RT has reached out to the UN special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, to request a correction or retraction of a statement in which she accused the Russian Armed Forces of employing a deliberate “rape strategy” as part of its military campaign in Ukraine. Patten made the claim in October in an interview with the AFP only to admit she did not have any solid evidence to substantiate it a month later.
“The allegations Ms. Patten has brought forward are of a very serious nature, which have the power to shape public discourse around the events in Ukraine,” RT said in a statement, adding that her words were then “widely distributed amongst media outlets and social media, to create a misleading, if not entirely false, narrative.”
In October, Patten told the AFP that when “you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.” Less than a month later, the UN official admitted that her words were based solely on some unverified reports disclosed to her in the presence of two Ukrainian officials. Speaking to Russian prank artists Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, also known as Vovan and Lexus, she recently said that it was “not her job” to conduct investigations anyway.
No evidence has since been provided to corroborate these claims. In its statement, RT asked Patten whether she “intends to issue a retraction – or at least a correction – of her original, misleading statement.”
“As a person holding such a public role with enormous responsibility, one would hope that Ms Patten seek to provide a true, verified testimony of her organization’s work,” the statement added.
RT also asked Patten’s office to provide some evidence to support her allegations in case the UN special representative believes a retraction would be “improper.” Neither Patten nor her office has commented on the request so far.
Moscow has previously denied the accusations made by Patten. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted the UN official’s claims as going “beyond the reach of reason.”
November 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Pramila Patten, Russia, Ukraine, United Nations |
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In the past few days, social media has been flooded with unsubstantiated reports alleging that the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced 15,000 protesters to death in the wake of street protests and violent riots sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The misleading allegations largely stem from a 6 November report by the UK-based and Saudi-funded Iran International news outlet regarding a letter signed by a majority of Iranian lawmakers.
In this letter, 227 out 290 lawmakers urged the judiciary to consider severe punishments for those involved in the riots.
“We, the representatives of this nation, ask all state officials, including the Judiciary, to treat those, who waged war [against the Islamic Republic] and attacked people’s life and property like [ISIS terrorists], in a way that would serve as a good lesson in the shortest possible time,” they said.
Within just a few days, western outlets like Newsweek chose to misconstrue this story, outright turning it into fake news by alleging the Iranian parliament “voted overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty for protesters.”
Many western public figures – including celebrities like Peter Frampton, Sophie Turner, Viola Davis, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – poured fuel on the fire, shamelessly spreading the latest piece of fake news against Iran.
In reality, no such vote has taken place in Tehran, as signing a letter does not constitute passing a law. Moreover, the Iranian parliament does not issue sentences, as the judiciary is laid out as a separate branch of government in the Iranian Constitution.
Chapter 11 of the constitution further lays out the judiciary’s role as an independent power.
Further muddying the waters, the figure of 15,000 protesters detained by Iranian authorities originates from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
US-based HRANA is the media arm of the Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), a group that receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a CIA soft power front that has for decades funded regime-change efforts across the globe.
Officially, Iran has so far sentenced one protester to death on charges of “disturbing public peace and order, assembly and conspiracy to commit a crime against national security and corruption on earth,” state news agency IRNA reported on 14 November.
The person reportedly set a government center on fire in Tehran province.
Five others were given between five to 10 years in prison under charges of “assembly and collusion to commit crimes against national security and disruption of public order and peace.”
Late last month, Iran’s Judiciary announced that 1,000 people would be tried in public in Tehran for their participation in the riots.
Iranian authorities have blamed foreign powers for inciting street violence in a heavy-handed attempt at forcing the revolutionary government out of power. Even former US officials have admitted that separatist groups in western Iran are being trained and armed in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) for this very purpose.
November 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, Iran, United States |
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Israel has carried out its own probe into the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and won’t cooperate with the FBI’s investigation into the incident, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz tweeted on Monday.
Media reports claimed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had launched a probe into the killing of Palestinian-American media worker, who was shot dead while covering an Israeli raid in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank in mid-May. US officials updated their Israeli counterparts on the move earlier this month, sources told the Times of Israel paper.
“The decision taken by the US Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the tragic passing of Shireen Abu Akleh, is a mistake,” Gantz wrote on Twitter in English. The Hebrew version of the message was formulated in harsher terms, labeling the US actions “a grave mistake.”
He said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have already carried out “a professional, independent investigation” into the death of the Al Jazeera reporter, and its findings were presented to Washington.
“I have delivered a message to US representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers, that we will not cooperate with an external investigation, and will not enable intervention to internal investigations,” Gantz insisted.
An Israeli probe established that Abu Akleh, who was shot despite wearing a vest marked “Press” and a blue helmet, was likely hit by a bullet that an Israeli soldier fired by mistake. It also didn’t rule out the possibility that the 51-year-old came under Palestinian fire.
However, Palestinian officials and Abu Akleh’s family, as well as Al Jazeera, insist the renowned journalist, who had been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for two decades, had been deliberately targeted by the IDF.
Abu Akleh’s death has led to anger and protests in the Middle East and elsewhere, with tensions mounting even further after the Israeli police used force to disperse mourners at her funeral.
November 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel |
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An investigation into how the British government groomed young, impressionable Iraqis to serve as their political agents.
Throughout the 20th century, it was frequently said by residents of West Asia, “lift up a mullah’s beard, and you’ll see the words ‘Made in England’ written underneath it.”
Such cynicism is understandable, given Britain’s history of covertly co-opting Imams and sheikhs to further its malign interests across the region.
Yet explosive leaked files reviewed by The Cradle show that this time-tested clandestine strategy hasn’t waned as the traditional role of religious teachers in West Asia is increasingly supplanted, or at least challenged, by politicians ostensibly elected by democratic vote.
Rather, it has evolved and been asserted in more modern forms, which are just as insidious, but may perhaps be even more effective in ensuring West Asian leaders at every level can be reliably depended upon to do London’s bidding.
Another youth initiative
The documents reviewed by The Cradle relate to a Foreign Office project in Baghdad, dubbed “Youth Political Leadership, “set to run for at least a year from August 2016. An accompanying “statement of requirements” not for public consumption laid out its objectives in stark detail. In brief, London sought to “identify young Iraqis…who will join the political establishment,” and train them in “values; representation; and political skills.”
This schooling would “ideally” be complete by Spring 2017, so “successful graduates” could “participate as candidates in the 2017 (or 2018, circumstances depending) local elections.” The desired end goal was that Iraq’s parliament and government alike would be “replenished with a professionalised and young class of political figures” who could be depended upon to serve London’s interests.
“The influx of these young Iraqis,” the statement explained, stood to “benefit” Britain, in particular by facilitating the spook-infested National Security Council’s strategy for Baghdad.
‘No functioning government’
Construction and management of the training program was outsourced to private contractors who were tasked with putting together a “comprehensive plan” for “gender diverse” Iraqis aged 27 or below with “a realistic prospect of entering the political sphere,” including a dedicated “curriculum” that would inculcate “professional ethics” and “hard political skills” in students, to ensure they could optimally “influence” voters.
Trainees were to be subject to intensive “monitoring and assessment” both during and after the course, with top performers whisked to London for a state-funded “study tour,” where they would be assigned “individual mentors” to “help support their career ambitions.”
Subsequently, a “graduate network” would be operated on- and offline in cooperation with the British embassy in Baghdad, to ensure “regular contact” between students and the Foreign Office – and thus MI6 – “through their political careers.”
Prospective candidates would be rigorously vetted before enrolment to ensure they had “an appropriate vision for Iraq,” with a “realistic” prospect of, and plan for, entering the political sphere upon graduation, such as “being chosen as a parliamentary advisor or selected to run as a provincial council member.”
These individuals would then be rigorously taught the Foreign Office’s approved curriculum, so as to instill them with “the right [emphasis added] technical knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours” in candidates.
“Practical training on how to function as a political representative,” such as “campaign work (e.g. canvassing, usage of social media),” and “the skills needed to collaboratively function as a member of the legislature,” would also be provided.
Adam Smith International
London’s call was answered by Adam Smith International (ASI). The company clearly grasped the urgency of the project. In detailed submissions to the Foreign Office, it noted that “recent events clearly indicate there is pressing need to address the failure of the Iraqi political establishment to provide an effective government,” making repeated reference to large-scale protests in Baghdad’s historic Tahrir Square, which occurred in July 2016.
Those incendiary scenes were part of several wide-ranging upheavals that unfolded across Iraq that year, spurred by anger over high-level corruption, and never-ending government gridlock.
Incidentally, these were themselves by-products of the byzantine political structure imposed upon Baghdad in the wake of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Western occupation forces enforced strict ethnic, sectarian, and party quotas on every office of state, ensuring perpetual division, inertia, and gridlock – essentially an inability to address basic public needs.
In the ensuing power vacuum, sectarian groups rose to the fore as the primary means by which average citizens could pressure parliament into implementing vital reforms. This development was no doubt extremely unwelcome to London – after all, many of these movements were Shia-led, raising the obvious prospect of neighboring Iran’s influence increasing considerably within the country.
This concern is reflected in ASI’s submissions. In bemoaning “the absence of a functioning government,” and emphasizing the resultant need to identify and groom future leaders promptly, the company noted firebrand Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was a leading figure in the 2016 protest movement.
“Unless steps are taken to provide avenues for the next generation of Iraqis to enter the legislature, the existing political cadres will continue to dominate the scene, leading to rising frustration and increasing social unrest,” ASI cautioned. “Practical assistance and continuing career support has the potential to stymy the rising tide of frustration among the youth of Iraq in the short term.”
Meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs
In a perverse irony, ASI purportedly played a pivotal role in shaping Iraq’s unworkable political system from its initial stages, enforcing the precise construction which the Foreign Office became resolved to shatter.
In sections of the leaked files outlining its experience of working in Iraq, the company noted that since 2004, it had on behalf of the British government “[provided] assistance to centre of government institutions in Iraq,” including “[developing] key parts of the machinery of government.”
Its in-country team was even said to have “worked closely” with representatives of the Prime Minister’s and Deputy Prime Minister’s offices, granting them a “detailed understanding of the functioning of the Iraqi political system.”
“ASI will leverage the contacts and experience from this project to help facilitate the outreach among political parties,” the contractor pledged. Little did those who ASI previously installed and shored up in office know, that in assisting their Foreign Office friends identify recruits for the leadership training program, they were signing their own political death warrants.
A region-wide strategy
Evidently, the assorted individuals and organizations serving British interests in West Asia at any given time are highly expendable – and should the governance structure they’re drafted to run on London’s behalf perform poorly, or become difficult to effectively control, another must be constructed in its place, filled with all-new representatives in order to create the bogus impression of “change.”
All along, the Foreign Office’s hand in steering a government’s composition and policies, and picking its public faces, will remain hidden, obscured by layer-upon-layer of private contractors, and lofty rhetoric about progress and democracy.
The leaked files exposed here represent a particularly candid insight into how Britain pursues its imperial ambitions in the modern day – but just one. The Cradle has previously exposed a similar connivance in Lebanon, wherein London covertly recruited “agents of change” from among the country’s youth, teaching them how to “maximise their impact” and boost their “name recognition and credibility,” in order to eventually elevate them to parliament.
It stands to reason that Baghdad and Beirut are far from alone in this regard. As such, it behooves all residents of West Asia to ask themselves for whom their elected representatives are truly working, and what interests they ultimately serve.
November 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Iraq, Lebanon, Middle East, UK, United States |
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Former US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are to hold conferences encouraging more online censorship.
According to Axios, the conferences by the two former presidents will “highlight rising threats from authoritarianism and disinformation — and how to combat them globally and at home.”
On November 16, the George W. Bush Institute will hold a conference called “The Struggle for Freedom.” The conference will address revitalizing democracy globally. The conference’s third panel is titled “Emerging Technology and the Future of Freedom.”
The conference will be attended by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
Bush’s conference only subtly hints at tackling “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Obama’s conference, the Democracy Forum, more broadly states disinformation will be a topic.
The first panel of the conference is titled “Tackling Disinformation, Protecting Democracy.” Anil Dash, CEO of Glitch, a platform that claims to be “the friendly place where everyone builds the web, is listed among the key speakers.”
The second panel is titled “Lightning Talk: Dismantling Hate in the Digital Age.” One of the key speakers is Vidhya Ramalingam, CEO of Moonshot, a company dedicated to developing tech solutions to “expose threats, disrupt malicious actors and protect vulnerable audiences online.”
Obama has been a vocal supporter of content moderation and has called “disinformation” a threat to democracy.
“Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world, but it can help tamp down divisions and let us rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make our democracy stronger,” Obama said at an event at Stanford University earlier this year.
Despite most Republicans calling for less censorship, Bush has encouraged content moderation.
November 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | George W. Bush, Human rights, Obama, United States |
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Did the Russiagate conspiracy entitle the federal government to censor Americans forever? Did federal shenanigans swing the 2020 election? A new report reveals how a new federal agency and federal grantees exploited a 2016 scam to launch the greatest covert censorship campaign in U.S. history.
In 2016, top FBI officials and the Obama administration fueled a conspiracy that the Trump presidential campaign was colluding with the Russian government. Numerous false FBI claims spurred a massive wiretapping operation approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The allegations led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who spent two years investigating before admitting that there was nothing to prosecute for his primary charge. But by that point, Trump had been irredeemably tainted and the Democrats had exploited the controversy to capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.
Thanks to Russiagate, Congress created a new federal agency in 2018—the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CISA was purportedly intended to fight foreign threats to election security and U.S. infrastructure. But the agency quickly shifted its target to American citizens. As a report last week from the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) revealed, “Any U.S. citizen posting what DHS considered misinformation’ online was suddenly conducting a cyber attack against US critical infrastructure.”
CISA and DHS realized that they could not directly muzzle Americans so they colluded with a number of federal grantees who comprised the Election Integrity Project, a coalition formed in mid-2020. The result was “censorship by proxy,” as law professor Jonathan Turley observed, bludgeoning social media companies into submission. The DHS-spurred crackdown in 2020 resulted in the suppression of “22 million tweets labeled ‘misinformation’ on Twitter” and “hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted” thanks to changes that would not have occurred without “‘huge regulatory pressure’ from government,” FFO reported.
Once the government claims a prerogative to censor “misinformation,” the definition of misinformation mushrooms to serve political purposes. The Election Integrity Partnership bragged about how social media posts were targeted that were merely purportedly guilty of offenses such as “exaggerate issue,” “misleading stats” and “out of context.” Many of those alleged factual infractions were piddling compared to the sweeping falsehoods continually uncorked by presidential candidates Trump and Biden.
Prior to the 2020 election, “the censorship focus was always and consistently foremost targeted at speech casting doubt on mail-in ballots,” FFO reported. Democrats exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to push through electoral changes that opened the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. Some states like Michigan sent absentee ballots to all voters, violating the Election Clause of the Constitution (which specifies that state legislatures make the rules for federal elections).
Election regimes that scrutinized mail-in ballots routinely had a high rejection rate. New York City relied on mail-in ballots for a June 2020 primary that the New York Daily News derided as a “dumpster fire.” Up to 20% of ballots “were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes,” The Washington Post noted, thanks largely to missing postmarks or signatures. Trump claimed that the shift to mail-in ballots could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.”
But federal string-pulling minimized controversies. FFO noted, “Pre-censoring U.S. citizen debate about mail-in ballots five months before an election has the impact of devastating the ability of concerned citizens to pressure their state representatives to take legal action on changing voting procedures.” Rather than the traditional scrutiny for mail-in ballots, many locales defaulted to accepting practically any piece of paper with a mark. Mail-in ballots determined the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump received more votes on Election Day but 43,000 mail-in ballots in three states sealed Biden’s victory—a minuscule portion of the tens of millions of mail-in votes he received.
In a July 28, 2020 article for the American Institute for Economic Research, I warned that the controversies over mail-in ballots could lead to “the death of political legitimacy…Deep State federal agencies are a Godzilla that have established their prerogative to undermine if not overturn election results.”
Until I read the new FFO report, I did not realize that “the biggest category for [2020] censorship was ‘delegitimization’… defined to mean any speech that ‘casts doubt’ on any kind of election process, outcome or integrity issues [which] made all conservative and populist criticism of the administration of the election pre-banned at the narrative level, five months in advance of Election Day.” Damn, no wonder that article of mine got so little traction on Twitter and Facebook! “Delegitimization” resulted in “72% of its censorship tickets and targeted over 99% of the posts throttled by narrative during the 2020 election.”
The entire process looks like a Monty Python parody of democracy. As Mike Benz, the former State Department official who heads FFO, observed, “The same obscure DHS subagency tasked with election security also gained the power to censor any questions about election security.”
How much impact did federal censorship and suppression have on the most recent elections? The Election Integrity Project browbeat tech companies to accept “that social media posts about the 2022 elections be censorable under a low bar of simply ‘misleading,’” according to FFO. For the midterm elections, “the Election Integrity Project is tightly monitoring and working to censor ‘discussions surrounding the delays in counting ballots’ being ‘framed as fraud,’” FFO reported. Damned convenient considering the debacle in Arizona—which was foreseen if not foreordained. In a Washington speech just before the election, President Biden told listeners that “in some cases we won’t know the winner…until a few days after the election. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner.” Biden stressed that citizens must be “patient. That’s how this is supposed to work.”
But it never consistently worked that way before in American history. Arizona’s voting machines dismally failed on Election Day and Democrats are vehemently resisting a hand recount of all ballots.
The real goal is to control Americans’ minds—and not just on Election Day. Jen Easterly, the NSA honcho who Biden chose to run CISA, declared that “the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation… is incredibly important.” And the most important cognitive “fix” is to train Americans to never doubt Uncle Sam. In a March 2022 meeting with top Twitter executives, FBI official Laura Dehmlow “warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government,” The Intercept recently reported. The FBI has 80 agents on a task force to curb “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.”
“Disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods. If the feds can censor most if not almost all of their online critics, their cons become almost irrefutable. Perhaps that is the only way that many federal policies can retain any shard of legitimacy. As Mike Benz warns, “DHS is carrying out an official state policy that if public trust is not earned, it must be installed.” That is a recipe for the death of democracy.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
November 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | CISA, DHS, Facebook, FBI, Human rights, Twitter, United States |
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The sudden collapse of a crypto exchange linked to the Democratic Party in the US, has revealed that FTX presently suffers from $10-$50 billion in liabilities and virtually no assets. And among those liabilities, are “investments” made by Ukraine’s leadership clique.
The company FTX, in its bankruptcy filing appears to have held tens-of-billions in American “military aid” to Ukraine. Instead of using the alleged funds to fight Russia, the money was ‘invested’ in the FTX Ponzi scheme.
From the bankruptcy filing it is clear that this money has now disappeared.
“Instead of using US military aid to fight Russia, Ukraine ‘invested’ part or all of it, into FTX, and right now, it looks like all the money’s gone,” said Hal Turner, a well-known American radio host.
The crypto money from unsuspecting clients was also used to fund the Democratic Party in the United States. More evidence has surfaced suggesting that the funds may have been stolen.
The CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was one of the top donors to the Democrats, with only George Soros outperforming his largesse. Recently, he also shared a podium with inveterate globalists Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
According to Turner, it seems that Ukraine was receiving money from the US, and then sent it to FTX, and FTX sent it to the same Democrats, who had originally voted to send it to Ukraine. “At this hour, it appears to some observers to be pure, criminal, money-laundering, and a criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws,” said Turner.
Reuters exclusively reported that the founder and CEO FTX transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to the trading company Alameda Research, which is run by his girlfriend Caroline Ellison.
Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University into a family of academics. Born and raised to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in California, he is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School. His aunt Linda P. Fried is the current dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, is a former Wall Street trader and the director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics.
He was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes in the 2021–2022 election cycle with total donations of $39,8 million, only behind Soros. Of this, $27 million was given to Protect our Future PAC, bankrolled by Bankman-Fried.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are currently looking into whether FTX.com mishandled customer funds. Bankman-Fried is also being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of securities rules.
November 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | Ukraine, United States |
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History shows that hiding clinical trial data can be deadly.
Vioxx is a well-known example of how the US drug regulator withheld important information about the harms of the drug for over three years, before it was withdrawn from the market and tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.
Numerous initiatives have been launched over the past two decades to improve access to trial data after it became evident that what was reported in peer-reviewed journals was often cherry-picked and misleading.
Eminent scientists have succeeded in gaining access to trial data from the European and Canadian drug regulators, but a recent analysis published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, found that the US FDA still lags behind others when it comes to data transparency.
Drug regulators have traditionally been the guardians of a treasure trove of trial data which they kept hidden from the public. But, over a decade ago, the efforts of Danish professor Peter Gøtzsche turned that on its head.
Gøtzsche and his PhD student were studying the effects of an anti-obesity drug and requested the trial data held by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
“We already had good evidence that the efficacy and harms of drugs were incompletely reported in the medical journals, so by asking for the regulatory data for the anti-obesity pills, we were convinced it would get us closer to the truth”, said Gøtzsche.
At first, EMA denied their request, saying that it needed to protect commercially confidential information, but Gøtzsche was undeterred. He made a formal complaint to the European Ombudsman.
After an arduous 3-year process, the Ombudsman accused EMA of “maladministration” for refusing to share its data – it was a serious and embarrassing charge, so EMA had no choice but to capitulate.
In 2013, EMA announced that it would provide public access to regulatory data – which included study reports, protocols and the raw anonymised patient data in statistical programmes enabling anyone to independently scrutinise the data for all new drugs that it approved.
It was a bitter-sweet moment for Gøtzsche.
“I was satisfied with the outcome, but I also felt a bit betrayed. When EMA praised itself for being transparent, it conveniently omitted telling the public that it was basically forced to make the decision because of my efforts and that of the Ombudsman,” said Gøtzsche.
“I’ve been around a while to know that this is exactly how the drug industry operates. They cover up their failures while praising themselves for what others force them to do,” he added.
Millions of pages containing trial data have since been released. Interestingly though, this remarkable feat has gone largely unrecognised and the response from the research community has been rather tepid.
Gøtzsche suspects it’s because analysing regulatory documents is complex and requires experience to decipher regulatory data – skills that few researchers have.
“It is a huge job to do systematic reviews of clinical study reports held by drug regulators, but it is the difference between producing reliable reviews or merely “garbage-in, garbage-out” reviews,” said Gøtzsche.
Since then, Gøtzsche’s group showed this was the case for reviews of antidepressant drug trials.
When they compared data from medical journals to that from regulatory documents, they found major discrepancies such as underreporting of harms, including suicide attempts and aggressive behaviour.
Following the landmark policy change in Europe, researchers believed it would help unlock regulatory documents elsewhere that were historically kept hidden from the public.
In 2016, Peter Doshi, professor at the University of Maryland and senior editor of The BMJ requested the release of unpublished clinical trial data relating to antivirals for the treatment of influenza (Tamiflu, Relenza) and three human papillomavirus vaccines from the Canadian drug regulator, Health Canada.
After some resistance, Health Canada agreed to allow Doshi access to the documents but imposed a confidentiality agreement that would prevent him from making his findings public.
When Doshi refused to sign the confidentially agreement, his request for access to the trial data was denied, so he filed a lawsuit in a federal court seeking a judicial review of the regulator’s decision.
Remarkably, in 2018, in the case of Peter Doshi v. Attorney General of Canada, a federal court judge ruled in favour of Doshi and in the public’s interest, ordering Health Canada to hand over the trial data for independent scrutiny.
It was hailed a “major victory” for transparency and after the win, Doshi told The BMJ, “For me this case has always been about something larger than my specific request. It is about the principle of transparency. If my case sets a precedent and Health Canada begins making clinical trial data available to others—promptly, and without imposing confidentiality agreements—that will be the real victory.”
Notably, the Canadian drug regulator has gone one step further than EMA by proactively releasing data for not only approved drug submissions, but also “unapproved, and withdrawn drug and biologic submissions… Class III and IV medical device applications.”
The US FDA houses the largest known repository of clinical trial data in the world, but it doesn’t proactively share it.
In 2018, the FDA launched a new pilot program to proactively publish clinical study reports from the pivotal studies of nine recently approved drugs – but the agency put an end to that program in March 2020.
“It is just so typical of the FDA, which is very beholden to industry, and which some have dubbed the Foot Dragging Agency when it comes to the public interest,” said Gøtzsche.
Now, the only mechanism to ascertain regulatory data for FDA-approved drugs is to submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a lengthy process which often results in heavily redacted documents of limited value.
A study by US researchers, analysed the FDA’s willingness to release data, compared to other regulators, EMA and Health Canada.
They found that between 2016 and April 2021, EMA released data for 123 unique medical products, while Health Canada released data for 73 unique medical products between 2019 and April 2021.
In stark contrast, the FDA only proactively disclosed data supporting one single drug that was approved in 2018, clearly demonstrating that the agency has failed to keep pace with the European and Canadian regulatory bodies.
The problem of data secrecy within the FDA has been especially evident during the pandemic. Recently, I reported in The BMJ that the agency had failed to disclose covid-19 vaccine ‘safety signals’ derived from post-marketing data.
Also, the non-profit group, Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency had to sue the FDA for access to trial documents used as the basis for licensing Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine. Initially, the agency wanted 75 years to release all the data but a Federal Court Judge rejected its request, ordering the release of the documents at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, taking approximately 8 months.
Given the widespread use of this important public health intervention, and the billions of dollars in public funds used to conduct vaccine research and development, these data should have been made publicly available immediately.
Data secrecy has undermined the health care system by subverting the allocation of scare resources and eroding public trust. The damage done to people’s confidence in vaccines, and medicines more broadly, will be felt for generations and likely to harm public health.
November 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | EMA, FDA, Health Canada |
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Dr. Rochelle Walensky Tweeting Counterfactuals with Intent
CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, for the record, continues to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine boosters with the apparent motivation of getting more Americans “fully vaccinated.” This is in the backdrop of an 8.4% rate of Americans over age 5 taking one of them.[i]
No matter how hard the internal pressure is at the CDC to get a “needle in every arm,” what would be such a strong motivation for Walensky to blatantly deceive Americans with such obvious counterfactual information?
She states “COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent every infection (as apparent in her personal case), but they do provide us important protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death…”
In order for that claim to be valid by US regulations, a COVID-19 vaccine would need to reduce the risk of adjudicated COVID-19 hospitalization and death as a primary endpoint in a prospective, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. The benefit would need to be meaningful, e.g., ~20% relative risk reduction, and statistically significant, e.g., p<0.05. The conclusive study should have no significant threats to validity such as loss to follow-up. There has been no pivotal randomized trial, and no one can claim COVID-19 vaccines reduce hospitalization and death. The shortest section on the FDA Pfizer Fact Sheet is the “Benefits” section! This is given with the consent form and makes no claims about severity, hospitalization, and death.[ii]
She goes on to promote a two-month period between the last injection (presumably legacy mRNA) and the new bivalent vaccine. This schedule has never been tested and demonstrated to be safe in human beings. Even more shocking, the bivalent boosters which failed in animal studies to stop Omicron, have never been tested for safety or efficacy in human RCTs with clinical outcomes. In academic medicine and the pharmaceutical regulatory community, the question is WHY does Walensky cross the line into making false claims, an illegal act for fully FDA approved and marketed drugs/vaccines? Only senate or congressional hearings with direct questions will get the truth out of her.
Here are some possibilities: 1) she is following orders from higher governmental authorities, 2) she knows the claims are false but truly believes the only way for vaccination to work is to keep everyone vaccinated on a continuous basis no matter what the costs, 3) she is in a form of a trance or psychological state driven by fear in herself and for humanity where COVID-19 vaccination has become like a talisman with special powers and cannot be challenged. Indeed, Walensky has never comprehensively discussed safety of COVID-19 vaccination, and she has not disclosed who should NOT take a COVID-19 vaccine. So, the next time someone in your circles claims you or your loved one should take a COVID-19 vaccine to be “safe” or “protected” from serious outcomes, ask them to take a look at the consent fact sheet and read the tiny benefit section.
[i] CDC COVID Tracker, Accessed November 9, 2022
[ii] VACCINE INFORMATION FACT SHEET FOR RECIPIENTS AND CAREGIVERS ABOUT COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, mRNA), THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, AND THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, BIVALENT (ORIGINAL AND OMICRON BA.4/BA.5) TO PREVENT CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) FOR USE IN INDIVIDUALS 12 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER, August 22, 2022
November 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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This week marked the 47th anniversary of the dismissal of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam by the country’s British-appointed governor-general John Kerr.
The role and power of governors-general is little known, let alone understood today, but they wield enormous clout over many countries that once comprised the British Empire.
Appointed by a royal decree, they serve as the reigning British monarch’s local representatives, appoint government ministers, judges and ambassadors, grant royal assent to laws passed by parliament, bestow state honors, and are commanders-in-chief of the respective nation’s armed forces, among other things.
The unceremonious dismissal of Whitlam and his elected government is largely forgotten today, but the sordid episode detonated the myth that constituents of the British Commonwealth are independent, sovereign states, free from control or influence of their former imperial master – however briefly.
Elected in 1972 on a wave of popular upheaval, Whitlam was an upstart social democrat who made clear his country would not be dominated by the interests of foreign powers.
Within months, he abolished royal patronage, recognised the People’s Republic of China, drew up plans for Aboriginal land rights, ended conscription, and withdrew all Australian troops from Vietnam, with his ministers referring to the US war as “corrupt and barbaric.”
Fast forward to November 1975, and he was thrown out of office upon the request of governor-general John Kerr. When that fateful day came, Queen Elizabeth II’s deputy private secretary William Heseltine, an Australian citizen, stated that “the palace was in a state of total ignorance.”
Secret communications between Buckingham Palace and Kerr, recently reported on in forensic detail by Declassified Australia, prove Helestine’s professions to be an outright lie, beyond doubt.
Doing the monarchy ‘good’
In a series of letters, starting in September 1975, Kerr openly discussed ways in which Whitlam could be removed from power in a bloodless coup with both the Queen and Prince Charles, now King of Great Britain, and Australia.
This was despite vice-regal convention dictating that a governor-general must “advise, counsel and warn” an elected prime minister about their planning and thinking, even in the event of potential dismissal, the British monarch theoretically being duty-bound to remain disinterested and politically neutral, and Australian High Court justice Anthony Mason warning Kerr that his behavior was “deceptive”.
Both he and the palace were unfazed, no doubt confident that “royal secrecy” laws would conceal their activities forever.
Among the earliest communications are notes from a meeting between Prince Charles and Kerr during Papua New Guinea’s 1975 independence celebrations. The governor-general made clear what he was plotting, but expressed anxiety that Whitlam, if he caught wind of the conspiracy, would dismiss him first.
“The Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time, should this happen, when you were considering having to dismiss the government,” Kerr cited Charles as saying.
Upon returning to Britain, Charles informed the Queen of the plan in motion. Charteris then wrote to Kerr outlining how he would be protected in the event Whitlam requested that the palace recall the governor-general.
Should that “contingency” arise, Charteris said, Elizabeth II would “try to delay things” rather than responding promptly according to protocol, allowing Kerr to plunge the dagger first.
While the Queen took the lead role in consulting with Kerr on legal and regulatory routes to oust Whitlam, Prince Charles was also intimately involved, actively encouraging and counseling the governor-general.
In order to legitimize his sinister scheme, Kerr sought the advice of Australia’s two most senior law officers as to whether Whitlam could be dismissed under “reserve powers”. This authority, only usable in specific, adverse circumstances such as crises, would allow the governor-general to act unilaterally, without governmental or parliamentary approval.
Kerr knew that it was likely no legitimate grounds for such an extraordinary intervention would be identified, and accordingly warned the palace in early November, although made clear he would move ahead anyway.
In a series of letters, Charteris variously reassured Kerr, “that you have powers is recognised,” “those powers do exist,” and “if you do, as you will, what the constitution dictates, you cannot possibly do the monarchy any avoidable harm. The chances are you will do it good.”
The senior Australian legal officers’ opinion arrived on November 6, 1975 – and as expected, they warned Kerr he had no legal or constitutional grounds for overthrowing the Whitlam government. Five days later, he did so anyway.
In March 1976, Prince Charles wrote to Kerr, praising him for his actions and stellar work as Buckingham Palace’s man Down Under more generally.
“I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed in your many and varied duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do,” the King-in-waiting fawned.
Web of lies and connivance
The public would be utterly in the dark about this web of lies and connivance, were it not for a bitter four-year-long High Court battle in Australia to secure declassification of these highly incriminating papers.
Within hours of the release of letters, Buckingham Palace issued a public statement, denying the dark reality so amply exposed by the disclosure: “Neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”
The High Court decision was a landmark development, marking the first time the concept of “royal secrecy” had been overturned anywhere in the British Commonwealth.
It has remained unchallenged in every other constituent country ever since, meaning the obvious question of whether similar chicanery was undertaken against troublesomely independent figures elsewhere in the political association remains an open one.
This is particularly relevant to consider given that the new British King has a dual history of directly pressuring state officials at home to structure policy and action domestically and internationally according to his personal will, and doggedly attempting to keep such lobbying hidden from public view.
In May 2015, over two dozen private communications between then-Prince Charles and British ministers were published after a 10-year-long legal struggle, which cost successive governments hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The contents of these letters showed Charles – again in breach of conventions on “political neutrality” – petitioning elected representatives on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to alternative medicines.
In some, then-heir to the British throne openly warned a health secretary that “chickens will come home to roost” in their government department if redevelopment of a hospital – in which the Prince’s architecture charity was involved – was not accelerated.
It’s clear though that Charles didn’t typically need to rely on threats – government officials were usually willing to obsequiously roll over how and when he requested them to.
In response to one royal intervention, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair unctuously stated: “I always value and look forward to your views.” In another, an education secretary signed off: “I have the honour to be Your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.”
The letters were released at a time when speculation was rife in the mainstream media that Charles intended to rule in a far more outspoken way than his publicly taciturn mother.
Since taking the throne, there is little sign publicly of this – although that could in part be attributed to the British government amending the Freedom of Information Act to provide an “absolute exemption” on all requests relating to the royal family since.
Now that more and more countries are choosing to unbridle themselves from the yoke of British rule and secede from the Commonwealth, it’s surely never been more important for the royal family to maintain an intensive cloak of secrecy around their political influence.
And the temptation to employ “reserve powers” to displace upstart governments in the manner of Gough Whitlam’s has surely never been higher.
November 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Australia, UK |
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On Monday, October 24th a debate on vaccine safety took place in Parliament. Three MPs, Danny Kruger, Sir Christopher Chope and Andrew Bridgen, discussed a number of issues the mainstream media have not been reporting on. The health concerns raised appear to be receiving very little, if any, serious recognition by the Government. It was the safety of children and young adults that concerned me most in this debate and in this article I want to explore whether the medical profession is being as cautious and conscientious as it should be in the administration of medication, including but not limited to Covid vaccines, to children. How well are children and young adults being monitored following medical interventions?
A few days ago it was reported that dozens of children between the ages of five and 11 were given higher doses of the Covid vaccine “by mistake”. Solent NHS Trust operated the ‘pop-up’ vaccine clinic (see later) and one mother was told that “she shouldn’t expect anything significant” to happen to her daughter following the mistake but that any reaction to the jab “would last longer”. The Chief Medical Officer for the Trust said that this was an isolated occurrence.
In other news, the Indonesian Health Ministry said on Thursday, October 20th that it had found traces of three hazardous chemicals in children with acute kidney injury, two of which are present in Indian-manufactured syrups suspected to be linked to dozens of deaths in Gambia. According to the Ministry, at least 70 cases of children under the age of five years with acute kidney failure are being detected every month with a mortality rate of about 50%.
This type of news is always disturbing to hear, not only because innocent young lives are involved but also because these children had little, if any, choice in the administration of a treatment that might not even have been necessary. It seems all too easy to reach out to the medicine cabinet for just about any ailment, no matter how mild or trivial these days. Likewise, it seems too easy for parents to be made to believe that Covid vaccinations offered to their child are essential for their health and wellbeing.
Errors in paediatric doses are not in fact uncommon. Research shows that potential adverse drug events occur three times more frequently among paediatric patients than among adults. Some of these differences in error rates are due to:
- larger volumes of stock solution for adults;
- greater variability in weight and body surface area of children;
- differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics;
- children’s kidneys, liver and immune systems are still developing;
- children not being able to communicate what they are feeling;
Monitoring of adverse events in children is also much more difficult than for adults and conducting and monitoring long term drug trials for children is even more problematic. The conclusion of a 2019 medical study was that: “Paediatric clinical trials designed to sufficiently investigate drug safety and efficacy to support approval are of relatively limited duration. Given the potential long-term exposure of patients to these drugs, the clinical community should consider whether new approaches are needed to better understand the safety of long-term use of these drugs.”
An example of a recent attempt to monitor the effect (and therefore safety) of Covid vaccines on children has been the reliance on testing for antibody production against the disease. A recent JAMA study suggests that these trials have been inadequate and inappropriate. It found that such antibody production provides children with little or no protection against infection. The main determinant is actually cellular immunity (i.e., T Cells). The study even found that having antibodies to Omicron increased the infection risk, which may help to explain the negative vaccine effectiveness seen in a number of studies where infection rates are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Whilst evidence of the adverse reactions and immediate harms of Covid vaccines on young people is building at an alarming rate, it is easy to overlook the possible unknown long term consequences. History has taught us that medical experts can fail to see harms in both pre-licensed and post-licensed pharmaceuticals and in non-licensed or non-prescription drugs for dangerously long periods. There are too many examples to list here, but in the early 1900s concern about smoking was considered alarmist. There was no definitive evidence that smoking was bad for you. By the 1930s, tobacco companies had an army of doctors ready to debunk you as a quack for even suggesting something as benign as a cigarette could give you cancer. By the 1960s, the evidence against smoking was more than damning. By then, the debate over smoking’s deadly impact had been raging around the world for more than a generation and medical experts were slowly reaching the same conclusion.
In July 1956, medical authorities in West Germany licensed a drug for sale without a prescription. Thalidomide had been developed as a sedative or tranquiliser, but people were soon taking it for a range of conditions, including pneumonia, colds and the flu, as well as to relieve nausea in early pregnancy. Six years later, more than 10,000 babies had been born with physical abnormalities caused by the drug. It wasn’t until 1962 that Thalidomide was banned in most countries in which it was sold – and this for a drug with such early and devastating side effects. In the U.K., the MHRA Yellow Card adverse event reporting system was introduced partly as a result of Thalidomide, but we know that average reporting rates are estimated to be around 10% of actual adverse events under this system.
Scandals are often associated with a failure to learn from history. In the early 50’s a Dr. Krugman wanted to create a vaccine for hepatitis. He deceptively coerced carers and parents into forcing 50 children from a home for developmentally challenged kids to be injected with the virus itself or by making them drink chocolate milk mixed with faeces from other infected children. Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician, said that “Krugman certainly did speed up the development of a hepatitis B vaccine but I don’t think you’re ever justified to inoculate a child with an infectious virus that might kill them”. In 1979 the Belmont Report was published in an effort to learn from this and provide a comprehensive guideline of basic ethical principles.
Augmenting the hoped for protections of the Belmont Report, a 2004 article described the main ways in which the risk of medication errors for children could be minimised. It said it is critical to have
- personnel trained in paediatrics to prescribe, prepare, dispense and administer medications;
- a quality review system in place to review drug use and medication errors, and;
- to implement computerised physician order entry with decision support and other tools in the next decade to improve pharmacologic therapy for paediatric patients.
It is concerning therefore, in relation to the above, that the ‘pop-up’ Covid vaccine clinics in the U.K. are often staffed by volunteers who may have had no prior medical, nursing or any type of clinical experience. The BMA paper on the recruitment of these Covid vaccination volunteers lists the minimal qualifications. The volunteer has to:
- be between the age of 18 and 69;
- have at least two or more A-levels or equivalent;
- be at low risk of COVID-19;
- be prepared to undergo a reference check.
How can we be sure that the Solent NHS Trust incident was an “isolated occurrence” and how can we be sure that nothing “significant” will happen to the children (estimated to have received three times the correct dose)?
Surely this cannot be right, 70 years on from the days of Krugman? Is it also acceptable for parents to have been pressured (in the case of Covid, through fear from Government, scientists and the media) into providing consent for a novel ‘vaccine’, without long term data, on behalf of their healthy offspring? This fear was instilled through overstating the risk of Covid to healthy children, misinforming the public that the vaccines prevented transmission and describing vaccine effectiveness in a misleading way by claiming up to 95% effectiveness (relative risk) instead of the actual or absolute reduction in risk which in the trial was less than 1% in adults and is now possibly less than nil for children (see above).
I try to put myself in the shoes of these children when, possibly some time later in their lives, they are told of their participation in the administration of a not yet fully licensed medication. Or not told. They were possibly too young to comprehend the personal risk and bodily infringement inflicted. Andrew Bridgen MP reported one study alone involving several thousand vaccinated children showing that one in 500 under five years of age who received a Pfizer Covid vaccine were hospitalised with a vaccine injury and one in 200 had symptoms ongoing for weeks or months afterwards.
Why has the Government, the medical profession and media not allowed the public to be informed that the Yellow Card reports, and those of the American equivalent, VAERS, show up more adverse Covid vaccine incidents in young people than all other known vaccinations combined? Around 6,000 doctors, scientists and professionals in more than 34 countries have declared an international medical crisis due to “diseases and death associated with the COVID-19 vaccines”. Their report highlights the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people who were inoculated with these ‘vaccines’, and the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths which have not been investigated.
Danny Kruger MP said: “The MHRA is funded by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs and vaccines that it regulates. There might be some universe in which that makes sense, but this is not it.”
In 1995, the comedienne Mrs Merton famously asked Debbie McGee (unfairly I thought): “So what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Similar could be asked of Government and others involved in the rollout of experimental mRNA Covid vaccinations: “So why were healthy children and young adults coerced into receiving unnecessary multiple Covid vaccinations from a $1.4 trillion global pharmaceutical industry?”
Dr. Mark Shaw is a retired dentist.
November 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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A bombshell New York Times report has revealed that Greg McWhirter, the Vice President of the Oath Keepers who helped lead the group’s presence on January 6th, is an FBI informant.
Federal officials worked hard to hide McWhirter’s status as a Confidential Human Source (CHS) in the seditious conspiracy trial of Oath Keeper’s leader Stewart Rhodes and his associates, presenting their asset in public filings as a mere “witness” instead.
In a furious November 8th filing, federal prosecutors accused defense attorneys of illegally disclosing confidential discovery about McWhirter to the press. It appears that the actual way McWhirter’s status was leaked was through a clerical error by DC court employees, who accidentally published the sealed document on the docket.
Federal officials have been suppressing information on the role their assets and agents played in inciting violence at the Capitol by having them testify as witnesses in cases related to January 6th.
McWhirter, a black Sheriff’s deputy in Montana, rose through the ranks of the Oath Keepers thanks in part to his existing contacts with law enforcement as well as his race. Rhodes regularly showcased McWhirter’s black heritage as evidence that he is not racist.
The infiltrator has also courted public controversy for other legally dubious stunts over the years. During the 2016 election, he called on members of his militia to patrol voting sites in order to discourage election fraud. In a more recent incident, he aided the FBI in attempting to manufacture an Oath Keeper’s conspiracy to kill members of Antifa in Portland as retaliation for the anarchist murder of Aaron Danielson.
Following the events of January 6th, McWhirter bought a gun shop and immediately began offering steep discounts on ammo and weapons to militia members, with implications that they had to prepare for civil war.
The defense for Rhodes, et al, was planning to call McWhirter as a witness in order to expose his role as an agitator. Yet, as the FBI informant boarded the plane to travel to his scheduled court appearance, he suffered heart trouble and could not testify. He is only 40-years-old.
On social media, many are speculating that federal agents either induced his emergency health issue with drugs or, more plausible, worked with him and his physician to fake the whole thing. In light of this curious coincidence, Rhodes’ defense was forced to rest its case without being able to cross examine the agent provocateur.
This is not the first irregular development in the trial. Witnesses Rhodes’ defense planned to call who were slated to tell the court that the defendants were innocent of plotting violence at the Capitol had FBI agents visit their homes right before they were scheduled to testify. The FBI agents told them that they would legally incriminate themselves and be prosecuted if they spoke in Rhodes’ defense. This intimidation tactic proved effective, leading to witnesses taking the fifth amendment when called, much to the shock and frustration of the defense.
McWhirter was not the only person working for the FBI inside the Oath Keepers. Another black member, Abdullah Rasheed, was also exposed in court for providing information on the group’s inner workings to federal agents in the run up to January 6th.
In addition to this, the FBI appears to be preparing to thwart expected Congressional inquiries into domestic counter-terrorism operations. Journalist Julie Kelly recently reported that Christopher Wray is rushing to replace the head of its Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, who has led agents in using controversial tactics across the country to entrap persons with right-wing political beliefs of all types in fictitious terror plots. D’Antuono suddenly announced his retirement despite his recent lucrative and prestigious promotion, which will make it difficult for Congress to question him on his actions under the color of law in the last three years.
The Oath Keeper’s trial, which to date is the most serious and high profile prosecution of all January 6th cases, will soon be going to jury deliberation.
November 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | FBI, Human rights, United States |
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