Pfizer sued for “false and deceptive” COVID-19 vaccine claims
Maryanne Demasi, reports | December 1, 2023
Myself and others have reported on the exaggerated claims made by vaccine manufacturers about the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In November 2020 for example, Pfizer published results in a press release claiming its mRNA vaccine was “95% effective against COVID-19.” The statistic was widely cited by politicians, academics, and the media.
Several weeks later, when details of the trial were published, it became evident the ‘relative risk reduction’ of 95% corresponded with an ‘absolute risk reduction’ of only 0.84% – a far more conservative number which was never publicly promoted.
The way in which the statistic was communicated to the public was likely to have distorted people’s perception of the vaccine’s benefit and increased their willingness to be vaccinated.
I also wrote about how Pfizer hid its data on waning immunity. Regulatory filings showed Pfizer had evidence, early into the vaccination campaign, that its vaccine’s efficacy waned, but the company waited months before alerting the public.
Pfizer would not explain why it delayed the publication of its data, but if the public was told about the vaccine’s fading efficacy at the time, it would have hampered the uptake of the vaccine.
These deceptive practises are now part of a lawsuit against Pfizer.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced this week that he’s suing Pfizer, saying the company “intentionally misrepresented the efficacy” of its vaccine and censored people “who threatened to disseminate the truth” about the vaccine in public discussions.
In a statement, Paxton wrote, “We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies…The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines.”
Paxton is seeking more than $US 10 million in civil fines and a court order barring Pfizer from speaking publicly about the efficacy of its vaccine.
According to the 54-page lawsuit, Pfizer engaged in a “deception campaign across several fronts” and consequently, the company became “grossly and unfairly enriched by its deceptive acts,” namely;
· First, duration of protection: FDA recognized when it first authorized Pfizer’s vaccine that it was “not possible” to know how effective the vaccine would remain beyond two months. But in early 2021, Pfizer deliberately created the false impression that its vaccine had durable and sustained protection, going so far as to withhold highly relevant data and information from the consuming public showing that efficacy waned rapidly.
· Second, transmission: FDA warned Pfizer that it “needed” additional information to determine whether the vaccine protected against “transmission” of COVID-19 between persons. But Pfizer instead engaged in a fear-mongering campaign, exploiting intense public fears over the year-long pandemic by insinuating that vaccination was necessary for Americans to protect their loved ones from contracting COVID-19.
· Third, variant protection: Pfizer knowingly made false and unsupported claims about vaccine performance against variants, including specifically the so-called Delta variant. The vaccine performed remarkably poorly against the Delta variant, and Pfizer’s own data confirmed this fact. Nonetheless, Pfizer told the public that its vaccine was “very, very, very effective against Delta.”
The lawsuit goes on to say that Pfizer also took overt action to intimidate and silence people who posted factual information about the COVID-19 vaccines, in order to “prolong the effectiveness of the company’s deception campaign.”
Paxton said, “When the failure of its product became apparent, Pfizer then pivoted to silencing truth-tellers.”
In the lawsuit, journalist Alex Berenson is named as one of the people censored. It states Berenson posted information that was critical of the mRNA vaccines to his hundreds of thousands of followers, so Pfizer “plotted to silence Berenson and eliminate his speech from public discourse.”
In addition to coercing social media platforms to censor truthful information, the lawsuit states that Pfizer intimidated vaccine skeptics. In November 2021 for example, CEO Albert Bourla labelled them “criminals” who have “literally cost millions of lives.”
In summary, the lawsuit states:
Pfizer knowingly and recklessly engaged in a multi-faceted scheme to mislead the American public about the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine, including making affirmative misrepresentations, withholding material information, and taking steps to censor and suppress individuals who disseminated truthful information adverse Pfizer’s deceptive scheme to increase sales and consumption of its vaccine.
Many have welcomed the move saying it could have political ramifications or encourage other States to launch similar lawsuits.
‘If We Get Away With It, It’s Legal’: Documents Reveal New Details on U.S. Government’s ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 29, 2023
Government agencies, private-sector firms, academia and nonprofits were collaborating to combat alleged “misinformation” and “disinformation” as far back as 2017, according to new documents released Tuesday.
The “CTIL Files” — which refer to the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTI League, a key player in the so-called “Censorship-Industrial Complex” — are based on documents received from an unnamed but “highly credible” whistleblower, according to investigative journalists Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag and Matt Taibbi, who released the files.
The new documents rival or exceed the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” in “scale and importance,” according to the journalists, two of whom — Shellenberger and Taibbi — were instrumental in releasing many of the “Twitter Files” that first called attention to the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
A comprehensive picture of the birth of the ‘anti-disinformation’ sector
The documents, which the journalists detailed on Substack, center around the activities of the CTI League, which “officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”
According to the journalists, the CTI League documents “offer the missing link … to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files” and “offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the ‘anti-disinformation’ sector.”
“The whistleblower’s documents describe everything from the genesis of modern digital censorship programs to the role of the military and intelligence agencies, partnerships with civil society organizations and commercial media, and the use of sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques,” the journalists wrote.
Documents in the “CTIL Files” show members of the CTI League, DHS officials and key figures from social media companies “all working closely together in the censorship process.”
This “public-private model” laid the groundwork for “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” campaigns launched by the U.S. and U.K. governments in 2020 and 2021, the journalists wrote, including attempts to circumvent First Amendment protections against government censorship of speech in the U.S.
Such tactics included “masking censorship within cybersecurity institutions and counter-disinformation agendas; a heavy focus on stopping disfavored narratives, not just wrong facts; and pressuring social media platforms to take down information or take other actions to prevent content from going viral,” they added.
The CTI League went still further though, the journalists wrote, engaging “in offensive operations to influence public opinion, discussing ways to promote ‘counter-messaging,’ co-opt hashtags, dilute disfavored messaging, create sock puppet accounts, and infiltrate private invite-only groups.”
Such censorship lies at the heart of Missouri et al. v. Biden et al., a First Amendment censorship case where injunctions were issued against several federal agencies and government officials, barring them from communicating with social media companies regarding user content. The injunctions are now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Former British intelligence analyst charged with creating counter-disinformation project
The journalists wrote that while previous releases of the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” revealed “overwhelming evidence of government-sponsored censorship,” they had not revealed “where the idea for such mass censorship came from.”
The whistleblower alleged that a key figure in the CTI League, “a ‘former’ British intelligence analyst, was ‘in the room’ at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a ‘repeat of 2016.’”
By 2019, this analyst, Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp, had “developed the sweeping censorship framework,” leading a team of U.S. and U.K. “military and intelligence contractors” who “co-led CTIL.” Previously, in 2018, Terp attended a 10-day military exercise organized by the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, according to the journalists.
It was there that Terp met Pablo Breuer, a former U.S. Navy commander, who became a key figure in the CTI League. According to Wired, the two realized that misinformation “could be treated … as a cybersecurity problem.” This led to the development of CogSec, which soon housed the “MisinfoSec Working Group.”
“Terp’s plan, which she shared in presentations to information security and cybersecurity groups in 2019, was to create ‘Misinfosec communities’ that would include government,” the journalists wrote.
By spring 2020, it appears Terp achieved this plan, as the CTI League partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been implicated in prior releases of the “Twitter Files” for its role in the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
The MisinfoSec Working Group included Renee DiResta, a former CIA operative who worked for the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) — later renamed the Virality Project (VP). This group “created a censorship, influence, and anti-disinformation strategy called Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques (AMITT).”
According to the journalists, AMITT adapted “a cybersecurity framework developed by MITRE, a major defense and intelligence contractor that has an annual budget of $1 to $2 billion in government funding.” MITRE is a backer of the Vaccination Credential Initiative and the SMART Health Card — a digital “vaccine passport.”
Terp used AMITT to develop the DISARM framework, which the World Health Organization (WHO) applied in “countering anti-vaccination campaigns across Europe.”
The same framework “has been formally adopted by the European Union and the United States as part of a ‘common standard for exchanging structured threat information on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference’” according to the journalists.
‘Can we get a troll on their bums?’
According to the journalists, MisinfoSec’s motivation for counter-misinformation was the “twin political earthquakes of 2016: Brexit and the election of Trump.”
“There’s something off kilter with our information landscape,” Terp and other CTI League members wrote, according to documents.
“The usual useful idiots and fifth columnists — now augmented by automated bots, cyborgs and human trolls — are busily engineering public opinion, stoking up outrage, sowing doubt and chipping away at trust in our institutions. And now it’s our brains that are being hacked,” they added.
In spring 2020, the CTI League set its sights on COVID-19-related narratives, targeting users who engaged in messaging that ran contrary to official policy.
“CTIL began tracking and reporting disfavored content on social media, such as anti-lockdown narratives like ‘all jobs are essential,’ ‘we won’t stay home,’ and ‘open America now,’” the journalists wrote.
“CTIL created a law enforcement channel for reporting content as part of these efforts. The organization also did research on individuals posting anti-lockdown hashtags … and kept a spreadsheet with details from their Twitter bios. The group also discussed requesting ‘takedowns’ and reporting website domains to registrars,” they added.
Regarding the “we won’t stay home” narrative, internal documents revealed by the whistleblower showed that CTI League members wrote, “Do we have enough to ask for the groups and/or accounts to be taken down or at a minimum reported and checked?” and “Can we get all troll on their bums if not?”
They also called posters circulating online promoting anti-lockdown posters “disinformation artifacts,” saying, “We should have seen this one coming” and asking “can we stop the spread, do we have enough evidence to stop superspreaders, and are there other things we can do (are there countermessagers we can ping etc).”
During CTI League brainstorming sessions to develop strategies for “counter-messaging for things like encouraging people to wear masks,” statements such as “Repetition is truth” were uttered by CTI League staff, the journalists noted.
The CTI League also sought to go “beyond simply urging Twitter to slap a warning label on Tweets, or to put individuals on blacklists.”
According to the journalists, “The AMITT framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them” and “trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events.”
As part of these efforts, even truthful information was targeted. In a 2019 podcast on “Disinformation, Cognitive Security, and Influence,” Terp admitted, “Most information is actually true … but set in the wrong context.”
“You’re not trying to get people to believe lies most of the time,” she said. “Most of the time, you’re trying to change their belief sets. And in fact, really deeper than that, you’re trying to change, to shift their internal narratives … the set of stories that are your baseline for your culture.”
Previous “Twitter Files” releases have revealed that true information was targeted for censorship by the U.S. government and social media platforms like Twitter if the information contradicted official policy regarding COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions.
‘Cognitive security’ a euphemism for censorship
In the same podcast, according to the journalists, Terp said, “Cognitive security is the thing you want to have. You want to protect that cognitive layer. It basically, it’s about pollution. Misinformation, disinformation is a form of pollution across the Internet.”
The journalists wrote, “A key component of Terp’s work through CTIL, MisinfoSec, and AMITT was to insert the concept of ‘cognitive security’ into the fields of cybersecurity and information security.”
Such “cognitive security” was seen as being threatened by the erosion of the mass media’s control on information and influence over public opinion.
Documents revealed by the whistleblower included a MisinfoSec report stating “For a long time, the ability to reach mass audiences belonged to the nation-state (e.g. in the USA via broadcast licensing through ABC, CBS and NBC).”
“Now, however, control of informational instruments has been allowed to devolve to large technology companies who have been blissfully complacent and complicit in facilitating access to the public for information operators at a fraction of what it would have cost them by other means,” the report said.
The same report also called for a form of “pre-bunking,” to “preemptively inoculate a vulnerable population against messaging,” suggesting that DHS-funded Information Sharing and Analysis Centers could be used to promote such pre-bunking.
‘If we get away with it, it’s legal’
Public-private partnerships were specifically sought out in an attempt to circumvent First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S., the documents revealed, even while Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Wired wrote glowing articles portraying the CTI League as a mere group of “volunteer” cybersecurity experts.
Yet, according to the journalists, “In just one month, from mid-March to mid-April [2020], the supposedly all-volunteer CTIL had grown to ‘1,400 vetted members in 76 countries’” and had “helped to take down 2,833 cybercriminal assets on the internet” including some which impersonated government organizations, the United Nations and WHO.
On the same 2019 podcast, according to the journalists, Breuer explained how the CTI League was getting around the First Amendment, by working to get “nontraditional partners into one room,” including “maybe somebody from one of the social media companies, maybe a few special forces operators, and some folks from Department of Homeland Security.”
Together, they would “talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way so that we can collaborate better, more freely and really start to change the way that we address some of these issues,” Breuer said.
Breuer even likened these tactics to those employed by the Chinese government, saying “If you talk to the average Chinese citizen, they absolutely believe that the Great Firewall of China is not there for censorship. They believe that it’s there because the Chinese Communist Party wants to protect the citizenry and they absolutely believe that’s a good thing.”
“If the US government tried to sell that narrative, we would absolutely lose our minds and say, ‘No, no, this is a violation of our First Amendment rights.’ So, the in-group and out-group messaging have to be often different,” he said.
The whistleblower told the journalists that CTI League leaders did not discuss their potential violation of the First Amendment.
“The ethos was that if we get away with it, it’s legal, and there were no First Amendment concerns because we have a ‘public-private partnership’ — that’s the word they used to disguise those concerns. ‘Private people can do things public servants can’t do, and public servants can provide the leadership and coordination,’” the whistleblower said.
According to the journalists, the authors of the MisinfoSec report also “advocated for police, military, and intelligence involvement in censorship, across Five Eyes nations, and even suggested that Interpol should be involved.”
The CTI League documents also suggest that the organization was involved in a form of domestic spying, with one document noting that while censorship activities abroad are “typically” performed by “the CIA and NSA and the Department of Defense,” such efforts “against Americans” necessitate the use of private partners because the government lacks the “legal authority” to do so.
According to the whistleblower, CTI League members also went to great lengths to conceal their activities, with a CTI League handbook recommending the use of burner phones, online pseudonyms and the generation of fake AI faces. One document advised, “Lock your s**t down … your spy disguise.”
One suggested list of questions to be posed to prospective CTI League members proposed asking whether those individuals had ever “worked with influence operations (e.g. disinformation, hate speech, other digital harms etc) previously” and whether those efforts included “active measures” and “psyops” (psychological operations).
Indeed, according to the documents, several CTI League members had worked for the military or intelligence agencies, while according to the whistleblower, “roughly 12-20 active people involved in CTIL worked at the FBI or CISA” — even, for a time, displaying their agency seals alongside their names on the CTI League’s internal Slack channel.
Terp, for instance, previously designed machine learning algorithms and unmanned vehicle systems for the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence.
According to the whistleblower, the CTI League sought “to become part of the federal government.”
Shellenberger, Taibbi to testify before Congress this week
According to the journalists, the FBI declined to comment, while CISA, Terp and other CTI League figures did not respond to requests for comment.
However, one CTI League member, Bonnie Smalley, did respond to the journalists’ request. She wrote, verbatim, “all i can comment on is that i joined cti league which is unaffiliated with any govt orgs because i wanted to combat the inject bleach nonsense online during covid. … i can assure you that we had nothing to do with the govt though.”
“CTIL appears to have generated publicity about itself in the Spring and Fall of 2020 for the same reason EIP did: to claim later that its work was all out in the open and that anybody who suggested it was secretive was engaging in a conspiracy theory,” the journalists wrote.
“But as internal messages have revealed, much of what EIP did was secret, as well as partisan, and demanding of censorship by social media platforms, contrary to its claims,” they said, adding that “EIP and VP, ostensibly, ended, but CTIL is apparently still active, based on the LinkedIn pages of its members.”
The journalists said the documents will be presented to Congressional investigators and made public, while protecting the identity of the whistleblower.
Shellenberger and Taibbi will testify at Thursday’s hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. They previously testified before the same committee in March.
On Tuesday, Taibbi appeared in a live YouTube webcast presenting some of the key revelations from the first release of the “CTIL Files.”
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.
Ex-Soviet state summons Western envoys over funding of local media
RT | November 29, 2023
Azerbaijan has filed complaints with the US, Germany and France over the illegal funding of a local media outlet, which has published investigations into government corruption. Three of its journalists were recently arrested on accusations of currency smuggling.
On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry issued a statement saying the ambassadors of the three Western countries had been summoned to a meeting. They were informed that the AbzasMedia portal was conducting unlawful financial operations with the participation of organizations registered in those states. They were also told that their embassies were involved in such activities.
Azerbaijani legislation prohibits the allocation of funds to unregistered projects. However, according to the foreign ministry, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), FreedomNow, New Democracy Foundation, and other organizations illegally transferred funds to the country, violating the rules of grant allocation and illegally facilitating the activities of the unregistered media portal AbzasMedia.
AbzasMedia said in a statement that, several days ago, three of its journalists were arrested on charges of “currency smuggling” and sentenced to four months in custody, linking the case to its corruption investigations. The outlet also reported that, according to police, €40,000 ($44,000) in cash was found in the office, and accused officers of “deliberately putting money in the office to justify arrests.”
Last month, the government of neighboring Georgia raised the alarm over the actions of the USAID-funded Center for Applied Nonviolent Strategies (CANVAS), saying it was planning to unleash a violent color revolution. The US Embassy in Tbilisi claimed the accusations against CANVAS were “false and fundamentally mischaracterize the goals of our assistance to Georgia.”
On its website, USAID states that it is “investing in democracy work to advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world.”
USAID activities have been banned in Russia since 2012. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this decision was mostly due to the fact that the nature of the agency’s work in the country did not always comply with the stated goals, including their “attempts to influence the political process” through the distribution of grants.
It pays to be friends with Zelensky: $75m yachts reveal sudden wealth of the Ukrainian leader’s inner circle
In the Midst of Brutal War: Extravagance and Proxy Intrigues Ignite Global Outrage
By Andrei Datsyuk | The Islander | November 21, 2023
In the heart of Eastern Europe, where the tumult of war clashes with the allure of Western support, a seismic scandal unfolds, casting a long shadow over Ukraine’s leadership. President Volodymyr Zelensky, once seen as a beacon of hope against corruption, is now ensnared in a scandal involving the alleged purchase of two luxury yachts, “Lucky Me” and “My Legacy,” worth a combined $75 million. This lavish expenditure, facilitated in the opulent settings of Abu Dhabi and Antibes, starkly contrasts with Ukraine’s dire war reality and raises damning questions about the integrity and criminal liability of its leadership amidst heavy reliance on Western aid.
In a striking expose, an independent journalistic inquiry has brought to light an egregious display of opulence by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s closest associates. Boris and Serhiy Shefir, two of Zelenskyy’s confidants, have been implicated in the purchase of two ultra -luxury yachts, with a jaw-dropping combined cost of $75 million. These purchases, completed in October 2023 in Abu Dhabi and Antibes, raise severe concerns about corruption at the highest levels of Ukrainian leadership. The extravagance is particularly alarming given the context: these funds, likely derived from Western aid allocated for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, appear to have been diverted for personal luxury, highlighting a disturbing (criminal) misallocation of resources intended for the nation’s defence.
Journalist Shahzad Nasir, in a revealing video exposé, has brought to light a scandalous facet of corruption within the Ukrainian leadership at the absolute highest levels:
An explosive expose has brought to light allegations of massive corruption at the highest levels of Ukraine’s leadership
The Ukrainian leadership’s reputation has been further marred by a recent corruption scandal involving high-ranking military officials. Key army chiefs have been caught misusing US aid, intended for the nation’s defense, to indulge in extravagant purchases of luxury vehicles and properties in Spain. This egregious misuse of funds starkly contrasts with the plight of Ukrainian soldiers facing ammunition shortages on the frontlines. President Zelensky’s response, firing these officials, appears as a belated effort to address corruption. This pattern of corruption, increasingly visible to the public, points to a troubling common denominator: the Zelensky administration. This revelation challenges the integrity of Ukraine’s governance in a time of crisis, casting a shadow over Zelensky’s leadership.
The juxtaposition of Zelensky’s associates’ extravagant yacht purchases with the corruption scandal in Ukraine’s military casts a glaring light on a pattern of corruption and misallocation at the heart of the nation’s governance. Amidst the backdrop of brutal war, these revelations not only underscore a profound disconnect in Ukraine’s leadership but also hint at a systemic graft, where the nation’s resources and Western aid are diverted for personal gain at a time when national solidarity, unity and responsible leadership are desperately needed.
Boris and Serhiy Shefir, emerging from the same roots as President Zelensky, have risen to prominence and power. Born in the same city as Zelensky, Kryvyi Rih, they share a bond that transcends the professional; a camaraderie rooted in shared experiences and a collective rise to prominence through the “Kvartal-95 studio.” However, their proximity to power and recent indulgence in lavish lifestyles, amidst the grim realities of a nation ripped apart by an unnecessary war, a war provoked by Ukraine via its master in Washington, raises grave questions about corruption and misallocation within Ukraine’s elite. This ostentatious display of wealth, in stark contrast to the country’s dire needs, highlights the troubling nexus of personal enrichment and power in Ukrainian politics, where the welfare of the nation is seemingly secondary to the luxuries of the few.
Appointed as the first assistant to President Zelenskyy in 2019, Serhiy Shefir’s deeper entanglement in Zelenskyy’s covert financial dealings soon came to light. Investigative reports by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project unveiled Shefir’s pivotal role in managing Zelenskyy’s offshore network, spanning the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. This web of deceit, exposed by the Pandora’s Archives, revealed Shefir as the clandestine custodian of Zelenskyy’s wealth, executing high-value property purchases in London. Notably, Shefir acquired a lavish three-bedroom apartment on Glenworth Street and a luxurious two-bedroom flat in Chalfont Court, totaling over £3.78 million ($5.78 million). These revelations, too significant for even Kiev-aligned Ukrainian media to ignore, underscore a staggering level of corruption, implicating the highest echelons of Ukrainian leadership in a scandalous misuse of power and wealth.
Ukraine’s chronic struggle with corruption is deeply rooted in its history. The oligarchic power structures have long cast a shadow over the nation’s governance, epitomized by the infamous Burisma scandal and the contentious dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, allegedly to protect Hunter Biden. This particular episode underscores the intricate web of political power and corporate interests in Ukraine, igniting international scrutiny and raising critical questions about external influences on the country’s legal and judicial processes. These ongoing issues of systemic corruption erode both domestic confidence and international trust in Ukraine’s institutions.
The lavish lifestyles and controversial financial dealings of President Zelensky and his associates have cast a shadow over Ukraine’s already fragile trust in governance. This juxtaposition of opulent yacht purchases and unchecked personal spending amid Ukraine’s reliance on Western aid paints a grim picture of leadership. The implications of this misallocated aid extend beyond Ukraine’s borders, stirring unrest in the Middle East and spotlighting the interconnectedness of Ukraine’s internal politics with global geopolitical dynamics.
The recent shopping extravaganza by Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska in New York City amplifies concerns over the misuse of American aid. These actions not only raise questions about the ethical conduct of Ukraine’s first family but also signal the potential role of Ukrainian corruption in fuelling regional instability. This crisis transcends national boundaries, posing a significant challenge to global stability and the fight against corruption.
As Ukraine endures the horrors of war, with over half a million lives lost in an unnecessary conflict, the populace struggles for daily survival. In stark contrast, their leaders, basking in luxury, exhibit an alarming indifference. The yachts “Lucky Me” and “My Legacy” serve as a poignant emblem of this leadership’s blatant disconnect from the nation’s suffering. At this pivotal moment, Ukraine faces a crucial decision: embrace democratic ideals and tackle corruption, or persist on a path where power and luxury eclipse the urgent needs of a nation in agony. This choice will not only dictate Ukraine’s future but also mirror its dedication to the democratic principles it professes, amidst a climate of contempt and apathy from its rulers. Reports like these fuelling righteous anger don’t bode well for Zelensky as he clings to power amid swirling rumours of coups, underscoring the volatile and uncertain nature of his tenure.
Main National TV Station Pumps INSANE Propaganda
Ivor Cummins | November 20, 2023
Our National main TV station just aired an INSANE piece of WEF/UN-style propaganda – it’s a parody of itself! Nonetheless I have a great time taking it down hardcore ;-) Please share widely – you can download vid here too, to share elsewhere:
NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing, business travel and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment:
– alternatively join up with my Patreon – exclusive Vlogs/content and monthly zoom meetings with the second tier upwards:
Were covid vaccine trials misleading by design?
Data presentation was deceptive
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | November 23, 2023
In chemotherapy, the primary aim is to reduce the disease burden in patients who are already diagnosed with cancer. This is reflected in endpoints like tumour size reduction, progression-free survival, and overall survival, which are directly related to the degree of disease burden. Therefore, measuring the benefit of chemotherapy involves comparing the extent of disease burden (or its progression) at the end of the trial between those who received the chemotherapy and those who did not. This comparison provides insight into how effectively the chemotherapy mitigates the impact of the cancer.
On the other hand, vaccines are designed with the primary goal of keeping individuals healthy by preventing the onset of a specific disease. Therefore, the efficacy of vaccines is best measured by comparing the health status among participants at the end of the trial. This involves assessing how many individuals remained healthy and disease-free in the vaccinated group versus the control group. Such an approach accurately reflects the preventive nature of vaccines.
The covid vaccine trials did not focus on how many were healthy instead comparing those who developed disease. To take the Pfizer/BioNTech trial as an example, there were 8 PCR positive symptomatic people in the vaccine group and 162 in the placebo group more than a week after the second dose and after up to 2 month’s follow up. That worked out at a 94.6% efficacy when calculated as a percentage reduction.
That sounds fantastic but it is not fantastic when measured in other ways. There is more than one scenario that could result in a claim of a 94.6% relative risk reduction as shown in the table. The alternative ways of measuring show the relative change in the percentage who remained healthy and the absolute change – i.e. the percentage of the population who benefitted.
In a hypothetical trial in which 94% of the placebo group developed a disease while only 5% of the treatment group did would also have a 95% efficacy as calculated the conventional way. However, these results have a totally different meaning to a patient. In this scenario 93.7% of the individuals who received the treatment directly benefited. Furthermore there was a marked change, 91.0% in the proportion who remained healthy.
Adjusting the percentages affected shows numerous situations in which the Relative Risk Reduction as conventionally calculated are identical but the Relative Risk Reduction in the proportion remaining healthy and the proportion who directly benefited tell a very different story. The last row are the actual results.
For the first two scenarios the people taking the treatment are more likely to directly benefit than not. For scenarios 3 and 4 there is still a high possibility of direct benefit. However, for the last two scenarios the chances of not directly benefiting are far higher than the chance of benefitting. It is possible in these scenarios that a longer follow up would improve the situation as more people would develop disease or be protected from it. However, the evidence of waning means that the time frame of follow up is close to the maximum possible period of benefit anyway.The important lesson here is that looking at the relative risk reduction as presented in the trials on its own is a meaningless measure. That is why the industry’s own code of practice says, “Referring only to relative risk, especially with regard to risk reduction, can make a medicine appear more effective than it actually is. In order to assess the clinical impact of an outcome, the reader also needs to know the absolute risk involved. In that regard, relative risk should never be referred to without also referring to the absolute risk.” The efficacy claims, even if we trust the results, were presented to the public in a way that could be deliberately misinterpreted.
Pfizer, Moderna Spend Millions on Ads Featuring Catchy Phrases and Celebrities to Push COVID Shots
By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | November 22, 2023
Facing dramatic stock market declines and growing resistance to their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna are running upbeat TV commercials with jingles and celebrities to push COVID-19 vaccination just in time for the holidays.
The 30-second Pfizer commercial features a cheery, driving tune and smiling celebrities Martha Stewart, singer-songwriter John Legend, professional soccer player and progressive activist Megan Rapinoe, singer-songwriter Charlie Puth and football star Travis Kelce.
All but Rapinoe flash Pfizer’s trademark blue band-aids on a shoulder showing they got Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot.
“Got it,” Stewart says, as the Pfizer ad copy reads, “This season’s updated COVID-19 shots are here,” and “Ask your healthcare provider if getting your COVID shot with your flu shot is right for you.”
“Got yours?” is the Pfizer tagline.
Moderna’s 60-second TV spot wants its audience to “Spikevax that body.”
Spikevax is the brand name of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. It refers to the artificial spike protein the vaccine is designed to stimulate in the body to allegedly trigger protective antibodies to the virus.
The commercial opens with an older man playing table tennis accompanied by a narrator, who says, “When it comes to your health … you ping and pong that body.”
The spot proceeds through a variety of ordinary people practicing their passions, including a woman blending a vegetable shake (“you green that body”), a man plunging into an ice bucket (“you plunge that body”), and a man and woman playing chess (“you brainpower that body).”
It concludes with, “You flu shot that body, and now, you Spikevax that body. Because even though the pandemic is over, COVID-19 isn’t.”
The pharmaceutical trade press portrayed the ads as an attempt by Pfizer and Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccines were injected into more than 5 billion people worldwide during the pandemic, to reverse dramatic losses in their stock prices in recent weeks.
“With hardly any Americans signing up to receive the updated COVID-19 shot, Pfizer is pulling out all the stops to increase uptake,” said Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Mercola reported that Pfizer paid Kansas City Chiefs tight end Kelce an outsized $20 million to promote the drugmaker’s COVID-19 shots, compared to his $5 million-per-year total endorsements from McDonald’s, Papa John’s, Walgreens, Nike and Tide, and was trying to capitalize on the football star’s recent surge in popularity as he dates pop star Taylor Swift.
Other medical trade journals debated whether celebrity endorsements like Kelce’s will actually help or hurt Pfizer’s sales and stock price.
Critic: COVID shot ads don’t meet FDA requirements for biologic side effects
But doctors and scientists interviewed by The Defender were appalled that Pfizer and Moderna, and the governments and media that support them, would continue to push the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines blamed for more than 36,000 deaths reported to the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
A large Canadian study of 17 countries estimated the COVID-19 vaccines killed approximately 17 million people around the world.
Dr. Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist and author with his wife Ginger of “COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey,” said the Pfizer and Moderna commercials draw the audience into “a never-never land of fakers.”
“This is a combination of extreme fraud and sham,” Breggin told The Defender. “We now know from multiple scientific studies that there was a broad panoply of adverse effects to the vaccines as there are with some very potent drugs. That resulted in death in some people, and with more reports to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] of deaths than all the other vaccines in the world combined.”
Breggin, a frequent expert witness in pharmaceutical cases involving dangerous drugs and co-author of the bestseller “Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Today’s Most Controversial Drug,” said the Moderna ad makes a passing reference to possible myocarditis side effects while the Pfizer spot names no possible dangers at all.
“They’re not like ordinary drug commercials,” he said, adding that neither meets the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirement for describing biologic side effects.
Pfizer outspent competitors on digital, TV ads for COVID shots
Big Pharma advertising is big business in the U.S., the only country in the world with the exception of New Zealand that allows direct pharmaceutical advertising to consumers.
Spending on the marketing of prescription drugs, health services, laboratory tests and disease awareness grew from $17.7 billion in 1997 to $29.9 billion in 2016, with the largest increases coming in direct-to-consumer spending, which nearly tripled to 32% of all medical marketing spending.
Between Jan. 1 and May 6, 2021, Pfizer spent $21.5 million on digital advertising alone to push its COVID-19 vaccine, while Johnson & Johnson spent $29.1 million marketing its COVID-19 vaccine.
Big Pharma TV ad spending grew 8% in 2022, reaching a total of $4.05 billion. Much of that was “COVID vaccine-related television commercials” with “companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech” spending “large amounts of TV dollars on campaigns highlighting ‘getting back to normal,’ featuring loved ones reuniting after years apart,” according to Fierce Pharma.
Pfizer was the biggest drug-ad spender at this year’s Oscars, shelling out an estimated $5.7 million for the most expensive spot in the televised event on its new COVID-19 drug ad: “If it’s COVID, it’s Paxlovid.”
Pfizer also aired the second-most-expensive TV ad at the Oscars, spending an estimated $3.8 million on another COVID-19 ad using “star power to emphasize risk factors and COVID-19 in [its] latest vaccine ad push” featuring celebrities including Pink, Questlove, Michael Phelps and Jean Smart.
The fourth-biggest advertising spender at the Oscars was the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which spent an estimated $1.9 million on a 30-second “awareness ad” with no pharma company mentioned “to get people to consider getting the latest COVID boosters amid ‘fading protection.’”
Despite nearly around-the-clock media reports and advertising by Big Pharma and governments urging people to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine and boosters, Pfizer’s September 2023 rollout of its updated 2023-24 COVID-19 shot suffered “abysmal” uptake, with only 7.1% of adults and 2.1% of children receiving the updated COVID-19 shot as of Oct. 14, according to Mercola.
Dr. Pierre Kory was encouraged that vast numbers of Americans, a majority of whom took the experimental mRNA COVID-19 shots during the pandemic, are waking up to the fact the mRNA technology is dangerous and its risk-reward benefit presents potentially frightening risk with little or no benefit, especially for children.
“It appears to me that pharma companies are now desperately marketing the vaccines to consumers via TV ads,” he said. “It looks like their previously winning strategy of fear-mongering via public health agency proclamations and widespread news media behavioral psychology ‘nudging’ tactics is now failing.”
Mike Capuzzo is the managing editor of The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.
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.
Pfizer Sues Poland, Demanding Money for Undelivered and Unwanted COVID Vaccines.
BY IGOR CHUDOV | NOVEMBER 24, 2023
After achieving a modest 57% COVID vaccination rate and seeing the vaccines not live up to the promise, Poles refused additional Pfizer COVID vaccine doses around April 2022.
“At the end of last week, we used the force majeure clause and informed both the European Commission and the main vaccine producer that we are refusing to take these vaccines at the moment and we are also refusing to pay,” health minister Adam Niedzielski told private broadcaster TVN24.
“Indeed, the consequence of this will be a legal conflict, which is already taking place,” he said.
Poland cannot directly terminate the contract for the supply of vaccines as the parties to the contracts are the European Commission and manufacturers, he said.
The value of the contract for vaccine supplies to Poland up to the end of 2023 with one producer alone was worth over 6 billion zlotys ($1.4 billion), with over 2 billion zlotys of that for supply in 2022.
Pfizer said its agreement over the supply of its COVID-19 vaccine to European Union member states was with the EU Commission.
“Our discussions with Governments and the details of vaccine deliveries are confidential,” it added.
Somehow, Poland is a party to the EU/Pfizer contract that was kept confidential from the country but still obligates it to pay.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and EU’s Ursula von der Leyen negotiated the contract in secret. (see picture below)
Anyway, now in 2023, Pfizer filed a suit, suing Poland for the monies due under the contract that was confidential and unavailable for Poland to even look at.
How a party can be obligated to pay under a contract that could not ever be assented to due to secrecy is a mystery to me, but I guess the legal minds in Europe see it differently.
Pfizer is suing in Brussels because Polish courts cannot see the contract and are unlikely to be very receptive to enforcing a contract that the court can review.
According to Polish newspaper Gazeta Prawa, Pfizer brought the civil case before a Brussels court because the doses were purchased through EU joint procurement contracts, drawn up under Belgian law.
Can Poland, perhaps, bring forth some novel defenses?
Perhaps Poland can ask Pfizer to comment on the dramatic fall in fertility that Poland is experiencing.
Poland may ask its local courts to make Pfizer compensate Polish COVID vaccine victims. (fortunately, there are fewer of them compared to the vax-crazy countries).
Pictures of some of the Polish victims of Covid vaccines, beautiful healthy humans who never needed the “vaccine” and yet died from it, are displayed by their bereaved relatives:
ht tps://twitter.com/DominateREALITY/ status/1488214087259459584/photo/3
Can Pfizer explain, for example, why Sweden’s deaths continued to go up as the country was vaccinated, while Poland’s deaths went down after Poland refused COVID vaccines?
I am not an international lawyer, and I do not specialize in the enforceability of secret contracts that cannot even be seen by the parties which they obligate.
But I expect that Pfizer will lose.
How the Democratic Party Faked an American Insurrection
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 23, 2023
Last week, more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 Capitol Police security footage was released in the public domain that once and for all blew a hole in the pro-Trump ‘violent insurrection’ narrative so dear to the Democrats.
The one question on countless Americans’ minds following the release of the damning videos was: will all those men and women recently locked away as political prisoners for dozens of decades get another day in court? Indeed, January 6 may have been a lot of things to many people, but another Boston Tea Party it most definitely was not.
Social media was alight over the weekend showing one benign scene after another of the ‘insurrectionists’ casually strolling through the Capitol Building premises, exchanging pleasantries with the on-duty police officers, even giving each other fist-bumps.
The revelations of the true nature of the event came to light as newly appointed House Speaker Mike Johnson released the security footage, which came as a political manna from heaven for former president Donald Trump and other members of the Republican Party.
“Truth and transparency are critical,” Johnson said in a prepared statement. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”
Democrats, however, who have milked the ‘insurrectionist’ narrative for everything it is worth, predictably chafed at the release, calling it a ‘risk to national security.’
“It is unconscionable that one of Speaker Johnson’s first official acts as steward of the institution is to endanger his colleagues, staff, visitors, and our country by allowing virtually unfettered access to sensitive Capitol security footage,” said New York Democrat Rep. Joseph Morelle, who sits on the Committee on House Administration. “That he is doing so over the strenuous objections of the security professionals within the Capitol Police is outrageous. This is not transparency; this is dangerous and irresponsible.”
For almost two years, Democrats, who managed to cherry-pick the most suggestive scenes of the footage, portrayed January 6th as everything from another September 11 to a second Pear Harbor.
Last year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the photogenic member of the Democrat’s radical progressive wing, was shown visibly upset after having to “relive” the events of the Capitol riot.
“I am so angry. Having to relive that footage,” she sobbed, rubbing her forehead. “I know it’s not just me. This is everyone.”
“These attacks killed people, traumatized people and for any of you right-winger Trump loyalists, he sent his own people to jail, and promised his own people that he would pardon them.”
The inconvenient truth, however, is that only one person was killed on the day of the Capitol riot – unarmed Air Force veteran and avid Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer.
Now, Republicans are demanding justice be served and that the incarcerated protesters be immediately set free.
“And just like that the J6 Committee’s violent insurrection narrative has crumbled,” said conservative commentator Charlie Kirk over X (formerly Twitter). “The Capitol Police facilitated the protesters passage through the building…the vast majority of J6ers should be immediately released.”
However, with the Democrats still in control of Washington, D.C., together with the FBI, the Justice Department and other administrative offices, the Republicans will have to wait until November 4th – and possibly longer if they lose their White House bid – before any real justice is meted out.
Meanwhile, federal officials have said there is no evidence that law enforcement officials helped coordinate the attacks.
“If you are asking whether the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents the answer is emphatically no,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) during a House Committee hearing. Higgins was questioning Wray about two Greyhound buses he said dropped off FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6, referring to the vehicles as “ghost buses.”
Whatever the case may be, the fresh revelations were a silver lining in a shitstorm that has been following Donald Trump, who hopes to win back the White House next November despite multiple legal woes.
“Congratulations to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for having the Courage and Fortitude to release all of the J6 Tapes, which will explicitly reveal what really happened on January 6th!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
Texas Sues Pfizer for ‘Endangering Children’ by Selling Ineffective ADHD Drug
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 22, 2023
Acting on behalf of the state of Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday unsealed a lawsuit against Pfizer and its drug manufacturer, Tris Pharma, alleging the companies sold medication to children even though they knew the drug was ineffective and potentially unsafe.
The suit, filed in the Harrison County District Court, alleges Pfizer knowingly distributed a drug used for treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to children on Medicaid — despite the drug’s pattern of failing quality control tests.
The drug, Quillivant XR, is a stimulant that affects brain and nerve chemicals involved in hyperactivity and impulse control.
From 2012-2018, “Pfizer and Tris continually manipulated Quillivant testing to hide poor manufacturing practices and defraud the Texas Medicaid program,” according to a press release.
During those years, many families complained that the medication failed to work. According to the complaint:
“At no point did Defendants warn Texas Medicaid providers or decision-makers that Quillivant had known manufacturing issues affecting its efficacy, thereby depriving the Medicaid program of the crucial information it relies on. … As a result, thousands of Texas children received an adulterated Schedule II Controlled Dangerous Substance.”
In a tweet, Paxton said:
Commenting on the lawsuit, Kim Mack Rosenberg, acting general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said, “Pfizer once again is in the spotlight for alleged unethical and fraudulent activity.”
Rosenberg told The Defender :
“I applaud the Texas AG for taking action here to protect some of Texas’s most vulnerable children, those who rely on Medicaid for healthcare. To knowingly supply adulterated medication to vulnerable children is inexplicable and unconscionable.”
“Unfortunately,” Rosenberg added, “this is not the first time questions have been raised about Pfizer’s conduct, including wrongdoing allegedly resulting in children dying in clinical trials in Nigeria in the 1990s and serious questions about Pfizer’s COVID-19 injections and its treatment medication Paxlovid.”
Defendants in the suit include Pfizer, Tris and Tris CEO Ketan Mehta.
The lawsuit stemmed from a whistleblower complaint made by Tarik Ahmed, who served as Tris’ technology chief from 2013-2017.
The lawyers are suing for more than $1 million, including civil penalty fees, and are asking the court to force Pfizer and Tris to pay back to the state of Texas all profits received from selling Quillivant in the Texas Medicaid program “as a result of Defendants’ unlawful acts” and, additionally, to pay back double that amount.
Lawyers with Paxton’s office requested a trial by jury.
In 2017, Quillivant grossed roughly $193.3 million in U.S. sales. The drug was developed by NextWave Pharmaceuticals, which Pfizer bought in 2012 for $680 million.
The lawyers charged the defendants with defrauding the Texas Medicaid program “by providing adulterated pharmaceutical drugs to Texas children in violation of the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act, now known as the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act (‘THFPA’).”
The press release said, “For years, Tris altered the drug’s testing method in violation of federal and state laws to ensure Quillivant passed regulatory hurdles and could continue to be sold.”
According to Reuters, Pfizer said in a statement that it had examined the suit’s allegations on “multiple occasions” and “did not find any impact on the safety of the product.”
Pfizer said the case has no merit and will move to dismiss it.
A Tris spokesperson told Reuters in an email, “We categorically deny and intend to rigorously defend these allegations in the court of law.”
Drug failed quality control tests for years
Almost immediately after getting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, Quillivant began failing routine quality tests. According to the complaint:
“Beginning at least as early as October 2012, Tris quality control personnel observed that sample of Quillivant tested under FDA-required dissolution specifications were not generating passing results.
“Dissolution testing is an important quality control tool used to measure whether a drug was properly manufactured, by comparing a simulated release of the drug to a standard set upon the drug’s initial approval.
“This in turn helps to predict whether the drug (as manufactured) will be released as expected in a patient’s body — which is critical for ensuring proper and consistent patient dosing.”
The Quillivant samples formed lumps during the reconstitution phase of the test.
Instead of investigating why there were lumps, Tris “retrained” its analysts to shake the water/drug mixture longer and to conduct the test only when “foaming is absent from the suspension,” the filing said.
Even with these changes, Quillivant continued to fail dissolution tests. Tris then stopped using that testing method and switched to a new method.
“Alarmingly,” the filing said, “the new test method was not representative of real-world usage by patients, and worse, went against the pharmacy reconstitution instructions contained in the FDA-approved label for Quillivant.”
When quality control issues continued to arise, the companies told the FDA a “misleading” and “convenient narrative to explain away the problem.”
Pfizer wanted to ‘fully exploit the economic potential of Texas Medicaid’
Meanwhile, Pfizer was petitioning Texas Medicaid to get Quillivant added to the program’s preferred drug list — but said nothing about the drug’s ongoing and unresolved quality control issues.
The FDA on March 26, 2018, sent a warning letter to Pfizer, informing the company that Quillivant was “adulterated starting in 2012 and continuing into 2018.”
Yet “even after receiving this clear and unequivocal assessment, neither Tris nor Pfizer alerted Texas Medicaid decision-makers to the FDA’s serious findings,” the filing said.
The suit alleges that the companies avoided telling Texas Medicaid about the issues because “Quillivant’s status with Texas Medicaid became a selling point.” The filing said:
“Tris and Pfizer both recognized that Texas Medicaid business would be crucial for Quillivant’s success.
“To fully exploit the economic potential of Texas Medicaid, Defendants needed Medicaid decision-makers to add Quillivant to the VDP [Vendor Drug Program] Formulary and the Preferred Drug List.
“These steps would effectively allow Medicaid providers to prescribe Quillivant to their Medicaid patients and would streamline the prescribing process by eliminating the need for the treating doctor to go through the burdensome process of obtaining prior authorization.”
Pfizer projected that Quillivant sales in Texas would significantly increase if the drug were added to the Texas Medicaid Preferred Drug List, as Texas was a “populous state with a disproportionately high percentage of children covered by Medicaid,” according to the complaint.
The Civil Medicaid Fraud Division of Paxton’s office undertook the investigation.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.
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.
Turkey’s intelligence organization foils Mossad attempt to kidnap Palestinian Iron Dome hacker
A view of the headquarters of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) in the capital Ankara on January 5, 2020.
Press TV -November 22, 2023
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has rescued a renowned Palestinian hacker from the Israeli Mossad spy agency seeking to kidnap or possibly kill him.
MIT rescued Omar A, who was behind the disruption of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system in 2015 and 2016, in an international operation and offered him protection as he was targeted by Mossad in Turkey and Malaysia.
The young Gazan hacker was sought by the Israeli regime for a long time after his hacking of the Iron Dome helped al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, launch missile strikes against Israel at the time.
Omar, a computer programming graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza, moved to Istanbul in 2020 after Mossad identified him as the one behind the disruptions. MIT was aware of his residence in Turkey due to his background as a hacker.
In an attempt to deceive him, Mossad offered him jobs at software companies several times but Omar, suspicious of Israel’s involvement, rejected the offers.
Omar was about to accept to join a team for an online project in June 2022 and to travel abroad for the project as Mossad was intent on taking him to Tel Aviv for interrogation. But MIT contacted him and warned him against the scheme.
The Palestinian hacker decided to take a vacation in Malaysia in September 2022. The Istanbul branch of MIT’s counter-intelligence department intervened again and installed tracking software on his cellphone after warning him against a possible abduction while abroad.
Indeed, he was kidnapped days later in Kuala Lumpur and was taken to a remote cabin some 50 kilometers (31.06 miles) from the Malaysian capital.
There, he was interrogated and tortured by suspects working for Mossad and was questioned on the methods he employed to infiltrate Iron Dome.
When MIT became aware of the abduction, Turkish officials contacted Malaysian authorities and through tracking software, helped them pinpoint the location where Omar was held.
Malaysian security forces raided the house and rescued Omar. Eleven suspects were arrested in connection with his abduction. Omar returned to Turkey and was taken to a safe house provided by MIT.
Turkey’s MIT has earlier uncovered similar Mossad plots to spy on Palestinians in the country.
Back in July, Turkish authorities said they had uncovered and disrupted a vast “ghost” Mossad spy network centered in Istanbul, following months of surveillance.
The substantial efforts by Turkey’s MIT exposed 56 operatives allegedly spying on non-Turkish citizens in Turkey in the service of Mossad.
The vast network consisted of citizens from various West Asian countries.
The findings by MIT revealed that the Mossad agents would gather information about foreigners through various surveillance methods, vehicle movements using GPS, and hacking into password-protected networks using Wi-Fi and location tracking devices.
These Mossad spies also used several fake websites in multiple languages, mainly Arabic, to secure technical locations and real IP addresses of the targeted individuals.
Also in May, Turkish media outlets reported that local authorities had managed to arrest 11 people accused of being part of a Mossad-led network.
Turkey has also broken Mossad-aligned spy rings in 2022 and 2021.
Mysterious military flights between Israel, Lebanon continue
The Cradle | November 21, 2023
Mysterious foreign military cargo flights, potentially carrying equipment for use against Hezbollah, continue to land at the Beirut and Hamat airports, Al-Akhbar reported on 21 November.
Between the 14 and 20 November, nine planes from various NATO countries were recorded landing at Beirut and Hamat airports, including several flying from Tel Aviv, according to Intelsky, a website monitoring aircraft movement in the region.
Sources speaking with Al-Akhbar said the cargo included devices used for jamming, which raises questions about the reason for their transport to Lebanon and whether they will be used to disrupt the communications network of Hezbollah in the event of an escalation of the fighting with Israel in Lebanon’s south.
Since the 7 October Hamas attack on settlements surrounding Gaza, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 more taken captive, Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in deadly tit-for-tat clashes on the Lebanese-Israel border area.
Hezbollah’s communication network played a key role during the July 2006 war against Israel, which later led to US pressure on the government of then-Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to call for dismantling the resistance group’s communications network in 2008.
The same sources speaking with Al-Akhbar confirmed that the security authorities at Beirut and Hamat airports do not seriously inspect the cargo of the planes that land, with Hamat Air Base lacking even a scanning device. The final destination of the cargo in Lebanon is also unknown.
Intelsky reported that the movement of foreign military aircraft is proceeding at a level that Lebanon had not witnessed in years. Between 8 October and 10 November, 32 planes landed, nine of which belonged to the US, Dutch, and British Air Forces and landed at the Hamat base, and 23 planes belonging to the US, French, Dutch, Spanish, Canadian, Italian, and Saudi armies landed at the base designated for military and diplomatic aircraft on the west side of Beirut Airport.
Although Lebanese law prohibits direct flights between Lebanon and Israel, Intelsky monitored three planes landing at Beirut Airport originating in Tel Aviv.
A British Royal Air Force Airbus A400M Atlas landed in Beirut on 14 November, coming from Tel Aviv. The plane carried out a “touch and go” operation (touching the runway and taking off directly without stopping) at a British military base in Cyprus to technically comply with Lebanese law banning direct flights from Israel.
After taking off from Beirut, the plane returned to Tel Aviv after carrying out another touch-and-go operation at the British base in Akrotiri, Cyprus.
On 16 November, a US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III also flew from Tel Aviv to Beirut. The Intelsky website recorded that the plane allegedly landed in Cyprus as well but disappeared from radars before landing and reappeared after the supposed take-off. The plane was absent from radars over Larnaca for 4 minutes at an altitude of 1,264 meters, suggesting it did not land in Cyprus.
On 21 November, a British Royal Air Force (Airbus A400M Atlas landed in Beirut after making only a camouflaged landing in Akrotiri, at an altitude of only 375 meters above the base, which means that the flight violated Lebanese law and was in effect a direct flight from Tel Aviv to Beirut.
It should be noted that daily flights between the Akrotiri base and Tel Aviv have been recorded since the outbreak of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on 7 October.
Al-Akhbar notes these flights raise suspicions about whether these trips are part of a broader strategy related to the conflict with Israel and may be intended to enhance the military capabilities of some parties in the region working on behalf of Israel and NATO, or to provide them with logistical support that includes transporting necessary equipment and supplies.
The Israeli army has not commented on the flight, except for a statement issued on 10 November confirming that “part of the air traffic at the airport is a routine movement to transfer military aid to the Lebanese army.”
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The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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