The government has refused to release the minutes of the meeting in which its vaccine advisory committee decided not to recommend vaccinating all 12-15 year olds against covid-19.1
The UK Health Security Agency, which replaced Public Health England, rejected a freedom of information request for the document on the grounds that it intended to publish the minutes “in due course.”
The agency argued that it was in the public interest to withhold the information until it could be released in a “simultaneous, coordinated manner” and that disclosing the minutes before they were finalised could “result in a false impression of the contents of the meeting.” The decision is being appealed.
On 3 September the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that it would not be recommending universal vaccination for 12-15 year olds because although the health benefits of vaccination were “marginally greater than the potential known harms,” the margin of benefit was considered too small.2 The committee did not explain what factors its conclusion was based on, and neither the minutes nor the data behind the decision have been made public.3
The JCVI asked ministers to seek further advice from the UK’s chief medical officers on the wider potential benefits of vaccination. The government later (13 September) accepted the chief medical officers’ recommendation to vaccinate all 12-15 year olds on the basis of an assessment that included transmission in schools and the effect on children’s education.4
In a letter dated 5 October academics from Independent SAGE wrote to the JCVI highlighting the fact that, despite the committee’s own policy stating that draft minutes would be published within six weeks of each meeting, the last publicly available minutes were from February 2021.5
They urged the JCVI to “abide by its code of practice and be open and transparent through rapid publishing of all agendas, supporting papers and minutes,” arguing that “public confidence in vaccination programmes is assisted by clear and consistent processes and messaging.”
They added, “In that spirit, we wish to have a public assurance from JCVI that all future considerations of covid-19 vaccines, including the extension of vaccination to children under 12 years of age, will be conducted openly and transparently.”
Footnotes
- bmj.com View and Reviews—Helen Salisbury: Official hesitancy is not helping (BMJ 2021;374:n2366; doi:10.1136/bmj.n2366)
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Americans may be under the illusion that the Hippocratic Oath compels doctors to do no harm to their patients. Unfortunately, that is not an ironclad injunction that protects patients from harm. There are several reasons for this. First, there is not a universal “Hippocratic Oath” to which all doctors must adhere. Indeed, according to the National Institutes of Health, the Hippocratic Oath is not required by most modern medical schools, and doesn’t expressly state “First, do no harm.” Actually, in the oath’s third paragraph, it does state the physician would do no harm. Leaving out the word “first” changes nothing. Interestingly, the oath’s fourth paragraph explicitly states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
Putting aside the idea of an oath sworn to mythical characters known as Greek gods and goddesses, and the subject of abortion, why would physicians even need to take any oath to not harm their patients? Up to current times, patients have held their doctors in the highest regard. It would not be a stretch to say people held their doctors and medical staff with inviolate trust at the center of their relationship. Sadly, that almost sacred relationship between doctor and patient has, over the past almost two years, been eroded and blown up by COVID-19 and the Left’s weaponizing of it. Every day we are learning more and more how this virus came about. However, the genesis of COVID-19 is not now the main concern of most people.
What concerns more and more people is the alarming and growing demand being pushed by corporate federal proxies for experimental gene therapies (aka “vaccines”) to be mandated for all Americans. To use the medical profession as a tyrannical tool against the most vulnerable is beyond unconscionable. There are some doctors and medical scientists pushing back and doing what the whole medical profession should be doing.
For full disclosure and trust in the vaccines, the main question is what are all the substances in the vaccines? Are data safety sheets for the Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines being provided to medical personnel and patients? If so, are 100% of the ingredients listed? What about the reported graphene oxide or aborted fetal cells in any of the vaccines? What about all the deaths and injuries caused by these vaccines? These are some of the many questions that must be fully addressed. There is something deadly going on and it is more than a virus with a cure rate of 99% for most people.
While the ugly politics play out, the medical profession must get back to basics and stand united against any and all efforts made to dissuade them from putting patients first. If a patient wants one of the vaccine shots, first, do no harm! Educate yourselves on what is in the vaccines. Then give patients all the information they need for informed consent for the shot. Medical personnel must stand against any order which may mandate all people have to get a COVID shot. Every person has the right to exercise his or her own free will and should never be coerced by government or anyone else to do or not do something that impacts their lives. Allowing medical tyranny to rule the day will have vast consequences for everyone. In Colorado, a woman in stage 5 renal failure is denied a transplant because neither she nor her donor was vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. What a tragedy for this woman whose very life depends on a kidney transplant!
If medical professionals bow to any edict other than their own conscience and good medical practice, they should be shunned. We may need to start taking personal responsibility and making better decisions that affect our well-being. After all, we are the first responders to our own health!
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Facebook has not had a shortage of whistleblowers over the past years, but most have been ignored and sometimes vilified by mainstream media and the authorities; however, they now have a “star” one, Frances Haugen, who seems to finally be telling them exactly what they want to hear.
And now European countries seem ready to use Haugen’s claims and her testimony this week before the US Congress as an excuse to promote more regulation that would force tech giants to come up with risk assessments every year regarding issues such as misinformation and hate speech.
The gist of Haugen’s testimony, and the reason why she revealed a number of internal Facebook documents prior to that, is the accusation that the social media giant has a negative and harmful effect on society.
So high is the profile now of this former product manager that straight after the congressional testimony, she was on the phone with European Commissioner Thierry Breton, and he was the one to inform the public about their conversation.
Breton, who is known for advocating very far reaching and strict new regulation of US tech giants, said Haugen “confirmed the importance and urgency of why we are pushing to rein in the big platforms.”
The leaked documents that were first reported in the Wall Street Journal – some of which had to do with the practice of white-listing celebrities and their content – now seem to be used as a catalyst in the EU to speed up the process of adopting new rules that aim to deal not only with the platform’s alleged anticomeptitive behavior stemming from their market dominance – but also make to go for more stringent ways of policing their networks – often a euphemism for unchecked moderation and even censorship.
Reports suggest that Haugen and EU officials drafting this legislation are having something of a meeting of minds, since a number of ideas she now has on how to contain Facebook are in agreement with what Brussels has been deliberating and debating for a year.
One of them, the Digital Services Act, would require transparency and disclosure both to regulators and researchers of services, algorithms and content moderation – but in the same breath, “force Facebook and other tech giants to conduct annual risk assessments in areas such as the spread of misinformation and hateful content,” writes the New York Times.
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights |
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Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.
Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.
Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.
Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.
Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.
A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.
Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.
Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.
A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.
It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.
Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.
The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.
Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.
Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.
At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.
One can’t help but be reminded of 15-year-old Kuwaiti citizen Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥa tearfully addressing the US Congress’ Human Rights Caucus in the lead up to the Gulf War.
“I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital… While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators,” she attested. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
Her words travelled the world over, were repeated endlessly on all major Western news networks, endorsed by Amnesty International, and cited repeatedly by US lawmakers and President George H. W. Bush as a rationale for waging war on Iraq, which occurred three months later.
It would not be until 1992 that Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and her story to be completely untrue. Her Congressional appearance was a publicity stunt organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, run by US propaganda merchants Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
It’s been said that if Nayirah’s lies had been exposed for what they were at the time, it might’ve prompted the public, journalists and politicians to consider whether they were being manipulated into supporting military action. Given the degree to which Haugen is preaching to the converted, even such a discrediting, debilitating exposure surely won’t hamper the US national security state’s inexorable push to take over the internet for good.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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Three US medical certifying boards have warned doctors that they risk losing their certification and licence if they spread covid vaccine misinformation.
Internists, family doctors, and paediatricians received an email on 9 September that quoted a warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July1 which read: “Providing misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical licence.”2
Richard Baron, president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), told The BMJ that the move was an attempt to establish a standard of care. “As standard setting organisations, we thought it was important to be on record, in a public way, to make clear that putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.” Baron said that the statement has been well received—“4 to 1 positive.” But community physicians contacted by The BMJ thought differently.
“When I got that email I thought I’d better not put anything on social media about vaccines,” said Shveta Raju, a community physician in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, who has treated covid patients and led the vaccination effort at her outpatient clinic.
“The email was sent more as a veiled threat to keep doctors on the official, established narrative, and that’s what I find chilling,” said a paediatrician who pseudonymously blogs under the name Elizabeth Bennett. “Pandemic or no, there is a problem with having an ill defined concept of misinformation that’s tied to public health messaging that hasn’t been consistent. How are physicians supposed to figure out what is misinformation when public health messaging swings so wildly?” Bennett asked.
Undefined offence
Baron said that the statement was also intended to signal the certifying boards’ support for physicians “trying to do the right thing.”
“We wanted to support that group and say ‘hey, we do have a standard of care here and you are doing the right thing when you uphold it,’” he said.
Raju responded, “If that was their intent, they should have defined misinformation. By leaving it undefined, the message was that we can’t talk about this at all.” She said that physicians are, by and large, a conservative group. “If they’re not sure what can be deemed misinformation, physicians would rather be quiet.”
Bennett concurred: “The thing I find most alarming is that they don’t define misinformation, but if they strip you of your board certification, you would lose your means of earning a living.”
Doctors spreading misinformation?
Official and social media company efforts to target “vaccine misinformation” predate the pandemic.3 But the new statement from ABIM, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Paediatrics is one of several recent statements putting doctors in the spotlight for the first time.
In Canada, warnings about physician information began earlier, when in April the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario declared that physicians “have a professional responsibility not to communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements or promote unsupported, unproven treatments for covid-19.”4
The Canadian statement triggered an outcry, leading to a clarification that the statement was “not intended to stifle a healthy public debate about how best to address aspects of the pandemic.” But concerns continued. In June, a Canadian member of parliament held a press conference on censorship of Canadian clinicians and scientists. YouTube removed the video of the meeting.56
The BMJ asked ABIM about the size of the problem of board certified physicians spreading misinformation.
“We don’t have a sense of numbers of physicians spreading misinformation,” Baron said. “We’re at the beginning.” He believed it was only a “small number of doctors.” The medical boards opted to send the statement to all doctors, he said, because focusing on just the offending individuals would “miss the impact they’re having because of how much their voices are being amplified.”
As an example of “unprofessional or unethical behaviour,” Baron cited the case of a Florida doctor offering medical exemptions from mask wearing for $50 (£37; €43).7
Personalised medicine—or one-size-fits-all?
The BMJ asked whether physicians expressing doubt about the need for booster doses or vaccination of patients with natural immunity—two matters that have been the subject of debate and changing official guidance—would qualify as misinformation.8 “I don’t think we have concerns with doctors wrestling with areas where the science is unclear,” Baron said, “but there is no debate about whether people should get a primary vaccination series.”
Raju worries about the impact on personalised care. “The job of physicians is to take guidelines and apply them to the patient in front of them.” But now “physicians are basically being told that when it comes to covid vaccines it’s one-size-fits-all.”
Baron said, “We’re not trying to stifle conversations between doctors and patients. We understand that different people may look at evidence in different ways, but when you have an overwhelming preponderance of medical consensus in a certain area, you need at least to tell patients that there is an overwhelming professional consensus here.”
Cautious approach
Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that in the context of the pandemic, he was “not opposed to certain levels of misinformation triggering a decision to question somebody’s licence.” He said, “I can see this being an appropriate remedy at a time of public health emergency.
“But this is not how the system for licensure and certification has traditionally worked, and creates many opportunities for mistaken judgment about what is and is not misinformation, and those decisions would have to be rendered with extreme caution.”
Flier added, “We have to remember that there are legitimate areas of debate, and such matters should not fall within the scope of disciplinary actions.”
“There are reasons to be concerned that state boards might be unprepared for these kinds of decisions at a time when so many aspects of covid policy have been enmeshed with political views.”
Footnotes
-
This article was updated on 4 October to make clear that it was medical certifying boards, rather than licensing boards, that emailed physicians. The email quoted an earlier warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards.
-
Competing interests: PD gave a public statement at a 17 September 2021 FDA advisory committee to discuss covid-19 vaccines, where he highlighted the joint statement. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position of the University of Maryland.
-
Provenance: commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.
https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage
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October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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How many people have died of COVID-19? The media is reporting CDC data that the death toll is about 640,000 in the U.S., but the answer is nobody knows. Health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci claim that there are likely far more COVID-19 deaths than have been reported, meaning that such deaths are being undercounted.1
Evidence of this, however, is lacking and many believe the opposite is true — that COVID-19 deaths have been overreported, in some cases by as much as 500%. In a Full Measure investigation, host and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed their findings from around the U.S., which found that “in some documented cases, news that COVID was the cause of death was greatly exaggerated.”2
Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made startling changes in how they track COVID-19 cases, which is muddling the data and making it virtually impossible to track infections among those who have received a COVID-19 injection.3
Homicide, Suicide Counted as COVID Deaths
Grand County, Colorado, has a population of just 15,717 people.4 It’s the type of rural area where coroner Brenda Bock is able to keep tabs on each and every death, including those from COVID-19 — of which, she said, there were none in 2020.5 COVID-19 deaths, however, were recorded in the area, highlighting the problems with how such casualties are counted. Bock told Attkisson:6
“I had a homicide-suicide the end of November, and the very next day it showed up on the state website as Covid deaths. And they were gunshot wounds. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as Covid deaths.”
The reasoning behind counting the homicide-suicide deaths as COVID-19 casualties was that they were listed in a database of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 within 28 days of their death. According to Full Measure:7
“Because there had been no Covid deaths within the geographic boundaries of Grand County in 2020, Bock was in a unique position to challenge the state’s accounting. In many cities and counties, the numbers are too big and the coroners would never know about discrepancies.”
There were other instances in Grand County as well. Bock investigated two “COVID-19 deaths,” which turned out to be people who were still alive. “They just got put in there by accident,” Bock said.8 Attkisson also spoke with Dr. James Caruso, chief medical examiner and coroner for Denver, who said he had also heard from coroners in rural counties that trauma deaths were being counted as COVID-19 casualties:9
“[A]t some level — maybe the state level, maybe the federal level — there’s a possibility that they were cross-referencing Covid tests. And that people who tested positive for Covid were listed as a Covid-related death, regardless of their true cause of death. And I believe that’s very erroneous, and not the way the statistics needed to be accumulated.”
Dying ‘of’ COVID or ‘With’ COVID
The distinction comes down to some tricky wording: deaths “among” COVID-19 cases and deaths “due to” COVID-19, or dying “of” COVID or “with” COVID. Someone who died with COVID-19 may be counted as a death among COVID-19 cases, even if the virus had nothing to do with their death.
When a death is said to be “due to” COVID-19, this is intended when COVID-19 caused or significantly contributed to the death. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment:10
“The number of deaths due to COVID-19 are not necessarily included in the number of deaths among people with COVID-19. After review, at either the state or national level, some deaths may not be counted as COVID-19 deaths. This is rare, and the expectation is that in the end the numbers will closely align.”
But according to Bock, the inflated numbers could hurt the region’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism:11
“It’s absurd that they would even put that on there. Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”
Caruso told Attkisson that he voiced his concerns about deaths being wrongly attributed to COVID-19 to the Colorado Department of Public Health in April 2020. A coroner from Montezuma County also complained after an alcohol death was deemed a COVID death. Colorado ended up adding categories to their death counts, stating a person died “Of” COVID or “With” COVID, but the counts were still off.
For instance, Bock’s murder-suicide cases were still being counted under “With COVID,” even though they shouldn’t have been tallied at all. According to Bock:12
“And that’s what I complained about. And then when I did talk to the Governor, he told me he didn’t believe it was right, but he wasn’t going to have them remove it from the count because all the other states were doing it that way so we were going to also.”
Full Measure’s investigation found that of the 13,845 COVID-related deaths in Colorado, about half were among people who died “among” or “with” COVID. The media is also contributing to the confusion. In one instance The New York Times inflated the number of people who died from COVID-19 in Grand County by at least 500%.13
This raises questions about COVID deaths being reported nationwide. There have been reports, for instance, of traffic accident fatalities,14 cancer15 and nursing home or hospice deaths16 being attributed to COVID-19. And in Alameda County, California, when they removed deaths that’s weren’t directly caused by COVID-19 from their official count, the number of “COVID” deaths dropped by 25%.17 Attkisson said:18
“The obvious implications are huge. If such a significant number of Colorado’s “Covid deaths” weren’t directly caused by Covid, or even related at all in some cases, and if that bears out in other states, it means the national totals we’ve heard since the start of the pandemic could be largely misleading.”
CDC Isn’t Tracking Most Cases Among the Vaccinated
Media reports keep referring to the pandemic as a crisis of the unvaccinated, which is simply inaccurate, since COVID-19 continues to affect and spread among those who have been vaccinated. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) posted online July 30, 2021, details an outbreak of COVID-19 that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts — 74% of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people.19
So-called “breakthrough infections,” which used to be known as vaccine failures, were reported by the CDC far earlier, though, including in their May 28 MMWR, which documented 10,262 breakthrough infections reported January 1, 2021, to April 23, 2021, across 46 states.20
This, they believed, was “likely a substantial undercount,” but rather than continuing to assess the situation, they stopped monitoring most COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people:21
“Beginning May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die, thereby focusing on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance.”
ProPublica detailed the case of Meggan Ingram, a 37-year-old who is fully vaccinated but tested positive for COVID-19. She became sick enough to require oxygen and intravenous steroids in a hospital for three hours, but wasn’t admitted. Her case won’t be counted among the official count, and neither will the seven other people in her household who also tested positive — five of them fully vaccinated.22
The end result is that there’s no way to know how many people have been infected, including among the vaccinated, and how the virus is spreading. As Dr. Randall Olsen, medical director of molecular diagnostics at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, told ProPublica, “They are missing a large portion of the infected. If you’re limiting yourself to a small subpopulation with only hospitalizations and deaths, you risk a biased viewpoint.”23
Injection Effectiveness Is Dropping
It’s possible the CDC stopped tracking most COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated in order to obscure just how commonly the vaccines are failing. According to CDC data, the overall COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness declined from 91.8% in May to 75% in July.24 Among nursing home residents, the vaccines are similarly failing, dropping from an effectiveness rate of 74.7% in March-May 2021 to 53.1% in June-July.25
“The vaccinated are not as protected as they think. They are still in jeopardy,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told ProPublica.26 As for why the CDC abruptly stopped tracking most breakthrough cases, the agency said it was because the more targeted data collection would be more useful for “response research, decisions, and policy.”27
However, it’s resulted in a lack of consistency and access to the full data for the U.S. public, with each state varying in what data it’s gathering and whether or not to share it. U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called on the CDC to track and share information on COVID-19 breakthrough cases. In a letter to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, he said:28
“The American public must be informed of the continued risks posed by COVID-19 and variants, and public health and medical officials, as well as health care providers, must have robust data and information to guide their decisions on public health measures.”
In July 2021, he asked to CDC to respond to a series of questions, including whether vaccine-derived immunity is decreasing in light of the breakthrough cases and what action they’re taking to monitor breakthrough cases among people who aren’t hospitalized. As of September 2021, he had still received no response, and many remain puzzled over the CDC’s sudden refusal to track such crucial health data.29
“I was shocked,” Dr. Leana Wen, a physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, told ProPublica. “I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of why they stopped tracking this information.”30
Sources and References
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Covid-19, New York Times, United States |
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An open storage for the collection of burnt ammunition containing toxicant agents. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
Russian diplomats have hit out at the US after American officials signed a letter demanding information on the circumstances of the purported poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, accusing Washington of double standards.
On Tuesday, Moscow’s embassy in Washington issued a fiery statement after the US and 44 other countries presented a series of answers from Russia over the incident as part of a missive passed over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Navalny and his German doctors insist that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok last year. The envoys blasted the allegations as “unfounded,” and the Kremlin has argued that all requests for evidence from Berlin have gone unanswered.
In response to the allegations, the embassy argued that Russia “is committed to its obligations” under chemical weapons treaties and, “in 2017, our country destroyed all national stocks of chemical warfare agents, which was documented by the OPCW.”
However, the envoys argue that “the US continues to be the only country in the world that has not destroyed its impressive arsenal of chemical weapons.” In 1991, then-US President George H.W. Bush committed to destroying its stockpiles of lethal agents, but progress has since been hampered by a number of issues and decommissioning is still underway, leaving large quantities of chemical munitions, including mustard gas shells.
In March, the US slammed Russia with sanctions, urging Moscow to get rid of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile following the allegations of the use of Novichok against Navalny. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, however, maintained that “Russia declared and verified the destruction of all chemical weapons on its territory many years ago and fully complied with international conventions… Russia has no chemical weapons.”
“By the way,” Peskov added, “we expect that our counterparts will also comply with these conventions.”
This is not the first time that Russia has called on the US to dispose of its chemical weapons. In 2018, the spokesperson for the country’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, responded to former US President Donald Trump’s request for Russia to “stop the arms race” developing between the two nations. “Great idea,” Zakharova said. “Let’s start by getting rid of chemical weapons. American ones.”
In response to the US’ latest accusations regarding Russia’s supposed chemical warfare capabilities, the embassy said that it is in the world’s interest that Washington complies with the UN’s international regulations surrounding disarmament. “We call on Washington to complete the chemical demilitarization program as soon as possible and fulfill international obligations, making the world safe from the potential use of this type of weapon,” the embassy added.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | Russia, United States |
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Because People were not Afraid Enough of the Flu Virus
Last night Alex Jones of Infowars.com did a special broadcast regarding an October, 2019 video that they had just become aware of that was a panel discussion hosted by the Milken Institute discussing the need for a Universal Flu Vaccine.
The video clip that they played of this event was a 1 minute and 51 second dialogue between the moderator, Michael Specter, a journalist who is a New Yorker staff writer and also an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
In this short clip, which was extracted from the hour long panel discussion, Anthony Fauci explains that bringing a new, untested kind of vaccine like an mRNA vaccine, would take at least a decade (“if everything goes perfectly”) to go through proper trials and be approved by the FDA.
He would know, because he had been trying to do it for about a decade already by then (October, 2019), trying to develop an mRNA based vaccine for HIV.
But now they were discussing something much bigger than just a vaccine for AIDS patients. They are talking about a “Universal Flu Vaccine” that everyone would have to take – a huge market for Big Pharma!
Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), then speaks and states that what could happen is that “an entity of excitement that is completely disruptive and is not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes” could change that.
Here is the short clip which I put on our Bitchute and Rumble channels last night:
Alex Jones spent over 50 minutes covering this on his show last night, and it looks like he covered it on his show today as well.
I have not had a chance to watch these yet, as I went and found the original 1 hour panel discussion video, and spent the day listening to and analyzing that, so that I could supply this report to our readers.
Joining Fauci, Rick Bright, and Michael Specter at this event were:
- Margaret Hamburg, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine
- Bruce Gellin, President, Global Immunization, Sabin Vaccine Institute
- Casey Wright, CEO, FluLab
In short, this panel discussion focused on what they perceived as the need for a universal flu vaccine, but they admitted that the old way of producing vaccines was not sufficient for their purposes, and that they needed some kind of global event where many people were dying to be able to roll out a new mRNA vaccine to be tested on the public.
They all agreed that the annual flu virus was not scary enough to create an event that would convince people to get a universal vaccine.
And as we now know today, about 2 years after this event, that “terrifying virus” that was introduced was the COVID-19 Sars virus.
And so now we know why the flu just “disappeared” in the 2020-21 flu season. It was simply replaced by COVID-19, in a worldwide cleverly planned “pandemic” to roll out the world’s first universal mRNA vaccines.
This was always the goal, and previous efforts through various influenzas, AIDS, Ebola, and other “viruses” were all unsuccessful in leading to the development of a universal vaccine to inject into the entire world’s population.
Margaret Hamburg stated regarding getting a “Universal Vaccine” into the market:
“It’s time to stop talking, and it’s time to act.”
“I think it is also because we haven’t had a sense of urgency.”
Michael Specter asks:
“Do we need lots of people to die for that sense of urgency to occur?”
Hamburg replies that: “There are already lots of people dying” from the flu each year.
Bruce Gellin states that basically people just are not afraid enough of the term “the flu.”
There are so many things that are revealed about how Big Pharma and government health authorities think in this panel discussion. For example, they bemoan the fact that if they do too good of a job in public health, then they lose funding to develop products that fight viruses.
Michael Specter states: “It seems to me that one of the curses of the public health world is, if you guys do your job well, everyone goes along well and healthy.”
Hamburg: “And they cut your funding.”
Rick Bright complains that the yearly distribution of flu vaccines is inefficient in terms of collecting data, and in the process actually admits that some vaccines just don’t work well:
“We distribute 150 million doses of the seasonal (flu) vaccines every year, we don’t even know how many people are being vaccinated from the doses that are delivered to the people, which doses they got, and what the real outcome was, so that we can learn from that knowledge base on how to optimize or improve our vaccine. So there are opportunities that we have today…”
I think if we uncloaked the poorest performing vaccines in the market place today, it might be very revealing to tell us which of the technologies we have, and allow us to go deeper into those technologies to determine why they are more effective. There are vaccines licenses today that are more effective. I think that we’re just afraid to admit the truth.”
So much for the public mantra that is espoused by Big Pharma and government that the “science” of vaccines is “settled,” and that they are completely “safe and effective.”
Casey Wright repeats the mantra that was publicized every year, before COVID, about just how deadly the flu virus was: “650,000 people die every year from the flu.”
As we have documented many times over the past decade here at Health Impact News, this is simply not true. This is an estimate because actual laboratory confirmed cases of influenza each year are very small, probably less than 1000 in the U.S.
Most flu-like symptoms are never tested in a lab to determine what is causing the symptoms. They were always just classified as “flu” to inflate the numbers to justify the very profitable flu shot each year. Some of our previous coverage of this issue:
Did 80,000 People Really Die from the Flu Last Year? Inflating Flu Death Estimates to Sell Flu Shots
So as they have inflated the COVID-19 cases since last year, they are simply continuing their policy of inflating flu numbers each year in order to sell their vaccines. They obviously could not have done both last year, as the public would have quickly seen that the math doesn’t work.
And yet, so many in the public bought the lie that the COVID-19 measures got rid of the flu, but not COVID-19.
Ultimately, this panel discussion can be boiled down to: Nobody wants to fund research for a universal flu vaccine. So how do we change that? Create a pandemic of fear over the flu (but they couldn’t call it the “flu” because people are no longer afraid of influenza, and the fear over “AIDS” had also subsided.)
Fauci then addressed this “perception problem.”
There’s this perception (about the flu), if it’s so serious, how come people get the flu each year and it isn’t a catastrophe?
When you’re dealing with a disease like HIV, if you get HIV, it’s serious. Whether you’re young, whether you’re middle aged, or whether you’re old. If you get cancer, that’s bad. Whether you’re young, whether it’s intermediate… whereas if it’s influenza, some people, they go throughout life and it doesn’t impact them at all.
There isn’t anyone who is afraid of influenza. You go into a focus group and you say: Are you afraid of getting HIV if you’re at risk? Oh, absolutely.
Are you afraid of getting cancer? Absolutely. Are you afraid of the flu? Don’t bother me.
That’s the reality of how people perceive flu.
And it is going to be very difficult to change that, unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem, in a disruptive way…
Specter then asks:
In the long run, over time, if the 2009 pandemic had been much more deadly, would that have ended up being a better thing for humanity?
Everyone is silent as they obviously were thinking about how to answer that, and Specter says: “Come on gang.”
Fauci ultimately answers and says “No” because there were other years that were worse than 2009 and it didn’t change a thing in terms of creating a universal vaccine.
Hamburg then states:
The sad truth is that when there is a major crisis, it focuses attention and usually resources and some significant mobilization follows.
We need, #1, this time to be different, and we also need to really organize ourselves in a way where there will be accountability for sustained action, and not just response.
Specter states:
Craig Venter, who is a controversial person, but interesting to me, has written that he thinks we ought to have a vaccine, such that, if you take off in a plane from Hong Kong, and are infected, by the time your plane lands in New York, there ought to be a vaccine assembled and deliverable to you.
How crazy is that? How far are we from that? Are we ever going to get there?
Bright replies:
I’m not going to say how far away, but I don’t think that’s too crazy.
I think that if we move towards the era of synthetic-based vaccines, I think we remove the dependencies of thinking the vaccine that has be grown into something else, an egg, a cell, or insect cell – any type of dependency embryo.
If we can move into more synthetic, the nucleic acid based, messenger RNA based, those sequences can be rapidly shared around the world.
He then goes on to talk about using a 3D printer to print out a “vaccine patch” that people use to administer the “vaccine.”
We also learn in this panel discussion why Anthony Fauci is so opposed to natural immunity, because natural immunity for influenza, according to his view, translates to an immune response against other strains of a particular influenza virus, which will interfere with what they are trying to do with the vaccines.
That is why he wants to inject infants as young as 6 months old with a universal vaccine, as he states here, to prevent that “confused” natural immunity from happening before the child grows older.
So the big question that this panel was tackling, was how do they implement their strategies, and what is holding them back?
Certainly the government/regulatory issue is a big one, and now two years later we can see exactly how they did that, by controlling the FDA and the CDC to promote the “killer virus pandemic” narrative as long as possible to justify taking emergency measures that short-cut the normal procedures for bringing novel, new drugs to the market.
It also clearly explains the vicious opposition to existing, cheap therapeutics that very easily treated what is really just the seasonal flu “virus,” which stood in their way of rolling out a universal vaccine.
Casey Wright then made a rather remarkable comment about “philanthropy” and its role in this effort:
There’s a potential role for philanthropy to play there… we are in a position to take on a little more risk (she smiles eerily as she says this), to be open to a little bit more experimentation and methods in how we do things. That’s what I think is unique about FluLab, and its unique about other philanthropies.
I think they can play a really important role there, and fund a set of bolder, maybe earlier promising concepts.
Bingo! Think Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other “philanthropies” that are “unburdened” by regulatory issues as they spend their money pretty much unchecked, with no accountability, all in the name of “science” and the “greater good.”
We have seen most certainly how the Gates Foundation has done this in India by luring poor people into highly questionable ethical experimentations with vaccines, such as the Gardasil vaccine which we have covered so often over the years here at Health Impact News.
Bruce Gellin then talks about a report published by his organization that called for an “entity” that would make these decisions and bring everyone together to collaborate to create this universal vaccine, and eliminate those who oppose.
The report was published in 2019, and here is the press release.
He states:
They called for this “entity” which is the collaboration we talked about. They called for the need to infuse innovation, to find some of these people who we don’t know might be part of the problem to come into this. And to try to think about how we talk about this differently so that your stomach flu doesn’t keep us from making progress. (everyone laughs…)
I assume that this “entity” is Gellin’s group, The Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science & Policy Group.
Today, this is the main group fighting “vaccine hesitancy” and trying to silence any dissenting voices that get in their way of rolling out this universal vaccine, which of course we now know is the COVID-19 vaccine.
Watch the entire panel discussion to learn just how arrogant these people are. This is on our Bitchute and Rumble channels… Further analysis at Health Impact News.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation |
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- Nick Karl, Pfizer Scientist: “When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus…When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination.”
- Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “You’re protected for longer” if you have natural COVID antibodies compared to the COVID vaccine.
- Croce: “I work for an evil corporation… Our organization is run on COVID money.”
- Rahul Khandke, Pfizer Scientist: “If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up.”
[NEW YORK – Project Veritas released the fourth video in its COVID vaccine investigative series today which exposed three Pfizer officials saying that antibodies lead to equal, if not better, protection against the virus compared to the vaccine.
Nick Karl, a scientist who is directly involved in the production of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, said that natural immunity is more effective than the very vaccine he works on, and Pfizer produces.
“When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus… When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination,” Karl said. Notwithstanding, Karl still believes that vaccine mandates are positive for society.
“The city [of New York] needs like vax cards and everything. It’s just about making it so inconvenient for unvaccinated people to the point where they’re just like, ‘F*ck it. I’ll get it.’ You know?”
A second Pfizer official, Senior Associate Scientist, Chris Croce, corroborated Karl’s assertion about COVID immunity derivative of antibodies:
Veritas Journalist: “So, I am well-protected [with antibodies]?”
Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist: “Like as much as the vaccine?”
Croce: “Probably more.”
Veritas Journalist: “How so? Like, how much more?”
Croce: “You’re protected most likely for longer since there was a natural response.”
Croce expressed dismay with his company’s direction and moral compass:
Veritas Journalist: “So, what happened to the monoclonal antibody treatments?”
Croce: “[It got] pushed to the side.”
Veritas Journalist: “Why?”
Croce: “Money. It’s disgusting.”
…
Croce: “I still feel like I work for an evil corporation because it comes down to profits in the end. I mean, I’m there to help people, not to make millions and millions of dollars. So, I mean, that’s the moral dilemma.”
Veritas Journalist: “Isn’t it billions and billions?”
Croce: “I’m trying to be nice.”
Veritas Journalist: “No, I hear you. I hear you. I do. I mean, I’ll still give you a hard time about it.”
Croce: “Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.”
The third Pfizer scientist, Rahul Khandke, admitted his company demands that its employees keep information from the public.
“We’re bred and taught to be like, ‘vaccine is safer than actually getting COVID.’ Honestly, we had to do so many seminars on this. You have no idea. Like, we have to sit there for hours and hours and listen to like — be like, ‘you cannot talk about this in public,’” Khandke said.
Khandke also signaled that proof of antibodies is on par with proof of vaccination.
“If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up,” he said.
Project Veritas will be releasing more Pfizer tapes in the very near future. To receive updates straight into your email inbox, click here.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine, Pfizer |
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The UK government’s Winter Plan is rife with nudges
There’s a chill in the air. Not from the changing seasons, it’s still beautifully balmy, but because the behavioural scientists’ fingertips have traced a hoar frost of psychocratic nudge on the government’s “Autumn and Winter Plan”.
The UK government’s Winter Plan plan contained some welcome news. The most draconian schedules of the Coronavirus Act will be revoked, including the powers to close schools, allow potentially infectious people to be detained, and restrictions on gatherings and events. The language around the plan’s launch was thankfully more cool-headed. The times are “challenging” but it is no longer claimed that Covid is the “biggest threat this country has faced in peacetime history”.
But the plan is also rife with “nudges” – sneaky ways to prime, prepare and prod you into the desired mindset and course of action.
The contents are freighted with the sunk cost fallacy; we’ve come so far, we mustn’t allow our good work to be undone. This also taps into people’s innate sensitivity to loss.
The trigger from Plan A to Plan B will be “unsustainable pressure” on the NHS rather than deaths. It’s under serious pressure every winter so consider yourselves to be put on notice.
There are other indications of the inevitability of Plan B. I spoke to behavioural scientist Patrick Fagan, who observed that:
“the Plan A / Plan B approach is a classic example of the foot-in-the-door technique. Firstly it makes us accept Plan A because, compared to Plan B, it looks more reasonable; then, once we have accepted and acclimatised to Plan A, we are more likely to then accept Plan B, because it is just one extra step on top of the commitment we’ve already made. The announcement of Plan B may also be an example of the mere exposure effect: simply by talking about the measures (even if, ironically, saying they won’t be implemented), the government makes them more familiar and therefore more psychologically acceptable.”
Bizarrely, after 18 months we’re trapped in a Groundhog Day of modelling and worst case scenarios. Almost a year ago, on the 21st September, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance warned of infections hitting 50,000 per day by mid-October in their “Shock and Awe” presentation. When the day arrived, the moving average was 16,228.
According to the doom-mongers at SAGE, up to 7,000 people could be hospitalised per day within the month. And this September the modellers were wrong once again – hospitalisations peaked at about a 1,000 a day and are now falling.
Source: The Telegraph
The big numbers both fuel the policies and justify them. It doesn’t matter that there are more optimistic scenarios, or that the modelling has limitations, because the first supine headline sticks in the brain. The behavioural psychology principle of “salience” draws your attention to what is novel and risky.
Dr Alex De Figueiredo, who conducts mathematical and statistical analyses for the Vaccine Confidence Project, told me that:
“Since the beginning of the pandemic it seems many modelling assumptions, such as the infection fatality rate, have been quite pessimistic. I think this has been why many of the predictions — such as hospitalisations and deaths — have been overstated. It also appears there has been little effort to validate forecasts out-of-sample, such as applying the models to Sweden or Florida, who have had far fewer restrictions.”
There are no quantifiable measures for what justifies each step from Plan A to Plan B. The parameters are fluid, unspecified. This creates confusion and stress, which infantilises people and makes them look to the government for direction. Essentially, confusion increases compliance.
The threat of lockdown hangs like a Sword of Damocles. Will we, or won’t we? It seems unlikely that the public and businesses could be persuaded again. Regardless, the threat of lockdown might be leveraged to justify the introduction of Covid Passports, in what is known as a “reciprocation nudge” – we appear to be given a concession in return for reduced resistance to another option.
Covid Passports have been vigorously opposed by MPs and civil liberties groups, and there hasn’t been a vote in Parliament yet. Despite this, they squat in Plan B as a fait accompli, in the denouement of the “door in the face” technique. This is when a huge request is made, then refused, to be followed by a second smaller request, in this case relegation to Plan B and for limited venues only. Boris Johnson said that it’s “not sensible to rule out this kind of option now when it might still make the difference between keeping businesses open or not.” But why would it be sensible when the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee produced a damning report against them and found the government could make no scientific case in their favour?
Covid Passports appear to be a behavioural science tool, used to increase vaccine uptake. This may backfire. ‘A Cross-Sectional Study in the UK and Israel on Willingness to Get Vaccinated against COVID-19’ found that vaccine passports deter a significant minority of people who want autonomy over their bodies. This also chimes with the research conducted by De Figueiredo and colleagues at The Vaccine Confidence Project. The bullying and resultant mistrust may impact Covid-19 vaccine uptake as well as other public health initiatives.
When my book A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic was published some people believed, quite quaintly, that public health measures and messaging were unrelated to behavioural science. I think that the book and the writings of other academics and journalists have moved the dial. Once nudge is seen it can’t be unseen. The public increasingly see the nudge. If the behavioural scientists have been dazzling people with card tricks they have over-played their hand.
As such, there is more honesty about the purpose Covid Passports serve. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, said that the passport scheme
“will not eradicate transmission completely but it will help reduce it in some higher risk settings, and it will maximise protection against serious illness. And we believe – as we have seen already in some other countries – it will help encourage take-up of the vaccine.”
Similarly, Linda Bauld, Professor of Public Health and Interim Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government, also admitted that Covid Passports are “to increase uptake in vaccination” and the “rationale” is that it particularly boosts vaccination in 18 to 29 year olds.
While Covid Passports are in Plan B, Ministers say different things about them each day. Within the space of a week, Sajid Javid scrapped them but also didn’t rule them out for pubs. Javid admitted there’s “no evidence” for them but Boris Johnson called them “sensible”. Does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing? Or maybe a big behavioural science brain lurks in between. The epidemic management is reminiscent of the uncertainty created by Vladislav Surkov in the Soviet Union to deliberately turn politics into a performance of confusion – you don’t know what’s real anymore.
There are never-ending question marks over travel, although double-vaccinated travellers will no longer need expensive and inconvenient PCR tests. The double-jabbed will delight in the news, and it sounds sensible on the surface. However, this is not about “following the science”, since the previously infected do not benefit from the exemption. This is an incentive, a classic nudge, to encourage jabs. The vaccinated are rewarded and the unvaccinated are punished. Bearing in mind that negative tests and prior infection could suffice, this decision reeks of disdain for personal autonomy.
Vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds have been authorised. Politicians have stirred up debate amongst all corners regarding whether children should be jabbed with their parents’ consent or not. This utilises what Patrick Fagan calls “the leapfrog effect”. He says,
“it leapfrogs one stage of the debate and in doing so, sets the baseline assumptions which become accepted implicitly. Specifically, by having people debate whether or not parents’ consent should be sought, they are establishing the unspoken assumption that children should receive the jab in the first place. Those who think they are debating the government, arguing that parents’ consent is needed, are actually accepting its true goal, to jab kids.”
The government might be more in control of the narrative than many people like to believe. (Of course, chaos and confusion are alternatives…)
Worryingly, can teens truly provide informed consent? Throughout 2020 they were exhorted not to “kill granny”, which would provoke fear, shame and stress. Ads on Tiktok tell youngsters that the way to get back to normal is to take the vaccine. The vaccine will be rolled out in schools which will create peer pressure, in a particularly egregious use of “norms”. Finally, if the JCVI found the decision difficult, how is a 12 year old supposed to weigh up the evidence? (Nudging teens is the subject matter of my next article.)
Since the Cabinet reshuffle, Michael Gove has been informally dubbed the ‘Minister for Christmas’. Boris Johnson joked that he “didn’t want to have to cancel Christmas again”. Did you know Christmas might be cancelled and needs saving? You do now, the idea has been “seeded”.
Although it is ostensibly supply chains which threaten Christmas, the joke draws a comparison with last year’s Covid reasons. Again, you are put on notice. The nudges are still focussed on increasing vaccination, for now, but the threat to Christmas might hint at the beginning of a behavioural science approach to meet green targets.
We must be good boys and girls if we want Santa to come. And be aware, the nudgers are drafting our collective New Year’s Resolutions.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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The MSM is trying to trick people into thinking they’re still journalists, by telling us things we already know.
The Pandora Papers are out! Following the riveting Panama Papers in 2016, and the astounding Paradise Papers of 2017, the latest entry in the trilogy of financial “leaks” is finally here, and I couldn’t be more excited.
THE “LEAKS”
So let’s get right down to it… what do the “leaks” say? Well, according to The Guardian…
The files reveal how wealthy individuals can shield their income and their assets from taxation and scrutiny by hiding them in offshore jurisdictions, more commonly known as “tax havens”.
Mind. Blown.
Rich people don’t pay tax! WHAT?!
It’s groundbreaking stuff. But that’s the kind of world-changing exposes you get when you read the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
THE SOURCE
Just as with the Panama Papers in 2016 and the Paradise Papers of 2017, the ICIJ are here to tell you that off-shore accounts exist, and that rich people use them.
The big “revelations” include politicians from Ecuador, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Kenya. The King of Jordan, the Prime Ministers of the UAE and the Czech Republic. Hardly a Who’s Who of hard hitters and political A-listers, instead – just as with the previous “leaks” – a collection of disposable lizard tails.
The biggest name mentioned is Tony Blair, who already has an unsalvageable public image, and is only accused of legally avoiding £300,000 in stamp duty. Or roughly 30p per Iraqi he murdered.
The papers don’t even allege any actual crimes took place, and they don’t name-and-shame any noteworthy politicians at all (largely because America has domestic tax havens), but still… they are apparently a huge deal.
Now a real investigative journalist might, at this point, ask “well who leaked these papers?” and “what did they stand to gain?”, but that’s not the ICIJ’s bag, they’re just here to unquestioningly publish documents sent to them by intelligence agencies and billionaires, and call them “leaks”.
You see, despite the name, the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” are not really journalists. In fact, they’re a “special project” of the creepily-named Centre for Public Integrity, a non-profit funded by various foundations and billionaires (including George Soros).
PUTIN? AGAIN? REALLY?
In a startlingly old-fashioned move, the press is pitching the angle that this “leak” reveals Vladimir Putin’s “secret wealth”, despite admitting that:
The Russian president Vladimir Putin does not appear in the files by name.
This exactly mirrors the Panama Papers, where Putin’s picture was everywhere despite the admitted fact “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.” At the time I wrote that the Guardian had collapsed into self-parody.
The whole thing was darkly funny at the time, it is decidedly stale now. Like an actor who’s played the same role for years and has started phoning it in.
Speaking of the Guardian… our old friend Luke Harding had 2000 words about Putin’s wealth in that paper over the weekend. He alleges an illicit affair, hidden billions and a secret Monaco flat… all based on literally nothing. He cites no evidence that the woman in question ever MET Putin except – quite seriously – that they might have been on the same aeroplane.
Still, though, the need to make stuff up in order to publish it has never stopped Luke before. And he’s writing “from Monaco” so he at least managed to wrangle a tax-deductible holiday out of it. Good job Luke.
And he’s probably already halfway through a new book called something like “Red Money: The secret lives and loves of Vladimir Putin”. If he hurries he might get it done before Christmas, (especially if he plagiarizes other people’s work again).
CONCLUSION
In short, the Pandora Papers are a non-story.
“Rich people avoid taxes and lie about it” is not breaking news, and when the newspapers like the Guardian and Washington Post report it as if it is… well, it’s because it must serve some other purpose.
Possibly just a distraction, sound and fury signifying nothing. Possibly some as-yet-unrevealed plans for “financial reform” or “stricter regulations”.
Maybe a simple pantomime, trying to pretend that the world is still the same as it was pre-Covid. That we’re still good, and Russia is still bad, and that there really are different sides and they’re not all joined together behind the scenes.
Maybe just an exercise in pretending mainstream news does any kind of journalism at all. A little bit of lipstick up on a very ugly pig.
The world is corrupt, no kidding. But it’s far more corrupt than the Paradise Papers show, or that the ICIJ would ever actually admit.
I wrote a long and detailed response to this nonsense back in 2016, which you can read here. It’s nearly five years old now, but if the ICIJ can recycle old material then so can I.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Centre for Public Integrity, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists |
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Assertions by the publishers of the Pandora papers that the entourage of Russian President Vladimir Putin has secretly enriched itself have no substance and aren’t backed up by proof, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed.
The Pandora papers are 11.9 million leaked documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which worked with journalists from over 117 countries, including outlets like The Washington Post and the BBC. It is said to be the biggest ever leak exposing tax evasion.
In the papers, several Russians are named, and according to the ICIJ, the country is “disproportionately represented” in the leaked documents. Two of the people named include Konstantin Ernst, the head of Russia’s most-watched broadcaster Channel One; and German Gref, the CEO of Sberbank, the country’s biggest financial institution.
However, despite his name not appearing in the documents, some of the journalists investigating the papers say that they show the great wealth of the president’s entourage, with London-based newspaper the Guardian claiming that it reveals the “hidden riches of Putin’s inner circle.”
However, according to the Kremlin, there is absolutely no evidence for this assertion.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, Peskov said that Moscow has not seen any “hidden wealth.”
“We haven’t seen anything in particular so far,” he explained. “So far, it’s just about some assertions, and it’s not clear what they are based on. This is certainly not a reason for an investigation.”
In fact, according to Peskov, the investigation simply proves that the US is the world’s most prominent location for tax evasion.
The Pandora paper authors also name Svetlana Krivonogikh, the woman claimed by investigative website Proekt to be the mother of one of Putin’s children. The Kremlin has never responded to the allegations. In 2021, Proekt was labeled as a foreign agent.
Outside of Russia, the paper also names Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Czech President Andrej Babiš, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as those storing money offshore.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | The Guardian |
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