also supposed to teach and develop critical-thinking skills in students. However, it seems increasingly obvious that the vast majority of academics lack the ability to think critically. This, or many academics seem more interested in promoting their personal agendas instead of questioning what is true and what is false or uncertain.
In the past, colleges did seem to have many professors who valued a search for the truth. Today, the groupthink among college professors and administrators is approaching 100 percent.
All colleges celebrate “diversity,” but they recoil against diversity of thought and scholarship. In reality, they are afraid of genuine debate or, more specifically, any campus voices that push back against their dogma.
As these academics influence tens of millions of students who are supposed to become “future leaders,” the long-term detrimental effects of this “indoctrination” are impossible to calculate (but frightening to ponder).
Certain employees who work in government are also supposed to seek the truth and expose individuals and organizations that are perpetrating untruths (fraud).
Members of Congress have oversight over every government department or agency that is allocated taxpayer dollars. If government agencies and officials are concealing truths that could harm countless citizens, it’s Congress’s job to expose this.
Yet again, I’m sure tens of millions of Americans would agree with me that senators and representatives have abdicated this responsibility. They effectively allow fraudulent and Unconstitutional edicts and “emergency orders” to control the lives of every citizen in the country.
Prosecutors are also government employees. No one would deny that it is the job of prosecutors to “search for the truth” (find the real facts) and bring criminal charges against individuals who are harming others by promoting untruths and/or violating the law or Constitution.
The third branch of government, the Judiciary, must also be questioned as judges at all levels have the power to control what cases can (and cannot) be tried in a court of law.
Once a criminal or civil case is placed on the docket, the same judges have the power to influence how these cases are tried. By not approving important prosecutions or lawsuits or by hamstringing the efforts of advocates to fully present their arguments, judges can also “conceal the truth.”
Elected representatives and government prosecutors (and too many judges) seem to have increasingly made an intentional decision to not perform their oversight or regulation duties, which effectively conceals the truth from the public.
Trial lawyers are another important professional class as attorneys can file lawsuits on behalf of clients who have been injured or harmed by the actions of defendants. Lawsuits are also filed by family members of those who may have died as a results of defendant actions.
Significantly, trial lawyers can demand testimony under oath and compel defendants to turn over important evidence or documents (discovery). They can cross-exam witnesses who may be lying, which allows a jury to determine whose testimony is or isn’t believable.
While this “search for the truth” can and has been abused with lawsuits that lack merit, the ability of any injured or harmed citizen to seek redress for wrongs is a vital component of our system of justice.
In the Covid era, it’s already clear that the plaintiff’s trial bar (with a few exceptions) is not going to represent clients who have suffered deaths, medical harm or financial damages (or citizens whose civil liberties have been violated by ignoring the language include in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution).
If injuries have occurred, the legal proceedings that would document these “truth” are not taking place (again, with a few exceptions). By not filing lawsuits on the behalf of tens of millions of citizens who suffered some form of harm, the trial lawyers are, in effect, concealing the truth.
Our society includes at least five key institutions or professions whose most important function is to seek the truth. All five of these institutions are supposed to expose untruths, especially those which have the potential to produce great harm among the citizenry.
As I see it, all five institutions are now “captured” and – at least as it involves Covid subjects – are more interested in concealing truths that challenge the authorized narratives.
In a recent article, I tried to identify how the “madness” of our Covid times actually came to pass. That article focussed on pivotal events of the last few years.
However, a deeper treatment of the “how” question would highlight the important role played by the above-cited institutions and professions. It took many years for all of these institutions to become largely or completely “captured,” but the fact this happened also explains how so much harm was inflicted on legions of victims who have not received any form of justice.
I’ll conclude this essay with the same sentence I wrote in a July 2020 Covid article published by uncoverDC.com.
When a genuine search for the truth is increasingly viewed as taboo or off-limits, the prognosis for a nation we all want to see survive and prosper is probably bleak.
March 3, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Data continues to emerge according to which not only were the mRNA shots ineffective at preventing infection and transmission of COVID-19, but they may have caused widespread harm to persons cajoled or coerced into undergoing vaccination, despite their own relative invulnerability to the worst effects of the virus. Anecdotal cases abound, but diehard regime narrative devotees continue to dismiss such “incidents”—thousands of which are recorded in the government’s own VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System) database—as purely coincidental. It is more difficult to downplay reports involving entire cohorts, such as the increased incidence of myocarditis among young males, which the CDC itself has acknowledged. Some critics have suggested that a disproportionately high percentage of pregnant women in Pfizer’s initial trial of the shots suffered miscarriages.
Back in November 2021, in the midst of the widespread and aggressive “Vaccinate everyone!” campaign, I spoke with a woman in Oregon who matter-of-factly mentioned that her (vaccinated) daughter had suffered three recent miscarriages. Recognizing that it was too late to do anything anyway, given that the daughter had already been vaccinated, I did not dare to suggest that her troubles may have been caused by the shots she had no doubt been exhorted by her doctor to take. At that time, following the lead of CDC director Rochelle Walensky, health officials everywhere were in the midst of a marketing blitz according to which COVID-19 vaccination would protect mothers and their babies alike.
I said nothing to the woman in Oregon about the dangers of introducing foreign substances into pregnant women (although I had written about it), but I did naturally wonder at the time whether there might be a causal connection between the poor daughter’s miscarriages and the shots, given the biological activity of the spike protein already known to induce blood clotting and heart troubles. The mother of the young woman—who was pregnant again, for a fourth time—seemed optimistic that somehow there was nothing to worry about, even after three failed attempts to bring a baby into the world. It is possible, I realized then and continue to own, as I must, that the woman was simply unable, for unrelated reasons, to carry a child to term. But given that the biologically active spike protein is what the original virus used to access cells, and production of lots of it was induced by the injected mRNA, it would not take a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist to surmise that the pregnancies may have been sabotaged by the shots.
Critics such as feminist scholar Naomi Wolf, who early on in the pandemic raised questions about the shot’s safety, given many reports of irregular menstrual cycles in women who under went vaccination, were denounced as purveyors of misinformation and immediately deplatformed by the social media giants. Only recently have such “conspiracy theorists” been permitted to articulate their concerns in the public sphere once again—and only on some platforms, including Twitter, which to Elon Musk’s credit reinstated thousands of accounts shut down for the crime of deviating from the narrative favored by the pharma-government alliance. If the shots are indeed dangerous to fetuses, it is needless to say too late for all of the pregnant women tricked into believing that because the CDC insisted that there was no evidence of risk to them and their offspring, they should therefore roll up their sleeves.
That Pfizer knew all along that their mRNA shots had effects upon women’s hormonal systems was corroborated through Project Veritas’ sting operation involving a Pfizer research director, Jordon Triston Walker. In the recorded interview thought by him to be a friendly conversation with a date, Walker observed that the shots seemed somehow to be affecting the endocrine systems of women. The delicate hormonal balance needed to maintain a pregnancy suggests an immediate connection between the widely reported menstruation irregularities of women and the incidence of miscarriages in some of the initial trial subjects.
The data interpreted by some critics to imply that miscarriage was one of the many possible side effects of the Pfizer shot were made public only recently, with the release of a large trove of court-ordered documents which the company is now required by law to provide, despite its initial insistence that it would take seventy-five years to do so. Setting aside the question of whether miscarriage is in fact a side effect of the shots, the very idea that it would take so many years to make public the documents said to have served as the basis for the FDA’s (Food and Drug Administration’s) decision to grant the Pfizer product Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), so that it could forego the customarily stringent multi-year testing program required of pharmaceutical products more generally, struck many people as absurd.
To my mind, the situation constituted a classic Charybdis and Scylla. If it was humanly impossible to process and assess all of the data (all 451,000 pages of it) in the short period between the creation of the vaccines and December 11, 2020, when the EUA was granted, this could be taken to imply that the persons on the committee incompetently executed their role and indeed based their decision to approve the shots primarily on Pfizer’s obvious wish that they do so. Alternatively, it was always possible to process the documents for publication, and the company’s resistance to doing so was due to the content of the documents themselves, which might harm the ambitious sales program to vaccinate everyone on the planet with the new product.
The director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, encouraged pregnant women from the beginning to get the shots, quite deceptively claiming that there was no cause for worry about possible health risks to fetuses. The safety information provided with the original shots itself indicated that pregnant women had been excluded from the initial trials, as they are for most pharmaceutical products. The reason why pregnant women are not included in early stage clinical trials of products intended for the general population is because they represent a special case, given the fragile chemical environment enveloping the fetus. It is a matter of common knowledge that developing human beings are highly sensitive to and often endangered by foreign substances—alcohol and nicotine being two well-documented examples. The vulnerability of fetuses was most notoriously and unforgettably demonstrated when pregnant women were prescribed Thalidomide on the basis of clinical trials which, again, excluded pregnant women. As in the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, Thalidomide was distributed by doctors under the misleading marketing line that there was no evidence that it would harm fetuses. Thalidomide killed thousands of babies and deformed thousands more before it was finally withdrawn from the market.
We now know from Pfizer safety data recently released that some of the women in the initial trial were in fact pregnant—apparently without having known that this was the case at the time, which was why they were not excluded from the trial. The vaccines may or may not have caused their reported miscarriages, but the fact that the CDC would encourage pregnant women, on the basis of nearly no data, to undergo vaccination betrays a reckless disregard and their true goals in injecting everyone everywhere, even members of low risk cohorts, with the mRNA treatment. Ignorance is bliss for pharmaceutical companies, which can continue to market and sell products for years, reaping billions of dollars of profits, before finally halting sales on the basis of widely reported and what come eventually to be undeniable post-launch problems, as in the cases of Vioxx, Belviq, Baycol, etc.
Above and beyond the profit motive was plausibly the desire to test the newfangled mRNA technology on the largest sample of human beings possible—whether or not they actually needed any treatment whatsoever in contending with COVID-19. Of course, if the desire on the part of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel was to make strides ahead in the research and development of other lucrative medications, then the quest for data, too, was ultimately driven by the profit motive—albeit looking forward, to future possible blockbuster drugs.
Certainly, the steadfast resistance, indeed, the outright refusal on the part of public health authorities such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, for more than a year after the launch of the COVID-19 vaccines, to acknowledge the relevance of natural immunity in those persons previously infected, and to recommend appropriate adjustments to the U.S. government’s mandates—for both health care workers and military personnel—supports the hypothesis that one of the overarching aims of the aggressive, relentless vaccine campaign was not to save the lives of the small percentage of human beings vulnerable to the virus, but to amass data.
Corroborating this interpretation, according to which the companies hoped not only to reap a windfall of profits but also to collect a huge amount of data, is the explanation by many critics (including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Peter McCullough) of the assiduous suppression of any and every other therapeutic which the vaccine salespersons recognized would compete with and diminish the uptake of the newly patented products. Most importantly of all, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were dismissed and denounced by public health authorities, and ridiculed by parroting pundits throughout the media, because EUA cannot be granted to products when alternative therapies are available.
In his conversation with a Project Veritas reporter, Dr. Jordon Triston Walker also shared the potentially explosive piece of information that Pfizer executives had floated ideas such as mutating the COVID-19 virus so as to be able to develop vaccines preemptively. It was not entirely clear from Walker’s remarks whether the intention would be to release those mutated viruses so as to direct the course of the disease in populations, or simply to predict which variants would pop up on the scene naturally, through mutations of the virus in its effort to self-propagate by evading the antibodies induced by the latest shots.
Pfizer responded to the bombshell revelation by effectively minimizing the story through suggesting that the process described by their (now former, I presume) employee was essentially part of the normal, necessary research conducted in producing, for example, the flu shot each year. Nearly everyone by now is more or less aware that the flu shot is a gamble, involving researchers predicting which strains will be most prevalent and virulent. People who undergo inoculation against those versions may still fall ill because they may or may not come in contact with the predicted dominant strains. Some individuals report anecdotally that they were never more ill than during a year when they opted for the “free” flu shot, which clearly indicates that they encountered versions of the pathogen not expected by the researchers who determined the ingredients for the products distributed during that particular flu season. Unsurprisingly, neither anecdotal reports, nor adverse effects, nor even consistently poor efficacy rates have deterred pharmaceutical firms from pushing for widespread uptake of their mediocre flu shot products in very public and misleading advertising campaigns fronted by government health authorities.
Needless to say, if the intention of Pfizer in mutating the COVID-19 virus was to release it into the human population in order to induce countless numbers of persons to seek protection by purchasing (or obtaining from their government) the “vaccine” developed in order to stop that strain, then that would constitute a flagrant violation of any decent person’s basic sense of ethics. Such a possibility would moreover, and disconcertingly, be taken by some to accrue a degree of plausibility to the conspiratorial notion according to which the original COVID-19 virus was not only a gain-of-function product, created by researchers in a lab, but also intentionally released into the world in order to initiate The Great Reset being promoted by members of the World Economic Forum (WEF), led by Klaus Schwab.
More plausible, I believe, is that Pfizer and Moderna, et al., are primarily focused on the future of their other new mRNA products in the works. It is not at all far-fetched to surmise that the relentless, divisive push to vaccinate everyone everywhere with the first mRNA treatment ever tested on a population of human beings, made possible only by the FDA’s EUA, was spearheaded by companies with much broader goals in mind. The CEOs of these companies have publicly vaunted their plans to use mRNA to cure cancer and other intractable diseases, which in fact best explains their manifest fervor to acquire as much data as possible, by all means necessary. Such a program, albeit less explicitly heinous than creating illnesses in order to be able to sell patented cures for the symptoms caused by them, nonetheless involved using all of the people coerced into undergoing treatments for which they had no need as the means to the companies’ mercenary ends.
Further evidence for this admittedly unsavory interpretation can be seen in the push to vaccinate children, even infants, despite the minimal danger posed to them by the COVID-19 virus. If, in reality, the chances of a child dying from COVID-19 is less than the chance of their being hit by a bolt of lightning, then it is hard to see why anyone would push for uptake under a public health pretext. Yet those who wish to foist the product on young persons, including infants, have continued to press the line according to which the virus poses a serious health risk to everyone, and the vaccine will help to protect children along with their parents, this despite data according to which the protection provided by the shots, even to the vulnerable persons who might be said to benefit, plummets to nothing after only a few months. (Preposterously enough, according to one recent study at the Cleveland Clinic, in the longterm, the more shots one has received, the greater become one’s chances of contracting COVID-19!)
A second reason why children have been important for the product companies is peculiar to the United States, where the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act) protecting companies from liability in the event of adverse effects covers any product approved as a part of the child immunization schedule. Demonstrating their complete capture by pharmaceutical industry forces, on February 9, 2023, the CDC added the COVID-19 shots to the long list of those recommended in the childhood vaccination schedule (which now includes dozens of shots), thus ensuring the product companies massive profits for years to come through the inoculation of persons not at significant risk from the virus, using a product whose already nearly negligible protective capacity for invulnerable persons (a risk reduction of ~1%—or less) spans less than a few months.
Unbelievably enough, the new CDC recommendation for children (beginning at six months) includes the original COVID-19 vaccine, though the wild strain of the virus may no longer exist, along with booster shots, for which the only clinical trial on human beings is currently underway—on the millions of persons who rolled up their sleeves on the basis of safety data gathered from only animal trials. The results are trickling in on the first-round of “bivalent” booster shots, which have so far been demonstrated to have only middling (30%) efficacy in preventing infection by the variant they are attended to address. But the virus will continue to mutate, thus serving as the pretext for producing new booster formulas. This implies that, under the CDC’s immunization guidelines, each new booster shot will of necessity constitute yet another experimental trial, to be conducted, shockingly enough, upon children throughout the years of their development into adults. In other words, children have been set up to serve as test subjects (i.e., human guinea pigs) for each newly developed “booster” to follow in the future as the virus continues to mutate, despite the fact that they make up the least vulnerable cohort of them all.
Why should “vaccines” which do not offer longterm immunity to anyone and are not even necessary for children—the CDC itself explicitly claims that most children will experience only mild symptoms from COVID-19—be included in the battery of time-tested vaccines such as those against polio, measles, etc.? Along with the desire to sell products, and to be able to test new products on children, is, again, scandalously enough, the fact that the CDC’s addition of the mRNA shots to the children’s immunization schedule protects the manufacturers in perpetuity from lawsuits, even after the State of Emergency has ended. President Biden has announced that the State of Emergency will be lifted on May 11, 2023, two months after the CDC added the COVID-19 shots to the children’s immunization schedule.
Because state and local officials follow the cues of the CDC, we can expect to see its recommendation for childhood inoculation by the COVID-19 shots swiftly transformed into mandates for public school children in states throughout the country. This will likely happen in places such as Massachusetts, California, and New York, where health authorities have persisted in retaining laws which restrict the behavior of residents even as new data continues to refute the erroneous premises widely embraced by officials in the spring of 2020 regarding masks, social distancing, etc. Although states such as Florida rescinded the COVID-19 emergency laws, and have passed legislation to protect children, the fact remains: with the federal level CDC recommendation in place, the product companies will retain their protection from future litigation arising from adverse effects, even if the data currently being collected and analyzed eventually demonstrate widespread harm to either children or adults.
It would be a mistake to judge corporations by the moral standards appropriate to individual persons. Corporations are beholden only to their stockholders, and their sole goal is to maximize profit. But the spokespersons for such companies are themselves individual human beings, as are all of the authorities representing public health organizations whose ostensible raison d’être is to protect members of society, not to maximize the profits of their sponsors. When institutions such as the FDA are coopted by mercenary forces, they cease to perform the function which citizens are depending upon them to execute. Because this already happened in the case of the opioid crisis, the fact that people fell for the trick once again in the case of the COVID-19 “vaccines” is best and perhaps only explained by the fearmongering campaign used to psychologically traumatize them to the point where they lost all critical bearings and agreed to undergo an experimental treatment of which most of them had no need.
Every healthy, nonobese person under the age of seventy who underwent COVID-19 vaccination was deceived into serving as a pro bono experimental subject in a pharmaceutical product trial. That millions of well-meaning parents, believing that they are doing the right thing, will on the basis of the CDC’s addition of the COVID-19 shots to the children’s immunization schedule, enroll their progeny in an entire series of such experimental trials, using substances never before tested on human beings, is nothing less than tragic.
Laurie Calhoun is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters.
February 27, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, Moderna, Pfizer, United States, WEF |
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In an interview with CNBC News in September 2020, Dr. Albert Bourla, the veterinarian Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer — the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue — said that anyone refusing to take the BioNTech vaccine will become “the weak link that will allow the virus to replicate”, and assured the public that “we will develop our product, develop our vaccine using the highest ethical standards”.
It was a dangerous claim to make, even for a CEO and investor making billions out of the experimental mRNA gene therapy product. Pfizer has a long history of paying out vast sums in out-of-court settlements to avoid not only claims in civil cases but also prosecution on criminal charges resulting from the fraudulent promotion, unapproved prescription and injury, including death, from use of its products. It has also offered millions in payments to doctors and scientists to prescribe, test, approve and recommend them to the public. So let’s have a look at what Dr. Albert Bourla means by Pfizer’s ‘ethical standards’.
- In 1992, Pfizer agreed to pay between $165 million and $215 million to settle lawsuits arising from the fracturing of the Bjork-Shiley Convexo-Concave heart valve, which by 2012 has resulted in 663 deaths.
- In 1996, Pfizer conducted an unapproved clinical trial on 200 Nigerian children with its experimental anti-meningitis drug, Trovafloxacin, without the consent of their parents and which led to the death of 11 children from kidney failure and left dozens more disabled. In 2011, Pfizer paid just $700,000 to four families who had lost a child and set up a $35 million fund for the disabled. This cover-up was the basis of the John Le Carré book and film The Constant Gardener.
- In 2004, Pfizer’s subsidiary Warner-Lambert was fined $430 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities for the fraudulent promotion of its epilepsy drug, Neurontin, paying doctors to prescribe it for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
- In 2009, Pfizer spent $25.8 million lobbying Congressional lawmakers and federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. Its expenditure on federal lobbying between 2006 and 2014 came to $89.89 million. In 2019 it spent $11 million lobbying the federal Government.
- In 2009, Pfizer set a record for the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine of any kind, paying $2.3 billion to avoid criminal and civil liability for fraudulently marketing its anti-inflammatory drug, Bextra, which had been refused approval by the FDA due to safety concerns.
- In 2009, Pfizer paid $750 million to settle 35,000 claims that its diabetes drug, Rezulin, was responsible for 63 deaths and dozens of liver failures. In 1999, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration warned that Rezulin was “one of the most dangerous drugs on the market”.
- In 2010, Pfizer was ordered to pay $142.1 million in damages for violating a federal anti-racketeering law by its fraudulent sale and marketing of Neurontin for uses not approved by the FDA, including for migraines and bi-polar disorder.
- In 2010, Pfizer admitted that, in the last six months of 2009 alone, it had paid $20 million to 4,500 doctors in the U.S. for consulting and speaking on its behalf, and $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centres for clinical trials.
- In 2012, Pfizer paid $45 million to settle charges of bribing doctors and other health-care professionals employed by foreign Governments in order to win business. The Chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit said: “Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers.”
- By 2012, Pfizer had paid $1.226 billion to settle claims by nearly 10,000 women that its hormone replacement therapy drug, Prempro, caused breast cancer.
- In 2013, Pfizer agreed to pay $55 million to settle criminal charges of failing to warn patients and doctors about the risks of kidney disease, kidney injury, kidney failure and acute interstitial nephritis caused by its proton pump inhibitor, Protonix.
- In 2013, Pfizer set aside $288 million to settle claims by 2,700 people that its smoking cessation drug, Chantix, caused suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders. The Food and Drug Administration subsequently determined that Chantix is probably associated with a higher risk of heart attack.
- In 2013, Pfizer absolved itself of claims that its antidepressant, Effexor, caused congenital heart defects in the children of pregnant woman by arguing that the prescribing obstetrician was responsible for advising the patient about the medication’s use.
- In 2014, Pfizer paid a further $325 million to settle a lawsuit brought by health-care benefit providers who claimed the company marketed its epilepsy drug, Neurontin, for purposes unapproved by the FDA.
- In 2014, Pfizer paid $35 million to settle a law suit accusing its subsidiary of promoting the kidney transplant drug, Rapamune, for unapproved uses, including bribing doctors to prescribe it to patients.
- In 2016, Pfizer was fined a record £84.2 million for overcharging the NHS for its rebranded and deregulated anti-epilepsy drug Phenytoin by 2,600% (from £2.83 to £67.50 a capsule), increasing the cost to U.K. taxpayers from £2 million in 2012 to about £50 million in 2013.
- In May 2018, Pfizer still had 6,000 lawsuits pending against claims that its testosterone replacement therapy products cause strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, and were fraudulently marketed at healthy men for uses not approved by the FDA.
- In June-August 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice said they were looking at Pfizer’s activities in China and Russia under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids U.S. firms from bribing foreign officials.
- In November 2021, the British Medical Journal revealed that the Ventavia Research Group had falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in the phase 3 trial for Pfizer’s ‘vaccine’.
- Since 2000, Pfizer has incurred $10.268 billion in penalties, including $5.637 billion for safety-related offences; $3.373 billion for unapproved promotion of medical products; $1.148 billion for government contract-related offences; $60 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and $34.7 million for ‘kickbacks and bribery’.
Given this record of ongoing corruption and malpractice from, which only its enormous profits have saved it from criminal prosecution by means of out-of-court settlements, it seems extraordinary that Pfizer Inc. is still permitted to manufacture and sell any health-care products. Yet this is the pharmaceutical company we were asked by the U.K. Government, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the U.K. Health Security Agency and the National Health Service to trust with the mass vaccination of 68 million people with a product that was rushed through clinical trials in seven months, employing experimental mRNA biotechnology whose clinical trials are not due to be completed until March 2023, for a disease with the infection fatality rate not much above seasonal influenza, which statistically is no threat to those under 50 years old, and for which there is no evidence that it prevents infection by the virus.
That was three years ago, during which the British people have paid with their freedoms, their health and their lives for believing the lies of their Government, their National Health Service and international pharmaceutical companies. Subsequent retractions by Pfizer, however, are an opportunity to revisit its claims in more detail.
On December 10th 2020, the U.S. Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee met to evaluate the trial data on the efficacy and safety of Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contained in the briefing document produced by Pfizer itself titled ‘Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (BNT162, PF-07302048) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Briefing Document‘. It was on the basis of this evaluation that, on December 11th, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorisation to its mRNA gene therapy product. And given the subsequent debate about what Pfizer claimed its ‘vaccine’ would do, it might be useful to review the contents of this document.
The FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation, which requires less data than standard approvals and is based on a lower standard of proof, was issued for a vaccine “intended to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2”. It was issued for prevention, therefore, not for reduction of the severity of symptoms, as was claimed when it became clear the gene therapy product did not prevent infection. Pfizer’s claim was that its product had a ‘vaccine efficacy’ of 95% protection against COVID-19 occurring after second days from injection with the second dose. In its clinical trials, a ‘case’ of COVID-19 was defined as a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 and the presence of at least one of the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhoea or vomiting. Nothing was said about asymptomatic ‘cases’ of COVID-19, or claimed about the ability of the gene therapy product to stop ‘asymptomatic transmission’ of the virus.
Pfizer’s benefit assessment was that its mRNA vaccine may be able to induce “herd immunity”, induces strong “immune responses”, and “confers strong protection against COVID-19”. This clearly indicates protection against both infection with the virus and the disease. Since transmission of a virus from person to person requires prior infection, Pfizer’s claim that its vaccine protects against infection, and the suggestion that sufficient injections will induce ‘herd immunity’, is also, by extension, a claim that it stops transmission from the injected.
The subsequent claim by Janine Small, Pfizer’s President of International Developed Markets, during her testimony before the European Union Parliament in October 2022, that Pfizer never tested whether its ‘vaccine’ stopped transmission appears, therefore, to rest on the myth of ‘asymptomatic transmission’. The implication of her statement was that Pfizer’s product only stops infection with SARS-CoV-2 and symptoms of COVID-19. However, the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation for Pfizer’s vaccine was based on prevention of both infection and disease. Pfizer’s claim is not evidence, as many afterwards claimed, for the lack of justification for making injection a condition of lifting lockdown or imposing vaccine passports, but rather an attempt to deny responsibility for the failure of its product (from which it has made $69 billion) to meet either of its claims.
An indication of just how unscientific was the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation of Pfizer’s vaccine is that it was granted on the basis of protection from infection and disease, while conceding there is no evidence that the vaccine “prevents transmission from person to person“. This is the way the ‘Science’ we mustn’t question or deny but blindly follow is conducted in what I call the global biosecurity state. Indeed, three years after it announced the pandemic in March 2020, the World Health Organisation can still only offer the following justifications for the four vaccines authorised for use in the U.K.
- Pfizer/BioNTech: “There is modest vaccine impact on transmission.”
- AstraZeneca/Oxford: “No substantive data are available related to impact of the vaccine on transmission or viral shedding.”
- Moderna: “There is only modest impact on preventing mild infections and transmission.”
- Novavax: “There is not currently sufficient evidence to date to evaluate the impact of the vaccine on transmission.” (See World Health Organisation, ‘COVID-19 advice for the public: Getting vaccinated’.)
Failure to offer protection against infection or transmission, however, are the least of the failings of Pfizer’s ‘vaccine’. As the evidence of the harms and deaths caused by this experimental gene therapy product injected into the U.K. public becomes too overwhelming for all but the Covid-faithful, the British press, the U.K. Parliament and our Government to ignore, there have been no end of doctors, nurses and medical professionals protesting they thought Pfizer’s biotechnology was ‘safe and effective’. But aren’t they trained to spot when something is going medically very wrong?
As of January 25th 2023, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, responsible for authorising the injection of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine into U.K. citizens, has received 180,005 reports of 517,779 adverse reactions to the injections, over 70% of which reports (127,405) have been classified as ‘serious’, including 884 deaths following injection. Including AstraZeneca’s viral-vector gene therapy product and Moderna’s mRNA gene therapy, the MHRA has received a total of 477,553 reports of 1,555,433 adverse reactions to the COVID-19 gene therapies, 74 per cent of which (355,052 reports) are categorised as ‘serious’, including 2,436 deaths following injection.
By the MHRA’s own estimation, only 10% of serious adverse reactions and 2-4% of non-serious reactions are reported, so the actual tally of injuries, autoimmune disease, reproductive and breast disorders, miscarriages and premature births, facial paralysis, blood clotting, amputations, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attacks and deaths — all of which were recorded in Pfizer’s own analysis of post-authorisation adverse events as early as February 2021 — is far higher, undoubtedly many times higher. Indeed, this — and not the risible excuses with which the U.K. public has been fobbed off by the U.K. media — is likely a major cause of the huge increase in mortality in the U.K. since the ‘vaccine’ programme was implemented, contributing to the more than 60,000 excess deaths in 2022.
Given which, it is my contention that any medical professional that authorised or administered the injection of U.K. citizens with the Pfizer/BioNTech gene therapy product is at risk of being found guilty in a court of law for failure to give sufficient warning of adverse effects and obtain informed consent.
Simon Elmer is the author of two new volumes of articles on the U.K. biosecurity state, Virtue and Terror and The New Normal, which are available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook. This article is an extract from an article in Volume 2, ‘Bowling for Pfizer’. Please click on these links for the contents page and purchase options. On March 11th, to mark the third anniversary since the declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organisation, he will be holding a book launch at the Star & Garter, 62 Poland Street, W1F 7NX, upstairs in the William Blake room from 6-8pm. Entry is free, with book signings, a reading and open-mic discussion.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, Pfizer, UK |
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Top Clinton adviser Mark Middleton was found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree with his chest blown out by a shotgun blast last May, in an alleged suicide, but there was no gun found anywhere at the scene, according to a Perry County, Arkansas sheriff’s report made public by the Daily Mail on Tuesday.
Written by Perry County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson, who said he was called to the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas when an employee found Middleton’s vehicle abandoned on the grounds, the report reveals that a gun case and three boxes of 12 gauge buckshot were found in the black BMW SUV – but no gun.
While early reports of his death claimed the businessman hanged himself with the help of a “makeshift gallows,” lugging a table onto the farm owned by animal charity Heifer International some 30 miles from his house, the police report does not mention a table.
Instead, Lawson describes glimpsing “what at first appeared to be a man sitting near a tree,” which gradually resolved to include “a rope of some type going from the tree limb to the male.” The “rope” was determined to be an extension cord.
Sheriff Scott Montgomery admitted at the time he had no idea why Middleton would have “picked that location to commit suicide,” telling Radar Online that “to our knowledge, he had never been there before.” Nor did the businessman leave a suicide note, Montgomery said.
Still, the sheriff initially stated the cause of death was suicide. “He found a tree and he pulled a table over there, and he got on that table, and he took an extension cord and put it around a limb, put it around his neck and he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun.”
Middleton’s family also insists he killed himself, arguing he was suffering from depression. They successfully sued to stop the release of photos depicting the scene of death.
However, one former business associate told Radar Online it was “physically impossible for Mark to have killed himself,” insisting “He knows nothing about guns! He hated guns; he couldn’t have tied a noose to save his life.”
Middleton is known to have signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House on at least seven of the 17 occasions he was known to have visited, and also flew on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.
Update, Feb. 23:
Police change story on Clinton aide ‘suicide’
A shotgun was found near the body of former Bill Clinton aide Mark Middleton, who was discovered hanging from a tree at the Heifer Ranch last May with his chest blasted out, a report seen by the Daily Mail on Thursday claims. This contradicts an earlier report seen by the paper which said no firearm was found at the scene.
According to the Mail, Perry County Sergeant Keenan Carter, said a Stoeger 12-gauge coach shotgun, was discovered 30 feet from Middleton’s body. They also say that the former Clinton aide had texted his wife Rhea shortly before pulling the trigger to say he had found “the perfect place for a nap in the sun” and reassure her she was “a great Mom and wife.”
According to Sergeant Carter’s report, Middleton “pulled the trigger on the firearm casing [sic] it to discharge and strike him in the chest and then he fell from the bench causing the extension cord to become tight cutting off his breathing.”
The gun was found so far from the body “due to recoil from the discharge and the height and angle of the ground,” Carter explained, insisting there was no “evidence to indicate that there was anyone present with Mr. Middleton at this scene or any evidence that there was any type of struggle and/or foul play.”
In the original report, Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson writes that he and an employee of the property owner discovered Middleton’s dead body hanging from a tree by an electrical cord. Searching Middleton’s vehicle turned up boxes of ammo and a gun case, but no gun. The initial report did not mention any gun found at the scene.
The Arkansas state medical examiner concluded that Middleton died by “suicide” from a “contact shotgun wound of chest and hanging” in his autopsy report, the first page of which was published by the Daily Mail on Thursday. The nine-page report reportedly mentions Middleton’s “history of depression.”
Middleton, a special adviser to Bill Clinton during his first term as US president, infamously signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House at least seven of the 17 times he was known to have visited and flew with Clinton on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.
February 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | Bill Clinton, United States |
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US President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine was “a slap in the face to every American,” Republican Rep. Paul Gosar declared on Monday. Already under fire over the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s handed Kiev, Biden is now being savaged by Republicans for his handling of a disastrous chemical accident on US soil.
Biden made an unannounced visit to Kiev on Monday, where he told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that his administration was readying a $500 million military aid package for his forces. Biden’s administration has handed Zelensky almost $30 billion in military aid since last February, and has set aside more than $110 billion for continued military and economic assistance to Ukraine.
“Joe Biden visiting Ukraine is a slap in the face to every American, especially the people of East Palestine, Ohio,” Gosar tweeted. “Ukraine is not our friend, and Russia is not our enemy.”
Gosar has bitterly opposed Biden’s bankrolling of Ukraine, and sponsored a resolution earlier this month that would halt US aid to Kiev. The resolution, signed by 11 members of the anti-interventionist ‘Freedom Caucus’, calls on Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement.
Republicans from the Freedom Caucus and beyond have hammered Biden for his handling of the East Palestine chemical spill. A train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed in this small Ohio town earlier this month, and a controlled burn of these substances blanketed the town in a cloud of black smoke.
Biden has not visited East Palestine, nor has he approved a disaster declaration. Biden’s transportation secretary blamed the derailment on former President Donald Trump, and although Biden has sent Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services officials to the location to declare it safe, residents have complained of alarming physical symptoms as well as dead pets, livestock and fish.
“That was the biggest slap in the face,” East Palestine Mayor Trent Conway said of Biden’s trip to Kiev. “That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us…on President’s Day in our country, so I’m furious,” he told Fox News.
February 21, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Human rights, United States |
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Another €100,000 (£88,000, $107,000) has been gifted to a climate journalist via the foundation of Spain’s second largest bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA). The money is an annual presentation and was recently given to the New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert. The bank said it gave her the cash “for her extraordinary ability to communicate in a rigorous, attractive manner the fundamental environmental challenges of our time”. BBVA is deeply involved in funding subsidy-heavy renewable technologies. It recently declared record profits for 2022 of €6.42 billion, and noted that it had channelled €50 billion into “sustainable business”. Past cash recipients include Matt McGrath of the BBC, the Guardian newspaper and Marlowe Hood of Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The foundation was particularly impressed with Kolbert’s 2016 seminal book, The Sixth Mass Extinction, which was awarded a ‘non-fiction’ Pulitzer Prize. This was said to have documented the dramatic loss of species that the planet is suffering. “One third of all reef building corals, a third of all freshwater molluscs, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of reptiles and a sixth of all birds are heading towards oblivion,” she said. For good measure, she claimed that around a half of all living species on the Earth could disappear by the end of the century.
Kolbert is a Climate Catastrophist straight from central casting. She fervently believes that humans can control the climate by adjusting levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a proposition that is disputed by many scientists. She compares climate ‘deniers’ to flat-earthers. What ‘deniers’ think of climate science, or rather her take on said science, is “completely irrelevant“. Like most people in her world, she says, “I have low tolerance for people who deny facts and disregard truths”.
The sixth mass extinction scare is becoming very popular in climate Armageddon circles, and is heavily promoted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). But it suffers from a major flaw – a lack of proof. Most of the claims are produced by models and are just opinions. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 823 animals and plant species (mostly animals) that have gone extinct since 1500. If you are in the Pulitzer prize winning territory of a sixth mass extinction, you might expect to be able to show more than 823 extinct species in 522 years.
The WWF has been responsible for much extinction alarmism since its Living Planet Index has estimated at least a 50% vertebrate decline since 1970. But a group of Canadian biologists recently cast considerable doubt on this claim, suggesting that it was a cherry pick. They showed that the estimate was produced from less than 3% of vertebrate populations. “If these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase,” they point out. “More informative indices are needed,” they conclude. The finding is perhaps not surprising since the small increases in CO2 over the last 40 years has produced 14% more vegetation across the globe.
Five years ago, the eminent Smithsonian palaeontologist Doug Erwin dismissed sixth mass extinction talk as “junk science“. He went on to state that “many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were”.
As regular readers are aware, MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen believes the entire climate narrative is “absurd”. However, he acknowledges it has near-universal acceptance, despite the fact that in a normal world the counterarguments would be compelling. “Perhaps it is the trillions of dollars being diverted into every green project under the sun, and the relentless propaganda from grant-dependent academics and agenda-driven journalists, along with the political control offered to elite groups in society by Net Zero, that currently says it is not absurd,” he suggests.
Neil Winton spent 34 years working for the international news agency Reuters, including four years as science and technology correspondent reporting on global warming. He wrote a recent article noting that anyone who abused people by calling them a climate denier “betrays the fact they know little about climate science, or are too lazy to do their own research”. They are more interested in forcing their views on the public and silencing debate, he added. The idea that the science is settled, he says, won’t last long if the reporter can be bothered to use a search engine revealing “scores if not hundreds of highly qualified scientists who beg to differ”.
In his new book on Net Zero, Winton notes, the author Ross Clark accuses Reuters of joining an organisation “which is dedicated to presenting a partisan view of climate change, and silences those who dare to disagree by activating the obnoxious ‘denier’ assertion”.
This organisation is called Covering Climate Now (CC Now), and it specialises in ready-to-publish climate scare stories. The Daily Sceptic wrote about it in December under the heading ‘How billionaires fill the Media with climate fear and panic’. CC Now feeds over 500 media operations and its ‘partners’ include some of the biggest names in news publishing such as Reuters, Bloomberg, AFP, CBS News, ABC News and MSNBC News.
Winston notes that CC Now issues the advice: “For God’s sake do not platform climate denialists.” Op-eds that detract from the scientific consensus or ridicule climate activism “don’t belong in a serious news outlet”, it says. Since when did Reuters require an outside organisation to advise it on how to report on controversial issues, asks Winton.
He adds: “If you dig deeper though you’ll find it uses weasel words only too familiar to those like me who’ve striven to provide real honesty and balance to the argument. It reveals itself as just another arrogant, warmist outfit dedicated to shutting down those with whom it disagrees. Not a thing Reuters should be associated with, surely?”
February 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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