President Joe Biden has ordered the remaining files on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to remain hidden until next December, citing the coronavirus pandemic. He’s not the first president to delay releasing the files.
In a memo on Friday, Biden wrote that the remaining files concerning the assassination “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 next year, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead as his motorcade rolled through Dallas, Texas.
Biden’s memo states that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Archivist have been prevented from checking in with every agency affected by the files, and can’t determine whether releasing the unredacted documents would impact national security.
Therefore, Biden wrote, “temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”
Some information already deemed appropriate will be released this December, while the remainder will stay secret until at least next December.
Although Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder, he never stood trial as he was shot dead two days later by Jack Ruby. As a result, Kennedy’s murder has spawned countless conspiracy theories, and a majority of Americans still believe that sinister forces were behind the assassination.
These theories have persisted for decades, and in 1992, Congress ruled that all records surrounding the shocking murder “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.” However, multiple administrations since have stalled on this disclosure.
Former President Donald Trump promised via tweet in 2017 to allow the “long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.” Despite Trump’s promise, a pledge that many thought he’d follow through on due to his status as a political ‘outsider’ in Washington, only a selection of material was released, and some of this material remained redacted.
Whenever the Biden administration releases the rest of these documents, they will at least be easier for the general public to view. At present, the 250,000 or so records released so far are viewable only at NARA’s location in College Park, Maryland. Biden’s memo orders NARA to digitize these files and make them available online.
October 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | JFK Assassination, Joe Biden |
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Yesterday, in a press conference, the director of the CDC warned that they may have to “update” the definition of “fully vaccinated”.
At the virtual presser accompanying the approval of “mix-and-match” booster jabs, Dr Rochelle Walensky told reporters that:
We will continue to look at this. We may need to update our definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ in the future,
The “updated” definition would potentially mean only people who have had the third “booster” shot would be considered “fully vaccinated”, while people who have had the two original shots are no longer “fully vaccinated”.
Whilst the warning might just be a ploy to scare people into getting their “booster” without forcing them to, it should be noted a revised definition of “fully vaccinated” has already been adopted in other countries.
For example, it is already policy in Israel where, in early September they “updated what it means to be vaccinated,”. You now need a third shot, or else you are no longer considered vaccinated.
We wrote about it at the time, and predicted it would likely spread to the rest of the world.
In fact, figures in the alternate media have been predicting this for a while. See this clip from YouTuber WhatsHerFace back in August:
As for the potential purpose of any “updated definition”, well it would be twofold.
Firstly, it would allow them to maintain control. Forcing people to jump through hoops just to “get back” rights they once took for granted creates an atmosphere that normalises state tyranny.
Secondly, and more cynically, it would allow them to artificially manipulate statistics to flatter the vaccines’ effectiveness whilst hiding any damage they might do.
We already know that, in the US and others, you’re not considered “vaccinated” if you’re only single-jabbed, or double-jabbed for less than two weeks. So any patient infected with “Covid” in that time is considered “unvaccinated”, NOT a “breakthrough infection”.
By redefining “fully vaccinated”, they can turn millions of double-jabbed people back into “unvaccinated” people and stop them from becoming potential “breakthrough infections” and hurting the vaccine effectiveness stats.
This will, in turn, camouflage any excess mortality in those who have had the vaccine, for example due to antibody-dependent enhancement, because all those who die will officially be “not fully vaccinated”.
They’ll likely push it through soon, before this winter’s flu season hits, so any flu deaths can be “unvaccinated covid deaths”.
And for anybody out there who got double-jabbed thinking they were buying their life back, we’re sorry, but we did warn you this would happen.
October 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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(L) Frances Haugen © REUTERS / Matt McClain; (R) Pierre Omidyar © REUTERS / Tim Shaffer
The plot has thickened further in the case of Frances Haugen, with the revelation she is being funded by Pierre Omidyar. Given his history of backing of US-friendly organisations abroad, it’s hard not to question her motives.
It’s been revealed by Politico that Haugen, the Facebook ‘whistleblower’ who has generated such intense mainstream attention in recent weeks, receives “behind the scenes” financial assistance from controversial US billionaire Omidyar.
The backing is extensive. Omidyar’s Luminate is handling all her press and government relations in Europe, her top public relations representative in the US is a former Obama White House spokesperson who runs public affairs for a non-profit funded by Omidyar, and last year the tech guru gifted $150,000 to Whistleblower Aid, another organization supporting Haugen.
Politico asserts that this enormous wellspring offers her “a potentially crucial boost” in her crusade against the social network giant, granting Haugen “an edge that many corporate whistleblowers lack” – but then again, she’s a far from typical whistleblower.
A Silicon Valley veteran, Haugen’s stint at Facebook’s Threat Intelligence put her in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking US intelligence officials, who occupy senior divisions in the unit. An ad for an analyst vacancy in the division, posted just days before Haugen’s well-publicized Senate testimony, cites “5+ years of experience working in intelligence [in] international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions” as an absolute “minimum qualification” for anyone wishing to apply.
There’s no indication Haugen herself has such a background, but it’s hard to imagine two-and-a-half-years spent rubbing shoulders with CIA, NSA, and Pentagon journeymen didn’t leave an impression on her.
As such, one needn’t be a cynic to suggest her public claims that the purported exploitation of Facebook by Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, against which her former colleagues have a clear and demonstrable bias, represents a threat to US national security may have been insidiously influenced to some degree. This would, of course, necessitate greater governmental censorship and surveillance powers in respect of social media, which White House and Pentagon officials have demanded for a decade or more.
Whatever the truth of the matter, given Haugen’s public positions, it’s hardly surprising Omidyar has taken such an interest in her. The eBay founder has for many years used his vast personal fortune to sponsor anti-government media operations, activist groups and NGOs in countries targeted for regime change by Washington, often in quiet concert with CIA-front organizations the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID.
Luminate’s ‘Strategic Plan’ for 2018–2022 spells this out in not so many words. It claims that “counter forces to liberalism have gained strength,” due to “Russia’s disruptive tactics” and “China’s state-centric alternative model,” and in response, the organization pledges to “to engage in ‘Countries in Transition’ where a potential inflection point and evidence of reform leads us to believe our support could catalyse significant change in an accelerated timeframe.”
“Our goal for this work is to provide critical support to courageous individuals and organisations seeking democratic gains in settings where civil society has been suppressed and where media has been circumscribed,” it ominously states. “We also work with government reformers post-transition to achieve positive policy outcomes which benefit large populations.”
Just two examples of “critical support” doled out by Omidyar over the past decade include bankrolling groups and news platforms at the forefront of Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan coup, and financing a welter of youth radicalization initiatives in Zimbabwe via the Harare-based Magamba Cultural Activist Network. A 2016 Omidyar Network-funded report on “People-Powered Media Innovation in West Africa” made clear the destabilizing intention behind such initiatives.
In a section discussing the “challenge” of “converting passive readers to active citizens,” the report recommended sponsoring the publication of “politically opportunistic” content “tied to unfulfilled promises” in order to “motivate citizens and government to act in the public interest.” It cited “recent, major successes of citizen and media efforts” in Nigeria that demonstrated “how public energy and conversation can be further harnessed and directed.”
In one case, a local radio station partnered with an NGO to “[develop] a radio program dedicated to education issues,” which “quickly gained popularity, and a highly engaged listenership.” Within a year, the government had “implemented several overdue policy reforms,” and the radio station was said to have since “applied this strategy to other negligent government bodies.”
“With the spectre of potential citizen mobilization looming in politicians’ minds, media outlets also have the potential to elicit government response directly,” the report boasted. “In some cases… government was motivated to act in order to prevent citizen action, instead of in response to it.”
Not coincidentally, Omidyar finances several media organizations in Lagos, including the radical Sahara Reporters, which focuses on corruption in the public sector – its founder allegedly has to sneak in and out of the country as his work has made him an enemy of the state. The Nigerian government evidently has much reason to fear Omidyar, which is perhaps why there has been no high-level opposition to his effective takeover of the country’s tech sector.
Clearly, the man well understands what can be achieved when citizens are stirred to action, and how they can be. In light of this, the help afforded to Haugen by Whistleblower Aid gains a rather sinister resonance. While widely reported that this assistance is strictly legal in nature, the organization’s founder Mark Zaid has made an intriguing disclosure.
“[We] prep clients in order to be focused on how to answer questions properly,” he told Gizmodo on October 6. “We have media experts that we work with to guide folks with something as simple as, you know, where do you look when you’re talking to a camera or a host? How do you best fluidly answer a question to come across in a positive way? Everything that might be connected to ensuring the individual’s image and substance are at their best.”
This direction surely explains why Haugen’s interviews with major media outlets have been so universally slick, and her Senate testimony was so extensively peppered with attention-grabbing quotes seemingly custom-made for repetition in headlines and news reports. At the very least, her involvement with Zaid casts even more doubt on how genuine she is.
Despite his organization’s name and stated aims, Zaid has a history of maligning individuals who have actually spoken out in the public interest, including Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Reality Winner.
What’s more, he’s been accused in open court by an FBI agent of specifically approaching the CIA and informing it his client Jeffrey Sterling, an Agency operative, had “voiced his concerns about an operation that was nuclear in nature, and he threatened to go to the media.” Sterling was subsequently sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for leaking that very information to a journalist.
It can only be considered a shocking indictment of the Western media that the revelation of Omidyar’s secret support for Haugen has not prompted a single mainstream journalist to question whether she is ultimately serving a wider, darker agenda, and what that agenda might be. After all, her public intervention surely represents an “inflection point”, Omidyar’s support of which “could catalyse significant change in an accelerated timeframe.”
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
October 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, United States |
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On July 28, the Wall Street Journal ran our article “Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug?” In it, we outlined the potential value of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin for Covid-19, and we questioned the FDA’s vigorous attack on ivermectin. Many people praised us and many criticized us. We had clearly covered a sensitive subject. It didn’t help that one of the studies we referenced was retracted shortly before we submitted our article. Within hours of learning that fact, we sent a mea culpa to the Journal’s editors. They acted quickly, adding a note at the end of the electronic version and publishing our letter. It’s important to address two criticisms of our work. The first is that we exaggerated the FDA’s warning on ivermectin. The second is that Merck’s stance on ivermectin proved that even the company that developed ivermectin thought that it doesn’t work for Covid-19.
First, we didn’t exaggerate the FDA’s warning on ivermectin. Instead, the agency changed its website after our article was published, probably to reflect the points we made. Second, Merck had two incentives to downplay ivermectin’s usefulness against the novel coronavirus. We’ll explain both points more fully.
Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Hooper) worked there years ago. Dr. William C. Campbell and Professor Satoshi Omura were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. They earned it for discovering and developing avermectin. Later Campbell and some associates modified avermectin to create ivermectin. Merck & Co. has donated four billion doses of ivermectin to prevent river blindness and other diseases in areas of the world, such as Africa, where parasites are common. The ten doctors who are in the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance call ivermectin “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.” Ivermectin is on the WHO’s List of Essential Medicines and ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children, and infants.
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic, but it has shown, in cell cultures in laboratories, the ability to destroy 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. Further, ivermectin has demonstrated its potential in clinical trials for the treatment of Covid-19 and in large-scale population studies for the prevention of Covid-19.
Contradicting these positive results, the FDA issued a special statement warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19.” The FDA’s warning, which included language such as, “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death,” and “highly toxic,” might suggest that the FDA was warning against pills laced with poison. In fact, the FDA had already approved the drug years ago as a safe and effective anti-parasitic. Why would it suddenly become dangerous if used to treat Covid-19? Further, the FDA claimed, with no scientific basis, that ivermectin is not an antiviral, notwithstanding its proven antiviral activity.
Interestingly, at the bottom of the FDA’s strong warning against ivermectin was this statement: “Meanwhile, effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 continue to be to wear your mask, stay at least 6 feet from others who don’t live with you, wash hands frequently, and avoid crowds.” Was this based on the kinds of double-blind studies that the FDA requires for drug approvals? No.
After some critics claimed that we overstated or overreacted to the FDA’s special warning, we reviewed the FDA’s website and found that it had been changed, and there was no mention of the changes nor any reason given. Overall, the warnings were watered down and clarified. We noticed the following changes:
- The false statement that “Ivermectin is not an anti-viral (a drug for treating viruses)” was removed.
- “Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous. This is true of ivermectin, too” was changed to the less alarming “Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications.” (Indications is the official term used in the industry to denote new uses for a drug, such as new diseases or conditions, and/or new patient populations.)
- The statement, “If you have a prescription for ivermectin for an FDA-approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it exactly as prescribed,” was changed to, “If your health care provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a legitimate source such as a pharmacy, and take it exactly as prescribed.” This more clearly acknowledges that reasonable physicians may prescribe ivermectin for non-FDA-approved uses, such as Covid-19.
- The ending statement about masks, spacing, hand washing, and avoiding crowds was replaced with one that recommended getting vaccinated and following CDC guidelines.
- The reasonable statement “Talk to your health care provider about available COVID-19 vaccines and treatment options. Your provider can help determine the best option for you, based on your health history” was added at the end.
The new warning from the FDA is more correct and less alarming than the previous one.
In a statement from February, Merck, the company that originated and still sells ivermectin, agreed with the FDA that ivermectin should not be used for Covid-19. “We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.”[2]
To some, this appeared to be a smoking gun. Merck wants to make money, they reason, and people are interested in using ivermectin for Covid-19, therefore, Merck would warn against such usage only if the scientific evidence were overwhelming. But that’s not how the pharmaceutical industry works.
Here’s how the FDA-regulated pharmaceutical industry really works.
The FDA judges all drugs as guilty until proven, to the FDA’s satisfaction, both safe and efficacious. By what process does this happen? The FDA waits for a deep-pocketed sponsor to present a comprehensive package that justifies the approval of a new drug or a new use of an existing drug. For a drug like ivermectin, long since generic, a sponsor may never show up. The reason is not that the drug is ineffective; rather, the reason is that any expenditures used to secure approval for that new use will help other generic manufacturers that haven’t invested a dime. Due to generic drug substitution rules at pharmacies, Merck could spend millions of dollars to get a Covid-19 indication for ivermectin and then effectively get zero return. What company would ever make that investment?
With no sponsor, there is no new FDA-approved indication and, therefore, no official recognition of ivermectin’s value. Was the FDA’s warning against ivermectin based on science? No. It was based on process. Like a typical bureaucrat, the FDA won’t recommend the use of ivermectin because, while it might help patients, such a recommendation would violate its processes. The FDA needs boxes checked off in the right order. If a sponsor never shows up and the boxes aren’t checked off, the FDA’s standard approach is to tell Americans to stay away from the drug because it might be dangerous or ineffective. Sometimes the FDA is too enthusiastic and these warnings are, frankly, alarming. Guilty until proven innocent.
There are two reasons that Merck would warn against ivermectin usage, essentially throwing its own drug under the bus.
Once they are marketed, doctors can prescribe drugs for uses not specifically approved by the FDA. Such usage is called off-label. Using ivermectin for Covid-19 is considered off-label because that use is not specifically listed on ivermectin’s FDA-approved label.
While off-label prescribing is widespread and completely legal, it is illegal for a pharmaceutical company to promote that use. Doctors can use drugs for off-label uses and drug companies can supply them with product. But heaven forbid that companies encourage, support, or promote off-label prescribing. The fines for doing so are outrageous. During a particularly vigorous two-year period, the Justice Department collected over $6 billion from drug companies for off-label promotion cases. Merck’s lawyers haven’t forgotten that lesson.
Another reason for Merck to discount ivermectin’s efficacy is a result of marketing strategy. Ivermectin is an old, cheap, off-patent drug. Merck will never make much money from ivermectin sales. Drug companies aren’t looking to spruce up last year’s winners; they want new winners with long patent lives. Not coincidentally, Merck recently released the clinical results for its new Covid-19 fighter, molnupiravir, which has shown a 50% reduction in the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. Analysts are predicting multi-billion-dollar sales for molnupiravir.[3]
While we can all be happy that Merck has developed a new therapeutic that can keep us safe from the ravages of Covid-19, we should realize that the FDA’s rules give companies an incentive to focus on newer drugs while ignoring older ones. Ivermectin may or may not be a miracle drug for Covid-19. The FDA doesn’t want us to learn the truth.
The FDA spreads lies and alarms Americans while preventing drug companies from providing us with scientific explorations of existing, promising, generic drugs.
David R. Henderson is a Senior Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research.
He is also a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and emeritus professor of economics with the Naval Postgraduate School, is editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
David was previously the senior economist for health policy with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers.
***
Charles L. Hooper is President and co-founder of Objective Insights, Inc. He is also the author of Would the FDA Reject Itself? (Chicago Park Press, 2021), currently available as an ebook on Apple Books and Amazon Kindle. A paper version is forthcoming.
Prior to forming Objective Insights in 1994, he worked at Merck & Co., Syntex Labs, and NASA.
He is a former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
His experience is in decision analysis, economics, product pricing, forecasting, and modeling.
October 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, FDA, United States |
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A deleted government report exploring how to make the public alter its behavior to accept the new ‘green economy’ reveals how COVID-19 restrictions have created a population with a “deep set reverence” for authority and a “powerful tendency to conform.”
The report was inadvertently published by the British government before being hastily pulled down, but numerous journalists were able to retrieve its contents.
The document explored how to weaponize behavioral psychology to ‘nudge’ the public into supporting measures and adopting behavior without them explicitly knowing they’re being manipulated.
The investigation found that the same techniques the government used to force people into accepting lockdown could be used to make them change their lifestyles in the name of preventing climate change.
Under the heading “principles for successful behaviour,” the paper noted;
“Government statements, actions and laws powerfully shape perceptions of normative and acceptable behaviour. For instance, even with public criticism being high, many still perceived government approval as the yardstick for safe behaviour during COVID-19 ‘we’re allowed to do this now [so must be safe]…’. This reveals, for many, a deep set reverence for legitimate government authority, regardless of one’s personal political views.”
While PR stunts such as having officials vaccinated live on television worked to convince people of the narrative, elite hypocrisy (public officials violating lockdown rules) was found to cause significant damage to public trust.
“Perceived hypocrisy can do a lot to undermine efforts to build public engagement and support. This was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic when prominent authority figures broke guidelines, leading to measurable reductions in public compliance as well as shifting attitudes.”
“Green politics has similar deep-seated reputational issues with elite hypocrisy,” notes Breitbart. “A common feature of climate change summits has been high-profile attendees arriving by private or government jet, a disconnect between word and deed that seems unlikely to vanish in the near term.”
The paper concluded that people can be rather easily “nudged” into changing their behavior in response to government announcements and “have a powerful tendency to conform.”
The investigation also found that even if enforced changes to lifestyle are not wanted by the public, most tend to fall in line with the new status quo rather quickly anyway.
The report was prepared by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a quasi-government body that was part of the effort to use “totalitarian” and “unethical” methods of instilling fear into the population as a means of scaring them into complying with lockdown rules.
A related group, the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours team, warned at the start of the first lockdown that a “substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened [by Covid-19].”
“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging,” the group added, leading to numerous lurid propaganda campaigns that exaggerated the threat of COVID to bully the public into total submission.
In summary, the public is largely unthinking, compliant and docile and can be made to go along with just about anything so long as they’re bombarded with the right propaganda.
Wonderful.
October 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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An intriguing though fragmentary espionage story made headlines eleven days ago and then disappeared abruptly, suggesting that some folks in high places in the government and media were fearing that the full tale would prove to be embarrassing to someone. I am referring to the report of the arrest made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service of an American government employee who worked in nuclear engineering. Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana apparently had stolen highly sensitive information on nuclear propulsion systems and the stealth hull designs of the next generation U.S. Navy Virginia class attack submarine fleet and had been caught after several times seeking to sell their wares to what they thought to be a foreign power.
Two days after the arrest, the Toebbes appeared in court in Martinsburg West Virginia and were ordered to remain in jail as they were considered a flight risk. So far, so good but the interesting part of the story is that the intended purchaser was apparently not obvious adversaries like Russia and China, but rather an ostensibly friendly country, which was not identified. The Toebbes clearly thought they were offering their technology to a foreign country’s intelligence service, one presumes, but they were in fact in contact with the FBI, which allowed them to arrange dead drops in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and paid them to continue providing new material on small digital computer cards before closing the trap and making the arrest.
And how the FBI learned about the Toebbes is another interesting part of the story. Apparently in April 2020 the couple had mailed a package containing manuals and other material relating to the propulsion systems to a foreign country, together with an offer to establish a covert relationship in return for payment in cryptocurrency. The package somehow wound up in someone’s hands in the foreign postal system or government and eventually made its way anonymously eight months later to the FBI legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy. It included a note that read “Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax.”
One has to suspect that the material actually had reached the foreign intelligence agency that it had been sent to where it was considered too hot to handle, so it was forwarded on to the U.S. officials anonymously to get rid of it.
The documents involved relating to the arrest and the alleged crimes committed by the Toebbes are heavily redacted, far beyond the identity of the foreign country involved, so it is somewhat difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened. Toebbe, a former naval officer, has held senior positions in the Navy bureaucracy, up to and including serving on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, which would have given him access to beyond top secret codeworded details of next level submarine technology. It is information that is only shared with Great Britain and, in a recent policy move, with Australia, both U.S. allies that will deploy nuclear powered submarines in the Pacific to deter China. The documents the Toebbes reportedly stole and tried to sell were produced by a little-known U.S. government facility the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin Pennsylvania.
One of the most interesting aspects of the case is the question of who might have been the potential buyer of the stolen technology. Building nuclear submarines is not exactly high on the priority list of any but a small handful of countries that have global or regional pretensions that might be supported by having cruise missile nuclear weapons capable ships that can stay under water for months at a time. Germany could conceivably build such vessels but has no defensive needs that require such an expedient. So could France, presumably. Japan and South Korea are perhaps more plausible recipients, particularly as they have the industrial and scientific bases that could benefit from and use the technology if they chose to go that route, and both are threatened by China.
And, of course, there is always Israel, which frequently tends to come up when there are stories of espionage committed by a friendly country against the United States. In this case, of course, the Israelis, if targeted by the Toebbes, apparently did not seek the approach and that may be why the information sent in the package possibly to Mossad was sat on for over six months. Nevertheless, there is a definite resemblance to what the Toebbes set out to do with the Jonathan Pollard case of the 1980s. Pollard, a non-practicing Jew and Navy analyst, stole a whole roomful of top-secret defense materials. He was in it for the money and tried to sell the intelligence to several foreign governments before he “got religion” and found a buyer in Israel. He became the most damaging spy in the history of the United States. After being caught, tried, convicted and spending twenty-eight years in federal prison, he was released on parole but not allowed to travel. The Donald Trump administration did not renew the parole in 2020 and he moved to Israel, where he was met at the airport by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who presented him with his citizenship papers. He is regarded as a hero in Israel and he has a city square named after him. So, the question becomes, was history repeating itself with the Toebbes?
Against that speculation is the fact that Israel already has an established nuclear deterrent more than capable of eliminating its regional enemies if needs be. It has no use for an expensive submarine with abilities that are not required in the goldfish bowl of the Middle East, unless of course if the United States were to gift Jerusalem with such a new military bauble. It would also have no need to get involved in something that might ultimately have tremendous blowback if exposed, potentially severely damaging the relationship with Washington.
My own theory is that Israel was indeed the target of the Toebbes’ scheme. It is widely known that the Jewish state is the most aggressive and successful “friendly” nation spying on Washington and it is backed up by a host of wealthy and powerful co-religionists who work hard to both “help” it and cover-up for its crimes. I suspect that if Israeli intelligence were interested in collecting on the submarine technology they would eschew potential screwballs like the Toebbes and instead work their other sources in Washington to collect the information independently, accounting for the time lag between the mailing of the package and the forwarding of it to the FBI. When Pollard was active, his Israeli Embassy handler would sometimes ask him for specific files by number, indicating they had other high level agents at work, and it must be assumed that that is still the case. Far too many in Congress and the Pentagon are very happy to have a lunch with that nice young man or woman from the Israeli Embassy and maybe share a secret or two.
But, that speculation aside, perhaps the strongest indicator that Israel was the planned recipient of what the Toebbe’s stole is the silence over who the target might have been. When the media and the federal government are silent on a foreign policy or national security issue it often means that Israel is involved, directly or indirectly. Will we the American public ever learn “who was it?” Probably not. Just one more secret.
October 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Israel, United States, Zionism |
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Sometimes it pays to step back in history to understand exactly how something monumental was created. This is the story of how one Big Lie turned our world upside down and ruined the lives of millions of people.
Hard to believe that one Big Lie could have created all the pandemic controls, especially lockdowns, school closings and quarantines, that devastated our lives, our economy and our society. But it happened.
A very powerful, influential person told the world in early 2020 that the new China virus that leads to COVID-19 infection was especially lethal. It quickly pushed a fast, enormous response to protect public health. Was the truth was being told? It was not. There was an exaggeration of the new virus lethality for the entire population.
In truth, it was only severe for the oldest age category. Helped by corrupt data from CDC, overstatement of COVID lethality continues today to maintain public fear.
But first it is important to discuss the meaning of critically important terms. What the Big Lie was all about had to do with the fatality or death rate of what early in 2020 was seen as an invading new virus coming from China. How should we think about the fatality rate of a virus?
Terminology
One simple and correct way is how many people die from the infection caused by the virus: the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). But another possible way would be to invoke the Case Fatality Rate (CFR); the fraction of documented cases of people with the virus that resulted in death.
How can you know how many people are infected? A lot of testing would be necessary. For our COVID pandemic there has been, surprisingly, very little wide blood testing across the whole population. Many people with infections have no symptoms or just mild ones and do not seek testing or medical attention. The CDC has done a terrible job of getting good data on infection numbers.
As to cases ascribed to COVID, there are reasons why that number surely underestimates how many people are really infected. Why? Because only some people, usually with symptoms, get tested and if found positive become a case. On the other side, the PCR test method most widely used has often been implemented in a way to get false positive results.
Mainly because the number of cycles the test is run is far too high (above 25) and picks up fragments of the virus (or any coronavirus) that does not document real COVID infection. Thus, the CFR is not a reliable or accurate measure of the real death rate despite widely published case numbers.
Key Moment In History
During a March 11, 2020 hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on coronavirus preparedness, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, put it plainly: “The seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent,” he told the congressional panel, whereas coronavirus is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,” per STAT news. [0.1 percent also expressed as .001]
He also said: “The bottom line: It is going to get worse.” And this: “The stated mortality, overall, of [the coronavirus], when you look at all the data including China, is about 3 percent.”
That figure of 3 percent, far from reliable, is 30 times greater than the figure given for the seasonal flu. Fauci exaggerated to create a crisis. Simply by implying great lethality for everyone infected by the new COVID virus.
And it should be noted that CDC has found the flu IFR ranged from 0.1 percent (the figure cited by Fauci) to 0.17 percent [.0017] from 2014 to 2019, because seasonal deaths vary significantly.
What Fauci said put the country, with the help of big media, into convulsions. It created the foundation for authoritarian contagion controls driving a spike into the lives of Americans. Fauci intentionally created the pandemic by creating fear.
New York City Analysis
An interesting analysis was made for IFR for New York City at the height of the pandemic in May 2020. It illustrates how both death and infection data can be fine-tuned to get an IFR. As to deaths, blood testing found that 19.9 percent of people had antibodies indicating infection, yielding a number of 1,671,351 infected. As to deaths from COVID, there were three components: 13,156 confirmed, 5,126 probable, and 5,148 excess for a total of 23,430, that may have overstated deaths.
Probable meant likely COVID death but not confirmed through testing. Excess meant the number above expected seasonal baseline level. Using the total deaths divided by total infected produces an IFR of .014. Higher than the usual quoted flu value [.001] for the height of the pandemic in high density New York City.
And without consideration of variations among most vulnerable groups. A high rate of fatality for elderly people would cause a deceptive high value for IFR for the entire population.
Deaths certainly have declined significantly in the past year and more (even as high transmissivity delta variant has probably maintained high levels of infections). Why? Because of far better actions in hospitals and because infected people have surely learned a lot about home treatments to catch COVID infection early after initial symptoms and possibly a positive test. Cutting the deaths in half for the same number of infected people results in an IFR of .007, probably a more realistic figure for today.
World Health Organization
At an October 2020 meeting of the World Health organization, Dr Michael Ryan, the Head of Emergencies revealed that they believe roughly 10 percent of the world has been infected with Sars-Cov-2. This is their “best estimate.” This figure was based on the average results of all the broad seroprevalence (blood) studies done around the world. The message was that the virus is nothing as deadly as everyone predicted.
At the time the global population was roughly 7.8 billion people, if 10 percent have been infected that is 780 million infections. The global death toll then attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections was seen as 1,061,539. That’s an infection fatality rate of roughly or 0.14 percent [.0014]. Consistent with seasonal flu and the predictions of many experts from around the world. And inconsistent with the dire picture given by Fauci.
Great Analysis
Now consider the detailed analysis “Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation” by Ronold B. Brown published in August 2020. He has doctoral degrees in public health and organizational behavior.
Here are highlights from this article that focused on what Fauci said.
“The validity of this estimation could benefit from vetting for biases and miscalculations. The main objective of this article is to critically appraise the coronavirus mortality estimation presented to Congress.”
[What Fauci said] “helped launch a campaign of social distancing, organizational and business lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders.”
“Previous to the Congressional hearing, a less severe estimation of coronavirus mortality appeared in a February 28, 2020 editorial released by NIAID [Fauci’s department] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM.org), the editorial stated: ‘…the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1 percent).’
Almost as a parenthetical afterthought, the NEJM editorial inaccurately stated that 0.1 percent is the approximate case fatality rate of seasonal influenza. By contrast, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 0.1 percent or lower is the approximate influenza infection fatality rate, not the case fatality rate.“
Brown correctly hit the key semantic issue: CFR versus IFR.
“IFRs are estimated following an outbreak, often based on representative samples of blood tests of the immune system in individuals exposed to a virus. Estimation of the IFR in COVID-19 is urgently needed to assess the scale of the coronavirus pandemic.“ [Now, over a year later this has not happened.]
Brown correctly emphasized “it is imperative to not confuse fatality rates [CFR and IFR] with one another; else misleading calculations with significant consequences could result.” [That is exactly what Fauci engineered.]
Brown said the 1 percent figure in the testimony was consistent with the “coronavirus CFR of 1.8-3.4 percent (median, 2.6 percent) reported by the CDC.” [As I write this data in The Washington Post shows a CFR of 1.6 percent. This substantiates that the health care system has made progress in curbing COVID deaths. But this current CFR is still 16 times higher than the IFR figure for the seasonal flu. IFR remains the issue.]
Now Brown gets to the heart of the problem: “A comparison of coronavirus and seasonal influenza CFRs may have been intended during Congressional testimony, but due to misclassifying an IFR as a CFR, the comparison turned out to be between an adjusted coronavirus CFR of 1 percent and an influenza IFR of 0.1 percent.”
[Did Fauci, the widely lauded expert, not know what he was doing? Hard to believe this. If he knew, then we have the explanation for the Big Lie.]
By May 2020 “it was clear that the coronavirus mortality total for the season would be nowhere near 800,000 deaths inferred from the 10-fold mortality overestimation reported to Congress [emphasis added].
Even after adjusting for the effect of successful mitigation measures that may have slowed down the rate of coronavirus transmission, it seems unlikely that so many deaths were completely eliminated by a nonpharmaceutical intervention such as social distancing, which was only intended to contain infection transmission, not suppress infections and related fatalities.”
As to getting good data to determine IFR, Brown noted: “A revised version of a non–peer-reviewed study on COVID-19 antibody seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California, found that infections were many times more prevalent than confirmed cases.
As more serosurveys are conducted throughout the country, a nationally coordinated COVID-19 serosurvey of a representative sample of the population is urgently needed, which can determine if the national IFR is low enough to expedite an across-the-board end to restrictive mitigating measures.”
[In other words, with systematic blood testing, if we have an IFR for COVID similar to the IFR for the seasonal flu, then the many disruptive and costly actions by the public health establishment are not justified. And they never were! ]
Another Analysis
The title of this September 2020 article by Len Cabrera is “Mistake or Manipulation.” An initial point made was: “A review of the early events mentioned in Dr. Brown’s paper and the lack of any corrections to the record suggest that the misstatement [by Fauci] before Congress was not a mistake.” If not a mistake, then it was intentional.
This point was dead on: “In his testimony, Dr. Fauci claimed the mortality of flu was 0.1 percent and that the case fatality rate of COVID was 3 percent but could be as low as 1 percent with asymptomatic cases. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison of the flu’s infection fatality rate (IFR) to COVID-19’s case fatality rate (CFR).”
And this critical point was made: “All cases are infections, but not all infections are confirmed cases, so the number of infections always exceeds the number of cases, making IFR less than CFR.” In other words, if the number of deaths is the same, then a lower denominator for calculating CFR compared to that for getting the IFR results in a higher number for CFR.
Are we to believe that the esteemed Fauci did not know this? Or is it reasonable to conclude that Fauci knew exactly what he was doing, namely using some simple data to create a pandemic crisis that required massive authoritarian government actions? Fauci set the stage for his wait-for-the-vaccine pandemic strategy that he sold to President Trump.
This required that the government establish blocks to wide use of the safe, cheap, effective and FDA approved generic medicines already found to cure COVID in early 2020, namely ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Details about these early treatment protocols are given in Pandemic Blunder.
Here is another point made: “A careful viewing of the testimony suggests the line [COVID being 10 times worse than flu] was not a mistake.
Dr. Fauci was specifically asked if COVID was less lethal than H1N1 or SARS. Rather than refer to his own NEJM article saying SARS had a case fatality rate of 9-10 percent (3 to 10 times worse than COVID), Dr. Fauci said, “Absolutely not… the 2009 pandemic of H1N1 was even less lethal than regular flu… this is a really serious problem that we have to take seriously.”
He repeated that COVID’s “mortality is 10 times that [of influenza]” and concluded with, “We have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”
This also was a prescient view: ”This was a perfect series of switches: IFR to CFR, voluntary isolation for the sick to mandatory isolation for everyone, two weeks to flatten the curve to indefinite lockdown until there’s a vaccine. (If you think it will be voluntary, you’re not paying attention.)”
Add this to the quest for truth: “A study in France looked at all-cause mortality data from 1946 to 2020 and concluded that ‘SARS-CoV-2 is not an unusually virulent viral respiratory disease pathogen” because there is no significant increase in mortality. Of the deaths in 2020, the study said, ‘unprecedented strict mass quarantine and isolation of both sick and healthy elderly people, together and separately, killed many of them.’”
Here is the article’s correct conclusion: “Sadly, many politicians were duped and went along with the recommendations for lockdowns and masks that followed from Dr. Fauci’s 10-times-deadlier testimony. Don’t expect them to admit their mistakes, either. Perhaps the only thing harder for a politician than telling the whole truth is admitting a mistake.”
What Is The Truth?
If you listen to many experts, you hear this truth based on CDC data: 99.8 or 99.9 percent of people across all ages who get infected by COVID do not die. That means that the IFR overall is .001 or .002. In other words, not so terribly worse than the flu IFR, but it does vary with age.
In September 2020 these CDC age related data were reported:
Updated survival rates and IFR by age group:
0-19: 99.997 percent, IFR .003 percent
20-49: 99.98 percent, IFR .02 percent
50-69: 99.5 percent, IFR .5 percent
70+: 94.6 percent, IFR 5.4 percent
Note that through age 49 the IFR is less than the average for flu of 0.1 percent, but higher for older people. And only for the 70+ group is the IFR more than 10 times greater. In other words, only for the oldest group is what Fauci said in his congressional testimony accurate. What if Fauci had said something in tune with that reality? The vaccine program he pushed should have focused on the elderly, not the entire population.
From the important recent report “COVD-19: Restoring Public Trust During A Global Health Crisis” are age data and COVID CFR [through Feb. 16, 2021]. Note these are Case Facility Rate data, meaning that the figures are very exaggerated because the number of infected are very much higher than the number of cases: probably 100 million more infections than cases. Thus, the total across all age groups of 1.701 percent, [.01701] should be corrected to .289 percent [.00289]; this is about three times higher than the cited flu IFR, not the 10 times higher given by Fauci. And it would be much lower for the less than 70 population.
A very recent article said this: “While estimates of COVID-19’s infection fatality rate (IFR) range from study to study, the expert consensus does indeed place the death rate at below 1 percent for most age groups.” Fauci did indeed overhype COVID for all but the very elderly. This supports the view of the eminent Dr. Peter McCollough that a wise COVID vaccine strategy would have been to target the elderly, not the entire population.
The widely acclaimed medical researcher John P. Ioannidis of Stanford University has examined IFR for COVID in considerable detail,
In October 2020 he said this: “The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 can vary substantially across different locations and this may reflect differences in population age structure and case-mix of infected and deceased patients and other factors. The inferred infection fatality rates tended to be much lower than estimates made earlier in the pandemic.”
At that time, he said:” Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27 percent (corrected 0.23 percent).” Higher than the Fauci quoted value for the flu (0.1 percent), but not 10 times greater.
A new report from the defense department gives data on 5.6 million fully vaccinated Medicare participants age 65 and older. There were 161,000 recent breakthrough COVID infections and the IFR was 0.021. It noted an IFR for this group of0 .12 (about five times greater) during the March to December 2020 period when there was far less effective hospital care and no mass vaccination.
Both IFRs for elderly Americans are greater than the quoted typical flu value, but far from a very lethal viral infection.
Recently, it was reported that according to CDC work “More than 39 million Americans have been diagnosed with coronavirus infection since the pandemic started in 2020.” Using that figure, that may be too low because only 1.4 million blood samples were tested, together with the current CDC value of about 700,000 COVID fatalities results in an average IFR of 0.018.
Why is 39 million infected people low? Because many medical experts have said that there are probably some 100 million Americans with natural immunity resulting from COVID infection.
The key word to question in what CDC did is “diagnosed.” In other words, people who were tested and found positive. But clearly a large fraction of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic people did not get tested. So, what if you add 100 million to the 39 million figure and then use that as the denominator, with 700,000 deaths in the numerator, and calculate the IFR?
You get an IFR of 0.005. Not ten times higher than the flu value cited by Fauci in his congressional testimony [actually 3 times higher than the high end of flu IFR values].
Podcaster Jack Murphy, who founded Liminal Order, deduced that because the CDC said there were twice as many people who were infected with COVID, then it automatically meant that the lethality rate must be cut in half, commenting that the virus that had killed 646,000 Americans in the last 19 months is “far less lethal than already known.”
Murder Motivation
To accept the entire argument for a Big Lie it is necessary to explain the motivation for Fauci to intentionally tell the public that the new China virus was extremely lethal. So much worse than seasonal flu. So awful that extreme government action was needed.
It is relevant to note that in January 2017 Fauci warned the Trump administration, in a public talk, that no doubt there would be a “surprise outbreak” of a new infectious disease pandemic. “The thing we’re extraordinarily confident about is that we’re going to see this in the next few years,” he said. He got what he wanted.
Maybe all the talk about a “plandemic” was spot on. And maybe Fauci had insights because he was funding the work at the Wuhan Laboratory to develop extremely toxic viruses.
What Fauci said about high lethality set in motion an onerous set of government actions justified on the basis of protecting public health. Why would anyone want to overstate the lethality of the new COVID-19 virus? It was the only way to use onerous pandemic control and management methods that Fauci favored. It was necessary to set in motion a COVID vaccine program. Most of all, his strategy was used to create very high levels of FEAR in the public so that they would accept his favored government actions.
Understand this. Fauci is not a trained public health expert, nor a trained epidemiologist or virologist. He was a plain physician who over many decades as a top NIH bureaucrat accumulated enormous power. He never did what true public health experts have an ethical obligation to do. That is to tell the public both the positives and negatives of public health policies and actions.
The point is this: By pushing the need for pandemic actions to address a very lethal virus a host of government actions produced so much economic, social and personal hardships and dislocations. And many analyses have concluded that more Americans died from the government actions than from the COVID virus.
Perversely, pandemic public health actions actually harmed public health. But with widespread mainstream media support Fauci got away with everything.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. Fauci is guilty of criminally negligent homicide stemming from his initial and very public overstatement of the lethality of the COVID virus. Those who have screamed for his prosecution have a valid case.
With his power he created policies that created data to support this lethality claim. One big action was to create a testing protocol using the PCR technology in ways that created very high case levels. The inventor of that technology said it was inappropriate for diagnosing the viral infection. Millions of COVID cases resulted from running PCR equipment at very high cycle rates [high than 25]. Meanwhile the government never did widespread blood testing to get data for knowing the IFR.
The other major way to keep up public support for pandemic controls was to ensure high numbers of COVID deaths. This was done through directives on how death certificates should be filled out and through financial incentives for hospitals to certify deaths as COVID ones.
Recent analysis that in March 2020 CDC changed guidelines on how death certificates were to be filled out. Different than the procedure used for 17 years prior to this change.
This study found a COVID fatality figure of 161,392 with the new reporting versus 9,684 for the older procedure. There is little doubt that COVID death data, even accounting for some overcounting because of people dying not from any COVID influence, have been too high. This means that IFR data have been too high.
The combination of false high levels of cases and deaths helped maintain public fear of a very lethal virus. That is not correct for nearly all people younger than 70 years old.
Conclusions
To sum up: COVID was intentionally over hyped by Fauci as a very deadly disease to justify the most extreme public health actions. This was the Big Lie. Most valid data now show COVID lethality is similar to that for seasonal flu for the vast majority of people. But accepting that truth would not have justified the array of excessive government actions used for the false pandemic.
Yes, many people have died from COVID, but deaths have been overreported and infections underreported. And most deaths – at least 85% – could have been prevented by using generic medicines, such as ivermectin. There is no doubt that a great many people die with COVID but not FROM COVID, also arguing for a low IFR. At one point CDC said that only 6% of deaths resulted only from COVID, making the IFR much lower than the flu IFR.
Finally, recognizing the true lower IFR for COVID the whole rationale for mass vaccination collapses, especially in view of very high levels of adverse effects and deaths from the vaccines themselves.
Which makes perfect sense if you appreciate that the COVID IFR is now similar to the flu IFR for most people. Especially if you recognize that CDC has found the flu IFR ranged from 0.1 percent (the figure cited by Fauci) to 0.17 percent from 2014 to 2019.
Understanding that the lethality of COVID is far from the terrible picture painted by Fauci at the very beginning of the pandemic is key to weighing the risk/benefit ratio when deciding to get vaccinated. For most people the risk from the vaccine is greater than the benefit. Only the elderly have a good reason to get the shot.
Some 81 percent of COVID deaths are for people over 65. As has been pointed out by many people, the average age of most COVID deaths for elderly victims have been consistently higher than average life expectancy ages.
A new article has made important observations. The main one is that countries with low vaccination levels have been doing better than those with mass vaccination programs, like the US. The results are consistent with a widely accepted understanding that the vaccines do not effectively stem virus infection or transmission. More vaccination equated to more viral spreading.
The new study ended with advice to learn “to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.”
Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.
October 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, NIH, United States |
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In the wake of WMD-liar Curveball’s videotaped confession, Colin Powell was demanding to know why nobody warned him about Curveball’s unreliability. The trouble is, they did.
Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world’s media watching, and using it to… well, to make shit up – to lie with a straight face, and with a CIA director propped up behind you, I mean to spew one world-class, for-the-record-books stream of bull, to utter nary a breath without a couple of whoppers in it, and to look like you really mean it all? What gall. What an insult to the entire world that would be.
Colin Powell doesn’t have to imagine such a thing. He has to live with it. He did it on February 5, 2003. It’s on videotape.
I tried to ask him about it in the summer of 2004. He was speaking to the Unity Journalists of Color convention in Washington, D.C. The event had been advertised as including questions from the floor, but for some reason that plan was revised. Speakers from the floor were permitted to ask questions of four safe and vetted journalists of color before Powell showed up, and then those four individuals could choose to ask him something related – which of course they did not, in any instance, do.
Bush and Kerry spoke as well. The panel of journalists who asked Bush questions when he showed up had not been properly vetted. Roland Martin of the Chicago Defender had slipped onto it somehow (which won’t happen again!). Martin asked Bush whether he was opposed to preferential college admissions for the kids of alumni and whether he cared more about voting rights in Afghanistan than in Florida. Bush looked like a deer in the headlights, only without the intelligence. He stumbled so badly that the room openly laughed at him.
But the panel that had been assembled to lob softballs at Powell served its purpose well. It was moderated by Gwen Ifill. I asked Ifill (and Powell could watch it later on C-Span if he wanted to) whether Powell had any explanation for the way in which he had relied on the testimony of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law. He had recited the claims about weapons of mass destruction but carefully left out the part where that same gentleman had testified that all of Iraq’s WMDs had been destroyed. Ifill thanked me, and said nothing. Hillary Clinton was not present and nobody beat me up.
I wonder what Powell would say if someone were to actually ask him that question, even today, or next year, or ten years from now. Someone tells you about a bunch of old weapons and at the same time tells you they’ve been destroyed, and you choose to repeat the part about the weapons and censor the part about their destruction. How would you explain that?
Well, it’s a sin of omission, so ultimately Powell could claim he forgot. “Oh yeah, I meant to say that, but it slipped my mind.”
But how would he explain this:
During his presentation at the United Nations, Powell provided this translation of an intercepted conversation between Iraqi army officers:
“They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.
“Yes.
“For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.
“For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?
“Yes.
“And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”
The incriminating phrases “clean all of the areas” and “Make sure there is nothing there” do not appear in the official State Department translation of the exchange:
“Lt. Colonel: They are inspecting the ammunition you have.
“Colonel: Yes.
“Lt. Col: For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.
“Colonel: Yes?
“Lt. Colonel: For the possibility there is by chance, forbidden ammo.
“Colonel: Yes.
“Lt. Colonel: And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas.
“Colonel: Yes.”
Powell was writing fictional dialogue. He put those extra lines in there and pretended somebody had said them. Here’s what Bob Woodward said about this in his book “Plan of Attack.”
“[Powell] had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light. Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of ‘forbidden ammo,’ Powell took the interpretation further: ‘Clean out all of the areas. . . . Make sure there is nothing there.’ None of this was in the intercept.”
For most of his presentation, Powell wasn’t inventing dialogue, but he was presenting as facts numerous claims that his own staff had warned him were weak and indefensible.
Powell told the UN and the world: “We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes.” The January 31, 2003, evaluation of Powell’s draft remarks prepared for him by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (“INR”) flagged this claim as “WEAK”.
Regarding alleged Iraqi concealment of key files, Powell said: “key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.” The January 31, 2003 INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and added “Plausibility open to question.” A Feb. 3, 2003, INR evaluation of a subsequent draft of Powell’s remarks noted:
“Page 4, last bullet, re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well.” That didn’t stop Colin from stating it as fact and apparently hoping that, even if UN inspectors thought he was a brazen liar, US media outlets wouldn’t tell anyone.
On the issue of biological weapons and dispersal equipment, Powell said: “we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK”:
“WEAK. Missiles with biological warheads reportedly dispersed. This would be somewhat true in terms of short-range missiles with conventional warheads, but is questionable in terms of longer-range missiles or biological warheads.”
This claim was again flagged in the February 3, 2003, evaluation of a subsequent draft of Powell’s presentation: “Page 5. first para, claim re missile brigade dispersing rocket launchers and BW warheads. This claim too is highly questionable and might be subjected to criticism by UN inspection officials.”
That didn’t stop Colin. In fact, he brought out visual aids to help with his lying
Powell showed a slide of a satellite photograph of an Iraqi munitions bunker, and lied:
“The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions . . . [t]he truck you […] see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and added: “We support much of this discussion, but we note that decontamination vehicles – cited several times in the text – are water trucks that can have legitimate uses… Iraq has given UNMOVIC what may be a plausible account for this activity – that this was an exercise involving the movement of conventional explosives; presence of a fire safety truck (water truck, which could also be used as a decontamination vehicle) is common in such an event.”
Powell’s own staff had told him the thing was a water truck, but he told the U.N. it was “a signature item…a decontamination vehicle.” The UN was going to need a decontamination vehicle itself by the time Powell finished spewing his lies and disgracing his country.
He just kept piling it on: “UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons,” he said.
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this statement as “WEAK” and added: “the claim that experts agree UAVs fitted with spray tanks are ‘an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons’ is WEAK.”
In other words, experts did NOT agree with that claim.
Powell kept going, announcing “in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and “not credible” and “open to criticism, particularly by the UN inspectorates.”
His staff was warning him that what he planned to say would not be believed by his audience, which would include the people with actual knowledge of the matter.
To Powell that was no matter.
Powell, no doubt figuring he was in deep already, so what did he have to lose, went on to tell the UN: “On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and called it “Not implausible, but UN inspectors might question it. (Note: Draft states it as fact.)”
And Powell stated it as fact. Notice that his staff was not able to say there was any evidence for the claim, but rather that it was “not implausible.” That was the best they could come up with. In other words: “They might buy this one, Sir, but don’t count on it.”
Powell, however, wasn’t satisfied lying about one scientist. He had to have a dozen. He told the United Nations: “A dozen [WMD] experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein’s guest houses.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and “Highly questionable.” This one didn’t even merit a “Not implausible.”
Powell also said: “In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to replace the workers who’d been sent home.”
Powell’s staff called this “WEAK,” with “Plausibility open to question.”
All of this stuff sounded plausible enough to viewers of Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. And that, we can see now, was what interested Colin. But it must have sounded highly implausible to the U.N. inspectors. Here was a guy who had not been with them on any of their inspections coming in to tell them what had happened.
We know from Scott Ritter, who led many UNSCOM inspections in Iraq, that U.S. inspectors had used the access that the inspection process afforded them to spy for, and to set up means of data collection for, the CIA. So there was some plausibility to the idea that an American could come back to the UN and inform the UN what had really happened on its inspections.
Yet, repeatedly, Powell’s staff warned him that the specific claims he wanted to make were not going to even sound plausible. They will be recorded by history more simply as blatant lies.
The examples of Powell’s lying listed above are taken from an extensive report released by Congressman John Conyers: “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War.”
October 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Iraq, United States |
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Two bombings in as many weeks causing hundreds of casualties at Shia mosques in Afghanistan raises fears of a sectarian war erupting in the Central Asian country.
The surge in atrocities comes at a challenging time for the new Taliban government which is trying to establish international recognition as the legitimate authorities of Afghanistan. Much of the Taliban claim to rule relies on assurances that it would bring stability and security following the historic withdrawal of all US troops on August 31.
The Taliban – like the majority of Afghanistan’s 38 million population – is mainly of Sunni muslim faith. It has every incentive, however, to protect the lives of the minority Shia community. The bomb massacres at the two mosques in the northern city of Kunduz on October 8 and Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, on October 15 were claimed by the ISIS affiliate group, Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).
This same group carried out the attack at Kabul airport on August 28 killing 13 US troops and over 160 Afghan civilians. It is officially designated as an enemy by Washington as well as by the Taliban. But is there a case of “my enemy’s enemy might be useful”?
The Taliban have vowed to root out ISIS-K and other Al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists. They all share an ultra-conservative profession of Sunni Islam, but it is not in the interests of the Taliban to see Afghanistan descend into a sectarian war when it is trying to mobilize national reconstruction after 20 years of war against the United States and other occupying NATO forces.
ISIS-K and other Al-Qaeda affiliates are also known by other terms, including Daesh, Takfiri or Wahhabi. They view Shia as heretics and liable to be put to death. Their cult-like theology put them in a different category from the Taliban who are rational players committed to national development.
But the surge in sectarian killings in Afghanistan has bigger geopolitical connotations.
A conference in Moscow planned for October 20 will bring together regional countries to chart a way forward for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Attending the summit will be senior Chinese government officials and Taliban representatives. While the group is listed as a terrorist organization in Russia and banned, its delegation has been invited to Moscow to discuss the situation in the region.
Beijing has offered investment of billions of dollars to help Afghanistan recover from years of war devastation. The Taliban, for their part, have welcomed the “fraternal” contribution from China.
All regional countries have much to gain if Afghanistan can harness stability and economic development. The country’s prodigious mineral wealth and its strategic geographical location for transport and energy links make Afghanistan a potential linchpin in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and more generally Eurasian economic integration.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed deep concern about the growing presence of terrorists in Afghanistan and a potential spread of extremism to the neighboring former Soviet republics.
China has also legitimate security concerts over threats posed by thousands of Uighur Islamists who have been engaged in terrorist violence in Afghanistan and Syria. Beijing has been assured by the Taliban that Kabul will not provide a safe haven for Uighur terrorists to launch attacks into its neighboring western province of Xinjiang.
In the first Shia mosque bombing on October 8, ISIS-K reportedly named one of its suicide bombers as a Uighur member.
The geopolitical significance seems clear. The surge in violence in Afghanistan is aimed at preventing the country from creating a stable government and to stifle a postwar reconstruction from cooperation with regional partners, in particular China.
In contrast to the overtures from Beijing, Moscow, Iran, Pakistan and others, the United States has sought to throw obstacles in the way of Afghanistan’s new Taliban government. Of course, revenge over Washington’s shameful retreat from the country is to be expected.
But Washington’s freezing of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves estimated at $10 billion as well as cutting off international finance from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund at a time when the country is facing an acute humanitarian crisis goes beyond vengeance. There seems to be a calculated agenda to consign Afghanistan to a fate of permanent failed state and to ensure that it won’t become a thriving part of the Eurasian model. In short, vindictive sabotage.
This then begs the question of whether the US has some clandestine role in supporting ISIS-K and its sectarian war agenda?
Speaking about the Shia mosque bombings, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raesi has openly accused the United States of sponsoring the growth of Daesh terror groups in Afghanistan with the purpose of inciting sectarian conflict.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the atrocities demonstrated that the objective of ISIS-K was to embroil Afghanistan in religious civil war and he also accused the American CIA as being responsible for the bloodshed. He claimed that the US has transported Daesh militants from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan for a new phase of dirty war.
The collusion between US military intelligence and Islamist extremists has been spotlighted elsewhere. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai claimed in 2017 that the Pentagon had assisted the infiltration of his country with ISIS brigades.
In 2018, the Russian government said it recorded transport of ISIS militants across Afghanistan with the use of “unidentified helicopters”.
We also know that massive supplies of weaponry and finances were funneled by the Pentagon to jihadi terror groups in Syria under the guise of arming “moderate rebels”.
During its occupation of Iraq, the US is documented to have used a counterinsurgency policy known as the Salvador Option in which pseudo-gangs led by American special forces deliberately incited sectarian violence as a way to manage political interests. The British authorities deployed similar dirty war tactics during the conflict in Northern Ireland and in other colonial-era campaigns.
With all of these things in view, it bears asking the question: is sectarian war in Afghanistan being fomented by powers who do not want to see the country prospering in a peaceful and stable Eurasian region led by China and Russia?
Finian Cunningham is an award-winning journalist. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.
October 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | Afghanistan, United States |
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Former MI6 man Christipher Steele is the subject of an obscenely vapid ABC documentary, with a contemptible interview by George Stephanopoulos that’s so deferential it’s like watching a first date that should be an interrogation.
Just as MI6 super spy James Bond is back in theatres with No Time to Die, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele is back in the spotlight with the story that refuses to die, in an ABC ‘documentary’ titled Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier, now streaming on Hulu.
Steele came to fame as the shadowy force behind the Steele Dossier, the document which was the spark that lit the Trump-Russia collusion fire that was doused in gasoline by obsessive partisan media coverage and numerous, spurious government investigations for the last five years. The dossier claimed that then-candidate Trump was “colluding with Moscow” and that those devious Russians had “kompromat” on Trump in the golden form of a “pee tape.”
Steele’s “coming out of the shadows” consists of him sitting down with George Stephanopoulos and having a cuddle session on fancy sofas in a posh apartment.
Stephanopoulos is the perfect choice for the softball interview since he and Steele have a lot in common – they’ve both worked for the Clintons. Stephanopoulos as adviser to President Bill Clinton and Steele as de facto dirt-finder for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
ABC tried to stretch the excruciatingly thin gruel of this supposed ‘interview’ into an hour-long documentary by adding talking heads from their own newsroom. They failed, as the end result is a one-hour show that is hilariously shallow and vapid, even by ABC News standards.
Out of the Shadows spends considerably more time rehashing the “history” of Russia, Vladimir Putin and Trump than it does actually talking to Steele. Russia is deemed “a rogue state virus spreading westward with its villainy,” Putin a “KGB killer,” and Trump a “threat to American democracy.” In other words, it’s standard establishment media talking points.
Steele’s background is somewhat explored, but being the ever-diligent super spy that he is, Steele never explicitly states that he worked for MI6. I guess he doesn’t want to blow his cover.
What Steele actually says in this interview is of strikingly minimal impact. Thanks to Stephanopoulos’ anti-journalistic, anti-adversarial, deferential approach, no new ground is broken.
It’s well-known that Steele didn’t just compile the dossier, he actively pushed it to media outlets, in effect working to try and scupper Trump’s election campaign. The fact that he was ostensibly working for Democrats at the time certainly makes it appear as if he was a part of a wider disinformation/interference operation, but of course that’s a topic Stephanopoulos whistles past in this patty-cake chat.
Steele admits to no wrongdoing or error, despite the U.S. intelligence agencies “eviscerating” his findings after thorough investigation, and the FBI labelling him “untrustworthy.”
The issue of the “sources” Steele uses doesn’t get the attention it deserves either, as it’s reported that he only used one “key collector,” but Steele is quick to make clear it was “one collector” but not “one source.” That seems like a distinction without a difference.
As the documentary reports, that one collector was not a person in Moscow, but actually someone in Washington DC whose name is not revealed. The Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported this person claimed that the information being given to Steele was “word of mouth and hearsay.” In other words, Steele was acting less as an intelligence expert seeking truth with his dossier than he was being a gossip columnist spreading rumor and innuendo.
Steele’s declaration, “I stand by the work we did, the sources we had, and the professionalism we applied to it,” is as devoid of substance as the rest of the interview.
The most damning aspect comes toward the end, and even that is soft pedaled, when Stephanopoulos asks Steele about both the dossier’s allegation that Trump counsel Michael Cohen went to Prague to meet with Russian intelligence and about the pee tape.
Cohen denies a Prague meeting ever took place, and since he has now flipped against Trump, one would assume he’s telling the truth. But Steele’s resolve remains, as he conjures up a wild scenario where Cohen is still lying because he wants to avoid being charged with treason.
Stephanopoulos, of course, lets this utter lunacy pass almost without notice. He could’ve asked Steele how exactly Cohen got to Prague, since his passport shows no travel to the Czech Republic. Or pressed Steele to provide details or at least a passable explanation for how that meeting could possibly have taken place? But he didn’t, he just smiled and continued playing footsie with Steele.
The ‘pee tape’ is the most salacious accusation in the dossier, and despite it never surfacing and no evidence it exists, Steele still stands by the claim…sort of. He says that the tape “probably does” exist but that he wouldn’t “put 100% certainty on it.”
When Stephanopoulos asks why the tape hasn’t come out, Steele replies that “it hasn’t needed to be released…because I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president.”
Look, I loathe Trump, always have and always will, but this sounds like the ravings of someone deeply infected with a ferocious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is maybe why he is still taken seriously by the equally afflicted establishment media.
The more you know about Steele, the more readily apparent it becomes that he’s an absolute charlatan and bullshit artist masquerading as a serious intelligence expert. He’s no James Bond, he’s not even George Smiley. He’s more like a cross between Mr. Bean and Inspector Clouseau, who should, like this vacant and vacuous interview/documentary, be relentlessly ridiculed and righteously disrespected.
October 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Film Review | Hillary Clinton, MI6, UK, United States |
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You may have noticed the media cycle has subtly begun for next week’s House Oversight Committee climate change show-trial, as energy crises unfold worldwide and President Biden prepares to take 13 Cabinet members and no grants of legislative authority from Congress supporting his “climate” agenda to the annual “Conference of the Parties” in Glasgow (where, like President Obama before him, he will claim that while legislative authority would be nice, in its absence he will do what he wants anyway — not, in fact, how these things are supposed to work).
With that backdrop, see the attached opening trial brief and declarations of Lindzen, Happer, Horner and Walter which were filed on Friday in open records litigation in Los Angeles. The subject of the records at issue is the role of academia (specifically, plaintiffs’ tort bar consultants among UCLA Law faculty) in the climate litigation industry, and what they boast of to at least one major donor behind these efforts. You may recall one such email by UCLA Law faculty describing the AGs, activists, “prospective funders” and faculty gathering at the “secret meeting at Harvard” was “about going after climate denialism—along with a bunch of state and local prosecutors nationwide”.
As context to the Regents’ behavior in this matter, the trial brief and declarations detail the climate industry’s Enron origins, and the role of academics supporting the plaintiffs’ effort (also noted is the spate of briefings of federal judges by the plaintiffs’ side, initiated after Judge Alsup dismissed litigation against oil companies in the Northern District of California, which briefings also trace back to UCLA faculty).
In another footnote, early in the attached Horner Declaration, you’ll find timely reference to a 1999 email warning of the consequences of seeking to rig the economics of the energy industry in the name of “global warming” (later, climate change). Cue the past few weeks’ headlines from around the world manifesting just those consequences:
Maybe Enron can dodge the macro problem and have our micro benefits, but then again I have to think that a politicized international energy market for any reason will create as much or more downside than upside. (April 1, 1999 memo to Lay)
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, as cynical as they were about it, Enron Knew.… a couple very important things*. Despite being the company that had bet the most on greenhouse warming and most wanted the alarmism to take root, Enron also knew the systemic economic risks from pushing the climate agenda. But, in the pursuit to “make [itself] rich,” plowed ahead. Others followed in Enron’s footsteps, with far too much success, and we all are now facing the consequences.
* PS See here for the other key point Enron knew, something that puts the lie to the very foundation underpinning the ongoing climate litigation tsunami — Enron knew and bitterly debated the uncertainties of the theory underpinning the climate agenda.
The excerpts from and links to emails and memos debunk the claims that, as one piece put it, “The Utilities Knew, Exxon Knew, Shell Knew, They All Knew” of catastrophic man-made global warming in the 1970s, or 1980s… showing there was instead intense and often bitter internal fighting over the risks of designing business plans around the theory when it was so laden with uncertainty. That was in the late 1990s.
10-15-21-Opening-Trial-Brief-PetitionerDownload
Jt-Evidentiary RecordDownload
October 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Joining me today is Ben Swann, here to discuss how he has been fighting back against the COVID-19 tyranny, and the actions he is taking to create a space where the truth can be heard. And no discussion with Ben would be complete without a back and forth about the many different ways in which COVID-19 itself is a deception.
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(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)
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(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
October 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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