Last week, medical journalist Katherine Eban posted at Vanity Fair the results of a long and detailed investigation into the lab-leak theory of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The subject is moving ever more to the front-and-center of efforts to find out exactly what was going on at the highest levels in early 2020 that resulted in the greatest societal, political, and economic upheaval of our lives.
How precisely did we move so quickly from the “germ games” of October 2019 – when the virus was already circulating in the US – to full-scale global lockdown by March? Why did Anthony Fauci, who in early February was downplaying the seriousness of the virus, flip to the other side (which we know from emails)? It was Fauci, according to many reporters, who tapped Deborah Birx to huddle with Trump and convince him that the only way to battle the virus was to “shut down” the economy – as if anything like that was possible much less effective for controlling a respiratory virus.
For two years now, and despite endless writing and reflection, this change from the top has puzzled me. Lockdowns contradicted not only a century of public-health practice but even WHO guidelines. Even on March 2, 2020, 850 scientists signed a letter to the White House warning against lockdowns, closures, and travel restrictions. Within days, everything changed.
There were hints of extreme measures in the CDC pandemic planning manuals since 2006 but the idea was hardly orthodoxy in the profession. It’s also true that there were elite scientists who longed for the chance to try out the new theory of virus suppression. But how did Fauci and Birx, to say nothing of Jared Kushner, become converts of the idea to the point that they were able to convince Trump to betray everything he believed in?
This is quite probably where the lab-leak theory comes in. It’s not so much about whether the virus was an accidental or even deliberate leak that matters so much as whether Fauci, Francis Collins, and Jeremy Farrrar of the UK’s Wellcome Trust believed it was possible or even likely. In that case, we have our motive. Did they deploy the chaos of lockdowns as a genuine if wildly misguided attempt to suppress the virus as a way of avoiding culpability? Or perhaps it was deployed as a kind of smokescreen to distract from a closer examination of the Wuhan’s lab’s funding sources? Or possibly there is a third reason.
We have a very long way to go before the full truth is out. But Eban’s article adds tremendous detail about the great lengths to which our Fauci-led cabal of officials worked hard to suppress dissent on the question of lab-vs-natural origin. They kept papers from being posted on preprint servers, held Zoom sessions with authors in an attempt to intimidate them, and spent tremendous energy making it clear that there would be a no-leak “united front” no matter what.
Writes Eban: “At the highest levels of the U.S. government, alarm was growing over the question of where the virus had originated and whether research performed at the WIV, and funded in part by U.S. taxpayers, had played some role in its emergence.”
Eban’s intrepid journalism now has former CDC director Robert Redfield opening up about how he not only warned about the possibility of a lab leak but also that he was then excluded from all strategy meetings thereafter.
To Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC at the time, it seemed not only possible but likely that the virus had originated in a lab. “I personally felt it wasn’t biologically plausible that [SARS CoV-2] went from bats to humans through an [intermediate] animal and became one of the most infectious viruses to humans,” he told Vanity Fair. Neither the 2002 SARS virus nor the 2012 MERS virus had transmitted with such devastating efficiency from one person to another.
What had changed? The difference, Redfield believed, was the gain-of-function research that Shi and Baric had published in 2015, and that EcoHealth Alliance had helped to fund. They had established that it was possible to alter a SARS-like bat coronavirus so that it would infect human cells via a protein called the ACE2 receptor. Although their experiments had taken place in Baric’s well-secured laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who was to say that the WIV had not continued the research on its own?
In mid-January of 2020, Vanity Fair can reveal, Redfield expressed his concerns in separate phone conversations with three scientific leaders: Fauci; Jeremy Farrar, the director of the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust; and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Redfield’s message, he says, was simple: “We had to take the lab-leak hypothesis with extreme seriousness.”
In sessions from which Redfield was excluded from early February, Fauci’s chosen participants strategized a statement published in the form of a medical paper: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” The publication date was March 17, 2020, the day following Trump’s lockdown press conference. The paper was in fact written as early as February 4. Eban makes the salient point: “How they arrived at such certainty within four days remains unclear.”
[Redfield] concluded there’d been a concerted effort not just to suppress the lab-leak theory but to manufacture the appearance of a scientific consensus in favor of a natural origin. “They made a decision, almost a P.R. decision, that they were going to push one point of view only” and suppress rigorous debate, said Redfield. “They argued they did it in defense of science, but it was antithetical to science.”
Two weeks following the drafting of the paper, “in a letter published in the influential medical journal the Lancet, [Peter Dazsak of EcoHealth, which had funneled US money to the Wuhan lab] joined 26 scientists in asserting, ‘We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.’”
A conspiracy theory! We know for sure that those never turn out to be true! Surely there was no such thing as a powerful cabal plotting to force a single orthodoxy on science in order to protect themselves from too much investigation into their own role in funding gain-of-function research! Except that this appears to be exactly what was happening.
This strategy of information suppression and intimidation of dissent, along with the manufacturing of a fake consensus that in fact did not exist, continued through 2020 and arguably to the present. Among the other victims of such propaganda and smears were the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. We know from emails that Fauci and Collins collaborated in a deliberate attempt to drum up a “quick and devastating” takedown.
It was a rather bizarre thing to do. The GBD was a rather conventional statement of public health principles along with a warning against the devastating consequences of extreme measures of coercion. Today it reads almost like a summary of what most people have come to believe after long and terrible experiences. Why did the Fauci cabal believe it was so very important to stop this statement?
What we need now is a clearer linkage behind the now-documented attempt to forge a single narrative on the lab leak question and the decision to forge a single narrative about the need to lock down, and thus overthrow a century of public-health practice. What was the motivation here? What were they discussing in private in those crucial weeks in February 2020 leading up to the disaster?
What is unbearably clear at this point is that this gang’s obsession with covering up a possible lab leak, in the interest of keeping their own fingerprints off the deed, completely distracted the leadership of the National Institutes of Health from what it was supposed to be doing at the time. And what was that? It’s not complicated. If you have a new pathogen sweeping a country, you want to focus on ways to keep vulnerable populations safe (for example, not forcing nursing homes to admit Covid-infected people) and discovering the best therapeutics to minimize severity for the general population.
This is not what happened. Instead, we had a plot against the US president, the deliberate cultivation of mass panic, forced closures of schools and businesses, wild demands for mass human separation, travel restrictions, ineffective mask and vaccine mandates, and the general triumph of crank science over experience, at the great cost of human liberties and rights and hence social and economic well-being.
The reason for the chaos appears, in part, that during those crucial early months, public-health leadership in the US had another private agenda centered not on health but their own reputations and professional standing. Two years later, we live with the devastating consequences that have affected the whole of our lives.
April 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, United States |
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Samizdat | April 3, 2022
Moscow will convene an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council over the incident in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Russia’s deputy permanent representative with the organization, Dmitry Polyansky said Sunday. Ukraine has accused Russia of massacring civilians in the town, while Moscow dismissed the incident as staged by the Kiev forces.
“In light of the blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals in Bucha, Russia has demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council to be convened on Monday, April 4. We will bring to light the presumptuous Ukrainian provocateurs and their Western patrons,” Polyansky said in a Telegram post.
Graphic footage from Bucha, a town to the northwest of Kiev, emerged over the weekend, showing multiple bodies clad in civilian clothing scattered around. Kiev was quick to blame Russian military for the incident, with Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba alleging it was a “deliberate massacre”.
“The Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new, devastating G7 sanctions NOW,” Kuleba said on Twitter.
Top Western politicians were quick to back and amplify Kiev’s claims, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg branding the incident “a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”
“And it’s horrific, and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed, and it just underlines the importance of, that this war must end. And that is President Putin’s responsibility, to stop the war,” Stoltenberg told CNN.
Similar stance has been voiced by many other officials, with some explicitly pinning the blame for the ‘massacre’ on Moscow. French President Emmanuel Macron said, for instance, that “Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes”.
Moscow, however, has firmly rejected any involvement, accusing Kiev of staging the whole affair to frame Russian troops. The country’s Defense Ministry said that Russian troops pulled out of the town on March 30, with local mayor confirming it in a video address a day after without mentioning “any local residents laying shot in the streets.” The purported “evidence” of the incident emerged only four days after the withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and “representatives of Ukrainian television arrived in the town,” the military added, stressing that multiple inconsistencies show that the affair “has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media.”
April 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Ukraine |
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The addition of a fluoride, such as hexafluorosilicic acid or disodium hexafluorosilicate, to public water supplies has been recommended in a joint statement by the four Chief Medical Officers of the U.K. The Government’s Health and Care Bill, which has reached its final stages in Parliament, includes a small section to facilitate water fluoridation, which is now expected to be spread throughout the U.K.
Although water is already fluoridated in a few parts of the U.K. (mainly Birmingham), for nearly forty years no new schemes have been implemented since local opposition has managed to defeat them all. The Government is now determined to impose its wishes.
A recent press release said that “higher levels of fluoride are associated with improved dental health outcomes”, and that the “Health and Care Bill will cut bureaucracy and make it simpler to expand water fluoridation schemes”. The Bill’s explanatory notes state: “Research shows that water fluoridation is an effective public health intervention to improve oral health for both children and adults and reduces oral health inequalities.”
For about 70 years it has been claimed that fluoridation reduces dental decay, and that it is safe. Although there is abundant evidence showing that in fact it is neither effective nor safe, the proponents of fluoridation have long had the advantage of far greater funding than that available to sceptics.
Trials of fluoridation started in 1945 in the U.S. and Canada but, before any had been completed, and without any comprehensive health studies, fluoridation was endorsed as safe and effective by the U.S. Public Health Service. The American Dental and Medical Associations soon added their approval, as later did their equivalents in the U.K.
The original trials were studied by Dr. Philip Sutton in Australia who graduated with honours in Dental Science. Asked to examine them, he found they were of low quality, full of errors and omissions.
In Austria, Rudolf Ziegelbecker also studied the original fluoridation trials and found they did not show what had been claimed. Professor Erich Naumann, Director of the German Federal Health Office, said of him: “Your results have been accepted everywhere in Germany with the greatest interest and have increased the grave doubts against drinking water fluoridation.” Prof. Naumann added: “It is regrettable that the existing data on water fluoridation had not been examined earlier using mathematical-statistical methods. Otherwise the myth of drinking water fluoridation would have already dissolved into air long ago.”
In the U.K., pilot schemes started in the mid-1950s in four areas, all of which sooner or later abandoned the practice: Andover (1955-58), part of Anglesey (1955-92), Kilmarnock (1956-62), and Watford (1956-89). In 1957, Dr. Geoffrey Dobbs wrote in New Scientist that they “are now officially described as demonstrations of the benefits of fluoridation, not experiments, so the results are a foregone conclusion” and their purpose quite openly “promotional”. He added that the studies would gain enormously in value if those responsible were willing to submit them to impartial scientific assessment.
When the UK pilot studies started, it was officially stated that they should include “full medical and dental examinations at all ages”, but no medical examinations were done, and neither short-term nor long-term possible harms were explored. This lack of concern continues, with a general failure in fluoridated countries to monitor fluoride exposure or side effects.
In 2000, a major report by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York concluded that, despite many studies over 50 years, “We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide”. Even among the 26 better studies on fluoridation and tooth decay, not one was evaluated as “high quality, with bias unlikely”.
In 2015, a Cochrane review added: “There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.”
When Israel ended fluoridation in 2014-15, partly because of health concerns, its Ministry of Health pointed out that WHO data indicated no significant difference in the level of tooth decay between countries that fluoridate and those that do not fluoridate.
A trial in Hastings in New Zealand was apparently so successful that it was widely reported as a classic case of the benefit of fluoridation, with tooth decay reduced by at least half. However, when New Zealand passed freedom-of-information legislation, two university researchers were able to access the original records, which revealed that the published results were fraudulent. One of those involved in running the trials was asked for an explanation but he did not even try to justify the published results.
Not only is there a great absence of good quality evidence that fluoridation significantly reduces tooth decay, there has, especially in recent years, been growing evidence that it is harmful.
In 2006, a major report by the U.S. National Research Council said that fluoride exposure is plausibly associated with neurotoxicity, gastrointestinal problems, endocrine problems and other ailments. It was also unable to rule out an increased risk of cancer and of Down’s syndrome in children.
In 2017, a team of experts in Chile, supported by the Medical College of Chile, concluded that fluoridation is ineffectual and harmful.
Fluoride occurs naturally in a few water supplies, but so does arsenic. A recent study from Sweden shows an increased prevalence of hip fracture in post-menopausal women associated with long-term exposure to natural fluoride at levels in water in the same range as used in some parts of the U.K. for artificial fluoridation.
About half a century passed before the declassification of hundreds of U.S. Government documents provided clues to the real reason for fluoridation. Much meticulous research by an award-winning investigative journalist, Christopher Bryson, resulted in his thoroughly documented book, The Fluoride Deception, showing beyond doubt the extensive fraud involved.
Bryson’s research revealed the strong connection between fluoridation and the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bombs. Huge amounts of fluorine were used to extract the isotope of uranium needed. Workers suffered hundreds of chemical injuries, mostly from the gas uranium hexafluoride.
In 1943 and 1944, farmers reported workers made ill, crops blighted and livestock injured, with some cows so crippled they could not stand. When the war was over, farmers in New Jersey sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage. In response the Government mobilised officials and scientists to defeat the farmers.
In 1946, the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs, and the New Jersey farmers’ legal action was seen as a threat, because of the potential for enormous damages and a public relations problem, with more trouble likely if they won. The farmers’ legal action was blocked by the Government’s refusal to reveal how much hydrogen fluoride DuPont had vented into the atmosphere.
Dr. Harold Hodge defended the nuclear programme against the legal threat from farmers. He had the idea of calming the public’s fears by talking about the usefulness of fluorine in tooth health. In January 1944, a secret conference on fluoride metabolism took place in New York. Organised by President Roosevelt’s science adviser, James Conant, documents from it are among the first that connect the atomic bomb programme to water fluoridation and to the Public Health Service.
Manhattan Project scientists were ordered to help the contractors. They also played a prominent role in the fluoridation of the public water supply in Newburgh, New York, an experiment that began in May 1945. In 1947 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission took over from the Manhattan Project.
Dr. Harold Hodge, the Project’s senior wartime toxicologist, became the leading promoter of fluoridation. He announced it was so safe that it would take a massive dose of fluoride to cause harm. (Some 25 years later, in 1979, he quietly admitted in an obscure paper that he had been wrong.)
A Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth was formed, with powerful links to U.S. military-industrial interests and their determined effort to escape liability for fluoride pollution. The aim was to transform the public image of fluoride from that of a dangerous pollutant to a beneficial prophylactic medicine.
This aim was achieved with the help of Edward Bernays, an expert in the use of psychological techniques to achieve “manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses” and “the engineering of consent”. Bernays advised the avoidance of debate: fluoridation was to be presented as indisputably beneficial; only the ignorant could object to it.
Reviews of Bryson’s book included one in the scientific journal Nature, noting that he “raises the stakes by reporting a great deal of relevant and often alarming research”, and describing the book as “thought-provoking and worthwhile”.
Publishers Weekly wrote: “Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people.”
Chemical & Engineering News stated: “We are left with compelling evidence that powerful interests with high financial stakes have colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and investigation into fluoride toxicity.”
Bryson found that, while the American Dental Association had previously opposed fluoridation, it changed its tune after receiving a large donation from an industrialist with a stake in the commercial use of fluoride.
A study of workers at a chemical company in Cleveland was used to promote the idea that fluoride reduces tooth decay. It said workers exposed to fluoride had fewer cavities than those not exposed to it. The report helped to shift public opinion. The secret version of the report, discovered decades later, stated that most of the men had few or no teeth, and that corrosion affected such teeth as they had.
As early as 1951 a confidential gathering of State Dental Directors in the U.S. was advised by Dr. Frank Bull, “We have told the public it works, so we can’t go back on that”. If it was difficult then, it must be very difficult now for prestigious dental and medical organisations to admit that the assurances of effectiveness and safety they have given for so long were at best mistaken and at worst fraudulent.
Among the various methods used to suppress adverse evidence and dissent have been mocking, silencing, sacking and denigration of scientists who threatened the official story. One of the earliest to suffer was Dr. George Waldbott, an eminent U.S. physician who was viciously maligned after reporting fifty cases of people made ill by fluoridated water, as established by double-blind tests.
Dr. John Colquhoun, a former supporter of fluoridation in New Zealand, was Chief Dental Officer for Auckland when he discovered and reported that fluoride was damaging children’s teeth. This was not what the authorities wanted to hear and he was sacked.
Dr. William Marcus was Senior Science Adviser in the Office of Drinking Water in the Environmental Protection Agency. He was sacked when he warned that research by the famous Battelle Institute showed that some forms of cancer could be caused by fluoride.
Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was the Chief Toxicologist at the prestigious Forsyth Dental Center, who discovered that fluoride is a neurotoxin that can adversely affect the brain. Following publication of her peer-reviewed study, U.S. Government pressure resulted in her being sacked and the institute’s toxicology department closed.
Often those whose research gave results unfavourable to fluoridation found that medical journals were hostile. Dr. Albert Schatz was a co-discoverer of streptomycin, the first effective drug for tuberculosis. When he found that infants in Chile had much higher death rates in fluoridated areas he sent a report in 1965 to the editor of the Journal of the American Dental Association who returned it unread.
The reluctance of many medical journals to publish adverse findings on fluoride resulted in the foundation of the International Society for Fluoride Research and its quarterly journal Fluoride. However, MEDLINE, the bibliographic database published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, declined to index the peer-reviewed journal’s contents.
Dr. Richard Foulkes chaired a committee that recommended fluoridation in British Columbia. Later, a friend urged him to do his own research, after which he changed his mind and said: “My initial belief was based on information given to me by those in authority rather than on the basis of my examination of the facts.”
Dr. Hardy Limeback was Head of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto when in 1999 he apologised for having promoted fluoridation. “I did not realise the toxicity of fluoride,” he said. “I had taken the word of the public health dentists, the public health physicians, the USPHS, the USCDC, the ADA, the CDA that fluoride was safe and effective without actually investigating it myself”.
It used to be claimed that fluoride works on the teeth from within and therefore that pregnant mothers should take fluoride for the sake of unborn children’s teeth. Now it is said that fluoride’s main effect is from the outside (topical, not systemic). Therefore, there is no need to imbibe it.
Water fluoridation is a blunderbuss that hits far more than the intended target. About a third to a half of fluoride that is ingested remains in the body where it accumulates, not only in the teeth and bones but also in the kidneys, pineal gland and the cardiovascular system. Kidney patients are particularly at risk from fluoridation.
The dose of fluoride a person gets in water is haphazard since people consume widely differing amounts. Bottle-fed babies get very much more fluoride than breast-fed ones, and the American Dental Association conceded in 2006, with little publicity, that “using water that has no or low levels of fluoride” should be considered when preparing formula milk for infants. However, neither an ordinary water filter nor boiling can remove fluoride.
Recent research also finds that fluoride damages children’s brains. For example, studies show a loss of IQ and increased symptoms of ADHD in offspring when pregnant women are exposed to fluoride at doses commonly experienced in fluoridated communities in Canada.
Leading scientists concerned about fluoride’s toxicity, and willing to speak out, include Dr. Philippe Grandjean (Harvard University: “Fluoride is causing a greater overall loss of IQ points today than lead, arsenic or mercury”); Dr. Kathleen Thiessen (“The principal hazard at issue from exposure to fluoridation chemicals is IQ loss”); Professor David Bellinger (Harvard Medical School: “It’s actually very similar to the effect size that’s seen with childhood exposure to lead”); Professor Bruce Lanphear (“Fluoride exposure during early brain development diminishes the intellectual abilities in young children”); and Dr. Howard Hu (“Fluoride is a developmental neurotoxicant at levels of exposure seen in the general population in water-fluoridated communities”).
No less important is the fact that fluoridation is treatment without consent. People without the resources needed to obtain alternative supplies of water for drinking and cooking are chemically treated, in effect compulsorily.
For more information see Fluoride Free Alliance U.K., Fluoride Action Network and Stop Fluoridation U.K.
April 2, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Civil Liberties, Deception, Environmentalism, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Fluoridation, Human rights, UK, United States |
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A review conducted by the Postal Service Office of Inspector General found that the Postal Service surveillance program iCOP exceeded its legal authority by surveilling Americans during protests between 2018 and 2021.
In 2021, Yahoo News reported the existence of the secret program, prompting outrage from lawmakers and constitutional experts who noted the program operated without oversight from Congress. Soon after the Yahoo News’ report, Congress requested the Inspector General’s office to launch an investigation into iCOP (Internet Covert Operations Program).
“We determined that certain proactive searches iCOP conducted using an open-source intelligence tool from February to April 2021 exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority,” the March 25, 2022, Inspector General report stated.
“Furthermore, we could not corroborate whether other work analysts completed from October 2018 through June 2021 was legally authorized.”
According to Yahoo News, iCOP used sophisticated technology, including facial recognition, to compile reports on protesters. It ran keywords searches for terms such as “protest” on online platforms to collect speech about protests that had nothing to do with the Postal Service’s work.
The House Oversight Committee chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the Inspector General report proves there was cause for concern over iCOP’s activities.
“The Oversight Committee requested this report because of our significant concerns about intelligence activities conducted by the Postal Service Inspection Service’s analytics team related to First Amendment activity,” Maloney said in a statement to Yahoo News. “The Inspector General’s audit makes clear that the committee’s concerns were justified, and that the use of open-source intelligence by the analytics team ‘exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority.’”
The report concluded that the Postal Service exceeded its legal authority in monitoring protesters, and stressed iCOP’s activities should have a “postal nexus.”
“However, the keywords used for iCOP in the proactive searches did not include any terms with a postal nexus. Further, the postal nexus was not documented in 122 requests and 18 reports due to a lack of requirements in the program’s procedures. These issues occurred because management did not involve the Postal Inspection Service’s Office of Counsel in developing iCOP or its procedures.”
April 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Human rights, United States |
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Samizdat | April 1, 2022
The international community should provide a “fair, objective and professional” assessment of Russia’s allegations regarding alleged US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
In March, Russia shared evidence obtained from laboratories across Ukraine that apparently confirms that Pentagon-funded labs were working on “biological weapons components,” and may have been connected to suspicious outbreaks of dirofilariasis, tuberculosis, and avian flu over the past several years. According to the latest data revealed by military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on March 30, Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass republics, as well as Russia itself.
Speaking at a regular press briefing on Friday, Zhao said the US has still not come up with a “constructive response” to Russia’s statements, and called on the international community to give serious consideration to Moscow’s claims.
He said, as quoted by TASS, that China “would welcome a fair, objective and professional assessment by the international community of the documents provided by Russia on the basis of the UN mechanisms and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”
China has consistently encouraged the US to make public all information about its biolabs. Two weeks ago, China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the UN Security Council that following the revelation by Russia of the newly discovered documents, “the party concerned should respond to questions, and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications to remove the doubts of the international community.”
Several days prior to that, Beijing disclosed for the first time the alleged number of US-controlled biolabs. Saying that laboratories in Ukraine are just the “tip of an iceberg,” Zhao revealed that the Pentagon “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” Noting that the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism, the Foreign Ministry spokesman called on the US to “publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out.”
The US has long claimed that allegations about military-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine are ‘Russian disinformation’. In March, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that “biological research laboratories in Ukraine” did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev “to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”
April 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | China, United States |
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Yesterday morning, celebrity doctor Sara Kayat appeared on GB News to defend the UK government’s decision to “offer” coronavirus vaccinations to children between the ages of 5 and 11.
In standing up for the policy, Dr Kayat made the following statement:
It’s important we remind parents that the [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization] have looked into all of the data, they’ve told us the benefits far outweigh the risks. The risks are extremely low, and the risks of Covid much higher.”
Is this true?
Let’s take the statements in reverse order.
Are the “risks of Covid much higher than the risks of the vaccine?”
They have literally no way of knowing.
But since Covid’s survival rate for children is something like 99.9998%, does it even really matter?
Do the benefits of the vaccine “far outweigh its risks”?
Again, they have literally no way of knowing.
But since the vaccine manufacturers:
- openly acknowledge in their supply contracts that their product may have unknown side effects,
- have demanded legal immunity to protect themselves from being sued should their vaccine cause harm,
- and released a document listing 9 pages of over 1200 “adverse events of special interest”, which they defend by saying there “may not be a causal relationship”
… they are at least aware that there might be some risks.
And finally, have the JCVI really looked into “all the data”?
Absolutely not, because they don’t have all of the data.
None of the covid vaccines were subject to usual tests due to the covid “emergency”, the few studies that were done were highly flawed, and since the vaccines have only existed for about 18 months there has been literally no time to do any kind of research on the possible long term side effects of the vaccine.
In short, they don’t have “all the data”. They don’t have most of the data. They have almost no data, except that your child has 499,999 out of 500,000 chance of surviving “Covid”.
Do you want to risk giving your child an untested vaccine to mitigate a one in five-hundred-thousand chance?
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Samizdat | March 31, 2022
The Russian military has presented documents showing Ukraine’s interest in using drones to deliver weaponized pathogens developed in US-funded biolabs. Names of US officials involved in the biolabs projects, and the role the current US president’s son played in the program, were also made public during the special briefing on Thursday.
One of the key pieces of evidence was a letter from the Ukrainian company Motor Sich to the Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar Makina – makers of the Bayraktar TB2 and Akinci UAVs – dated December 15, 2021. The Ukrainians specifically asked if the drones could carry 20 liters of aerosolized payload to a range of 300 kilometers – putting them in range of a dozen major Russian cities and almost all of Belarus.
“We are talking about the development by the Kiev regime of technical means of delivery and use of biological weapons with the possibility of their use against the Russian Federation,” said Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces.
Kirillov also referenced a US patent (No. 8,967,029) for a mechanism to deploy aerosolized pathogens from a drone. The US response to a 2018 Russian inquiry about this patent did not deny its existence, but claimed that it technically did not violate Washington’s obligations under the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons, he pointed out.
Kirillov showed signed contracts between US government agencies – Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Pentagon, the Department of State – and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, as well as the specific facilities inside Ukraine. The Pentagon spent more than $30 million for biological research at just one Ukrainian facility, the Public Health Center of the Ministry of Health, according to the Russian military.
DTRA official Robert Pope was “one of the key figures” in the program, and “the author of the idea of creating a central depository of especially dangerous microorganisms in Kiev,” Kirillov said. The Pentagon’s biological projects in Ukraine were coordinated by Joanna Wintrol, head of the DTRA office in Kiev, until she left in August 2020. She directly supervised projects UP-4, UP-6, and UP-8 to study deadly pathogens, including anthrax, the Congo-Crimean fever, and leptospirosis, according to Kirillov.
The US agency’s point of contact was Ukraine’s Health Minister (2016-2019) Ulyana Suprun, herself a US citizen, Kirillov noted, while a major go-between was the private contractor Black and Veatch, whose Kiev office was headed by Lance Lippencott. Another Pentagon contractor, Metabiota, also had a role in the project.
Kirillov said that Hunter Biden – son of the current US President Joe Biden – played “an important role in creating a financial opportunity to work with pathogens on the territory of Ukraine,” pointing to several emails between him and executives of Metabiota and Black and Veatch. In particular, he described the Metabiota VP as “a confidant of Hunter Biden,” based on their correspondence. According to the general, the “Western media” has confirmed the authenticity of these emails – presumably a reference to materials published last week by the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
Even Kiev was concerned about the biolabs, according to a memo Kirillov showed. A 2017 letter from the Kherson department of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said that DTRA and Black and Veach intend to “establish control over the functioning of microbiological laboratories in Ukraine conducting research on pathogens of particularly dangerous infections that can be used to create or modernize new types of biological weapons.”
Pointing to a June 2019 document from the Public Health Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Kirillov wondered why it insisted on secrecy and required that “serious” incidents “including the death of the subjects” had to be reported to the US bioethics authorities within 24 hours – when other documents about that specific program only reference standard blood sampling work.
“We do not exclude that the official research program is only the ‘visible part of the iceberg’, while in practice, volunteers were infected with the Congo–Crimean fever virus, hantaviruses and the causative agent of leptospirosis,” the general said, accusing the US of “a dismissive attitude towards the citizens of Ukraine,” and treating them as guinea pigs for biological and medical experimentation.
The US has long claimed that allegations about Pentagon-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine were “Russian disinformation.” Earlier this month, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that “biological research laboratories in Ukraine” did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev “to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”
According to Kirillov, all pathogenic biomaterials stored in Ukraine were “transported by military transport aircraft to the United States via Odessa,” in early February 2022. On February 24, as Russian troops entered Ukraine, the ministry of health in Kiev ordered the remaining strains to be destroyed, the general said.
Kirillov said that the Russian intervention halted activities at five Ukrainian biolabs that had been working with anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, and African swine fever.
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Ukraine, United States |
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On March 30 of last year, The New York Times published an article that was treated as a bombshell by the political class. Citing exclusively anonymous sources — “three people briefed on the matter” — the Paper of Record announced that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) “is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him.”
The headline chosen by Times editors was as inflammatory and provocative as possible: “Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl.” The paper, high up in the article, emphasized what grave crimes these were: “The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.” The article was extremely light on any actual evidence regarding Gaetz, instead devoting paragraph after paragraph to guilt-by-association tactics regarding “a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.”
Only in the seventh paragraph — well below the headline casting him as a pedophile and sex trafficker — did the Times bother to note: “No charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.” Exactly one year after publication of that reputation-destroying article, this remains true: while the DOJ may one day formally accuse him, Gaetz has not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a single crime which The New York Times stapled onto his forehead.
From the start, the GOP Congressman vehemently denied these accusations. And he went further than mere denials: he claimed that these allegations arose as part of a blackmail and extortion scheme to extract $25 million from his family in exchange for not publicizing these accusations, which his father promptly reported to the FBI. While many scoffed at Gaetz’s story as fantastical and bizarre, that part of his story was vindicated last August when a Florida developer and convicted felon “was arrested on a charge that he tried to extort $25 million from the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz in exchange for a presidential pardon that would shut down a high-profile, criminal sex-trafficking investigation into the Republican congressman.” In November, that developer, Stephen Alford, pled guilty to trying to extort $25 million from Rep. Gaetz and his family.
In other words, the only component of this story that has thus far been confirmed — a full year after the NYT first trumpeted it — is the part of Gaetz’s denial where he insisted that all this arose from an extortion attempt. Yet none of that mattered, and it still does not matter. As I wrote in the aftermath of the Times story, designed to warn of the perils of assuming someone’s guilt without any due process: “That Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is a pedophile, a sex trafficker, and an abuser of women who forces them to prostitute themselves and use drugs with him is a widespread assumption in many media and political circles.” CNN celebrated the fact that one of Gaetz’s arch political enemies — the liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) — said that “as the mother of daughters, the charges certainly are sickening.”
In sum, Matt Gaetz has now spent a full year with millions of people believing he is guilty of pedophilia and sex trafficking even though he has never had the opportunity to confront witnesses, evaluate evidence or contest his guilt in a court of law because he has never been charged. Instead, he has been found guilty by media-led mob justice, all from unethical and possibly illegal leaks by “people briefed on the matter.” As a result, not only did Gaetz become radioactive due to crimes that have never been proven, but so too did anyone who argued that he is entitled to due process before being assumed guilty. For writing that April article and producing an accompanying video advocating the need for due process before assuming someone’s guilt, I spent two days trending on Twitter due to widespread accusations that, like Gaetz, I too must be a pedophile who was only defending him because I am guilty of the same crimes. That is the core evil of mob justice: it triggers the worst instincts in mob participants, who become drunk with righteous rage and bereft of reason.
In a separate article and video report in December of last year, I outlined the reasons prosecutors are ethically and often legally barred from leaking the pendency of criminal investigations as appears to have been done to Gaetz. It is precisely because it is common that a person who is the subject of a criminal investigation never ends up being charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes due to a lack of evidence to support an indictment or guilty verdict. Leaks thus have the effect, and often the intent, of destroying someone’s reputation, convicting them of repellent crimes in the court of public opinion that will never be brought in a court of law, thus relieving the state of the requirement to prove the crime and depriving the accused the opportunity to exonerate themselves.
These vital journalistic and ethical principles clearly apply to Gaetz but not only to him. In 2019 and 2020 in Brazil, I worked with colleagues for eighteen months on a multi-article exposé which revealed widespread corruption and wrongdoing on the part of the most powerful Brazilian prosecutors and judges. The misconduct was varied and severe, but one of the key unethical tactics they used was strategic and selective leaks about investigations against their adversaries. They would frequently use friendly media outlets to plant stories that a particular politician, activist or business person who opposed them was being “investigated” for some grave crime involving bribes or money laundering.
As these dirty prosecutors and judges in Brazil intended, these leaks would destroy the reputation of their targets overnight. Their allied media outlets would trumpet these accusations as if they were proven fact. The public assumed that their targets were guilty. Many lost their jobs, while others had their political careers ended. Yet so often, no charges were ever brought based on these leaks. That is because there was little to no evidence that the targets of these leaks had actually committed any crimes. As we revealed in August, 2019 as part of that investigative series:
Brazil’s Chief prosecutor overseeing its sweeping anti-corruption probe, Deltan Dallagnol, lied to the public when he vehemently denied in a 2017 interview with BBC Brasil that his prosecutorial task force leaked secret information about investigations to achieve its ends.
In fact, in the months preceding his false claim, Dallagnol was a participant in secret chats exclusively obtained by The Intercept, in which prosecutors plotted to leak information to the media with the goal of manipulating suspects by making them believe that their indictment was imminent even when it was not, in order to intimidate them into signing confessions that implicated other targets of the investigation.
The abuse inherent in such leaks is self-evident. When large corporate media outlets publish or broadcast innuendo from prosecutors by framing it as “X is being investigated for Grave Crimes Y and Z,” the public naturally believes that where there is smoke, there must be fire. In the midst of our exposés, Sérgio Dávila, the editor-in-chief of Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha of São Paulo, apologized for this practice in an article by its ombudsman:
In the evaluation of the [editor], the space given by the newspaper to the allegations leaked by the prosecutor is deserving of criticism. “If I had to revisit the case and do the coverage again, I know that’s not possible, maybe I’d rethink the space we’ve given, headlines after headlines… So, yes, I do that self-criticism.”
Dávila spoke … about a common procedure not only in Folha, but in all major newspapers: the headlines produced from [accusations made during investigations] along the lines of “so and so” said that [a politician] “did such a thing, according to an investigation by Operation Car Wash”.
Much of this content, however, ended up being reviewed or invalidated by the courts, without a new headline to make amends.
In other words, media outlets frequently blared in headlines any accusatory leaks made by prosecutors and investigators, ruining the reputations of countless people. But when no charges were brought, or courts dismissed the accusations for lack of evidence, the paper or news broadcast rarely returned to tell their readers and viewers that the accusation had not been proven. Therein lies the grave danger, the clear injustice, of accusing people of crimes through media leaks and forcing them to live with a cloud over their head with no fair process to defend themselves.
One could make a similar argument about the ongoing FBI criminal probe into Hunter Biden’s international business and tax activities. On Monday, we produced a new video report on what is clearly one of the most egregious disinformation campaigns in modern American political history: the union of the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to spread the outright lie in the weeks before the election that the incriminating materials from the Hunter Biden archive were not real but instead were “Russian disinformation” — meaning fake documents forged by the Kremlin.
As we have repeatedly reported, the evidence that this was a lie, and that the archive was real, was overwhelming from the start. But six months ago, a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book, “The Bidens,” that contained ample proof that the key materials on the laptop were authentic. The media outlets that spread that lie in the weeks before the election simply ignored that book.
Two weeks ago, the outlet they unironically regard as the Paper of Record — The New York Times — published an article on the FBI probe into Hunter Biden which, in their words, relied on emails “obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” On Monday, The Washington Post published a lengthy article on the Bidens’ potentially corrupt business activities in China that also relied on materials from the laptop, which that paper also said it confirmed.
Yet not a single media outlet that spread the pre-election “Russian disinformation” lie has acknowledged any of this, let alone retracted their pre-election lies. That is because, as we document in our new video report, these outlets no longer see their function as journalistic but instead as partisan and propagandistic: they are absolutely willing and even eager to lie if it helps the Democratic Party stay in power. They know that their almost exclusively liberal readers and viewers want them to lie to help Democrats, and so they feel no compunction about lying and no need to acknowledge it when they get caught red-handed doing so. Our new video report can be viewed on our Rumble page, or on the video player at the end of this article.
But note what our numerous reports on the Hunter Biden matter do not allege or imply. We do not state or suggest that he is, in fact, guilty of the crimes for which he is being investigated, precisely because he has not yet been charged with those crimes, which means that the government has not yet been forced to show its evidence of guilt and Hunter Biden has not yet had the opportunity to defend himself in a fair process. One can suspect his guilt based on the disclosed evidence, but to assume he is guilty prior to charges being filed and a trial being held would be just as wrong as assuming that about Matt Gaetz. The corporate media, vehemently defending Hunter Biden, has no problem recognizing this core principle when it comes to the president’s son, yet refuses to recognize its validity at all when it comes to Congressman Gaetz — whom they have all but branded a pedophile and sex trafficker of children — and other enemies of American liberalism.
There are multiple forms of corruption and wrongdoing in the world of politics and journalism. Obviously, if Gaetz in fact had sex with a 17-year-old girl, that would be a crime in some states. If he paid her to travel across state lines to do so, that would be a crime under federal law.
But thus far, he has not been charged with any such crimes. Maybe one day he will be. But as a result of these unethical leaks and the treatment of them by The New York Times, he has lived for a full year with millions of people believing that he committed a serious crime with which he has never been charged. Even if the day comes when he finally is charged and convicted, this will still be a form of grave corruption and profound injustice, one committed by the sinister leakers and the journalists who deliberately turned him into a pedophile and sex trafficker for ideological reasons, even knowing that the state has not yet concluded that it has sufficient evidence to prosecute him for it.
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | New York Times, United States |
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Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reported on a new peer-reviewed paper that analyzes the results of the 2020 election and found Biden received 255,000 excess votes. It has been accepted for publication by the journal Public Choice and was written by Dr. John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. The linked pdf may not match the final printed version of the paper that will appear in the journal, but it is the copy that was peer-reviewed.
Both Dinan’s article and the paper are worth reading. Unfortunately, statistical analysis doesn’t prove anything, but I found Lott’s analysis impeccable and compelling. His discussion of the problems in several states with mail-in and absentee ballots is interesting and informative. He makes the following points very clearly.
- Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not match signatures on the outer mail-in envelopes to the official registration records. Some states, like Pennsylvania accepted ballots that were not enclosed in outer envelopes. These acts are in violations of the laws in many states and make it impossible to verify a vote’s legitimacy.
- Lott compares votes in adjacent voting precincts, where one of the precincts is accused of voter fraud, as with Georgia’s Fulton County, and finds statistically significant evidence of abnormal mail-in and absentee ballot results. In short, Trump’s absentee ballot share in the Fulton County precincts was depressed, compared to adjoining precincts. The largest estimate of depressed Trump votes was more than Biden’s margin in Georgia.
- In Pennsylvania and other states, numerous voters trying to vote in person were told they had already voted absentee, suggesting that someone else had voted using their name. The differences found to be statistically significant in Georgia were not significant in Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania was missing some essential data for the study, which was a problem.
- In Nevada, 42,000 people voted more than once, 1,500 dead people voted, and 19,000 did not have a Nevada residence.
- In Wisconsin 28,395 people voted without identification.
- In Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the rejection of improper absentee ballots in 2020 were a fraction of those rejected in 2016.
The most serious problems in the 2020 election were the procedural changes made, generally illegally, in absentee and mail-in voting. This type of voting is discouraged by the Jimmy Carter and James Baker, 2005 voting commission (Carter & Baker, 2005, pp. 46-47). The past problems with absentee voting in Europe have been much worse than in the U.S., at least prior to 2020, and as a result the practice is banned in 35 of 47 countries in Europe. In ten of the countries that allow it, the voter must show up in person and present a photo id, to pick up their absentee ballot. The remaining countries temporarily allowed voting in limited cases. Europe learned the hard way what happens when mail-in ballots are not secured, just as we did.
Lott concludes that his study underestimates the extent of voter fraud because it assumes that no voter fraud occurred with in-person voting. He also concludes that there were 142,000 to 368,000 total excess Biden votes, enough to swing the election. The statistical methods used for the study look valid to me, but as noted above, statistics are not proof. They do suggest that the election should be investigated, and the study shows that the permissive, and mostly illegal, absentee, and mail-in ballot procedures used in 2020 should never be repeated. I recommend everyone read Dinan’s article and the paper.
Works Cited
Carter, J., & Baker, J. (2005). Building Confidence in U.S. Elections. Retrieved from https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/1472/file/3b50795b2d0374cbef5c29766256.pdf
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | United States |
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The Federal Election Commission, tasked with maintaining the integrity of US campaign finance rules, fined former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee for violations related to election expenditures concerning the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
On Tuesday, the FEC declared Clinton and the DNC “violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm,” according to a memo obtained by the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard.
“A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.
“Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called ‘Russia hoax’ that dogged Trump’s first term.
“The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for ‘legal advice and services’ because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.”
The fine revolves around a complaint filed by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation back in Sept. 2018.
The memo says (pg. 9) that Clinton and the DNC have agreed to pay the fine: “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, Respondent does not concede, but will not further contest the Commission’s finding of probable cause to believe.”
As a result, the Hillary for America campaign will pay a fine of $8,000, while the DNC is fined a civil penalty of $105,000.
Dan Backer, a representative for the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, told Bedard the settlement represents a monumental instance of accountability rarely seen these days.
“This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites,” Backer said.
The fines come as President Donald Trump last week sued Clinton, several staffers and various members of the DNC and fake news media for causing him and the American people grievous harm by perpetuating false claims of Russia collusion during the 2016 presidential election.
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Russophobia | Hillary Clinton, United States |
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For the past two years, I and many others have detailed the ways in which COVID-19 deaths have been overcounted to create the illusion of the pandemic being far worse than it actually is.
Now, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and individual states are backtracking on their death statistics, showing we were right all along. Deaths were initially exaggerated for political purposes, and now they’re being downplayed for the same reason.
CDC Removes More Than 72,000 COVID Deaths
As reported by The Defender,1 March 14, 2022, the CDC had removed 72,277 “COVID deaths” from the tally, including 24% of those attributed to children under 18.2,3 They claim a “coding logic error,” a faulty algorithm, had “accidentally” counted deaths that weren’t related to COVID. As reported by Udumbara:4
“Some of the pediatric deaths attributed to COVID-19, according to a search of the CDC’s Wonder system, include deaths where drowning or drug use was listed as the primary cause of death.”
Meanwhile, the CDC used the false death statistics among children to push for COVID shots for 5- to 7-year-olds. In November 2021, CDC director Rochelle Walensky cited that data to justify the recommendation to issue emergency use authorization for the Pfizer shot for this age group.5
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that it took the CDC two years to realize this error. It’s simply not believable, and The Epoch Times has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for internal communications relating to the data change.6
Ironically, the adjustment comes on the heels of fact-checking articles “debunking” claims that COVID deaths have been overcounted. For example, in early March, Health Feedback claimed there’s “no evidence COVID deaths have been overcounted,” and that “the evidence suggests the opposite.”7 Yet here we are. Deaths were clearly overcounted, not undercounted. That fact check didn’t age well.
CDC Has Been Turned Into a Propaganda Agency
According to Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, the CDC is cherry-picking data to justify its public health policies, and when it gets caught, it simply blames its “outdated IT systems.” In a March 19, 2022, article, she wrote:8
“CDC is not a public health agency. It is a public propaganda agency that collects a massive amount of data. CDC marshals its huge data library to create presentations that support the current administration’s public health policies …
A 2007 Senate oversight report on the CDC noted the agency spent $106 million on the Thomas R. Harkin Global Communications (and Visitor) Center, and summarized its 115-page report with the following:
‘A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.’”
Health Officials End Reporting COVID-19 Deaths
Curiously, three months before the CDC started changing its mortality statistics, the U.S. Health and Human Services stopped collecting data on hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 altogether. The HHS announced9 changes to the reporting requirements for hospitals and acute care facilities January 6, 2022. The new guidelines, which took effect February 2, note “The retirement of fields which are no longer required to be reported,” which include the “previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.”
What are they trying to hide? Are they stopping the flow of data to prevent examination and analysis? According to some, the HHS hospital data are among the best we have in the U.S., so ending that data collection doesn’t make sense. January 2021, Alex C. Madrigal, co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project, wrote:10
“In a series of analyses that we ran over the past several months, we came to nearly the opposite conclusion of other media outlets. The hospitalization data coming out of HHS are now the best and most granular publicly available data on the pandemic.”
An unnamed federal health official spoke with a reporter from WSWS,11 calling the move to stop reporting COVID-29 hospital deaths “incomprehensible.” The official added:
“It is the only consistent, reliable and actionable dataset at the federal level. Ninety-nine percent of hospitals report 100% of the data every day. I don’t know any scientists who want to have less data.”
Changing Definitions Justify the COVID Narrative
From the start of the pandemic, changing definitions have allowed authorities to manipulate data in whatever way they needed. Now, states are starting to change the way they define a “COVID death,” resulting in lowered mortality rates. In Massachusetts, for example, COVID deaths dropped by 3,700 after the state changed its definition to be in alignment with that of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.12
As reported by CBS Boston:13
“The state said currently the COVID death definition includes anyone who has the disease listed as a cause of death on their death certificate. It also includes anyone who had a diagnosis within 60 days but did not have it listed as a cause on their death certificate. Under the new definition, the timeframe is changed to 30 days for people without a COVID diagnosis on their death certificate.”
For the record, counting someone who died of any cause as a COVID death simply because they tested positive within 30 days of their death is still a grossly inaccurate way of determining the true death toll from this virus, because we know PCR tests have a false positive rate of about 97% when run at 35 cycles or greater,14 as was the norm from the start.
Results From At-Home Tests Aren’t Reported
Case counts are also being adjusted downward. In mid-January 2022, the Biden administration started distributing half a billion at-home COVID tests to the American public,15 and the results from those are not being reported anywhere.16 As a result, case counts will be skewed downward. According to 13NewsNow:17
“… the fallibility of case counts is the reason health officials track several COVID-19 metrics, like hospitalizations, deaths, and now, even viral samples in the wastewater18 — metrics that do not necessarily rely on people to go get tested or report the results they get at home.”
And yet the HHS is no longer requiring hospitals to report COVID deaths, which is one of the metrics health officials are supposedly focusing on in lieu of tracking cases. Don’t get me wrong, PCR testing was a scam from the start and I’m not suggesting we should pay much attention to those data. The point here is that the tracking of COVID data has been fatally flawed from the start.
What they’re really trying to do is shift toward passive monitoring, starting with wastewater sampling.19 Eventually, the goal is to monitor every person’s biological processes in real-time, and this is part and parcel of the transhumanist Fourth Industrial Revolution and The Great Reset.
CDC Hides Data
To make matters even murkier, the CDC is also hiding data on COVID hospitalizations and the COVID jab. The stated justification for not making certain data public is that people are “misinterpreting” the data. In other words, the data show that the COVID jabs don’t work, and the CDC doesn’t want that to be widely known.
It has also collected data on the effectiveness of COVID-19 boosters, but for some reason has not included the data for 18- to 49-year-olds in any of its publications. “Coincidentally,” this is “the group least likely to benefit from extra shots,” the New York Times pointed out, adding:21
“Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots.”
COVID Has Served a Purely Political Agenda
Over the past two years, the pandemic has been used to usher in a range of radical changes that would never have been accepted were it not for widespread panic. It was used to implement illegitimate voting rules, which appear to have had an impact on the 2020 elections.
It was used to announce the urgent need for a “Great Reset” and a Fourth Industrial Revolution. It’s been used to strip people of basic human rights, and to justify radical environmental policies that will result in lower standards of living.
It was also used to abruptly transition the vaccine industry from conventional vaccine manufacturing using eggs to the use of risky gene transfer technology. The only thing the pandemic has not been used for is to make recommendations that actually improve public health. And throughout, data have been massaged and manipulated to justify the unjustifiable.
Now, it appears data are being manipulated yet again — this time to artificially end the COVID crisis so that the Biden administration can take credit for it during the upcoming elections. As stated in a February 24, 2022, letter from Impact Research, titled “Taking the Win Over COVID-19”:22,23
“It’s time for Democrats to take credit for ending the COVID crisis phase of the COVID war, point to important victories like vaccine distribution and providing economic stability for Americans, and fully enter the rebuilding phase that comes after any war. Below we lay out some strategic thoughts for Democrats positioning themselves on COVID-19 …”
Strategic positioning includes declaring the crisis phase over; pushing for “feeling and acting more normal;” and taking the side of people who are burned out on COVID and don’t want to hear about it anymore. Not setting a standard of zero COVID as the “victory condition,” and to “stop talking about restrictions and the unknown future ahead.”
“If Democrats continue to hold a posture that prioritizes COVID precautions over learning how to live in a world where COVID exists, but does not dominate, they risk paying dearly for it in November,” the letter states.24
Dr. Anthony Fauci perhaps did not receive this memo, as he is out there signaling that we can expect a return to COVID restrictions at any given point. In a mid-March CNN interview, he stated that “we need to be flexible” and “if we see a resurgence, we have to be able to pivot and go back to any degree of mitigation that is commensurate with what the situation is. We can’t just say ‘We’re done, now we’re going to move on.’”
Based on what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if this “pivot” back into COVID crisis mode were to occur right before the midterm elections.
Sources and References
March 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Covid-19, United States |
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Stop the narrative I want to get off!
The semi-official United States government plus media lie machine knows that constructing a plausible reason to bomb the crap out of someone all depends on where you begin your narrative. If you keep starting your accusations at a point where the target has done something bad, all you have to do is repeat yourself over and over again to drown out any alternative backstory that surfaces. And if you really want to demolish all contrary views, all you have to do is liken the targeted foreign leader to Adolph Hitler and keep repeating. That tactic was used with Saddam Hussein of Iraq and is now being employed against Vladimir Putin of Russia and it always works.
In the current context of Ukraine versus Russia the trick has been to tie everything to the invasion by Putin’s armed forces over four weeks ago, an undoubted act of aggression. Once you establish that as your launching point, preceding developments are rendered moot. Who cares about US promises not to expand the NATO alliance eastwards after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991? And there is also Washington’s role in regime change in Ukraine in 2014? Or even the relentless demonization of Russia linked to the 2016 US presidential election followed by any unwillingness by Washington to negotiate even the most reasonable of Putin’s demands? Fuggedabout it! And also forget about considering whether or not the US has any national interest in going to war over Ukraine. Only Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard seem inclined to challenge the basic premise, which is to raise the question “Since Russia does not threaten us why are we doing this? Do we really want a possible nuclear war over Ukraine?”
Just read the New York Times and you will learn that it is not about what’s good for America at all. It is all about a big bully country attacking a “democratic” neighbor with the US and its brave allies standing up as the standard bearers of a Washington imposed “rules based international order.” And now the US is upping the ante by pushing ahead with its insistence that Russia is committing war crimes. But convincing the world on that point is a bit more difficult to accomplish. If one were to ask the question “Which nation in the world commits the most war crimes?” the general international response might well be Israel or the United States. Part of the problem would be working out an acceptable definition for a war crime while also developing a methodology for defining “the most.” If Israel attacks Syria four times in a week is that four separate war crimes or only part of one continuous war crime. As the United States has military bases in both Syria and Iraq that the respective governments have not authorized, and have in fact, asked the Americans to leave, is that a single war crime of illegal invasion and occupation or a continuous one punctuated only by the occasions when US troops kill a few of the natives?
In any event it is difficult to “convict” Russia as neither Israel nor the US has ever been held accountable for the war crimes they have committed, to include shooting and bombing civilians, hospitals, schools at random and occasionally wedding parties and other social gatherings. President George W. Bush even started a couple of wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq based on fabricated “intelligence” and the greatly beloved Barack Obama did the same to Libya and Syria. Both are now regarded as venerable elder statesmen even though they should be in prison and there is lately some talk among Democrats of seeing Obama or his wife run again in 2024 for the highest office in the land. And is that Hillary waiting in the wings for a second try? Either way, it will be a bad day for anyone trying to establish a modus vivendi for working with Russia.
America’s blood lust vis-à-vis Russia is completely bipartisan, with the few sensible voices in Congress drowned out by the drumroll in high places accompanying the avalanche of propaganda pouring out of the mainstream media. It has long been axiomatic that the first victim of war propaganda is truth, but the United States only needs the stimulus of the possibility of war or conflict to begin its pattern of lying. And, as the current situation illustrates, it is quite prepared to designate enemies that in reality do not threaten the country. It did so to bring about a greatly enlarged US commitment in Vietnam and also through the Cold War by deliberate CIA overestimates of the power and reach of the Soviet Union. Since 9/11 there has been a succession of presidents who have lied about nearly everything relating to national security and foreign policy, leading to invasions, assassinations, other types of interventions, and a “sanctions” prone government that has denied ordinary citizens of food and medicines while leaving the leadership of the targeted countries untouched.
One of the recent lies is a replay of the old “let’s get Saddam Hussein” playbook. Remember those savage Iraqi soldiers tearing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and throwing them onto the floor? Of course, it was all a lie concocted by the Kuwaiti ruling family and US government largely neocon accomplices. Now we are learning that the vile Russians bombed a maternity hospital! Except, of course, that it may have turned out to be completely untrue. And the media is now exclaiming that “Russia is putting the planet on the brink of World War 3!” while the New York Times is indicting political conservatives as purveyors of Russian propaganda. Actually, it was the United States and NATO that have opened the door to a possible nuclear holocaust, but one hates to dispute what is an apparently a profitable and well-received story line.
But the best bit of lying has to be the ongoing propaganda war over twenty-six biological laboratories in Ukraine funded at least in part by the Pentagon. “Nothing to see here” says the Biden White House, while Russia is saying “Just a minute, folks…” Meanwhile the plot thickens as emails have now surfaced indicating that Joe Biden’s son Hunter was involved in obtaining, and profited from, the US government’s funding of the labs.
The biolab controversy began when the United States government’s State Department number three Victoria Nuland recently admitted to a congressional panel that the labs exist and also added that Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. She then realized her error and both backtracked and elaborated that “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities [and] we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
The statement is absurd as the Russians undoubtedly already possess their own stocks of bioweapons. The existence of the labs themselves may be linked to the legacy of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, when, by one account, the US provided assistance through its “Cooperative Threat Reduction Program” to manage the existing bio and chem labs lest their toxic chemicals and pathogens fall into the wrong hands. But the US has actually done much more than that, Ron Unz observes how “Over the decades America had spent over $100 billion dollars on ‘biodefense,’ the euphemistic term for biowarfare development, and [has] had the world’s oldest and largest such program, one of the few ever deployed in real life combat.”
Currently, the US government claims blandly that the labs, which are run by America’s Department of Defense, remain active for “peaceful research and the development of vaccines.” The US Embassy in Kiev described the activity in greater detail as working “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
Some Ukrainians have, however, been suspicious of their purpose, particularly as their activities are secret and are managed by the Pentagon rather than some civilian agency. And if the original objective was to prevent the development of bioweapons, why is the US still hanging around seventeen years later? Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who held the post under President Viktor Yanukovych, spoke about how the decision to start collaborating with the Americans was taken by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s office and subsequently implemented under President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005. It was generally believed in the government that the agreement was focused on Ukrainian biosecurity, but all its related activities were and are classified and Ukrainian citizens were not even allowed to work together with the Americans.
There was some pushback on the labs, to include a cursory inspection in 2010-2012 and by 2013 the Ukrainian government sent an official letter demanding that the labs be closed. The 2014 regime change intervened however, and the decision was never implemented by the new regime.
It should be noted that if one is to protect against toxins and pathogens one must first create them in order to manipulate them or prevent them. If one thinks back to the notorious Anthrax scare in the United States in 2001, investigators determined that the lethal strain of the pathogen had actually been created in a US Army biological weapons lab at Fort Detrick Maryland. One might also consider COVID and the widely held belief that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal.
Nuland clearly admitted that there were US-funded bioweapons in Ukraine when she expressed concern that Russia might occupy one of the labs and be tempted to acquire the material for its own use against Kiev. And the Biden Administration, clearly embarrassed by the admission, has attempted to turn the tables by rejecting Russian suggestions that the labs might be seeking to design biological pathogens that target certain ethnic groups, which is why the existing labs have been placed all around the world, including Ukraine. As far back as 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns about US collection of biological material from ethnic Russians, as Unz puts it “certainly a very suspicious project for our government to have undertaken.”
If these Pentagon funded laboratories are indeed involved in propagating mutated strains of pathogens like anthrax and plague as biological weapons, like may have taken place at Wuhan, it would be a violation of Article I of the “UN Biological Weapons Convention,” making the United States government indisputably a War Criminal, with its leaders subject to the death sentence under the Nuremberg Laws which were in large part established by the United States Government itself in 1946. That aside, the real concern right now should be that the US/NATO will stage some kind of false flag incident which will lead to calls for direct military intervention. Watching Biden’s serial blunders and cover-ups suggests that there is nothing that Biden and Blinken will not do, up to and including starting some kind of hopefully manageable war to boost the presidents sinking approval ratings. Now that Joe Biden is talking tough, it is hard to imagine how he will get off of the horse that he is riding without stepping into some sort of armed conflict. As the former Reagan Administration official Paul Craig Roberts has astutely observed “The evil that [now] resides in Washington is unprecedented in human history.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
March 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Joe Biden, Ukraine, United States |
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