The Face Mask Cult
The Daily Sceptic | April 13, 2022
There follows a post by Hector Drummond, a former academic who worked in risk, who says when he came to research his new book The Face Mask Cult on the effectiveness of masks against COVID-19 the evidence was threadbare.
In 2021 I decided to write an FAQ on all aspects of Covid, lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). I started with face masks, as they seemed to be the easiest issue to deal with, thinking that the whole mask situation could be summed up in five to six pages. After a few days work I had twenty pages of text, and another twenty pages of reminder notes on further aspects of face masks that I needed to consider and research. Those notes ballooned out in the next few weeks, and I realised that the use of face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was a far bigger topic than I had appreciated, and would require substantial amounts of writing, and months of research and literature-reading.
It took until the next year before I decided I’d written enough on the topic. I had read an enormous number of scientific papers and other articles on masks, and gone through some of them with a fine-tooth comb (see Part 3 of the book, for instance). I had spent considerable time analysing, synthesising and rewriting, and my short FAQ article had become a comprehensive 400-page book that tackled all aspects of the issue, as well as a unique resource with its extensive scientific literature review section.
In all my researches I failed to come across very much in the way of convincing evidence that masks work. The papers that were supposed to show that they did all turned out to be poor pieces of science. None were randomly-controlled peer-reviewed trials. Some were observational studies, with inadequate controls for dealing with the possibility of faulty or biased recollection. Some were ‘modelling’ studies, in which a computer program was used to ‘model’ the effect of face masks on disease spread. Modelling studies are generally hopeless at providing any confirming evidence for the effectiveness of face masks as they require the modellers to make assumptions about how effective the masks are when writing their programs. Some were mannequin studies, in which a dummy in a lab with artificial breathing functions, rather than a real person in the real world, was used. Some were simply tests of the porosity of various materials in regard to salt aerosols.
Most studies ignored the issue of face mask gaps, despite it being well-known in the field that gaps around the sides of masks will let such large amounts of virions in and out that any effect that the masks do have will be completely negated. (This is why medical institutions require ‘fit tests’ for masks – not that fit tests are very reliable, as I explain in the book.)
Even these dubious studies that claimed to show an effect for masks didn’t show much of an effect. The less wild ones would typically claim that the cloth masks would stop 5% to 15% of virions, but they never presented any reason to believe the further claim that was often made that this would cause a 5% to 15% reduction in cases, or a 5% to 15% reduction in deaths. The closest such studies got to doing so was when an author would occasionally speculate, in an airy fashion, that if the disease in question’s R0 rate happened to be close to 1.0, then maybe widespread mask use (assuming masks had some small effect) would be enough to push the R0 rate below 1.0, in which case the disease would die out, although of course even if all their assumptions were true and masks did push the disease’s R0 rate below 1.0 it doesn’t follow that the disease would die out anytime soon. It could well be that the disease’s R0 rate would quickly come back over 1.0 again as soon as we stop masking, and so in order to stop the disease spreading again we would have to wear masks for years on end, or even indefinitely.
But what about all those government reports written by distinguished scientists assuring us that there were now truckloads of research proving that masks work? This is perhaps the most shocking part of the whole face mask con. The 2020 DELVE report and its updates, the 2020 Royal Society report, and the 2022 Department for Education’s Evidence Summary were disgraceful pieces of misinformation, as I show in detail in the book. Even more shocking, perhaps, is the fact that there have been so many acts of wrongdoing in the last two years that the scientific butchery committed in these reports is completely unknown to the general public. The fact, for instance, that the Royal Society’s report relied heavily upon a low-grade Chinese study, written in Chinese only, and published in an obscure Chinese journal, which reported fantastically unrealistic results, is never even going to briefly flit through the mind of the average person, because the average person will never come across any reference to this shameful affair in the mainstream media.
I felt vindicated as I put the finishing touches to the book when several prominent advocates of masks, such as Trish Greenhalgh, Jeremy Howard and many others, started to admit that cloth masks were useless. Not that they wanted us to stop wearing masks – they now wanted us to move onto medical-grade respirator masks, like N95s and FFP2s, as Germany required. Needless to say, these mask fanatics didn’t bother to mention that Germany’s stringent mask policy has been a complete failure.
The book I finished up with is a serious corrective to the endless propaganda we have been fed about masks. It lays out the case against masks in detail, considers the harms done by mask-wearing (harms which are usually ignored by scientists and governments), closely examines many claims made about masks by both sides, and backs it all up with an enormous number of references to the scientific literature. Whenever anyone who wants you to wear a mask says, “Follow the Science”, just show them this book and say, “I already did”.
The question MSM should be asking about Partygate
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 14, 2022
Partygate, as the name suggests, concerns parties and in particular parties in Downing Street during lockdowns. For those who don’t know no. 10 Downing Street is where the current Prime Minister works and resides, in this case, Boris Johnson. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lives and works next door at number 11. Number 10 may look small from the outside but actually comprises of more than 100 rooms.
From March 2020, the UK had a number of lockdowns and until recently some form of restrictions in place. As with most countries, many of these restrictions included who you could and couldn’t visit or numbers of people allowed indoors or outdoors.
It has since transpired that whilst authoring and implementing all of these draconian rules, along with the harsh penalties if the rules were broken, Boris, his wife Carrie, Rishi and other staff at Downing Street had at least 12 parties. At least 50 penalty notices are being handed out to Boris, Carrie, Rishi and others.
The MSM is focussing on Boris breaking the rules and lying when asked if he had broken them. However, the question they should be asking is:
Why was the government desperately trying to scare the public about Covid when they themselves weren’t scared in the slightest?
Were they so stressed and tired of it all that they were happy to risk their lives just to have a few parties or did they know, the whole time, that Covid would mainly kill the elderly and vulnerable so they themselves were perfectly safe. Or perhaps they knew of the potential dangers a lab made virus could pose but had access to an already prepared inhibitor which targeted the spike protein?
If the correct answer is that they knew Covid was not as deadly as being made out, then the MSM should be investigating why they continued to scare the public. Where did the idea come from? Why was it pushed so hard if they knew it was rubbish? Why was no cost/benefit analysis undertaken and if it was why did they continue to destroy the economy?
Another anomaly, which verges into conspiracy theory territory, is why was Boris Johnson partying after he came out of intensive care less than a month previously? Surely you would take it easy for a while after such a big scare? Even if Boris wasn’t bothered, staff would have been shell shocked and scared for their own safety? Politicians and Journalists voiced rumours at the time but they were quickly retracted.
Come on MSM, step up and ask the correct questions.
6 Double Standards Public Health Officials Used to Justify COVID Vaccines
Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | April 13, 2022
We are not only in an epidemiological crisis, we also are in an epistemological crisis. How do we know what we know? What differentiates opinion from a justified belief?
For nearly two years, the public has been inundated by a sophisticated messaging campaign that urges us to “trust the science.”
But how can a non-scientist know what the science is really saying?
Legacy media sources offer us an easy solution: “Trust us.”
Legions of so-called “independent” fact-checking sites that serve to eliminate any wayward thinking keep those with a modicum of skepticism in line.
“Research” has been redefined to mean browsing Wikipedia citations.
Rather than being considered for their merit, dissenting opinions are more easily dismissed as misinformation by labeling their source as untrustworthy.
How do we know these sources are untrustworthy? They must be if they offer a dissenting opinion!
This form of circular reasoning is the central axiom of all dogmatic systems of thought. Breaking the spell of dogmatic thinking is not easy, but it is possible.
In this article I describe six examples of double standards medical authorities have used to create the illusion their COVID-19 narrative is logical and sensible.
This illusion has been used with devastating effect to raise vaccine compliance.
Rather than citing scientific publications or expert opinions that conflict with our medical authorities’ narrative — information that will be categorically dismissed because it appears on The Defender — I will instead demonstrate how, from the beginning, the official narrative has been inconsistent, hypocritical and/or contradictory.
1. COVID deaths are ‘presumed,’ but vaccine deaths must be ‘proven’
As of April 8, VAERS included 26,699 reports of deaths following COVID vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially acknowledges only nine of these.
In order to establish causality, the CDC requires autopsies to rule out any possible etiology of death before the agency will place culpability on the vaccine.
But the CDC uses a very different standard when it comes to identifying people who died from COVID.
The 986,000 COVID deaths reported by the CDC here are, as footnote [1] indicates, “Deaths with confirmed or presumed [emphasis added] COVID-19.”
If a person dies with a positive PCR test or is presumed to have COVID, the CDC will count that as COVID-19 death.
Note that in the CDC’s definition, a COVID fatality does not mean the person died from the disease, only with the disease.
Why is an autopsy required to establish a COVID vaccine death but not to establish a COVID death?
Conversely, why is recent exposure to SARS-CoV-2 prior to a death sufficient to establish causality — but recent exposure to a vaccine considered coincidental?
2. CDC uses VAERS data to investigate myocarditis yet claims VAERS data on vaccine deaths is unreliable
On June 23, 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met to assess the risk of peri/myocarditis following COVID vaccination, especially in young males.
This was the key slide in this presentation:
The observed risk of myocarditis is 219 in about 4.3 million second doses of COVID vaccine in males 18 to 24 years old.
The CDC is fine with using VAERS data to assess risk of myocarditis following vaccination — yet the agency rejects all but nine of the 26,699 reports of deaths following the vaccines.
Why does the CDC trust the peri/myocarditis data in VAERS but not the data on deaths?
One reason may be because the onset of myocarditis symptoms is closely tied to the time of vaccination.
In other words, because this condition closely follows inoculation the two events are highly correlated and suggestive of causation.
For example, here is another slide from the same presentation:
The majority of cases of vaccine-induced peri/myocarditis suffered symptoms within the first few days after injection. As explained above, this is highly suggestive of a causative effect of the vaccine.
A recent study in The Lancet included a similar graph, taken directly from VAERS, on deaths following vaccination:
Once again, the event (death) closely follows vaccination in the majority of cases.
As we regard the two graphs above we should acknowledge that the temporal relationship between the injection and the adverse event is suggestive of causation but does not stand as proof of such.
However, it is also important to note that if the vaccination caused the deaths, that is exactly what the plot would look like.
It should be clear that the CDC has no justification for dismissing VAERS deaths if the agency is willing to accept reports of myo/pericarditis from the very same reporting system.
3. CDC pushes ‘relative risk’ for determining vaccine efficacy, but uses ‘absolute risk’ to downplay risk of adverse events
In Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial, nine times more placebo recipients developed severe COVID than those vaccinated during the short period of observation. This constitutes a relative risk reduction of 90%.
This seemed an encouraging finding and was used as a major talking point to compel the public to accept this experimental therapy despite the absence of any long-term data.
However, the risk of a trial participant contracting severe COVID (Table S5) was 1 in 21,314 (0.0047%) if they were vaccinated.
If they received the placebo, the risk was still only 9 in 21,259 (0.0423%).
The vaccine reduced the absolute risk of contracting severe disease by 0.038%.
Mainstream media and the CDC never mentioned the minuscule reduction in absolute risk of contracting severe COVID by getting inoculated.
Moreover, with 0.6% of vaccine recipients in the trial suffering a serious vaccine injury (one that results in death, medical or surgical intervention, hospitalization or an impending threat to life), approximately 16 serious adverse events will result for every serious case of COVID prevented by vaccination.
However, when it comes to risk of myo/pericarditis, the CDC states, “Myocarditis and pericarditis have rarely been reported, especially in adolescents and young adult males within several days after COVID-19 vaccination.”
The CDC further states, “While absolute risk remains small, the risk for myocarditis is higher for males ages 12 to 39 years…”
In other words, the risk of adverse events is being considered in absolute terms, not relative.
The CDC presentation slide above (Table 1) indicates the relative risk of contracting myo/pericarditis in males 18 to 24 is 27 to more than 200 times higher than expected in (unvaccinated) young men that age.
When assuaging the public’s fear around vaccine-induced myocarditis, the CDC finds it useful to cite absolute risk — yet when promoting the efficacy of the vaccine, the CDC emphasizes relative risks.
This double standard has been quietly and masterfully employed to reduce vaccine hesitancy and encourage compliance.
4. FDA requires randomized control studies for early treatment medications — but not for boosters
The CDC reports that as of April 8, 98.3 million Americans had received a COVID booster.
On March 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a second booster for the immunocompromised and adults over age 50.
These authorizations were made not because of solid evidence the boosters are effective but rather to remedy the fact that the primary vaccine series has been widely shown to have waning efficacy within a few months.
As reported by The Defender, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s vaccine division, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, admitted the fourth booster dose approved last week was a “stopgap measure” — in other words, a temporary measure to be implemented until a proper solution may be found in the future.
Despite the lack of solid evidence, the FDA continues to recommend and authorize boosters.
Yet when it comes to early treatment options, the agency holds medicines — including those the agency has already licensed and approved for other uses — to a different standard.
In this CNN interview from August 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns people not to take ivermectin for COVID because “there is no clinical evidence that this works.”
With regard to hydroxychloroquine, Fauci said, “We know that every single good study — and by good study, I mean randomized control study in which the data are firm and believable — has s shown that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in the treatment of Covid-19”, as reported by the BBC on July 29, 2020.
Where, then, are the randomized control studies in which the data are firm and believable that show boosters are effective at preventing COVID?
There aren’t any. None have been done.
As of today, the FDA still refuses to authorize the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID despite hundreds of studies that demonstrate significant benefits (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) in prevention as well as early and late treatment.
The double standard here is blatant. There are no randomized control studies that show boosters are effective in preventing COVID.
Nevertheless, these experimental therapies have the FDA’s blessing while inexpensive, highly effective safe and proven medicines are ignored despite the enormous evidence that supports their use.
5. FDA uses immunobridging to justify Pfizer shots for young kids, but rejects antibodies as indicative of immune protection from COVID
Immunobridging is a method of inferring a vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing disease by assessing its ability to elicit an immune response through the measurement of biochemical markers, typically antibody levels.
The FDA asserts the presence of SARS-COV-2 antibodies is not necessarily indicative of immune protection from COVID.
Moreover, the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biologics Product Advisory Committee reached a consensus last week that antibody levels cannot be used as a correlate for vaccine effectiveness.
Their decision is consistent with the CDC’s executive summary of a science brief released on October 29, 2021:
“Data are presently insufficient to determine an antibody titer threshold that indicates when an individual is protected from infection.”
Nevertheless, the FDA used immunobridging as a means to justify authorization of the Pfizer vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, as explained in The Defender here and here.
Because there were no deaths or serious cases of COVID in the pediatric trial, the FDA chose to reject its own position (and that of its advisory committee) regarding antibody titers as a correlate for vaccine efficacy.
6. Causation must be proven for vaccine injuries, but correlation suffices for proving vaccine efficacy
When it comes to vaccine injuries the public is often reminded that correlation does not equal causation.
In other words, just because an injury was preceded by inoculation doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the injury.
But what constitutes causation in medicine? A mechanism of action needs to be identified and pathological studies must confirm this mechanism while eliminating other potential causative factors. Causation can be proven only on a case-by-case basis.
Proving causation requires an enormous burden of proof in medicine.
For example, does smoking cause lung cancer? The answer is yes, it can. That doesn’t mean that it will.
However, when it comes to the benefit of medical intervention, such as a vaccine, causation does not have to be established. Correlation suffices.
In the COVID vaccine trials, fewer vaccinated people contracted COVID than unvaccinated ones. Yet there were those who received the vaccine who contracted the disease anyway.
To be fair, this is how all new medical interventions are evaluated. The benefit doesn’t have to be caused by the vaccine in the strictest sense, there just has to be a correlation between vaccination and a relative protective effect.
The more often this happens, the more confident we can be that the outcome wasn’t simply a coincidence.
Likewise, when it comes to assessing the harm of medical intervention, the most sensible outcome to consider is mortality. After all, what would be the point of introducing a vaccine that prevented some deaths while causing more?
Nevertheless, this is, in fact, what we have done with the Pfizer product. The interim results from the Phase 3 trial demonstrated that all-cause mortality in the vaccinated cohort was higher than in the placebo.
This glaring problem gets brushed aside because there were two deaths from COVID in the placebo arm versus just one in the vaccinated cohort, allowing the vaccine manufacturer to claim a 50% efficacy in preventing this outcome.
However, if we attribute a protective benefit to the vaccine in preventing this one fatality, we must also conclude that the vaccine was responsible for the extra death when considering mortality from all causes.
Doing otherwise would be applying yet another double standard.
How the pandemic could have played out differently
To summarize how devastating the use of these double standards in crafting the “safe and effective” narrative was, let’s look at how different the situation would be if we had adopted the opposite standard:
- There would have been an extremely low number of deaths from COVID. Very few, if any, autopsies have definitively confirmed that a fatality was caused by SARS-CoV-2. If confirmation by autopsy is the standard, there have been essentially zero deaths from COVID during the pandemic.
On the other hand, if we presume the deaths registered in VAERS are in fact vaccine-induced fatalities — similar to how the CDC presumed many deaths from COVID — we can affirm there have been more than 26,000 vaccine deaths. - Using absolute risk reduction as a measure of efficacy, vaccines would have been widely rejected as ineffective, providing only a 0.038% risk reduction for contracting severe COVID.
- Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would have been readily available for people who got COVID. And for those who got the vaccine but got COVID anyway, these medicines would have been a great alternative to boosters, which wouldn’t have been approved due to the lack of a single randomized control study proving they work.
- No children between the ages of 5 and 11 would have received this risky, experimental vaccine as it wouldn’t have been authorized for this age group — because Pfizer’s pediatric trials did not demonstrate any meaningful outcomes in children ages 5 to 11.
- The Pfizer vaccine would no longer be in use because interim data demonstrated that all-cause mortality is higher in the vaccinated.
Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.
Leaked files expose Britain’s covert infiltration of Palestinian refugee camps
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | April 13 2022
In February, Lebanese journalist Mohammed Shoaib was arrested on suspicion of collusion with Israel’s Mossad spy agency. The writer who worked for Al-Jaras, confessed that the notorious spy agency secretly paid him to author “dozens” of anti-Hezbollah articles, receiving a paltry $30 to $70 per article.
In particular, Shoaib was tasked with writing hit jobs on the “Iranian occupation” of Lebanon, and falsely linking Hezbollah with the August 2020 Beirut port blast, drug trafficking, and murder of political activists.
It is also alleged that Mossad specifically requested his work incite hostility towards Palestinian refugees in the country who number almost 300,000. In all, Lebanon hosts more than 1.7 million refugees and has the largest per capita population of refugees in the world.
Roughly half inhabit camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), where they endure abysmal living conditions, overcrowding, poverty, unemployment, lack of access to justice, and other unspeakable hardships. The 11-year, foreign-backed crisis in neighboring Syria has also prompted Palestinian refugees there – and Syrian citizens – to seek sanctuary in Lebanon.
Given Israel’s track record of multifaceted crimes against the Palestinian people, that they are targeting an already vulnerable refugee population for propaganda purposes is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, Israel is not the only hostile foreign country resorting to these tactics.
Leaked files reviewed by The Cradle reveal the British Foreign Office has for many years secretly meddled in Lebanon’s refugee camps, courtesy of ARK, a shadowy intelligence cutout run by probable MI6 operative Alistair Harris. London’s agenda is rather different than Tel Aviv’s, however – it seeks to subtly stir up revolutionary fervor, and exploit them as unwitting foot soldiers in its ongoing clandestine war against Lebanon’s ruling elite.
‘Community Engagement’
The documents indicate ARK has been operating in all 12 camps since 2009, implementing British-funded “programming” of various kinds. This experience has granted the company “granular understanding” of their internal political, economic, ideological, religious and practical dynamics, and led to the establishment of a “diverse delivery team” and array of “local contacts” with “access throughout all camps and gatherings,” meaning community-level discussions and activities of residents can be spied upon and influenced.
This intimate, insidious insight is reinforced by “daily monitoring of neighborhood-level WhatsApp groups,” with “any new information, such as affiliation between a local group and a faction, or conflict between factions” documented by ARK’s in-house “stakeholder tracker.”
Typically, ARK has engaged in small-scale initiatives in the camps, including the restoration of streets and cemeteries, recycling initiatives, assisting in the launch of small businesses, providing income to disadvantaged and disabled residents, creating nurseries and daycare centers, and even launching a community hub, Sawa Coffeeshop. It serves to this day as “a popular place for youth to gather and promote civic engagement in their community and a shared Palestinian identity that bridges factional differences.”
In submissions to the Foreign Office dating to May 2019, ARK proposed ramping up these activities significantly. It pledged to create “Community Leadership Committees” in each camp, composed of hand-picked “stakeholders” – including NGOs, youth activists, women’s organizations, and representatives of neighborhood armed groups – to identify “quick impact projects” that could be implemented therein. These projects aim to “counter threats to social stability in the camps, create or improve livelihood opportunities, and provide better access to services.”
A social media platform created by ARK, Nastopia – which boasted 20,000 “highly invested” followers on Facebook at the time, a figure that has almost doubled since – was forecast to be fundamental to these efforts.
The page, run by a 24-strong team of ARK-trained “youth reporters”, would be used to recruit local participants, increase awareness and demand for “community engagement and improved conditions” among camp residents. Other activities include the promotion of Foreign Office-financed projects and to publicize “success stories” generated by them, while “promoting Palestinian culture and a sense of belonging, and tackling social injustice.”
Nastopia was “already [an] effective voice for connecting Palestinian communities, particularly youth” by that point. ARK cited a recent “Camps Films Festival” organized by the platform, covered by Al-Jazeera, which showcased “films portraying life in the camps and what it means to be Palestinian,” and in the process provided “positive examples of a shared identity.”
All along, the Nastopia page was to be monitored with “community feedback” on the assorted initiatives gauged to identify areas in which these activities “could be adapted to maximize impact.” Specialist training provided to its staff meant the platform could also serve “as a forum for online and offline discussion about social injustices [and] virtual space to talk about topics considered taboo in the camps,” allowing ARK to burrow even deeper inside the heads of refugees.
‘Active Citizenship’
If the obvious surveillance and manipulation dimensions of ARK’s project weren’t troubling enough, it takes on an acutely sinister character when one considers a key objective of “highlighting successful initiatives” in the camps was to “[enhance] the audience’s confidence in their own ability to contribute to social change.”
A Foreign Office-commissioned Target Audience Analysis conducted by ARK in March 2019 sought to pinpoint a segment of Lebanon’s population that could be mobilized to “affect positive social change,” and methods by which tensions between sectarian communities could be reduced, in order to unify them in opposition to the country’s ruling elite. Reading between the lines, it gives every appearance of a blueprint for the overthrow of the Lebanese government.
An ideal audience was duly identified, representing 12 percent of the population, who disavowed violence but did not reject “other forms of contentious politics,” and could be “influenced” to engage in “behaviors leading to positive social change,” such as protests and community initiatives.
The only questions for ARK were: “What might be done to enable other Lebanese to have similar confidence in their potential to contribute to positive social change?” and “how might this segment of the population … be grown to include a larger fraction of the public?”
The answer, ARK proposed, was to both covertly and overtly promote the message that “change is possible and ordinary citizens have a role to play in achieving change,” by way of propaganda campaigns and civil society initiatives “[highlighting] where change has been achieved or where threats to Lebanon’s stability have been countered.” This would demonstrate to the country’s diverse population that “barriers” to reform can be overcome, by taking matters into their own hands.
Providing evidence of “responsive government at local levels” was crucial for reinforcing “principles of active citizenship” among Lebanon’s population – and the analysis specifically cited Syrians and Palestinians, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, as representing an “important part” of the country’s demography, to be motivated in this manner.
In other words, Foreign Office activities in the refugee camps form just one fragment of a wider, clandestine, multi-channel assault on public perceptions in Lebanon that Britain has been waging against its democratically-elected government.
A mobilized force
One can judge these efforts by their fruits. In October 2019, seven months after ARK’s Target Audience Analysis was supplied to the Foreign Office, large-scale protests engulfed the streets of Beirut, which have ebbed and flowed ever since, and generated enormous amounts of western media coverage along the way.
The extent to which ARK’s Foreign Office-funded meddling in Lebanon influenced this incendiary unrest may never be fully quantifiable, but it may be significant that in July that year, thousands of refugees across several camps began demonstrating in unison, demanding the government immediately reform employment laws barring them as “foreign workers” from numerous professions.
This turmoil was arguably the spark that ignited the entire “October Revolution” – and in one of its Foreign Office submissions, ARK refers to how it “takes pride” in ensuring refugees recruited to its illicit schemes receive “annual leave, sick leave, and health insurance,” despite this not being “legally necessary” due to local legislation “discriminating against Palestinians.”
Who benefits?
The influence of ARK on Lebanon’s impending general election in May, the country’s first since the riots began, is even more unambiguous. Several news outlets have hailed the unprecedentedly high profusion of young candidates vying for office – 80 in total, many of them women.
A clandestine Foreign Office project influenced by the aforementioned Target Audience Analysis sought to enlist Lebanese youth as “agents of change”, fostering among them a culture of active political participation, in order that they could better “hold political institutions and individuals accountable,” and increase “electoral participation” in favor of opposition parties.
Under its auspices, ARK convened “boot camps” in “priority areas” of Lebanon, cultivated “a national group capable of pushing for greater change” composed of young women, and created social media assets and youth-focused websites featuring political interviews, question-and-answer sessions, coverage of boot camp meetings, “calls to action,” and “humorous messaging campaigns.” Activity on these assets was scheduled to ramp up ahead of the 2022 elections.
Clearly, irrespective of the outcome of the Lebanon May elections, the ultimate victors won’t be the parties and candidates that secure office, or the average Lebanese citizens who elected them, but Britain – for whatever form the next government takes, one way or another, it will serve London’s financial, ideological, military, and political interests.
Real James Bond villains wear cardigans
Bill Gates, the WEF, and the WHO are not done with us. It’s time we were done with them.
el gato malo – bad cattitude – april 13, 2022
in history as in literature, a special place of contempt is held for the grand vizier, the guy behind the throne, the power behind the power. it’s a position of great influence but zero accountability, especially if you can subvert the ruler you puppet past the point of being able to scapegoat you.
buying or leading a politician and getting goodies is a process as old as politics, probably older as it was likely the reason the first politician was elected in the first place…
but the truly discerning james bond villain level vizier, well, they just go right ahead and buy their own NGO’s. that’s how you take over the world. space lasers and earthquake machines may be cool, but real conquest usually banal.
get to about the 1 minute mark in this video where you can hear bill speak about talking to donald trump in the white house.
trump asks about looking into some of the ill effects of vaccines.
gates tells him “that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.”
this is not a man giving well intentioned advice.
this is a man covering up a crime committed in the service of crony capitalism.
the gates foundation has a longstanding relationship with vaccines that is more than a little sketchy. they were pushing oral polio vaccines in africa LONG after they were known to be unsafe and had actually become the leading cause of polio in the world.
“The Gates Foundation is a leading funder of oral polio vaccination in Africa and around the world, having dedicated nearly $4 billion to such efforts by the end of 2018. As discussed in Forbes in May 2019, Gates has “personally [driven] the development” of new oral polio vaccines and plays a “strategic role beyond funding.”
the US uses ONLY injected IPV polio vaccines. both the US and the EU discontinued use of orals because of side effects including actually causing polio.
A year ago, news outlets briefly shone a light on the fact (a fact that makes public health officials squirm) that oral polio vaccines are causing polio outbreaks. With reports streaming in throughout 2019 regarding the circulation of vaccine-derived polioviruses in numerous African and Asian countries, a CDC virologist confessed, “We have now created more new emergences of the virus than we have stopped.”
… there were 400 recorded cases of vaccine-derived polio in more than 20 countries worldwide.
(author’s note: that’s ~3X the total of all natural polio cases worldwide and of those, only 29 occurred outside of pakistan and 100% of those were in afghanistan. this vaccines caused multiples more polio than the virus itself)
This week, the same story is making the same headlines, with the WHO’s shamefaced announcement that the oral polio vaccine is responsible for an alarming polio outbreak in Sudan—“linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad”—with parallel outbreaks in a dozen other African countries. In fact, between August 2019 and August 2020, there were 400 recorded cases of vaccine-derived polio in more than 20 countries worldwide. Ironically, WHO disclosed this “setback” barely a week after it declared the African continent to be free of wild poliovirus—which has not been seen in Africa since 2016. While African epidemiologists cheerily claim that these outbreaks can “be brought under control with further immunization,” and Sudan prepares to launch a mass polio vaccination campaign, WHO is warning that “the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa” is high.
but gates kept pushing them in africa anyway, probably because so many of his pals owned the production and that’s what the gates foundation does. that’s what all these guys do. big business and billionaires are not friends of free markets. they want sure things and it’s cheaper to twist and break arms and buy mandated markets than to compete on a fair playing field.
i have (on excellent, direct authority from a personal friend who i trust implicitly and who spoke directly to the folks involved) the following story about the gates foundation in india:
gates himself came in to speak with the health ministers. he offered them a vaccine for a disease they already had one for. they told him, “no thank you, we already have that one covered.” he told them “well, you need to switch to this vaccine or there will be no gates foundation investment for india.” the one he wanted them to switch to was owned by a “friend of his.” this story was relayed by extremely liberal folks who literally run vaccine programs in india. they heard this conversation directly and have no reason to lie. they were horrified. it was a pay to play stick up. (they still declined)
this is not the sort of conflict of interest that’s helpful in a guy telling the president not to look into vaccine issues. it also stands testament to his morality and inclination. bill gates is as amoral as he is rich. always has been. much of microsoft was stolen from his less machiavellian partners.
i’m presuming this interview above and the discussion with trump were pre-covid because it’s never mentioned and had this been post covid, i find it hard to believe that it would not have been, but it seems more apropos now that ever. obviously, the conflicts of interest certainly did not stop back then and vaccine ill effects are looking like quite the hot topic just now.
and gates is, as ever, right smack in the middle of the dirtiest, most profitable part of it.
it was september 2019. SARSCOV-2 was still not really on the radar. according to many, there was not even an outbreak yet.
that same month, billy made a large investment in a company called bioNtech to allegedly pursue HIV and tuberculosis vaccines. if memory serves, he bought about 1/3 of the company which was entirely preclinical in infectious diseases at the time. they were mostly a phase 1-2 oncology company. this looks like a sweetheart valuation.
obviously, this became a very big deal in a very big hurry. it was their mRNA payload that was licensed by pfizer for their vaccine, a product that went on to be the most profitable drug per unit time in human history. (and possibly the most profitable altogether) bioNtech minted money.
lots of things about this investment have long smelled fishier than a sushi bar dumpster.
but then a funny thing happened with a now vexingly familiar cast of characters.
(read more HERE)
even months later in january 2020, folks like osterholm were still buying the “no signs of human to human transmission” line.
yet somehow, 4 months earlier (and who knows when the due diligence started. might have been 6 or more), gates was putting his money right on the one obscure square that would pay out 100 to one. at a company with near zero footprint in infectious disease. for a virus no one was focused on. whose genetic code would not (allegedly) be initially characterized for 4 more months.
then, in the same odd, sudden miracle that got moderna the NIH science they licensed for their vaccine, bioNtech also had a product and pfizer jumped to license it.
alone, having a wargame for the war that had, unbeknownst to most, already started, might raise eyebrows, but it might also be a coincidence.
but when the folks coming to that wargame have been making big bets on the kinds of weapons that that precise (and only that precise) sort of war would use, well, one might start to sharpen the points on one’s pointy questions.
just what was informing what here?
this idea that “mRNA is magic and you can develop a vaccine in weeks” is complete nonsense. it’s never been true and the rest of the mRNA vaccine timelines stand testament to it. no other vaxx has been forthcoming.
this HAD to have been in the works for a significant period beforehand.
the fix appears to have been deeply in here. somebody was getting some VERY early looks at some tech to vaccinate against a virus no one else even had a copy of. the awareness not just of the pathogen, but the way to code for its spike protein and the impending pandemic seems to have been loose in certain circles long before the rest of us were told.
the NIH seeded moderna. i still do not have confirmation on where bioNtech got theirs, but i have a hunch and it rhymes with “silly plates” and that this might explain the sweetheart deal.
there is really only one story that makes sense to me here on covid origins, and that story is this:
NIH funded eco health alliance run by daszak and in cahoots with folks like baric colored outside the lines with fauci’s grant money. they, in collaboration with the wuhan institute of virology hotwired the hell out of covid viruses from bats engaging in gain of function work WAY outside of safe limits. this was not a weapon. it was work on inoculation. that was daszak’s longstanding focus. we’ll probably never know what happened in wuhan, but the breadcrumbs here are AWFULLY provocative and the sudden appearance of 2 mRNA vaccines, one with the NIH folks that funded EHA at the WIV, one with bioNtech, looks like an offshoot of it. (lots of detail HERE and HERE on the breadcrumbs)
wrapped up in this from the very beginning were load of the WEF gang (who had just run an oddly timely pandemic wargame for a disease an awful lot like covid) and the WHO.
billy gates is neck deep in both, a charter member of the cool kids crony capitalist table at davos and a top funding source for the WHO, donating more than 10% of its budget. it’s clearly a great investment for him as it poops golden eggs in terms of early information and hard sell opportunities for poor countries. it’s a seat at every table that makes you look like a philanthropist while in reality being a lead pipe wielding coercive corporatist.
gates is not a good guy.
he’s a sociopathic nerd with the most unsavory of associates.
and he knows how to play the crony capitalist game with the absolute best of them. the gates foundation has become a barely veiled international influence organization masquerading as a charity.
between gates and china, the WHO will dance to whatever song the two play. and oh, how they will dance.
remember this gem? (i do)
this was a big part of what got the out of control abandonment of 100 years of science based pandemic guidelines rolling.
“hey, let’s throw all the science, data, and history out the window and copy a terrifying authoritarian regime with a human rights record that would make myanmar blush!”
yeah, well, we all remember how THAT worked out…
but this is government. it’s worse than government, it’s trans-national organizational government. these are the people who invented “failing up” where the bigger your screw ups, the higher you get promoted. (if you doubt me, look at who runs the IMF and the world bank some time…)
and so, despite having cheer led for nothing uty pseudoscience, failure, and human ruin, the current plan being put forward is, wait for it, “hey, let’s give the WHO massive, unaccountable globalist powers!”
of course, this was clearly the plan all along if you were paying attention.
note the direct parrot of the WEF “build back better” taking point.
this gang sees every crisis as a chance to try to grab control of the world. and they are at it again.
In a consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, the World Health Assembly today agreed to kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said the decision by the World Health Assembly was historic in nature, vital in its mission, and represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the many flaws in the global system to protect people from pandemics: the most vulnerable people going without vaccines; health workers without needed equipment to perform their life-saving work; and ‘me-first’ approaches that stymie the global solidarity needed to deal with a global threat,” Dr Tedros said.
they will also force licensing, break patents, and drive health policy at the highest levels.
but here’s the full blown worst of it:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has contracted German-based Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to develop a global vaccine passport system, with plans to link every person on the planet to a QR code digital ID.
Indeed, despite the minuscule threat posed by new variants and dubious-at-best vaccine efficacy, the WHO is adamant that a global QR code-based vaccine passport system is vital for all future health emergencies, not just COVID.
“COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology,” says unit head of the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation Garrett Mehl.
“The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records.”
got that? this one is going to be digitally verifiable and global. nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, universal, mandatory, trans-national, and administered by an agency completely unaccountable to you and beholden to proven kleptocrats, authoritarians, and crony corporatists. they are basically a subsidiary of china and gates inc.
they will not get any better or more honest next time.
we’re talking about taking one of the most corrupt, captured, and incompetent agencies in the history of bureaucratic bloviation and giving them the keys to the world crisis machine and to an electronic health passport that will be your right to travel and work and eat out and shop and who knows what else. this is the cornerstone of an international social credit system. wait until they add your ESG score and your carbon footprint.
giving this team universal chicken little rights and direct links at highest levels to public policy is bad enough. letting them enable fine grained access into permission to have anything resembling a life will have you eating bugs and tweeting what you’re told faster than you can say #grasshoppers #yummy!
they promised you that in the future you’d have no privacy and own nothing and that you’d been happy.
guess which two promises they’re going to keep?
and government will fall all over themselves to help and to outsource the imposition of the infinite personal tracking and permissioning they have so long salivated over under the pretext of pandemic preparedness. (oops, look, another trojan framing of subjugating masquerading as safety. told you these were EVERYWHERE…)
this is not going to be acceptable or even tolerable.
this group should be disbanded, not granted greater remit.
and they are not done, because the power behind these thrones is ever hungry.
you might be thinking “wow, that was awful” but they are all thinking “wow, that was surprisingly easy. i wonder what we could do if we had some time to get set up beforehand and really run the table?”
these are not good people.
they do not have noble aims nor your best interests at heart.
they are a global aristocracy of surpassing ruthlessness telling scare stories so they can mandate alleged solutions.
they tell you it’s about saving you.
it isn’t.
read the fine print.
follow the money.
the super rich do not like to guess. they do not like to be surprised by trends. it is far more certain and therefore more profitable to force you to buy that which they are selling. the public health grift and the climate grift are all one grift: use government and trans-government to frighten and force people into buying the needless products that you’re going to produce for them.
small investors talk their book. titanic investors force you to buy it.
- if it’s a vaccine, mandate it and bar all useful therapeutics from market.
- if it’s a windmill, kill nuclear and inflict absurdist carbon taxes.
- never let any of it be properly assessed.
- use fear to drive compliance and compliance to drive mandate.
they will sell you your own collar and leash and demand your gratitude for having done so.
and if you don’t wake up pretty soon, they’re going to get it from you. by force. and you will be powerless to stop it.
the confluence of a global health passport and central bank digital currencies is an extinction level event for personal liberty and privacy.
and make no mistake: gates wants it. the WEF wants it. and most western governments want it.
but they also know that you do not want it. so they need a pretext and a plan and a pile of boring, technocratic yammering to hide it behind. they learned from last time. they saw the cracks we squirmed through and how we got away. and they do not plan to let it happen again. the next one will be air tight. they’ll have the WHO ready to both be able to declare a global emergency and impose ready made verified global digital ID using that fear as a pretext.
if you let them get these pieces into place, you are NOT going to like the endgame.
this has reached the email length limit. check the substack page for an addendum.
Jive Talking Journals: Why the conclusions sometimes don’t match the data in scientific papers
By a Biomedical Scientist | The Exposé | April 13, 2022
Biomedical research papers are being published in which the abstract, the discussion section, and even the title contradict the content within the paper.
This is unlikely to be happening because the authors don’t understand their own data. It’s more likely that the authors are being pressured by their financial backers and the editorial staff of journals to reach conclusions that advance the prevailing narrative.
It’s a well thought out deception that uses seemingly intellectual analysis to lead the undiscerning reader into believing the wrong conclusion. Skewing statistics is easy to accomplish simply by using the wrong statistical test, using a weak test when a stronger one should apply or just about any other trick to misrepresent the data.
Medical journals have become financially dependent on their advertisers, which are almost exclusively the big pharmaceutical companies. With enough money, they can buy a scientific study that says what they want it to say.
Sometimes these studies are “ghost” written by people working for industry with credentialed unscrupulous scientists and doctors names misattributed as authors when in fact they did none of the writing.
The pharmaceutical industry uses its profits to control biomedical science at every level, from researchers to journal editors, to government regulatory agencies, and to the media who are supposed to interpret science for the public.
Pressure is being placed on independent researchers by the journal editors and peer reviewers, many of whom have ties to Big Pharma. Valid studies, honestly reported, can be rejected for publication if they convey a message that threatens corporate profits. Many scientific authors know how difficult it is to get a paper through peer review at most “reputable” medical journals when the results are not in line with the official narrative.
Many biomedical scientists have become shills for the pharmaceutical companies. Rigging clinical trials the old-fashioned way is expensive, time-consuming, uncertain, and recent legislation makes it more difficult. Sometimes the truth emerges even if a study is designed to hide it. Even a study that is designed to fail might succeed when the inconvenient truths are stubborn enough.
It’s easier to report the actual results and then tack on an abstract and a discussion section that convey the right message, regardless of the data in the main body of the article. This can then be used in the “citation bluff” fraud, that depends on people not carefully reading supposed supportive evidence, to perpetuate the false narrative.
Often the cited evidence in support of a particular narrative doesn’t really support the narrative being advanced. In fact, the supposed supportive evidence can sometimes even completely contradict the narrative being pushed.
This is something to bear in mind the next time you get into an argument with someone demanding to see peer-reviewed evidence and rejecting any evidence that has not been peer-reviewed regardless of its merits.
Journals and the peer review process have been corrupted by powerful vested interests.
SAS and Delta Force part of “secret war”: French intelligence source
Samizdat | April 11, 2022
Elite special forces from the UK and the US have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of hostilities with Russia in late February, a source in the French intelligence community reportedly told a Le Figaro reporter, last week.
The claim was reported by the newspaper’s senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot on Saturday, the day when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his surprise visit to Kiev. The British leader was reportedly surrounded by guards from the elite SAS force, though this claim was not officially confirmed.
SAS units “have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did [sic] the American Deltas,” Malbrunot tweeted citing a French intelligence source. He added that according to the source Russia was well aware of the “secret war” waged against its troops by foreign commandos. Le Figaro included his report in their updates on Ukraine.
The UK and the US have been among the most active military supporters of Kiev. Johnson reportedly personally urged his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to keep on fighting against Russia and not settle for peace until better terms are offered.
Western pro-fighting consensus was apparently confirmed last week by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said on Saturday that the “war will be won on the battlefield” as he too was visiting Kiev.
British media earlier reported that dozens of “retired” SAS soldiers had gone or planned to go to Ukraine to contribute their expertise in reconnaissance and anti-tank warfare to Kiev’s cause. Their services were allegedly paid for by “a country in Europe, still to be named, via a private military company” rather than by the British government, according to the UK tabloid the Daily Mirror.
The Russian military reported action against what it described as “mercenaries” fighting for Ukraine on several occasions. One of the recent instances was on Saturday, just as Johnson and Borell were in Kiev.
The Russian defense ministry said Kiev attempted to use a civilian ship in its latest failed attempt to evacuate high-value personnel from the port city of Mariupol, which saw some of the most intensive fighting during the conflict. The individuals intended for evacuation were identified as leaders of the ultranationalist Azov battalion and foreign mercenaries. There are unconfirmed reports that hundreds of foreign nationals could be blocked in Mariupol along with several thousand Azov troops.
The US and the UK have publicly stated they had no plans to involve their troops in the fighting in Ukraine. Both are major suppliers of arms to Kiev and were training soldiers in Ukraine before the Russian offensive. The experts were reported pulled out of the country in the run-up to the hostilities.
Britain’s Defence Ministry banned active service members from traveling to Ukraine in early March, saying that violating the rule could result in prosecution. Kiev called on volunteers abroad to join the ranks of its newly-created “foreign legion” after the Russian attack.
Putting Big Pharma on Trial in the COVID-19 Era, Part 4
The Hypocrisy of “Misinformation”
By Rebecca Strong · February 16, 2022
I find it interesting that “misinformation” has become such a pervasive term lately, but more alarmingly, that it’s become an excuse for blatant censorship on social media and in journalism. It’s impossible not to wonder what’s driving this movement to control the narrative. In a world where we still very clearly don’t have all the answers, why shouldn’t we be open to exploring all the possibilities? And while we’re on the subject, what about all of the COVID-related untruths that have been spread by our leaders and officials? Why should they get a free pass?
Fauci, President Biden, and the CDC’s Rochelle Walensky all promised us with total confidence the vaccine would prevent us from getting or spreading COVID, something we now know is a myth. (In fact, the CDC recently had to change its very definition of “vaccine ” to promise “protection” from a disease rather than “immunity”— an important distinction). At one point, the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) and former Governor Andrew Cuomo prepared a social media campaign with misleading messaging that the vaccine was “approved by the FDA” and “went through the same rigorous approval process that all vaccines go through,” when in reality the FDA only authorized the vaccines under an EUA, and the vaccines were still undergoing clinical trials. While the NYS DOH eventually responded to pressures to remove these false claims, a few weeks later the Department posted on Facebook that “no serious side effects related to the vaccines have been reported,” when in actuality, roughly 16,000 reports of adverse events and over 3,000 reports of serious adverse events related to a COVID-19 vaccination had been reported in the first two months of use.
One would think we’d hold the people in power to the same level of accountability — if not more — than an average citizen. So, in the interest of avoiding hypocrisy, should we “cancel” all these experts and leaders for their “misinformation,” too?
Vaccine-hesitant people have been fired from their jobs, refused from restaurants, denied the right to travel and see their families, banned from social media channels, and blatantly shamed and villainized in the media. Some have even lost custody of their children. These people are frequently labeled “anti-vax,” which is misleading given that many (like the NBA’s Jonathan Isaac) have made it repeatedly clear they are not against all vaccines, but simply making a personal choice not to get this one. (As such, I’ll suggest switching to a more accurate label: “pro-choice.”) Fauci has repeatedly said federally mandating the vaccine would not be “appropriate” or “enforceable” and doing so would be “encroaching upon a person’s freedom to make their own choice.” So it’s remarkable that still, some individual employers and U.S. states, like my beloved Massachusetts, have taken it upon themselves to enforce some of these mandates, anyway. Meanwhile, a Feb. 7 bulletin posted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicates that if you spread information that undermines public trust in a government institution (like the CDC or FDA), you could be considered a terrorist. In case you were wondering about the current state of free speech.
The definition of institutional oppression is “the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.” It is defined as occurring when established laws and practices “systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.” Sound familiar?
As you continue to watch the persecution of the unvaccinated unfold, remember this. Historically, when society has oppressed a particular group of people whether due to their gender, race, social class, religious beliefs, or sexuality, it’s always been because they pose some kind of threat to the status quo. The same is true for today’s unvaccinated. Since we know the vaccine doesn’t prevent the spread of COVID, however, this much is clear: the unvaccinated don’t pose a threat to the health and safety of their fellow citizens — but rather, to the bottom line of powerful pharmaceutical giants and the many global organizations they finance. And with more than $100 billion on the line in 2021 alone, I can understand the motivation to silence them.
The unvaccinated have been called selfish. Stupid. Fauci has said it’s “almost inexplicable” that they are still resisting. But is it? What if these people aren’t crazy or uncaring, but rather have — unsurprisingly so — lost their faith in the agencies that are supposed to protect them? Can you blame them?
Citizens are being bullied into getting a vaccine that was created, evaluated, and authorized in under a year, with no access to the bulk of the safety data for said vaccine, and no rights whatsoever to pursue legal action if they experience adverse effects from it. What these people need right now is to know they can depend on their fellow citizens to respect their choices, not fuel the segregation by launching a full-fledged witch hunt. Instead, for some inexplicable reason I imagine stems from fear, many continue rallying around big pharma rather than each other. A 2022 Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports survey of Democratic voters found that 59% of respondents support a government policy requiring unvaccinated individuals to remain confined in their home at all times, 55% support handing a fine to anyone who won’t get the vaccine, and 48% think the government should flat out imprison people who publicly question the efficacy of the vaccines on social media, TV, or online in digital publications. Even Orwell couldn’t make this stuff up.
Photo credit: DJ Paine on Unsplash
Let me be very clear. While there are a lot of bad actors out there — there are also a lot of well-meaning people in the science and medical industries, too. I’m lucky enough to know some of them. There are doctors who fend off pharma reps’ influence and take an extremely cautious approach to prescribing. Medical journal authors who fiercely pursue transparency and truth — as is evident in “The Influence of Money on Medical Science,” a report by the first female editor of JAMA. Pharmacists, like Dan Schneider, who refuse to fill prescriptions they deem risky or irresponsible. Whistleblowers, like Graham and Jackson, who tenaciously call attention to safety issues for pharma products in the approval pipeline. And I’m certain there are many people in the pharmaceutical industry, like Panara and my grandfather, who pursued this field with the goal of helping others, not just earning a six- or seven-figure salary. We need more of these people. Sadly, it seems they are outliers who exist in a corrupt, deep-rooted system of quid-pro-quo relationships. They can only do so much.
I’m not here to tell you whether or not you should get the vaccine or booster doses. What you put in your body is not for me — or anyone else — to decide. It’s not a simple choice, but rather one that may depend on your physical condition, medical history, age, religious beliefs, and level of risk tolerance. My grandfather passed away in 2008, and lately, I find myself missing him more than ever, wishing I could talk to him about the pandemic and hear what he makes of all this madness. I don’t really know how he’d feel about the COVID vaccine, or whether he would have gotten it or encouraged me to. What I do know is that he’d listen to my concerns, and he’d carefully consider them. He would remind me my feelings are valid. His eyes would light up and he’d grin with amusement as I fervidly expressed my frustration. He’d tell me to keep pushing forward, digging deeper, asking questions. In his endearing Bronx accent, he used to always say: “go get ‘em, kid.” If I stop typing for a moment and listen hard enough, I can almost hear him saying it now.
People keep saying “trust the science.” But when trust is broken, it must be earned back. And as long as our legislative system, public health agencies, physicians, and research journals keep accepting pharmaceutical money (with strings attached) — and our justice system keeps letting these companies off the hook when their negligence causes harm, there’s no reason for big pharma to change. They’re holding the bag, and money is power.
I have a dream that one day, we’ll live in a world where we are armed with all the thorough, unbiased data necessary to make informed decisions about our health. Alas, we’re not even close. What that means is that it’s up to you to educate yourself as much as possible, and remain ever-vigilant in evaluating information before forming an opinion. You can start by reading clinical trials yourself, rather than relying on the media to translate them for you. Scroll to the bottom of every single study to the “conflicts of interest” section and find out who funded it. Look at how many subjects were involved. Confirm whether or not blinding was used to eliminate bias. You may also choose to follow Public Citizen’s Health Research Group’s rule whenever possible: that means avoiding a new drug until five years after an FDA approval (not an EUA, an actual approval) — when there’s enough data on the long-term safety and effectiveness to establish that the benefits outweigh the risks. When it comes to the news, you can seek out independent, nonprofit outlets, which are less likely to be biased due to pharma funding. And most importantly, when it appears an organization is making concerted efforts to conceal information from you — like the FDA recently did with the COVID vaccine — it’s time to ask yourself: why? What are they trying to hide?
In the 2019 film “Dark Waters” — which is based on the true story of one of the greatest corporate cover-ups in American history — Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott says: “The system is rigged. They want us to think it’ll protect us, but that’s a lie. We protect us. We do. Nobody else. Not the companies. Not the scientists. Not the government. Us.”
Words to live by.
Unless FullFact.org Says So Then It’s Not True, The UK Government Advises
By Rhoda Wilson – The Exposé – April 7, 2022
Most of us are aware that it’s not only online but also things published by corporate media that aren’t always what they seem. However, a major difference between government or corporate media reports and independent or citizen reports shared online, is the latter allows for public discourse and open debate, providing they are not censored, while corporate media and their fact-checking services do not – they prefer a top-down “above all” approach.
Denying public debate negates the all-important diversity of thought in a liberal and democratic society. Silencing counterarguments that challenge their preferred storyline enables governments and corporate media to create a one-sided narrative. A narrative that, left unchallenged, moves further and further away from the truth. But here’s a fact that you will not find on either GOV.UK or Full Fact: a lie cannot become truth, no matter how often it is repeated.
The SHAREChecklist attempts to provide advice on what to share and what not to share apparently for the good of others. Information that does not originate from their sources could be “harmful to share with our friends and families,” the UK government claims.
It’s important to understand that we, the people, are in the midst of an information war. One which began in earnest at the start of 2020. A battle in the public space for complete and truthful information while governments and their advisors attempt to manipulate our perceptions and behaviours so we obey their instructions, without question, even when those instructions prove to be harmful.
Even the most trusting know that governments and politicians hide the truth, manipulate the truth and even outright lie – it’s merely the extent that varies. We know that governments use mass media – television, radio and online – as tools to roll out their narratives to the public en masse. Additional government tools include initiatives such as their SHAREChecklist campaign.
At the very least corporate media is biased but as they sink deeper into an ever-narrowing storyline it is becoming apparent that reports are being manufactured and that they are activists seeking to implement an agenda, they are not journalists.
Fact-checking services do not provide facts they provide opinions. Last year, Facebook admitted in court that its “fact checks” are nothing more than statements of opinion. Not experts’ opinions but those of the “fact-checkers.” And self-described “fact-checkers” are not independent. They are dependent on donations from large corporations, the same corporations that work to craft a narrative and silence public debate through censorship.
The SHAREChecklist
As we work through the checklist what will become apparent is that in no way does the government advise, or even so much as hint at encouraging: critical thinking, comparing a variety of sources, open dialogue or debate. The checklist leads readers along a path to following a narrative set by a centralised coterie – the government or whoever is “advising” them.
The Government’s first bit of advice is to “make sure information comes from a trusted source.” This is common sense and something we should all be doing, and most likely instinctively are. What each of us believes are “trusted sources” is decisive.
A source that has been proven to lie without remorse is not a source to be trusted. Any source that consistently and persistently promotes Covid injections as “safe and effective” and so roll up your sleeve for another shot, for example, is not to be trusted. Within these sources, the lies are pathological and systemic. Such a source – the BBC, SAGE or UK government, for example – does not suddenly and inexplicably switch from being wanton liars to being truthful.
The second bit of advice the Government has to offer is to read beyond the headline – yet more common sense. A headline cannot contain all the substantive information that an article contains.
Additionally, clickbait headlines, for example, are common practice in all forms of media. To avoid a knee jerk response to the attention-seeking text we should not take an article, or post online, at its headline. Corporate media, as with marketing agencies, are particularly adept at clickbait headlines, texts and thumbnails. And, of course, the UK government has SPI-B and the Nudge Unit to advise them on how to use psychology to maximise public “engagement” and “cooperation.” The checkmark or tick symbol incorporated into the SHAREChecklist logo is an example of typical Nudge Unit behavioural psychology.
Again, in its third bit of advice, the Government advises some additional common sense: “check the facts.” What is notable about this point is that, according to the UK government, there are a limited number of sources that provide these “facts.” Actually, there are only two: themselves, of course, and “fact-checkers,” namely Full Fact.
The BBC frequently and repeatedly tells its viewers that it is a trusted source, bringing you the all facts. Yet, SHAREChecklist does not recommend them as a source to “check the facts.” This may or may not be an indication of how the Government views BBC’s “fact-based” reporting or, possibly, recognition that the public has, by and large, lost its trust in the BBC.
Taking on board the first two bits of advice – “trusted source” and “read beyond the headline,” in this case the Government’s headline – we take a brief look at the Government recommended “fact-checker” Full Fact later in this article.
The fourth bit of the Government’s advice is as true for images and videos shared online as it is for images and videos shown on television. There have been many examples of dubious images and videos published by corporate media over the past two years that deserve to be questioned. There is no source of information, “official” or unofficial, that we should not test for accuracy and reliability. Stay sceptical. Criticism is not only legitimate, it is necessary.
The final bit of advice the Government gives is that typos could be an indication that the information is false. How are those with dyslexia or learning difficulties supposed to feel reading that? For those who find it hard to express their thoughts and ideas in writing, you’re in good company. While Albert Einstein loved mathematics and science, he disliked grammar and had problems with spelling.
After singling out typos, then comes the sneaky bit: “official guidance” – in other words, the Government’s or the centralised coterie’s guidance – has been “carefully checked” presumably for spelling and grammatical errors. So naturally, the Government’s typo-free publications must be true – of course! On that basis, if you want to avoid being censored download Grammarly now!
Who Is Full Fact?
Full Fact’s website states: “We’re developing world-leading technology and new research to spot repeated claims, and find out how bad information can be tackled at a global scale. And we campaign for change that will make bad information rarer and less harmful.”
Who are the people and organisations behind Full Fact? Who are they campaigning for? Who is determining what information is “bad”?
In 2012, UK Column published an article about Full Fact, ‘Faux Facts – The disturbing Truth About fullfact.org’, digging a little deeper into “this interesting little non-profit company, headed by Tory Party donor and Anne Freud Centre Chairman Michael Samuel.”
In 2019 Daily Mail wrote that Full Fact was at the centre of an election row with the Tories and was forced to defend its credibility after it stepped into a social media war after an election debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. Daily Mail quoted Dominic Raab: “Who said Final Fact is the final arbiter of what the public gets to see as the truth? There’s no god-given right, set in law.”
“Foundations set up by eBay creator Pierre Omidyar and left-wing investor George Soros have also joined tech giants in giving six-figure sums to London-based Full Fact along with thousands of unnamed individual donors paying between £25 and £5,000 each,” Daily Mail reported.
A 2021 article published in The Critic noted the board of trustees included Labour peer Baroness Janet Royall, Lib-Dem peer Lord John Sharkey and former Conservative Party member Lord Richard Inglewood. These three peers are still trustees and Michael Samuel is still chairman.
The Critic article goes on to note that Full Fact is a charity with a small output of research compared to its size, funded primarily by big-tech and staffed to a large extent by former public sector workers or ex-reporters from left-wing media. “Full Fact’s website reports that they were paid £1.1 million by Facebook and £206,500 by Google in 2019, plus a monthly payment of £7,300 worth of free advertising by the search giant. The funding by big-tech in 2019 makes up roughly 70% of their declared funding for the year,” The Critic wrote.
As you can see for yourself in the table below Full Fact is still predominantly funded, and so their opinions are influenced, by the notorious online censor organisations – Facebook, which includes WhatsApp, and Google, which includes YouTube. In 2021, almost 40% of Full Fact’s “donations” came from Facebook and Google.
Full Fact Funders 2021
Full Fact does not pass the government’s SHAREChecklist test and, according to UK government advice, their articles may be “harmful” if shared with friends and families – do not share them.
| Full Fact Funding 2021 retrieved 6 April 2022 | ||
| £305,119.64 | Third Party Fact Checking programme | |
| £116,352.14 | Framework for collaboration during misinformation crises | |
| £59,634.83 | Health fellowship | |
| Hundreds of individual donors and gift aid | £370,148.00 | Core funding |
| Mohn Westlake Foundation | £250,000.00 | Core funding |
| Google AI for Good Impact Challenge | £235,222.77 | Automated fact checking |
| Nuffield Foundation | £100,000.00 | Fact checking and annual report |
| Luminate | £75,789.87 | Core funding |
| Esmée Fairbairn Foundation | £68,333.33 | Core funding |
| £61,809.84 | WhatsApp fact checking service | |
| International Fact Checking Network & WhatsApp | £53,737.20 | Vaccine Grant Program |
| Baillie Gifford | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| John Ellerman Foundation | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| The Buchanan Programme | £49,801.68 | Core funding |
| The Dulverton Trust | £35,000.00 | Core funding |
| Gill Family Foundation | £30,000.00 | Core funding |
| James Padolsey | £30,000.00 | Core funding |
| International Fact Checking Network & National Endowment for Democracy | £26,576.58 | Fact-Checkers Working Together Research Program |
| Colefax Charitable Trust | £25,000.00 | Core funding |
| The M J Samuel Charitable Trust | £17,500.00 | Core funding |
| International Fact Checking Network & YouTube | £17,064.56 | Fact Checking Development Grant |
| Highway One Trust | £10,000.00 | Policy team |
| William de Winton | £10,000.00 | Core funding |
| Reed Foundation | £9,000.00 | Core funding |
| Good Thinking Society | £8,000.00 | Core funding |
| Dorothy Bishop | £6,000.00 | Core funding |
| Cecil Pilkington Charitable Trust | £5,000.00 | Core funding |
| Tinsley Charitable Trust | £5,000.00 | Core funding |
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From the Archives
Politicians lie
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
Blog Roll
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- Global Tipping Points Lead the World Into a State of Entropy
- The day-after at the White House: USA and Xi Jinping
- The Geopolitical Balance in the Red Sea: The UAE Being Displaced by New Players
- Iraqi resistance group vows to stage airport sit-ins over Iran aerial blockade
- If Americans Knew
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
