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U.S. Lawyers Reiterate Claim Ivermectin was never prohibited for treating COVID-19

Attorneys restate claim that FDA merely advised doctors against IVM for dying patients, but did NOT prohibit it.

BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | AUGUST 14, 2023

Last November, I wrote the following post:

The Epoch Times recently reported an astonishing statement by a U.S. government lawyer in a federal court in Texas, where the FDA is being sued by Dr. Paul Marik of Virginia, Dr. Mary Bowden of Texas, and Dr. Robert Apter of Arizona. The three plaintiffs claim the FDA illegally prohibited them from prescribing the drug to their patients. At a November 1 hearing, U.S. lawyer Isaac Belfer argued for the defendant:

The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin.”

If Belfer’s assertion is true, it raises a very urgent question: On what legal grounds did hospitals all over the United States refuse to administer ivermectin to severely ill COVID-19 patients, even when patients and their family members begged for the drug to be administered?

If ivermectin was not prohibited by the FDA or any other U.S. medical authority for treating COVID-19, why did Dr. Paul Marik’s hospital prohibit him from administering the drug to his dying patients? Why was Dr. Mary Bowden reported to the Texas Medical Board for disciplinary action when she prescribed it? Why did many pharmacists fear losing their licenses if they filled ivermectin prescriptions for treating COVID-19?

In our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Dr. McCullough and I document numerous instances of hospitals flatly refusing to grant the wishes of dying patients and their family members for ivermectin.

All these patients asked for was to be allowed to try the drug (FDA-approved for River Blindness, Elephantiasis, and Scabies) for COVID-19. The patients and their kin gladly indemnified the hospitals and arranged to have their independent primary care doctors deliver and administer the drug. Nevertheless:

  • Hospital administrators absolutely refused to grant this wish.
  • Hospital attorneys fought tooth and nail against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, doing everything in their power to challenge patient lawsuits and appeal court orders to administer the drug.
  • Even when hospital doctors acknowledged that the patients were dying, they insisted it was better to let the disease take its natural course rather than allow patients to try ivermectin.
  • Even when patients’ families succeeded in getting a court orders to administer the drug, many hospitals still refused, even at the risk of being held in contempt of court.

Several readers have told us that our chapters covering this shameful scandal— Chapters 38: Begging for the Wonder Drug and Chapter 40: Graduating into Eternity—are horrifying beyond belief.

Now we hear U.S. government lawyers arguing in court that the FDA never prohibited using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, but merely recommended not using it. This indicates that hospitals had no legal grounds for denying sick patients a drug that could have helped them. How is withholding medicine from a sick man any different from withholding a life ring from a man who has fallen overboard in high seas?

For families who watched their loved ones slip away after being denied the right to try ivermectin, U.S. attorney Isaac Belfer’s statement may be interpreted as declaring open season for lawsuits against hospital administrators and doctors.

After I wrote the above post, I exchanged an e-mail with Dr. Marik in which he expressed profound discouragement about U.S. Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown’s granting of the government’s Motion to Dismiss the case on the grounds of sovereign immunity.

Nevertheless, Dr. Marik and his co-plaintiffs, Robert L. Apter and Mary Talley Bowden, appealed the dismissal and are now being heard before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Once again, attorneys for the U.S. government are in the hot seat about their mendacious claims about the FDA’s directive to doctors and hospitals against prescribing or administering Ivermectin, either to outpatients or to patients dying in hospital.

Instead of acknowledging the obvious reality that the FDA did indeed DIRECT doctors and hospitals against administering Ivermectin, U.S. attorneys continue to insist that the FDA’s communiques were mere advice.

This preposterous argument not only overlooks the plain language of the FDA’s communiques, it also overlooks the salient fact that numerous doctors (like Paul Marik) were fired from their jobs for administering ivermectin to their dying patients, and the fact that many State Medical Boards revoked doctors’ licenses for doing the same. If these punitive actions taken against doctors were NOT based on the FDA’s directives, on what grounds were they taken?

As was just reported by Just the News columnist Greg Piper:

The 5th Circuit panel seemed skeptical of Civil Division Appellate Attorney Ashley Honold’s argument that the FDA’s “informational statements” against ivermectin, including its conflation of human and animal dosages, were “merely quips” about reported problems after “self-medicating” rather than “prohibit[ing] anyone” from using ivermectin.

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod cited the phrase “Stop it” in the agency’s viral “You are not a horse” post on X, then known as Twitter. “If you were in English class, they would say that was a command. … That is different than ‘we’re providing helpful information,'” she told Honold.

Readers of this Substack will probably agree with my sentiment that enough is enough of lying and obfuscating U.S. government agency officials and their mercenary lawyers. It’s time for the grown-up, reasonable citizenry of this country to join Marik, Bowden, et al. in suing the pants off the FDA and other U.S. agencies against whom there is a preponderance of evidence that they have unlawfully interfered with the doctor-patient relationship and committed negligent homicide, fraud, and concealment.

Cry havoc and let slip the plaintiffs’ attorneys! Sue the FDA; sue doctors and hospital administrators; and sue the medical boards. Let them pay for the damages they have inflicted on the families of patients who were denied ivermectin until their last breaths. Let them pay for the massive damage and distress they have caused for courageous doctors like Paul Marik and his colleagues who tried to help their patients.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

First ‘confirmed’ cases in America were on U.S. aircraft carrier …

Or this should have been the obvious conclusion from a strangely-ignored antibody study

The USS Theodore Roosevelt left San Diego on January 17, 2020. Some sailors had shore leave at a port of call in Vietnam March 5-9. There seems to have been little interest in the question of how crew members were first infected or when “case zero” on the ship experienced symptoms. In a future article, I’ll point out that an “outbreak of norovirus” occurred on the ship Feb. 2-22. Only 382 of the ship’s 4,800 crew members “voluntarily” participated in the antibody study. At one time, officials said at least 1,000 crew members would participate in the antibody study.
BY BILL RICE, JR. | AUGUST 14, 2023

For a few weeks in early spring 2020, the drama of an outbreak of COVID-19 on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was world news.

Inexplicably, however, journalists and Covid researchers missed or ignored several blockbuster findings that could re-write key (and, I believe, false) narratives about this novel virus. In this author’s opinion, this possibly represents an intentional disinformation campaign perpetrated by “trusted” Naval and public health officials.

A later antibody study of a sample of the ship’s crew members produced several eye-opening findings. In my view, two findings qualify as particularly significant:

Information contained in the study strongly suggests that at least two crew members (and most likely several other crew members) had already been infected with the novel coronavirus when the ship sailed from San Diego on January 17, 2020.

The date is significant as this would be three days before the CDC reported the first “confirmed” Covid case in America. (This case was “confirmed” on January 20, 2020 but the PCR sample was taken on January 18.)

Language in the Roosevelt study definitely “confirms” that at least two sailors, both of whom later tested positive for antibodies, experienced Covid symptoms between Jan. 12-17, 2020. 

For more than three years, “official” Covid histories state the first “confirmed” case in America was a man from Washington who’d recently returned from Wuhan, China.  As developed below, crew members of the USS Roosevelt could, in fact, be listed as “confirmed” cases and by themselves debunk the narrative that America’s first cases came from travelers returning from Wuhan.

The same antibody results suggest that at least 59.7 percent of the ship’s approximately 4,800 crew members had already been infected by mid to late April 2020. This means approximately 3,000 crew members had contracted the virus by this date.

Sadly, Aviation Ordnanceman Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., 41, passed away on April 13, 2020 reportedly from complications of Covid. Officer Thacker tested positive for Covid March 30th and was in isolation in housing on Guam when he was found unresponsive April 9th. According to published reports, Thacker was receiving twice-a-day medical evaluations. He had gone to the Naval hospital in Guam on April 4th, but had been discharged back to his isolation quarters. It’s unclear how his medical condition deteriorated so rapidly without anyone knowing. It’s also unclear if he was staying by himself  or with other sailors in isolation. I hope CDC and Navy officials can provide more details in a future interview, which I’ve requested. According to antibody and PCR test results, approximately 3,000 Roosevelt crew members were infected by Covid and Thacker was the only death. As of April 16, six of 4,800 crew members were hospitalized. Many sailors who were hospitalized seemed to have been hospitalized as a precaution, according to various press reports.

According to news reports, only one crew member, age 41, died from “complications of Covid.” (A future article will provide details that make me think the public hasn’t learned the full story of the death of Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr.).

As the vast majority of Roosevelt crew members were under the age of 40, this one death reveals that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for crew members under age 41 was 0.0000 percent. 

In my opinion, the second big headline from this antibody study should have been: “Covid poses virtually no mortality risk to anyone middle age or younger … even in the worst and most intense spread environments.”

Instead, the prevailing narrative remained that Covid was a serious threat to “everyone” in the world, even though lessons from the Roosevelt proved this was not the case.

Two other naval vessels had ‘outbreaks’ where antibody tests

The above finding was further reinforced by two other “outbreaks” on military vessels from approximately the same time period.

Sixty percent of crew members on the French air craft carrier The Charles De Gaulle tested positive for antibodies after an outbreak said to have begun in March 2020. 

According to this chart, 74.75 percent of crew members of this French aircraft carrier either had “confirmed” or “suspected” cases of Covid (60 percent of de Gaulle crew members tested positive for antibodies, the same percentage as the Roosevelt study)

None of the 1,739 sailors on the de Gaulle died. Also, an outbreak that infected at least 41 percent of the 333 crew members on the  guided missile destroyer USS Kidd resulted in no deaths.

This means that Covid outbreaks that spread through three military ships between January – April 2020 – potentially affecting almost 7,000 Navy personnel – resulted in only one (presumed) Covid death.

According to results of antibody and PCR tests administered to crew members of these three Naval vessels, a total of 4,408  sailors were either “confirmed” or “probable/suspect” Covid cases.

As only one crew member died from Covid, the Infection Fatality Rate was 0.022 percent – which is significantly lower than the infection fatality rate for influenza (which is often reported as 0.1 percent).

Most news reports in the early months of the official pandemic said the IFR from Covid was between 1 and 4 percent, meaning that at least 1 in 100 people infected with this virus would later die from complications caused by this new and contagious virus.

However, among Naval personnel believed to have contracted this virus while serving on these three vessels, only 1 of 4,408 likely-infected sailors died from Covid.

Expressed as a fraction, the IFR for flu (0.1 percent) corresponds to 1 death in 1,000 flu cases. From this statistic, one could state that influenza is at least four times more deadly than Covid … at least among healthy young and middle-aged sailors.

It should also be emphasized that sailors on all three vessels lived with the virus in extremely-cramped quarters with the virus circulating for weeks or months. In other words, it’s hard to produce a more virulent environment for virus spread.

In the opinion of this journalist, neither of these two findings have received the attention they warrant. Study findings which should have been Page-1 news around the world have barely been cited by researchers, with most members of the public probably unaware of these two narrative-shifting findings.

See top graph … Figure 3 from the Roosevelt antibody study presents information on the number of sailors who tested positive for antibodies between April 20-24. The two cases on the far right would pre-date the fist confirmed Covid case in America. At least six antibody-positive crew members had symptoms before the ship’s port-of-call in Vietnam (March 5-9, 2020). The study does not address how these sailors – isolated and confined to the ship for many weeks – contracted the virus. Note also that most of the antibody positive sailors either did not test positive with a PCR test or had yet to receive a PCR test, which begs the questions of how and when these crew members contracted the virus their positive antibody tests say they’d definitely contracted. None of the positive sailors were interviewed by CDC or Navy officials.

Roosevelt Antibody Study key findings …

On April 20-24, 382 Roosevelt crew members “voluntarily” donated blood for antibody tests. (Positive results on an antibody tests show/suggest “prior infection.”)

Quick Comments: 

  • 382 crew members is only 7.9 percent of the crew of approximately 4,800. 
  • Earlier reports said the Navy and CDC were going to test at least 1,000 crew members for antibodies. I’ve never learned why the study was down-sized dramatically or wasn’t made mandatory, which one thinks might have been the case in time of an alleged medical crisis and world-wide pandemic.

–  As I will show in a future article, 98.1 percent of the crew of the Charles de Gaulle were tested for antibodies.

60, 62 or “nearly” 66 percent infected …

All three figures are used in the Roosevelt study, with 60 percent being the most common percentage. From the study:

N = 382 – Survey respondents/participants

N = 228 positive (antibody) ELISA result (59.7 percent)

N = 238 had “previous or  current Covid infection (62 percent)

One sentence in the study reads:

“Nearly two thirds of persons in this sample had positive ELISA test results, which indicate previous exposure to SARS-CoV-2.”

In my opinion, these could be labelled as ‘confirmed’ cases …

In several places in the study, authors define a “current or previous infection.” For example:

  • “Current or previous SARS-CoV-2 infection is defined as a positive RT-PCR test result or a reactive antibody result determined by testing performed at CDC laboratories on specimens collected during April 20–24, 2020.”

“… (4) Previous or current SARS-CoV-2 infection was defined as a positive real-time RT-PCR result or positive ELISA (antibody) result.”

Quick comments:

Although different semantic interpretations might be offered, in my opinion, the above language says at least two Roosevelt cases should be “confirmed” as “early cases” that happened before the first “confirmed” case in America.

That is, all 228 sailors who tested positive via ELISA antibody tests satisfied the definition of individuals who had “current or previous” Covid infections. This figure would include the two sailors who tested positive and experienced Covid symptoms 98 and 99 days before receiving their antibody tests.

As far as I’m aware, this might be the only CDC study that defines a Covid case as someone who tested positive on an ELISA antibody test.

This language is extremely significant as hundreds of other early cases in the world could/might be “confirmed” if the same definitions used in the Roosevelt study also applied to these likely early cases.

Move the birthday of Covid spread up several months …

If this criteria applied to other likely/possible cases, the timeline of the “start date” of virus spread would be moved up at least three months. The first “confirmed cases” would  be November 2019, or October 2019 if not September 2019 … but certainly not January 20, 2020.

For example, I’ve identified many Americans – as well as citizens from France, Italy and the UK – who tested positive via antibody tests (including several/many who tested positive with ELISA antibody tests). These possible/likely cases include many citizens who experienced Covid symptoms in late 2019. None of these citizens have been “confirmed” as Covid cases.

Almost all other studies define or confirm Covid cases as individuals who tested positive via a PCR test. As almost no PCR tests were administered to Americans prior to March 2020, it is literally impossible to “confirm” an early case via the “PCR-positive” confirmation protocol.

Again, modifying the definition of  “previously-infected” individuals to include those who tested positive via an antibody test should be viewed as very significant and represents a stark departure from other CDC statements.

Symptoms and symptom onset dates matter …

Significantly, Roosevelt study participants filled out questionnaires, providing information on when sailors experienced Covid/ILI symptoms. Participants reported what symptoms they experienced, how many symptoms and, most significantly, self-reported dates where they first experienced these symptoms. (Most antibody-positive sailors experienced at least four symptoms; many experienced six or more symptoms).

The data that immediately jumped out to me (but apparently no one else) was the two crew members who self-reported symptoms 99 and 98 days before donating blood for this serology test (donation dates were April 20-24, 2020).

Working backward from April 20-24, 2020, the crew member who experienced symptoms 99 days before donating blood  would have been symptomatic January 12-16, 2020. The sailor who experienced symptoms 98 days earlier would have been symptomatic January 13-17.

Comments:

Inexplicably, Navy and CDC medical personnel did not interview either of these sailors, both of whom could/would have qualified as “case zero” in America. In fact, no sailor in the survey was questioned about their symptoms.

From study: “… although the date of any symptom onset was collected, information on timing, duration, and severity of individual symptoms was not collected.”

“Symptom onset” typically occurs two to 14 days after infection. This means these two sailors, if they had Covid, were infected even earlier in January. For the sailor who experienced symptoms 99 days earlier, the infection date could have been between December 29, 2019 and January 15, 2020.

While the ship left San Diego January 17, 2020, I’ve yet to learn when sailors began to board the ship. My assumption is sailors boarded the ship at least several days before the ship got underway to prepare for its deployment, which lasted approximately 70 days.

If any crew members were symptomatic or infected with Covid on or before January 17, these crew members would almost certainly have begun to infect any “close contacts” who didn’t already have natural immunity.

(The possibility some crew members might have already been infected as early as November 2019, or perhaps even earlier, does not seem to have been considered by any public health official or journalist. At least to me, The Red Cross antibody study proves that residents of California had been infected by November 2019. If this was the case with some Roosevelt crew members, these crew members would likely have come on board the ship with natural immunity.)

In my opinion, if the CDC and Navy had tested the vast majority of the crew for antibodies, and these crew members had also filled out symptom questionnaires, the number of possible cases pre-dating the first confirmed case in America would have been much larger than two possible American “case zeroes.”

That is, by severely limiting the size of this antibody study, CDC and Navy authors limited the number of other possible early cases the study might have identified.

At least four other crew members who tested positive for antibodies (six in total) self-reported symptoms before the ship arrived at port in Vietnam Mach 5-9.

Twelve crew members who later tested positive for antibodies self-reported symptoms 41 or more days before giving blood for their antibody tests. Again, if the study size was much larger, many more sailors would have likely reported “symptom onset” dates before the ship’s port of call in Vietnam, as well as other crew members who were perhaps infected prior to January 20, 2020.

MORE DISCUSSION …

I can’t say the Navy/CDC “concealed evidence” of early spread because the information that made me suspect this is included in the study. Indeed, the key information is depicted on a graph (“Figure 3”) of the study. Also, text in the study makes this conclusion almost impossible to miss. For example:

“Among 12 participants with positive ELISA results >40 days after symptom onset, eight maintained positive microneutralization test results, including two participants who were tested >3 months after symptom onset.”

The Roosevelt antibody study, which was published online on June 8, was covered by prominent news organizations, including The New York Times and Reuters.  The NY Times actually put the key information in its sub-headline:

Headline: “After Outbreak on Carrier Roosevelt, Many Have Antibodies”

Sub-headline: “A C.D.C. study found that some sailors showed protection against the coronavirus three months after the onset of symptoms”

FWIW, the sub-headline is not entirely accurate as 99 and 98 days would be “more than three months” after onset of symptoms. I mention the Times’ headline only to point out that no Times’ journalist or editor seems to have figured out that the first known case in America could have been a member of this ship (although the newspaper’s own headline should have told them this).

The story also quotes the study’s corresponding author Daniel Payne, who highlighted the fact some crew members had apparently had Covid antibodies for several months. (I have requested an interview with Dr. Payne).

“This is a promising indicator of immunity,” said Daniel C. Payne, an epidemiologist and one of the lead authors of the study … “We don’t know how long-lasting, for sure, but it is promising.”

Previous stories mentioned the growing number of “positive cases” on the ship, but none reported anywhere close to 60 percent of the crew being infected. For example, by April 21 (one day after the antibody tests had begun), 678 sailors had tested positive via a PCR test (14.1 percent of the crew).

Reuters’ journalist correctly highlighted the fact the study’s “results could indicate a far higher presence of the coronavirus.”

However, the journalist seems to de-amplify the significance of such a large percentage of positives with this latter text:

“… one of the Navy officials said that may not be the case because of the way the study was carried out … The outbreak investigation did not encompass the entire crew, and the results of this study cannot be generalized to the entire crew,” the official said.

The article later includes this disclaimer: “Medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, have warned that serology tests can lead to false positives.”

Like all journalists who wrote articles about this study, the Reuters reporter never asked why the project didn’t encompass the entire crew nor does this journalist question the assumed predicate (that a larger sample might have produced lower antibody-positive percentages than the study/sample that was performed. As noted, a sample of almost 100 percent of French sailors produced the identical percentage of antibody positives – 60 percent).

Nor do the journalists challenge the AMA’s statement that  antibody tests “can” produce “false positives.” The author and the AMA could have noted, accurately, that serology tests “can” also lead to false negatives.

That is, if antibody tests are producing more “false negatives” than “false positives,” serology “prevalence” percentages in many/most antibody studies might be even higher than reported.

Such (requisite?) sentences support my belief that any antibody test that suggests much higher percentages of “early” cases will be routinely maligned or spun as being somehow insignificant.

One of the most disturbing take-aways from my “early spread” research is that, as far as I can tell, 100 percent of mainstream or corporate journalists, are not going to investigate credible evidence of early spread.

I understand why government and public health officials might want to cover-up evidence their “virus-origins” narrative was wrong all along, but I don’t understand why the “skeptical, watchdog” press would participate in what must be a massive conspiracy to conceal the truth.

I’ve harvested too much previously-unreported information from my research into Navy ship antibody studies to include in one article. Future articles will highlight other findings which have received little or no scrutiny to date – findings I believe deserve scrutiny, even if belated.

***

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Anyone with relevant information about the outbreak on the Roosevelt or any Naval vessel can email the author at: wjricejunior@gmail.com.

I would be very interested to hear from any Roosevelt crew members. Confidentiality will be protected.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Sen. Ron Johnson Says Pandemic “Preplanned By An Elite Group Of People” Who Conducted “Event 201”

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | August 13, 2023

And now, better late than never, a US politician recognizes that all may not have been what it seemed with the pandemic – and its tyrannical response.

Senator Ron Johnson on Friday told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that Covid-19, and its response, were “preplanned by an elite group of people” who conducted “Event 201” – a joint exercise conducted by John Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum – which envisioned the spread of a coronavirus pandemic in South America which included over 65 million deaths worldwide.

The simulation concluded that national governments are nowhere near ready for a pandemic.

“We are going down a very dangerous path, but it is a path that is being laid out and planned by an elite group of people that want to take total control over our lives, and that’s what they are doing, bit by bit,” said Johnson, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and is a ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

To which Bartiromo responded: “It is just extraordinary to me that the government was working with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth and has been doing so repeatedly. We just saw the Facebook story, the Twitter files, all of the all the way, government officials from the CDC, FBI, you know CIA, a thousand people according to the reporters working on the Twitter files, worked with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth.

Why couldn’t the American people know that, you know, there were other alternatives to treat Covid why can’t American people know there were side effects with the vaccine?

Johnson then said: “This is all preplanned by an elite group of people, that is what I am talking about, Event 201 occurred in late 2019, prior to the rest of us knowing about the pandemic. Again — this is very concerning in terms of what is happening, what continues to be planned for our loss of freedom,” adding “ It needs to be exposed but unfortunately, very few people even in Congress are willing to take a look at this. They all pushed the vaccine, they don’t want to be made aware of the fact that vaccines might have caused injuries or death, so many people simply just don’t want to admit they were wrong and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure they’re not proven wrong.”

“We are up against a very powerful group of people here, Maria.”

Watch:

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

AIDS Inc. by Gary Null (2007)

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The appointment of a special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case is just a trick to better shield the US president and his son

By Tony Cox | RT | August 12, 2023

US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who works for President Joe Biden, desperately wants the world to know that the government’s investigation of his boss’ son is utterly apolitical. America’s top law-enforcement official is so desperate, in fact, that he has appointed a special counsel to handle the case.

That’s right. No mere employee of Garland’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to be leading the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden. Garland on Friday assigned a special counsel to the case because he wanted to demonstrate to Americans the DOJ’s “commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

Make no mistake: This is definitely one of those “particularly sensitive matters.” The president’s son has been accused of a litany of crimes – from failing to pay taxes to making an illegal gun purchase to transporting women across state lines for prostitution. It turns out he’s the sort of guy who was brazen enough to take pictures of himself smoking crack and driving his Porsche at 172 miles per hour, then to leave those images and countless other incriminating files on a laptop computer that he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop.

Most sensitive politically is the evidence suggesting that Hunter Biden ran an influence-peddling operation in which he allegedly solicited bribes in Ukraine and other countries by selling the family “brand.” The brand was then-Vice President Joe Biden and the political clout that he could wield for the family’s friends.

Those claims are the most serious because they connect the commander-in-chief to the alleged conspiracy. In fact, Hunter Biden allegedly patched in his father on conference calls with overseas business associates and once tried to coerce a Chinese businessman to resolve a payment dispute by claiming that Joe Biden was sitting next to him and would make the partner regret failing to comply.

President Biden has angrily denied having been with his son when the shakedown message was sent. He also has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of or involvement in his son’s business dealings. As evidence continues to mount to the contrary, it’s easy to see why Garland is concerned about public perceptions heading into the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans have accused the DOJ of giving the president’s son preferential treatment and of trying to protect the Biden family as Joe Biden seeks re-election. Two-thirds of US voters polled by Rasmussen Reports agreed, saying Hunter Biden got favorable treatment from federal prosecutors because his father is the president.

If all that doesn’t make the investigation politically sensitive enough, the cherry on top is that a DOJ special counsel has filed dozens of felony charges against Biden’s chief 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, in two separate cases. Trump, the first ex-president in US history to be criminally indicted, has claimed that politically motivated prosecutors are trying to interfere in the election because Biden can’t defeat him in a rematch of their 2020 battle.

Garland’s solution was to appoint a special counsel in the Biden case. However, it turns out that the prosecutor assigned to the role is the same DOJ employee who has been running the Hunter Biden investigation since 2019. David Weiss, US attorney for the district of Delaware, was elevated to special counsel status at his own request. “Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.

The Pro-Biden press corps – meaning pretty much the entire US legacy media – nodded approvingly. For example, the New Republic was quick to claim that Biden’s attorney general had “annihilated several main Republican talking points.” The move “fully insulated the investigation from accusations of government interference,” the outlet added. NBC News said “distrustful” Republicans were still critical of the appointment.

As Garland pointed out, as special counsel Weiss will no longer be subject to “day-to-day supervision” by any Department of Justice (DOJ) official. And if the administration were to torpedo the investigation or block the filing of any charges, Garland would be required to inform Congress. The attorney general and Biden’s media backers also have noted that Weiss was appointed to his job by Trump and was allowed to continue leading the Hunter Biden investigation when the new president came into office.

But what really changed? Garland has repeatedly claimed that Weiss was given full authority all along to make prosecutorial decisions without any interference from higher-ups. If Garland is to be believed, Weiss merely has the same authority now, and his prosecutorial decisions will still have to conform with DOJ policies. He will have broad authority to file charges in any jurisdiction he chooses, but his boss insisted that he had that latitude before.

Weiss has backed up Garland’s claims that the investigation has been free of political interference. He denied allegations from IRS whistleblowers that the administration had declined to give him special-counsel status and that he had been prevented from filing indictments against the president’s son in Washington and Los Angeles, where some of the alleged crimes supposedly occurred.

Republican lawmakers were unimpressed by the fact Weiss was appointed as a US attorney by Trump, pointing instead to actions that suggested he was trying to protect the Bidens. The Delaware prosecutor’s investigation dragged on for four years, during which the DOJ declined to set the record straight when former US intelligence officials falsely claimed the laptop scandal was a Russian disinformation operation, deceiving voters just before the 2020 election. When Weiss finally did file an indictment in June, it was limited to tax and gun matters.

Weiss made a deal with defense lawyers that called for the felony gun charge to be dropped if Biden adhered to the terms of a diversion agreement. The president’s son also was enabled to avoid jail time on the two misdemeanor tax charges to which he agreed to plead guilty. It was a political happy ending that would allow Hunter Biden to move on, free of any felonies on his record, and end the distraction he was creating for his father’s re-election campaign.

Unfortunately for the Bidens, US District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika was taken aback by the deal, at least partly because it appeared that Weiss had given Hunter Biden immunity from prosecution for other possible crimes. The judge refused to accept the plea bargain late last month and sent the lawyers back to the drawing board to work out a revised agreement. Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks on a new plea deal were at an “impasse,” suggesting that the case was headed for trial.

It’s unlikely that such a trial would ever be allowed to happen, making a public spectacle of the allegations against Hunter Biden at a time when his father is asking voters for another four-year term in the White House. Even as Garland assures the public that the investigation will be guided “only by the facts and the law,” Weiss will have other concerns. Whether he carries the title of special counsel or US attorney for the district of Delaware, his job is to give the appearance of enforcing the law without causing any serious harm to the Bidens.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Illusion of Scandal: How Washington is Attempting to Dismiss $20 Million as an Illusion

By Jonathan Turley | August 10, 2023

I previously wrote a column marveling at the success of the Bidens in pulling off one of the neatest tricks in political history. I analogized it to how Houdini used to make his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear on a stage in front of a live audience. The media and political establishment is now striving to top that performance by declaring $20 million in payments to Biden family members as an “illusion” of influence. At the heart of this scandal is the BFF, the Biden Family Fund.

Here is the column:

This week, President Joe Biden responded to calls for greater access to the media with a blockbuster interview with . . . the Weather Channel.

The interview immediately prompted critics to speculate that the president wanted to continue to talk about the weather — the same claim made after the disclosure of his participation in various dinners with his son’s foreign associates.

As the number of these dinners, meetings and outings increase, Joe Biden appears to have covered more meteorological subjects than Al Roker.

The problem is that conditions are worsening in Washington.

This week, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released a third report on the ongoing investigations into the Biden corruption scandal.

The latest bank records indicate the Biden family has received more than $20 million, including from corrupt Kazakh figures.

Some of this money provided Hunter Biden with extravagant toys. On April 22, 2014, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai bank account.

That account then shows the exact same amount being wired to a New Jersey car dealership for a Fisker sports car for Hunter. Finding the Fisker unsuitable, Hunter traded it in for a Porsche.

Notably, these payments often coincided with dinners and meetings with Joe Biden.

Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, the widow of Moscow ex-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton Feb. 14, 2014.

She later attended a dinner with Joe and Hunter Biden at Washington, DC, hotspot Café Milano.

For weeks, Joe Biden’s prior claims have been collapsing as his allies in the media and Congress struggle for an alternative spin on these new disclosures.

The president’s denials of any knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings finally have been exposed as a lie.

Even the Washington Post has acknowledged Biden lied when he insisted that Hunter never made any money in China.

It was always a boldfaced falsehood (and a confusing claim from a man who insisted that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings).

But the testimony of associate Devon Archer and new bank records forced the paper and others to recognize the falsehood.

There is also the confirmation that Biden’s long denials that he attended key dinners with Hunter’s business associates were false.

Most notably, the media are grudgingly admitting that Hunter was openly selling influence peddling and access to his father as part of what Archer called “selling the brand.”

The final line of defense is now that Hunter Biden was selling access to Joe Biden but it was an “illusion.” The reason, they claim, is there is no evidence of direct payments to Joe and Jill Biden.

There is, of course, nothing “illusionary” about tens of millions moving to Hunter and other family members.

But political spins are often built on illusions. The latest is that Joe Biden only benefits from these payments if they were directly deposited in his accounts.

For a family that Hunter explained was “the best” at this type of dealing, it is absurd to expect a deposit slip from a corrupt Ukrainian official to the account of Joe and Jill Biden, one of the most vulnerable accounts in the world to review and monitoring.

These claims, moreover, ignore emails discussing Hunter’s and his father’s use of joint accounts to pay for expenses, including how one account was used to pay Joe’s taxes. There is also Hunter’s complaint that he was using half of his earnings to support his father. Indeed, one trusted FBI informant said that, in planning a bribe, one foreign figure was told to avoid direct payments to Joe Biden. Today, that is as amateurish as an envelope of cash and the Bidens have been in the business of influence peddling for decades.

Responding to the new evidence, Washington Post columnist Phillip Bump led the charge in asking: Where’s the bribe?

In other words, as long as Hunter got the luxury car, Joe didn’t benefit or receive a bribe.

(Notably, Bump did not have the same high standards when he pushed the false claim over a photo op in Lafayette Park and later refused to concede with the rest of the media on the lack of Russian collusion with Donald Trump.)

Not even millions to Biden children and grandchildren would seem to satisfy Bump as an inducement for the then-vice president.

Yet the greatest illusion is the claim Joe Biden would only be motivated by a direct payment to one of his accounts.

Biden clearly benefited from millions going to the Biden Family Fund (BFF). Even grandchildren received some of the transfers funneled through a labyrinth of accounts.

Joe Biden is 80 years old. Despite holding only government jobs in his career, he is worth an estimated $8 million.

Forbes reported he earned $17.3 million over the four years he was out of office. He will never spend his fortune. Any additional money would have to pass to his descendants.

For most wealthy people in their final years, the challenge is not raising more money but getting that money to your children without heavy taxes or delays.

This money was going to his BFF. That is a benefit and probably of greater value to a man of Joe Biden’s age and wealth.

None of this has stopped politicians, press and pundits from insisting that absent a direct payment to the president’s account, there is no corruption or crime.

After all, $20 million going to a president’s family is like complaining about the weather in Washington.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

‘So Many Pitfalls’: Feds Push School-Based Health Centers as Critics Sound Alarm Over Lack of Parental Consent

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 9, 2023

The recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of school-based health centers (SBHCs) across the country has some critics concerned children will receive, or be pressured into receiving, unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions — including vaccines — without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Georgia attorney Nicole Johnson, co-director of Georgia Coalition for Vaccine Choice and a consultant to the Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) legal team, told The Defender :

“It’s scary because these health centers sound really good. In some of the rural and poor communities especially, this is going to seem like a really good way for children to get this care.

“And while there may be some conveniences, there are so many concerns with allowing medical exams and treatments at school. Parents need to be involved in all medical decisions and I fear they are being left out of the equation.”

SBHCs are intended to provide high-quality healthcare to kids by offering “primary care, mental health care, and other health services in schools,” particularly in underserved communities.

This includes services “to prevent disease, disability, and other health conditions or their progression” such as “immunizations” and “well-child care.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Community Preventive Services Task Force, SBHCs can improve educational and health outcomes.

The CDC also considers SBHCs as integral to its Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model because they provide health services and mental health counseling.

But critics like Johnson worry that though there may be benefits to SBHCs, there are also downsides — including lack of regulation of the centers and the fact that parents may not be aware of the broad range of medical and behavioral services being provided in their children’s schools.

SBHCs have been linked to higher human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates, according to a 2022 report by Harvard University’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and the University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The report — written expressly to “address vaccine hesitancy” — concluded: “These results suggest SBHCs create a considerable opportunity … to implement successful school based HPV vaccination programs.”

Merck, the maker of the Gardasil HPV vaccine, is one of the funders of the School-Based Health Alliance, a large networking organization that “works on policy, standards, data, and training issues” regarding SBHCs.

Federal, state authorities pour taxpayer money into school-based health centers

The idea of running full-service health centers in public schools has been around for more than two decades, but events in 2022 caused SBHCs to catch on like wildfire.

Congress and President Joe Biden in June 2022 passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which allowed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to award $50 million in grants to states “for the purpose of implementing, enhancing, or expanding the provision” of healthcare assistance through SBHCs using Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The legislation charged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) with expanding access to Medicaid healthcare services — including behavioral health services — in schools, and reducing the administrative burden for states and schools.

A CMS spokesperson told The Defender that Medicaid and CHIP now can provide reimbursement for services given in SBHCs for children and youth who are covered by those programs.

Additionally, in May 2022 HHS awarded $25 million in grants to 125 SBHCs “to improve and strengthen access to school-based health services in communities across the country.”

State public officials also are dedicating funds to expand SBHCs. For instance, the governor of Georgia in fall 2022 announced an investment of $125 million to expand school-based health services to rural communities in Georgia.

Pediatricians can ‘partner’ with schools

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) supports SBHCs and said in a policy statement that pediatricians may act as “sponsors” by partnering with a school to establish the SBHC as an extension of their practice or by supervising the care given at a SBHC.

“Sponsors also include local hospitals that can provide prearranged after-hours and school vacation coverage and financial support for SBHCs,” the AAP said.

The Defender reached out to the AAP statement’s lead authors for comments on how parental consent is handled in SBHCs, but they did not respond by our publication deadline.

SBHCs also have the support of the School-Based Health Alliance. In addition to funding from Merck, the alliance receives financial support from HHS’ Health Resources & Services Administration.

Documents obtained in June by CHD revealed that the HHS gave $4.7 million to research headed by a Merck consultant that focused on developing “The Announcement Approach Training,” where providers simply “announce” a child will be receiving the HPV vaccine as part of a routine office visit, instead of discussing it with the family first.

The government-funded research also is testing whether financial incentives and peer pressure can “nudge” doctors to change how they talk to their patients in order to increase HPV vaccine uptake among adolescents.

Meanwhile, a fierce battle is taking place in multiple states where some lawmakers are pushing legislation that would allow minors to receive treatments to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — including Merck’s HPV vaccine — without parental knowledge or consent.

‘So many pitfalls … so many ways for someone else to be making parental decisions’

Justine Tanguay, an attorney with nearly 20 years of experience advocating for children in various areas of the law, told The Defender :

“Don’t be fooled! This year many schools will be sending home blanket consent-to-treat forms for parents to sign.

“Parents need to be aware that these forms are not the traditional authorization requests for the school nurse to give first-aid or to treat minor illnesses.”

Tanguay, CHD’s director of campaign and research, explained that the forms may give those who run the SBHC the legal authorization to provide “comprehensive healthcare.”

This could include — but may not be limited to — “the ability to provide preventative treatment, behavioral and mental health services, reproductive counseling, lab and prescription services, various medical screenings, immunizations and disease management,” Tanguay said.

Moreover, SBHC staff will have “direct access” to a minor child, Tanguay said, “as well as the ability to encourage a minor child to make personal healthcare decisions without the need to consult with and seek approval from a parent.”

“The opportunity to circumvent both parental rights and informed consent is ripe for abuse,” Tanguay warned.

Johnson agreed, saying, “There are just so many pitfalls here, so many ways for someone else to be making parental decisions.”

Johnson shared with The Defender a consent form currently used in a school district north of Atlanta, Georgia.

The form says nothing about parents being notified before, during or after treatment. It reads:

“I hereby voluntarily give my consent for [my child] to receive health services with Georgia Highlands Medical Services at Cumming Elementary School.

“I further authorize any health care provider and professional staff working for the clinic to provide such medical tests, diagnoses, procedures, and treatments as are reasonably necessary or advisable for the medical evaluation and management of my child’s health care.”

The form does not clarify who determines what services are “reasonably necessary or advisable” and does not explain how parents will be involved in that process. It states:

“I understand that my signing this consent allows the health care provider and professional clinic staff of Georgia Highlands Medical Services at Cummings Elementary Schools to provide comprehensive health services which includes physical and behavioral health services.”

Again, the form does not clarify what specifically falls into the category of “physical and behavioral health services” or how parents will be involved in the determination for what services their child may need.

“I think about my own kids when they were in school,” Johnson said, “how easily they could have been swayed to get a vaccine or a medical treatment just because an adult told them that they should.”

“It’s really dangerous to have all of these things offered to them without the parents even being aware,” she said. “A lot of kids — most kids — are compliant. They want to do what the adults are telling them to do.”

According to the CDC, a key component of its Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model, which includes SBHCs, is “family engagement.”

However, the agency’s 37-page document about family engagement mentions parental permission only once and does not discuss parental consent for medical treatment beyond the application of sunscreen during recess.

According to a CMS spokesperson, SBHCs “follow the same practices as any other medical center or Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provider … including parental consent requirements.”

The spokesperson did not go into detail on whether consent would be requested generally or for each specific medical treatment.

Where’s the regulatory oversight?

Tanguay pointed out that SBHCs exist without proper regulatory oversight.

According to Stand for Health Freedom, a nonprofit “dedicated to protecting informed consent in medical care,” SBHCs are “completely unregulated.”

For instance, it is presently unclear how HIPAA law (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and FERPA law (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) will be applied to SBHCs and students’ health information.

Stand for Health Freedom also pointed out that although in-school clinics may relieve busy parents of the burden of taking their children to the doctor, “medical ethics do not allow physicians to treat minors without a parent or guardian present, which is why parents cannot simply drop their child off at the doctor’s office and come back later to collect them.”

Stand for Health Freedom said:

“Parents must engage politically and work with state health freedom leaders to ask lawmakers to either ban SBHCs in favor of the existing limited school-nurse model, or place guardrails on SBHCs to protect parental consent and involvement in their minor children’s medical care.”

Meanwhile, proponents of SBHCs, such as the School-Based Health Alliance, argue that SBHCs are a “powerful tool for achieving health equity among children and adolescents who unjustly experience disparities in outcomes simply because of their race, ethnicity, or family income.”

Johnson said she disliked being “so skeptical of something that may potentially benefit some people” but added, “as a parent, it is your job and your right to be a part of the decisions that affect the health and well-being of your child.”

Johnson said parents who experienced or witnessed vaccine injury would be particularly skeptical of putting medical decisions in the hands of government agencies, including schools.

“And the COVID response created even more skeptics,” she said, adding:

“It’s unfortunate that we have to approach this [SBHCs] with the thought, ‘How could this be abused?’ But that’s where we are.”

The Defender on Aug. 3 reached out to the School-Based Health Alliance to ask how parental consent in SBHCs is handled and what they’d like parents who may feel distrustful of the U.S. medical system to know about SBHCs. The alliance did not respond by our publication deadline.

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.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Winter Cold, Darkness Kill, While Summer Heat And Sun Save Lives Data Clearly Show

Cold and stupid policies are the real killers, not heat

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 11, 2023

German data from Bestattungen.de (Funerals.de) show that far more people die from cold winter weather than they do from hot summer weather.

Lately in Germany there’s been a coordinated disinformation campaign by policymakers and the media. all aimed at getting people to believe that summer heat is the real killer. And so, during heat waves, governments should declare states of emergency and usher restrictions, which could entail cancelling large outdoor events like festivals and sports matches, driving bans and lockdowns.

It’s all about saving thousands of lives and ensuring your safety, they (falsely) claim! And never mind that the mean summer temperature in Germany is under a comparatively cool 20°C.

All the focus on the dangers of summertime warmth seems odd, especially when most of us look forward to this season the most and dread the horrible long winters, a time when people are forced to spend so much time confined inside.

Winter kills, summer saves lives

Today I came across a report from Bestattungen.de (Funerals.de), a site that of course would be familiar with the business and statistics of dying. Clearly cold winter temperatures are far more dangerous than warm summer temperatures, according to their data:

Image: Besttatungen.de (translated in the English).

As the chart shows, mortality is 9.7% above the mean in the dead of winter, February, and is 7.1% below the mean right after Germans have been exposed to 3 summer months of now “deadly heat”. In fact, all the mortal suffering begins to end only once the temperatures finally warm up in April. Of course the report isn’t so recent, but we can rest assured that the mortality behavior hasn’t changed that much.

The data also suggest how crucial Vitamin D is.

The data also suggests the power of vitamin D. Fully tanked up on this crucial nutrient, people are much more resistant to infections and disease well into the fall. By mid winter, once vitamin D levels become depleted, far more become prone to disease, many experts say. This is why so many advised taking vitamin D during the COVID “pandemic”.

The following table shows the ranking, from the most deadly month to the least deadly month:

Source: Bestattungen.de 

Summer saves lives

Again, the bitter cold months of January and February are the real killers, while the summer months are the real life savers. It’s absolutely idiotic of policymakers to be focused and obsessed on summer heat plans. The only heat plan people need is: Get outside, take off your clothes and enjoy the hot weather! Shade and cold water is all you need to cool off.

According to Bestattungen.de:

The German Weather Service sees weather-related factors as the main reasons for the variance in mortality risk. Damp, cold air increases the risk of aggravating existing illnesses. Respiratory diseases in particular can become more severe in the winter months. Heart attacks can also be triggered by the weather.”

Other factors also include psychological aspects and the lack of daylight and its associated “winter depression” increased melatonin and reduced serotonin.

We need a “stupid-policy-protection plan”

We really need to ask ourselves and policymakers: Why is heating fuel being made so expensive when we know that it would save a lot more lives? Stupid government policy is what’s killing people, and not the life-saving German summers.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Wikipedia Suppresses Basketball Player’s Post-Vaccine Blood Clot Troubles

BY ROBERT KOGON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 10, 2023

In spring 2021, the American basketball player Brandon Goodwin, then of the Atlanta Hawks, developed severe fatigue and back pain, which would force him to miss that year’s NBA playoffs. Several months later, in September, Goodwin revealed in a Twitch stream that he had been diagnosed with blood clots and that his problems began in the immediate aftermath of being vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I was fine… until I took the vaccine,” Goodwin said. “I was fine… Yes, the vaccine ended my season, one thousand percent.”

Astonishingly, however, Brandon Goodwin’s post-vaccine troubles with blood clots have been entirely purged from his Wikipedia entry. The current version of his Wikipedia entry simply reads “Goodwin missed the 2021 NBA playoffs due to a respiratory condition”, without any source being given.

It was in fact his employer, the Atlanta Hawks, that had announced in May that Goodwin would miss the playoffs due to a “minor” respiratory condition, as reported by the Associated Press. In his September 29th Twitch stream, however, Goodwin revealed not only that he had in fact been suffering from post-vaccine blood clots, but also that a Hawks official called him while in the hospital and told him, “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell nobody”.

For an account of the episode, see Megan Redshaw’s article at Children’s Health Defence. The Twitch stream is no longer available, but relevant excerpts have been preserved by the Daily Caller.

Despite back-and-forth among Wikipedia editors about whether blood clots should be described as a ‘known’, ‘rare’ or ‘common’ side effect of COVID-19 vaccines, as of February 26th 2022, Goodwin’s Wikipedia entry still included the following passage:

On October 3rd 2021, with his season having ended early, Goodwin reported severe fatigue coupled with extreme back pain, and a formal diagnosis of blood clots followed. Blood clots is a common side-effect connected to COVID-19 vaccination. Goodwin has made public he had received a vaccination shot just prior to his blood clot diagnosis.

By two days later, there was no longer any mention of his blood clots or the vaccine.

A Wikipedia editor attempted to justify an earlier deletion of reference to Goodwin’s post-vaccine blood clots by noting that Goodwin had “recanted” his claims. The term is well chosen.

By the time of his Twitch stream, Goodwin had been let go by the Atlanta Hawks. In an apparent attempt to get back in the good graces of the NBA, on October 14th – the very day he signed a non-guaranteed contract with the New York Knicks and just before the start of the NBA season – Goodwin posted an exculpatory tweet insisting:

I don’t have a story. That wasn’t something I wanted to get out there. I got sick. Maybe it was the vaccine maybe it was Covid [I don’t know] I’m not a expert. But I’m fine, and I’m healthy and about to play.

It was presumably also around this time that Goodwin made his Twitch stream private. He is presently out of the league.

Have other NBA players likewise been put under pressure to cover up adverse reactions to a COVID-19 vaccine? Well, on the same day that Brandon Goodwin posted his exculpatory tweet, Brooklyn Nets centre Nic Claxton revealed after a pre-season game that he was feeling unwell with what the New York Post would later call a “mystery illness“. Claxton would not play again for the next month-and-a-half.

News reports described symptoms of fatigue reminiscent of the problems Goodwin was having earlier in the year. On October 31st, the Brooklyn Nets announced that Claxton was suffering from an otherwise unspecified “non-Covid-related illness”.

“Nic is going to be out a little bit,” then Net coach Steve Nash explained:

He’s not feeling well. Nothing to be concerned with but I don’t think he’s going to be back in the next week or 10 days. Just an illness, but it’s nothing major or nothing we’re overly concerned with. It’s just a little more severe illness than we thought initially and I think he’ll miss a little more time.

Mysterious indeed. “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell nobody”?

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter.

August 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

FBI Memo Linking Catholic Faith to ‘Extremists’ Drafted by Several Offices – GOP Lawmakers

By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 10.08.2023

House GOP lawmakers have blasted the FBI director for “inconsistencies” in his testimony after he claimed that a report from the bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, field office identifying “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” as a potential source of “violent extremism” was an isolated incident. They say that new evidence suggests otherwise.

In a Wednesday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that was published by US media, US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, requested a slew of bureau documents related to communications between FBI field offices in Richmond, Virginia; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles, California.

“From information recently produced to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on information from around the country – including a liaison contact in the FBI’s Portland Field Office and reporting from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office – to develop its assessment,” they wrote.

“This new information suggests that the FBI’s use of its law enforcement capabilities to intrude on American’s First Amendment rights is more widespread than initially suspected and reveals inconsistencies with your previous testimony before the Committee,” they lawmakers said. “Given this startling new information, we write to request additional information to advance our oversight.”

They noted that in his testimony before the committee last month, Wray claimed that a January 2023 memo on the potential of right-wing activists motivated by “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” to pose a violent threat to certain minority groups had been the sole product of the field office in Richmond, the Virginia state capital.

The memo, which was leaked to the press in February, said the office had received a tip from a local informant leading them to believe in an “increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology.” This, they said, was especially associated with the sect of Catholics who rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and with “white supremacist ideology.”

This threat, they said, “presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.”

Notably, the unredacted parts of the document do not contain the words “potential terrorists,” as reported in some parts of the American press.

In response to the lawmakers’ letter, the FBI gave a statement to US media on Wednesday doubling down on Wray’s testimony, saying the lawmakers had become confused by similar terminologies used by multiple FBI field offices.
“Director Wray’s testimony on this matter has been accurate and consistent. While the document referred to information from other field office investigations of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE) subjects, that does not change the fact the product was produced by a single office,” the statement said.

“To be clear, the document was a domain perspective which is an intelligence product designed to address potential threats in a particular area – in this case, the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility,” the bureau continued. “Because the product failed to meet FBI standards, it was quickly removed from all FBI systems and a review was launched to determine how it was produced in the first place.”

The situation has revived anger at the FBI for its wiretapping activities and profiling of religious groups, for which the bureau became notorious after spying on American Muslims in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

However, conservatives especially have accused the FBI of political bias for years, pointing to its investigation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the months preceding the 2016 presidential election and its August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to serve a search and seizure warrant for hundreds of classified files Trump did not return to the National Archives after leaving office. The former president is facing dozens of criminal charges related to alleged mishandling of the secret files.

August 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Islamophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Claims that ‘Global Boiling’ Led to “Shocking” Melting of Greenland Ice Sheet are Nonsense

The Ice Sheet is Currently Bigger Than Normal

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 8, 2023

The new era of ‘global boiling’ has brought a return of the much loved climate scare story featuring the imminent demise of the Greenland ice sheet. The Daily Mail recently ran a headline noting the ‘Impact of Global Boiling‘, saying it has “shocking” photos showing how much the ice sheet has melted during the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth”. Snow melt is said to be higher than the 1981-2010 average.

But, alas, those who strive for accuracy in these matters are likely to quibble. The Earth is not “boiling” – that is the unhinged raving of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – the claim about July comes from a computer model, while “ever” refers to data of varying quality going back barely 150 years. Furthermore, the surface balance of ice on the Greenland ice sheet is higher than the 1981-2010 average, and could improve on last’s year performance, when there was little or no loss of the surface mass after the brief summer melting season.

If the Mail is “shocked” by how much the Greenland ice sheet has melted this year, it probably didn’t consult the polar portal site run by Danish meteorologists, which updates an accurate record on a daily basis. Both graphs above show the effect of a cold June where the ice loss was considerably lower than the previous year. Warmer weather arrived from the south in late June in time for the peak summer melt season.

As the second graph shows, the accumulation of surface ice on Greenland is more than the 1981-2010 average, and a big improvement on a decade ago. But as the Daily Sceptic noted recently, the current improvement can be seen in an even better light. A number of scientific institutions still use a decadal 1981-2010 average for comparison purposes, despite data to 2020 being available. The cynical might note that the ice sheet lost just 51 gigatonnes a year in the 1980s, compared to an annual loss of 244 gts in the 2010s. Updating the average figure would greatly amplify the recent, and continuing, recovery in the surface ice mass.

The ”shocking” before and after photos revealing how snow melts in the summer, even in Greenland, were taken by NASA satellites over the Frederikshab Glacier running down to the warmer south-west coast. The information and photos came from a NASA blog aimed at educators headed ‘Wasting Away (Again) in Greenland‘. More than halfway through the 2023 melting season, reports NASA, “Greenland has seen a substantial transformation of its snow cover”. This line – if it’s summer in Greenland, the snow melts – is readily taken up by the Mail. “According to scientists, snow falls on the Greenland ice sheet every winter… but experts say hotter summer temperatures are reducing the amount of snow cover.” The NASA blog is heavily quoted: “More than halfway through the 2023 melting season, Greenland has seen a substantial transformation of its snow cover. … Changes are the result of the increasing warmth of summer weather that took hold across the region in late June.”

Hold the front page – snow melts during the summer in Greenland, not many dead.

It is not difficult to find areas of rock in Greenland, especially in the south-west where most of the population of 55,000 live. The climate in this area is characterised as ‘low Arctic’ and temperatures are well above freezing in the warmest months. Ice in the Arctic waxes and wanes on a cyclical basis, while the long-term Greenland temperature is fairly stable. At a time when the planet has seen a gentle period of warming over the last 100 years, Greenland even held back slightly on the general trend. The five-year moving average of -18.57°C in 1929 compares with a measurement in 2021 of –17.96°C. The largest boost, as with other areas of the world, occurred in a short period in the 1980s and 90s, as the World Bank graph below shows. Since that time, as elsewhere, the rate of warming has considerably declined.

The Greenland ice sheet is the alarmist scare story that keeps on giving because water flowing off the land can increase sea levels. The Mail notes that scientists have already warned this year that the Greenland ice sheet is the “hottest it has ever been” and will cause global sea levels to rise by 20 inches by 2100 if it keeps warming at the same pace. In fact this information is linked to an earlier article that referenced a science paper quoting temperatures between 2000-2011. The next paragraph of the current story reports a rise of four feet or 1.2 metres by 2300, “even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned”. Scientists might “warn”, but all these opinions of greatly increased sea level rises are produced by climate models, often assuming outlandish future scenarios.

Again, as we have noted in numerous articles, sea level rises are notoriously difficult to calculate since land rises as huge weights are lifted from it. Many areas in the northern hemisphere show falls in coastal sea levels, and this process is ongoing since the Earth is currently in an interglacial phase. In fact, current rises of 2mm a year are tiny compared with the huge boosts between 12,000 to 4,000 years ago.

Again, hold that front page – shock 2mm annual rise will lead to civilisation being inundated in the next century by a catastrophic seven inch increase in sea levels. Not many expected to die.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Biden family received money from Russia – Congress

RT | August 9, 2023

The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday published receipts showing Hunter Biden, the son of current US President Joe Biden, receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan by trading on the family name.

The committee says it has identified $20 million in payments from foreign sources to Hunter Biden’s company, which they describe as a front to sell access to the “Biden network” while his father was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017).

“During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered,” said committee chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican.

The third bank memo Comer has published so far shows a February 14, 2014 wire transfer from “Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina” to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a shell company run by Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer. Of the $3.5 million wired by Baturina, $1 million was transferred directly to Archer, while the rest was used to start up Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a new account used to receive more funding from abroad, the committee said.

Another memo shows that Biden and Archer were both appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company run by Mykola Zlochevsky, for $1 million each per year. Burisma had previously paid Biden as counsel, but invited him and Archer to the board after a meeting hosted by Zlochevsky and Burisma corporate secretary Vadim Pozharsky in the spring of 2014 at Lake Como in Italy.

“Then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukraine soon after their first payments,” the committee noted, and Hunter claimed that the visit showed “value” that he provided to the company.

The third notable transaction took place in April 2014, when “Kazakhstani oligarch” Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai. The very next day, the company paid Hunter Biden the same exact amount for a sports car. Hunter had met Rakishev at a Washington, DC hotel in February.

“Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in payments from Yelena Baturina, Burisma, and Kenes Rakishev. Vice President Biden had dinner with them in the spring of 2014 and 2015 in Washington, DC,” the committee pointed out.

Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man for Ukraine policy after the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, and famously bragged at a 2018 DC event about getting a prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold loan guarantees. The prosecutor in question had been investigating Burisma. When then-president Donald Trump brought the incident up in 2019 talks with Kiev, the House Democrats impeached him, claiming this somehow violated US laws.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

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