Biden administration demands Facebook hands over data on “misinformation” and vaccine skeptics
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2021
The Biden administration continues to pressure Facebook to collaborate and help it achieve its goals, one of them being to counter COVID vaccine skepticism and get more people in the US vaccinated.
After Biden shockingly denounced Facebook and others as “killing people” because they are allegedly letting COVID misinformation run rampant on their platforms, that pressure now continues in media reports, like the one The Washington Post published, citing three anonymous administration sources.
According to them, The White House and Facebook have had a series of meetings whose aim was to get the social media giant to turn over massive amounts of user data to the government, apparently as a “good will gesture” – since there doesn’t seem to be any legal ground for such a request.
Instead, the “tense” meetings saw the administration’s COVID crew “begging” Facebook to give them access to data showing how many people on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp see content branded as coronavirus misinformation, how many are still undecided whether to get the jab, and also the efficiency of Facebook’s censorship algorithms, i.e., how many people still get to see content that it aims to block.
It’s not obvious why the officials quoted by the article thought Facebook was under obligation to do this, but they accused the company of “hiding, filibustering and deflecting” – while at the same time commending Google and Twitter for apparently being much more accommodating in similar meetings around the same subject.
Although it is clear that these meetings are initiated and the data sought by the government, the criticism of Facebook in this matter conflates the notions of government and the public, saying it was the latter that “needs to understand” the scale of COVID misinformation and how to “potentially” fight this real or perceived problem.
The data Facebook has collected from its billions of users is described as “singular” and so complex and fine-grained that it can reveal people’s behavior and position on issues – clearly this is where the belief that the data would show the Biden administration how many users are still undecided on the vaccine comes from.
“It’s not that they wouldn’t provide data. It’s that they wouldn’t provide meaningful data, and you end up with a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily have value,” Andy Slavitt, who represented The White House in the meetings, said.
The Face Mask Folly in Retrospect
“It’s just a mask”: Global impact of the face mask folly (K. Birb)
Swiss Policy Research | August 22, 2021
It has been known for decades that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. Why has much of the world nonetheless fallen for the face mask folly? Ten reasons.
1) The droplet model
Many ‘health authorities’ have relied on the obsolete ‘droplet model’ of virus transmission. If this model were correct, face masks would indeed work. But in reality, respiratory droplets – which by definition cannot be inhaled – play almost no role in virus transmission. Instead, respiratory viruses are transmitted via much smaller aerosols, as well as, possibly, some object surfaces. Face masks don’t work against either of these transmission routes.
2) The Asian paradox
During the first year of the pandemic, several East Asian countries had a very low coronavirus infection rate, and many ‘health experts’ falsely assumed that this was due to face masks. In reality, it was due to very rapid border controls in some countries neighboring China as well as a combination of metabolic and immunologic factors reducing transmission rates. Nevertheless, many East Asian countries eventually got overwhelmed by the coronavirus, too (see charts below).
3) The Czech mirage
In the spring of 2020, the Czech Republic was one of the first European countries that introduced face masks. Because the Czech infection rate initially stayed low, many ‘health experts’ falsely concluded that this was due to the masks. In reality, most of Eastern Europe simply missed the first wave of the epidemic. A few months later, the Czech Republic had the highest infection rate in the world, but by then, much of the world had already introduced face mask mandates.
4) Fake science
For decades, studies have shown that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. But with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and increasing political pressure (see below), suddenly studies appeared claiming the opposite. In reality, these studies were a mixture of confounded observational data, unrealistic modelling and lab results, and outright fraud. The most influential fraudulent study certainly was the WHO-commissioned meta-study published in The Lancet.
5) Asymptomatic transmission
Another factor contributing to the implementation of mask mandates was the notion of ‘asymptomatic transmission’. The idea was that everybody should be wearing a mask because even people without symptoms might spread the virus. The importance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is still a matter of debate – up to half of all transmission might occur prior to symptom onset –, but either way, face masks simply don’t work against aerosol transmission.
6) Political pressure
Several political factors contributed to the implementation of mask mandates. First, some politicians simply wanted to “do something” against the pandemic; second, some politicians thought face masks might have a “psychological effect” and might “remind” citizens to stay cautious (if anything, it had the opposite effect: creating a ‘false sense of security’); third, some politicians used mask mandates to enforce compliance and pressure the population into accepting mass vaccination.
In addition, there was a vicious circle involving science and politics: politicians claimed to “follow the science”, but scientists followed politics. For instance, the WHO famously admitted that their updated mask guidelines were in response to “political lobbying”, not new evidence. The most influential lobby group was “masks4all”, founded by a “Young Leader” of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
7) The media
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the ‘mass media’ amplified the fraudulent science and the political pressure driving mask mandates. Only some independent media outlets and some truly independent experts questioned the validity of the underlying evidence. However, their voices got suppressed as dubious “fact checking” organizations eagerly enforced official guidelines and throttled or censored many articles and videos critical of face masks.
8) “Surgeons wear masks”
Surgeons wear masks, so they must be effective, right? This was another notion contributing to the face mask misunderstanding. In reality, surgeons wear masks not against viruses, but against much larger bacteria, but more importantly, studies have long shown that even surgeons’ masks make no difference in terms of bacterial wound infections.
9) Misleading memes
To convince low-IQ social media users of the effectiveness of face masks, several unscientific memes were created. The most notorious one probably was the “peeing into your pants” meme, shared by many ‘health experts’ (really). Many of these memes exploited the fact that most people simply don’t realize how small and ubiquitous viral aerosols really are.
10) Doubling down
After mask mandates had been implemented globally and hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on masks, it soon became obvious – once more – that masks simply don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics (see charts below). But at that point, neither politicians, nor ‘health experts’, nor duped citizens who had to wear them for months wanted to admit this anymore.
Instead, some ‘health authorities’ doubled down and enforced outdoor masking (even on beaches), double-masking, or N95/FFP2 masking, to no avail. The one novel scientific insight produced during the coronavirus pandemic was that even N95/FFP2 mask mandates have made no difference at all.
Sweden: The exception that proved the rule
Only very few countries in the world have resisted the face mask folly. The most famous example certainly is Sweden (see charts below), which has also resisted the lockdown experiment. Naturally, Swedish coronavirus mortality has remained below the European average. But the many vicious attacks against Sweden by much of the international media showed just how difficult it has been to escape the global madness and follow the real science during this bizarre pandemic.
A child wearing a mask at school (more)
How face masks and lockdowns failed
The following charts show that infections have been driven primarily by seasonal and endemic factors, whereas mask mandates and lockdowns have had no discernible impact (charts: IanMSC).
FBI admits it “has so far found no evidence” January 6th Capitol riot was organized on social media
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2021
The narrative that the January 6 storming of the US Capitol was organized on social media contributed to the shutdown of alternative tech app Parler, led to mass social media censorship, and was even used by some Big Tech platforms to justify the permanent suspension of President Trump.
But now, the FBI is disputing this narrative, with multiple current and former law enforcement officials telling Reuters there is scant evidence that the events of January 6 were the result of an organized plot and no evidence that Trump was involved in organizing the storming of the Capitol.
Four current and former law enforcement officials, who have been either directly involved or regularly briefed on the FBI’s investigations into the storming of the Capitol, told Reuters that “the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump.”
One of the sources added that “ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases” and that the remaining five percent “were more closely organized” but “there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
Additionally, the sources said that the FBI “has so far found no evidence” that Trump or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.
These revelations from law enforcement sources directly dispute the January 6 narrative that has been pushed by numerous media outlets which, in the immediate aftermath of the storming of the Capitol, blamed social media and Trump supporters for the events at the US Capitol.
In a January 6 article titled “The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media,” The New York Times claimed that groups that had been “bolstered by Mr. Trump” had “openly organized on social media networks and recruited others to their cause.”
The article also directly connected this alleged months-long organization on social media to the storming of the Capitol by stating “their online activism became real-world violence, leading to unprecedented scenes of mobs freely strolling through the halls of Congress and uploading celebratory photographs of themselves, encouraging others to join them.”
Countless other media outlets, including BuzzFeed and ProPublica, pushed the same narrative by claiming that the Capitol rioters had been planning online for weeks.
Not only did these media articles allege that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media but many also suggested that alt-tech sites such as Gab, Parler, and Telegram were to blame.
The New York Times piece claimed that both Gab and Parler were being “used by the far-right” to share “directions on which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors.”
And BuzzFeed wrote:
“On pro-Trump social media website Parler, chat app Telegram, and other corners of the the far-right internet, people discussed the Capitol Hill rally at which Trump spoke as the catalyst for a violent insurrection. They have been using those forums to plan an uprising in plain sight, one that they executed Wednesday afternoon, forcing Congress to flee its chambers as it met to certify the results of the election.”
This media narrative, which is now being disputed by the FBI, triggered a wave of online censorship after January 6.
President Trump was banned from all of the major social media platforms days after January 6. Big Tech justified the bans by referencing the events at the Capitol and suggesting that Trump was inciting violence.
Twitter even pushed similar talking points to those being pushed by the media and claimed that “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021” were one of the factors that led to it banning Trump.
And Parler was booted from Apple and Google’s app stores and Amazon’s web hosting services within days of the Capitol riot. Apple even echoed the media’s assertion that Parler was being “used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021” in its threat to ban the alt-tech platform from the App Store.
Other examples of post-January 6 Big Tech censorship include Facebook banning photos and videos from protestors at the US Capitol and YouTube disabling live chats on some streams discussing protests at the Capitol.
As this media narrative that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media starts to fall apart, those who were impacted by the subsequent censorship are still feeling its impact.
President Trump is still blacklisted from all of the Big Tech platforms and has lost his ability to reach the millions of followers he had accumulated on these platforms, even after these law enforcement sources said the FBI has found no evidence that Trump or his prominent supporters had anything to do with coordinating or organizing the events of January 6.
And since it was deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon in January, Parler has lost more than 95% of its traffic. According to web analytics service SimilarWeb, Parler’s traffic declined from a peak of over 40 million visits in January to 1.93 million visits in July.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media outlets that pushed this narrative are still given preferential treatment by Big Tech through algorithms that boost their reach by up to 20x.
This phenomenon of mainstream media outlets pushing a narrative that leads to mass censorship, only for the narrative to crumble months later isn’t limited to January 6.
Countless social media users were censored for suggesting the possibility of the coronavirus leaking from the infamous Wuhan lab until the media reversed course and reported that this could in fact be a possibility. Facebook then changed its rules to allow discussions of the lab leak theory but most of those who were censored before the media reversed course still haven’t had their accounts or posts reinstated.
Yet the media outlets that previously claimed the lab leak theory was a “conspiracy” and then reversed course, haven’t faced any sanctions and get to maintain their status as “authoritative sources” that are boosted by Big Tech’s algorithms.
Related: How Big Tech’s “authoritative” mainstream media sources prop up each other’s falsehoods
Florida governor DeSantis slams AP over ‘baseless conspiracy theory’ article about Covid-19 treatment
RT | August 23, 2021
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has lit into AP over a “partisan smear piece” about his promotion of a Covid-19 treatment endorsed by the White House, and the agency’s complaints of ‘harassment’ when his staff pushed back on it.
“I assumed your letter was to notify me that you were issuing a retraction of the partisan smear piece you published last week. Instead, you had the temerity to complain about the deserved blowback that your botched and discredited attempt to concoct a political narrative has received,” DeSantis wrote in a letter to the agency, which he made public on Monday.
The Republican governor described the AP story, published on August 17, as a “baseless conspiracy theory” with an “inflammatory headline” that might cause some Floridians to decline life-saving treatment, even though “the public’s trust in corporate outlets like the AP is at historic lows.”
“This is what happens when you decide on the headline and narrative before you begin reporting. The corporate media’s “clicks-first, facts-later” approach to journalism is harming our country.”
“Was it worth it?” DeSantis asked at the end.
The AP article revolved around Democrat outrage that DeSantis was promoting Regeneron – a monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid-19 – because the CEO of a hedge fund that has a financial interest in its maker has donated to the governor’s campaign.
The trouble with that narrative is that the treatment has also been endorsed by health experts and even the current administration. In a press conference on August 12 – days before the AP story – the White House “racial equity in health” adviser Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith said that the Biden administration had deployed “surge teams” to promote the drug in hard-hit US states.
The AP story even noted that experts agreed with DeSantis and that Regeneron has been “shown to cut rates of hospitalization and death by roughly 70%” if given within 10 days of initial symptoms. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who tested positive for the virus after being fully vaccinated on the same day the DeSantis hit-piece came out, said he was taking the drug and has since recovered.
When DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw tweeted about the “baseless” headline and called out both the writer and his editors, AP complained to Twitter that their reporter was being subjected to “harassment” and “bullying.” Pushaw’s account was locked for 12 hours.
“You cannot recklessly smear your political opponents and then expect to be immune from criticism,” DeSantis told AP, adding that he stood by his staff and their work.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has written previously about the phenomenon of corporate outlets labeling any criticism as bullying, commented that AP’s “whining” is part of a trend that “just seems like a cynical tool to place them off limits from critique.”
DeSantis and Abbott, both Republicans, have found themselves in the crosshairs of corporate media outlets over their opposition to lockdowns as well as to mask and vaccine mandates – though both have promoted voluntary vaccinations, and DeSantis has prioritized the elderly, as the highest-risk population. The White House has singled them out as “standing in the way” of its Covid-19 policies.
DeSantis has openly rejected the lockdown strategy as “Faucism” – after Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and a corporate media darling – and publicly stated his opposition to Florida becoming a “biomedical security state” and mandating vaccine passports like New York City.
Shortly after making the AP letter public, DeSantis announced that two more monoclonal antibody treatment centers will be opening in Alachua and St. Lucie counties on Tuesday, with the capacity of treating 300 patients per day, seven days a week. They join similar sites in 14 other counties across Florida.
Facebook suspends Canadian political candidate Marc Emery during campaign season
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2021
A Canadian candidate for political office who is currently running for a seat in parliament has been suspended by Facebook, most likely for posts critical of the country’s COVID policy.
Facebook cited five posts published over the past year as the reason, and one of them, Marc Emery took aim at what he called “the evil Covid dictatorship.”
The ban – which will last as long as his campaign and thus cut him off from communicating with his potential voters on the world’s largest social media site – came because Facebook found the posts to violate its community standards on “hate speech.”
Emery, who is a libertarian and a candidate of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), is also an activist and entrepreneur who is known as “prince of pot” for his previous activism to legalize cannabis, and who has run for various offices in the past.
It was precisely the government’s response to the pandemic and the way many Canadians are accepting the sometimes draconian restrictions that inspired Emery to return to politics.
Among the posts that Facebook said contained hate speech is one featuring photos of a takeout bag from a restaurant ruined by lockdowns. Emery linked the shutting down of the restaurant with Canadians being “soft, weak, unprincipled” and “virtually begging for this dictatorship because of hysteria, propaganda, lies and manipulation.”
In the same post, he accused what he said was “the hysterical and evil Covid dictatorship” for destroying businesses every day, something he added was a tyranny happening at all levels of government.
The rest of the posts marked as “hate speech” show what is said to be marijuana that Emery bought legally, and one of cannabis samples he received as a gift.
Facebook names government-funded CBC’s Radio-Canada as “fact-checker” for Canadian election
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 23, 2021
Facebook has revealed that Radio-Canada, a French-language news service owned by the government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), will be serving as a “fact-checker” for the 2021 Canadian election campaign.
Facebook made the announcement as part of its Canadian Election Integrity Initiative and revealed that Radio-Canada’s “Les Décrypteurs,” a team that fact-checks “false information” and “disinformation,” has been added to the program since the last federal election.
Not only is a service that’s owned by a public broadcaster that receives over $1 billion in annual funding from the Canadian federal government being given the power to act as an arbiter of truth for Facebook during a federal election but the appointment also follows CBC admitting to several major factual errors in its own reporting via its public corrections and clarifications page.
Some of CBC’s self-admitted errors this year include incorrectly describing the AstraZeneca vaccine as 100% effective in preventing the severe outcomes of COVID-19 in multiple stories, incorrectly stating that Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman had contracted COVID-19, and incorrectly reporting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had fatally shot a women in Edmundston, New Brunswick.
In addition to CBC receiving government funding and having a public history of major errors, CBC also sued the Conservative Party, the opposition to the current ruling Liberal Party, during the last Canadian federal election in 2019 for using CBC footage in its ads. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed but critics argued that it was an example of CBC’s bias against the Conservatives.
More recently, journalist and best selling author Candice Malcolm highlighted the disparity in CBC’s coverage of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative leader Erin O’Toole:
“Just last week the CBC ran an article framing Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole as an anti-vaxxer over his stance on mandatory vaccines for the civil service. O’Toole supports vaccines and encourages all federal employees to get vaccinated, with the small caveat that he would make accommodations for those who fail to get the shot.
This is nearly identical to Trudeau’s position. A federal memo on vaccines similarly discusses alternatives and accommodations for those who do not get vaccinated.
And yet, CBC’s report read like a Liberal news release.
“O’Toole has come out against mandatory vaccinations for federal public servants,” read one headline.
“Trudeau pushed to make mandatory vaccination an election issue Friday calling the Conservative opposition to it ‘irresponsible’ and ‘dangerous,’” read another CBC headline.”
Members of Facebook’s fact-checking program can have a significant influence over the total number of clicks posts generate because their fact-checks can result in a warning label being appended to posts. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, these warning labels cut clicks through to content by 95%.
Award-winning former Toronto Star reporter Richard J. Brennan responded to the news by tweeting: “First off, when did Facebook give a damn about giving its members accurate info? And secondly, CBC should mind its own store.”
Michael Campbell, host of Canada’s top-rated syndicated business radio show MoneyTalks, added: “Now I know I’ve entered the Twilight Zone.”
Israel’s Secret Arsenal: It’s Not So Secret Anymore
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 19, 2021
Few Americans are aware of the fact that no U.S. government official, to include congressmen, can in any way mention or discuss Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which is estimated by some observers to consist of as many as 200 tactical nuclear weapons which can be delivered on target by air, land or sea. The prohibition is spelled out in a Department of Energy “classification bulletin” graded Secret, which was issued on September 6, 2012 and bears the file number WPN-136. The subject line reads “Guidance on Release of information Relating to the Potential for an Israeli Nuclear Capability.” It would be interesting to learn exactly how the text of the memo reads, but in spite of repeated attempts to obtain a copy under the Freedom of Information Act, the entire body of the document is completely blacked out.
What is known in that the memo is basically a gag order, presumably issued by the Barack Obama Administration to block any official from making a comment that might be interpreted to mean that the federal government recognizes that Israel has nuclear weapons. The silence over the Israeli arsenal dates back to an agreement made by President Richard Nixon with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. In its most recent manifestation, President Barack Obama, when asked if he knew of “any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons,” responded “I don’t want to speculate.” He was, of course, lying.
The bulletin’s first known victim was Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear policy specialist James Doyle who in 2013 wrote a sentence suggesting that Israel had a nuclear arsenal. It appeared in an article entitled “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?” which had been security cleared by Los Alamos and appeared in the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. An unknown congressional staffer demanded a review and Doyle had his home computer searched before being fired.
Israel, as is so often the case, gets a free pass on what is for others criminal behavior. Its nuclear program was created by stealing American uranium and weapons technology. Preventing nuclear proliferation was in fact a major objective of the U.S. government when in the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy learned that Tel Aviv was developing a nuclear weapon from a CIA report. He told the Israelis to terminate their program or risk losing American political and economic support but was killed before any steps were taken to end the project.
Israel accelerated its nuclear program after the death of President Kennedy. By 1965, it had obtained the raw material for a bomb consisting of U.S. government owned highly enriched weapons grade uranium obtained from a company in Pennsylvania called NUMEC, which was founded in 1956 and owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro, head of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Zionist Organization of America. NUMEC was a supplier of enriched uranium for government projects but it was also from the start a front for the Israeli nuclear program, with its chief funder David Lowenthal, a leading Zionist, traveling to Israel at least once a month where he would meet with an old friend Meir Amit, who headed Israeli intelligence. NUMEC covered the shipment of enriched uranium to Israel by claiming the metal was “lost,” losses that totaled nearly six hundred pounds, enough to produce dozens of weapons. Such was the importance of the operation that in 1968 NUMEC even received a private incognito visit from a top Israeli spymaster Rafi Eitan who later ran the spy Jonathan Pollard.
Also there was physical evidence relating to the diversion of the uranium. Refined uranium has a technical signature that permit identification of its source. Traces of uranium from NUMEC were identified by Department of Energy inspectors in Israel in 1978. The Central Intelligence Agency has also looked into the diversion of enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant and concluded that it was part of a broader program to obtain the technology and raw materials for a nuclear device for Israel.
With the uranium in hand, the stealing of the advanced technology needed to make a nuclear weapon, which is where Hollywood movie producer Arnon Milchan comes into the story. Milchan was born in Israel but moved to the United States and eventually wound up as the founder-owner of New Regency Films. In a November 25, 2013 interview on Israeli television Milchan admitted that he had spent his many years in Hollywood as an agent for Israeli intelligence, helping obtain embargoed technologies and materials that enabled Israel to develop a nuclear weapon. He worked for Israel’s Bureau of Science and Liaison acquisition division of Mossad, referred to as the LAKAM spy agency.
Milchan admitted in the interview that “I did it for my country and I’m proud of it.” He was not referring to the United States. He also said that “other big Hollywood names were connected to [his] covert affairs.” Among other successes, he obtained through his company Heli Trading 800 krytons, the sophisticated triggers for nuclear weapons. The devices were acquired from the California top secret defense contractor MILCO International. Milchan personally recruited MILCO’s president Richard Kelly Smyth as an agent before turning him over to another Heli Trading employee, future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for handling. Smyth was eventually arrested in 1985 but insofar as is known neither Milchan nor Netanyahu has ever been questioned by the FBI regarding the thefts.
Israel’s nukes are now in the news because of an Op-Ed that surprisingly appeared in the New York Times on August 11th written by Peter Beinart entitled “America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel’s Nukes.” Beinart wrote that “Israel already has nuclear weapons. You’d just never know it from America’s leaders, who have spent the last half-century feigning ignorance. This deceit undercuts America’s supposed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and it distorts the American debate over Iran. It’s time for the Biden administration to tell the truth.”
Beinart points out that the American public can hardly make an informed judgement regarding what should be done in the Middle East if it is uncertain whether Israel is a nuclear power or not, but one issue he does not discuss is the issue of money. IRMEP’s Grant Smith, who has been challenging the secrecy surrounding the Israeli arsenal, recently observed that “The Symington & Glenn provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC §2799aa-1: Nuclear reprocessing transfers, illegal exports for nuclear explosive devices, transfers of nuclear explosive devices, and nuclear detonations) forbid U.S. foreign aid to countries with nuclear weapons programs that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, absent required special procedures… But no member of Congress has taken up this issue — or even mentioned Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.”
Smith is frustrated by the reluctance of progressives in Congress, who have opposed recent additional $735 million in military aid to Israel permitting it to rearm after its assault on the Gazans, to ignore the gag order and raise the issue of the nuclear arsenal. He writes “It seems as though even these members of Congress, as well as the rest of the U.S. government, are abiding by this secret gag order when they could take action which would challenge the administration’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons and possibly stop $3.8 billion in taxpayer money from going to Israel.”
That the Energy Department document exists at all is recognition of the astonishing power of the Israeli Lobby over the U.S. government at all levels, particularly as it is intended to ignore or even negate other legislation passed by congress to combat nuclear proliferation. And the denial of what everyone knows to be true, i.e. that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, appears to all come down to the ability of the United States government to continue to reward a wealthy Israel with billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year. To suggest that the arrangement is nefarious would be to put it mildly, but it is more that that. It is criminal. Israel has been allowed to get away with massive espionage directed against the United States and the theft of material and technology while also since the 1970s being engaged in a conspiracy with the U.S. government that distorts America’s foreign policy, largely done to keep getting the billions of dollars that it is not entitled to receive under existing American law. It is shameful. Beyond that, it might be construed as treason.
Facebook suspends news outlet for reporting on latest Hunter Biden story
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 17, 2021
In the midst of the most recent Hunter Biden scandal, Facebook has removed some posts about the story and temporarily suspended a news outlet for reporting on it.
It seems to be perfectly obvious that Facebook would censor on behalf of the President’s son as they’ve done it before.
Facebook had initially prevented the spread of a bombshell exposé written about Hunter during the 2020 election. It was that exposé that disclosed what happened to Hunter’s previously missing laptop and raised questions about Biden’s business dealings.
Social media platforms began to delete mentions of the story and shut down accounts that reported on it.
However, in this new scandal, Facebook seems to be running to Hunter’s defense again.
Biden was caught on video with an alleged prostitute in a video published by the British newspaper Daily Mail, describing how Russian drug traffickers may be blackmailing him over a stolen laptop (not the one described in the initial New York Post article).
The video then shows Hunter alleging that there are possibly incriminating videos of him “doing crazy fucking sex” on the laptop but showed no nudity.
Facebook took down The Western Journal’s coverage of the controversy from its platform on Thursday. Amidst all the action, The Western Journal was also barred from streaming on the platform for the next 30 days.
Despite being highly edited to hide the identity of the alleged prostitute, the video, according to Facebook, appears to be in violation of Facebook’s “standards on adult sexual exploitation.”
Certain New York Post and Daily Mail stories also appear to have been subject to Facebook restrictions relating to their coverage of the controversy. When some attempted to share those stories in Messenger, they are prompted with an error notice that reads, “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”
From Western Digital :
“Now, if Facebook banned the video in an attempt to protect the woman shown, that argument could be reasonable. After all, by filming a video of her nude and allegedly paying her for sex, it can certainly be argued that Hunter Biden was sexually exploiting her.
However, if that truly was Facebook’s intent, there was no need to restrict The Western Journal’s coverage of the scandal, given that the woman’s identity is unknown and her face and body are blurred out throughout the entire video.”
The persecution of courageous Dr Peter McCullough
By Kathy Gyngell – TCW Defending Freedom – August 12, 2021
IN his post for TCW Defending Freedom yesterday, Neville Hodgkinson drew our attention to possibly the most courageous and clear thinking of the doctors to take on the official Covid narrative. Painstaking and meticulous, Peter McCullough has the clarity and capacity to get the simple heart of the matter.
For those doubling down in the establishment and officialdom who find themselves beset with ever more uncomfortable evidence to accommodate in their commitment to coercive and mandatory vaccination, his truths must be very disconcerting.
This, I have no doubt, is why the only references to him you’ll find in a Google search attempt to vilify or discredit him.
Apparently it is not sufficient to cancel this persistent thorn in the side. Baylor Scott & White, a medical centre and health company with which Dr McCullough was once affiliated, have taken it upon themselves to sue him, ostensibly for his references to his prior affiliation with BSW. It is hard to see the action as motivated other than by an intent to discredit him.
Two of his horrified colleagues have written a detailed and heartfelt letter in support of him and condemning the action of BSW. You can read it here.
Media group Holding The Line is taking a stand against censorship
Brits being ‘coerced and controlled by fear’
By Chris Sweeney | RT | August 11, 2021
The organisation claims its numbers are growing as current and retired journalists join. Their ethos is that only one side of the Covid-19 story is reported and the government isn’t being questioned enough by the mainstream media.
A counterinsurgency is underway in the British media. Holding The Line is a group who bill themselves as ‘Journalists Against Covid Censorship’. They are not anti-vaxxers or Covid-deniers but do feel the mainstream media is only allowing certain themes and tropes to be reported. Most importantly, they are adamant that UK citizens have been manipulated and gaslighted by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
One of HTL’s spokespeople, Sonia Elijah, said to RT.com: “Unfortunately, I feel the UK public have been part of a mass behavioural science experiment because these behavioural scientists know full well the power of fear. You can really control someone’s behaviour through fear.”
I feel fearmongering has really gone on in the media like the government’s Project Fear advertising campaign about if you leave your house people can die, and they did a Look Me In The Eyes campaign. If you look at the early meetings that SAGE did last year in the minutes, they did look to use the media to increase the sense of personal threat, so the media were used as a tool for fearmongering, that’s a fact.”
This fear and control is what Holding The Line wants to rally against.
Elijah said: “We feel there’s only been one official Covid narrative that has been pushed onto the public through the mainstream media. As journalists, our role is to present all the facts, not just select a few.”
Some members of the group are anonymous, for fear of losing their jobs but they are from a cross-section of the industry. The plan is to expand and begin to release their own content online to beat the censors. Elijah, an independent investigative reporter, witnessed the censorship first hand when YouTube removed a video of her interviewing Dr Robert Malone.
She explained: “I think I’m the only UK journalist to have done so as yet, he is a vaccine expert and the inventor of mRNA technology. He’s undergone systematic attacks; his whole profile is being erased online. I posted the interview on YouTube and within three hours it got taken down for violating their policy, there was nothing on it that was to do with any kind of conspiracy theory.
It was very fact driven, he was measured in his responses but because he mentioned people having adverse events from taking the vaccines, that was probably one of the reasons it got taken down. People working in the mainstream media have found a lot of their stories being blocked or censored, or just not getting published, it’s a problem.”
Holding The Line is particularly concerned with mixed messaging. Some attribute this to the changing demands of a global pandemic, but they feel there is also a more sinister reason.
Taking aim at England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, Elijah added: “When the pandemic first broke, he was saying over his 15 years, there has been no evidence of masks presenting any transmission of a virus and then they did a U-turn weeks later and mandated masks, so you’re getting this sort of flip-flopping happening. Journalists need to ask, why is this happening?
I covered the anti-lockdown protests that were hardly covered in the mainstream media in the early days and if they were covered by the BBC, they were covered as anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and they were a small group of a few thousand. When, in fact, I attended one of these protests and there were hundreds of thousands of people there from all different backgrounds.”
Virtually everyone concedes Britain has reacted ineptly to the pandemic, with over 130,000 dead but, according to Elijah, issues around testing go beyond naivety.
She took a look herself at the lateral flow tests that are being used by millions of Britons and made a startling discovery.
“These tests are produced in China by Xiamen Biotime Biotechnology, their original manufacturer,” she explained, “but they have been rebranded by Innova which is a US start-up company that has no background in any medical field and they were started up just around the time the pandemic started. They are wholly owned by Pasaca Capital which is a venture capital group funded by a US/Chinese billionaire.
The UK government has spent£3.2 billion in procurement and buying these tests. The Innova lateral test was then rebranded by the NHS, school children were given these kits and they were branded as NHS but this is the history behind it. They were proven to be highly inaccurate and very unreliable, they actually have false positive and false negative results.”
Due to issues around the tests, in June the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged Americans to stop using them. They advised the population to place “them in the trash” or return them to Innova. Elijah added: “Our equivalent in the UK, the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) ignored what had happened in the US and have continued to extend their emergency authorisation use for these tests. They are saying they have done their assessment and are satisfied, but they’re not publishing their findings, so they’re not being forthcoming. There are so many scandals and the people who have benefitted from these contracts have made billions.”
Pertinently that’s what Elijah thinks is behind a lot of the perceived Covid censorship: money. With many media companies struggling financially, they are clinging even harder to the backers. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s successful tabloid The Sun (once the biggest selling British newspaper) was recently given a value of zero, after Covid-19 contributed to a £200 million loss.
Elijah explained: “You have to look at who funds the mainstream media, the amount of advertising revenue they make, their sponsors, and a lot of them don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. The independent platforms have the freedom to tell the whole story, they are not being restrained whereas in the mainstream media, you have to follow the money.
There is sort of a war on information going on right now, it’s a shame for journalists to be gagged in a way. We need to level the playing field. We are promoting best journalistic practice as a group and we feel there needs to be more room for a balanced debate, that’s what has been sorely missing in this whole Covid world.”
Other themes that Holding The Line say have been omitted from mainstream platforms are the Great Barrington Declaration and the drug Ivermectin as a way to fight Covid-19, which the FDA strongly advises against. It is true many issues haven’t received widespread coverage, but some journalists attribute this to research or facts that don’t merit the spotlight. Different platforms will choose what to run, it’s not feasible to report every possible story but professional balance is essential.
Elijah added: “It’s the way people are being coerced that I think is a bit troubling and there hasn’t been enough questioning behind that. Even the lab leak theory which has been discussed in the mainstream media, six months ago that would never have been discussed. The public are hungry to know what’s really going on.”
Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines.
Vaccine safety evidence
Vaccine Truth | July 20, 2021
We are not “anti-VAXers.” We were vaccinated because we believed we were being told the truth. Now we know better.
Unfortunately, the current gene-based vaccines (all vaccines on the US market today) were rushed to market without proper testing. They are dangerous and appear to have killed over 30,000 previously healthy Americans so far and disabled an equivalent number.
The Phase 3 trials were structured so that the results looked good because they were allowed to exclude unfavorable data (such as Maddie de Garay, a 12-year old girl who participated in the Pfizer trial and who is now permanently paralyzed due to the vaccine). People with a bad first reaction were allowed to drop out which doesn’t reflect the reality of “full vaccination” requirements of workplaces and schools.
We should stop the current gene-based vaccines ASAP. The risk/benefit justification isn’t there for any age group due to the poor safety profile of these vaccines compared with the alternatives.
Based on analysis of VAERS death data for vaccine deaths and CDC death data for COVID deaths, the younger you are, the less sense vaccination makes. If early treatments didn’t work at all, the toxicity of the current vaccines would only make sense for those over 30 (based data to date). However, the vaccines are too toxic and don’t meet the <50 deaths stopping criteria that we’ve used for the past 30 years, so they should never be used because we have better alternatives available today that can achieve the same goals.
We should never be giving vaccines that disable or kill previously healthy people in huge numbers if safer alternatives are available that can achieve all the same objectives.
Why would anyone in America choose to have lipid nanoparticles which deliver a toxic protein into your brain and where the long term effects are unknown, when safer alternatives are available? What parent would choose to experiment on their kids this way when safer and more effective options are available?
It is tragic that schools are requiring students to be vaccinated in order to attend classes. I’ve asked our top universities for the risk-benefit analysis to justify this action and have received nothing. If the vaccines were perfectly safe, no analysis would be needed. But they aren’t.
The rate of severe life-changing side effects appears to be well in excess of 25,000 people (the number reported disabled is comparable to the number dead). The fact that Facebook groups of vaccine victims had 200,000 users suggests that more than 1 in 1,000 are suffering from significant long-term impacts; people with minor temporary reactions have little incentive to seek out and sign up for a vaccine side-effects group.
People who claim “the clinical trials showed no significant side effects so it must be safe” have a tough time explaining how these facebook groups were so large before they were deleted. If you think the vaccines are so safe, show me the severity analysis of the 200,000 people there. These groups don’t appear with the influenza vaccine. You never see neurological effects like this in such high volume with a safe vaccine.
Some have cited the emergence of the Delta variant as changing the math to favor vaccination even if the vaccine is unsafe. But the case fatality rate (CFR) of the Delta variant is only 0.1 percent compared to the CFR of 1.9 percent for the original virus (alpha) according to UK government data. The argument that the lower CFR of delta is due to the higher number of vaccinated people isn’t very credible since the Eta variant has a 2.7 percent CFR.
Early treatments are a more effective and safer option than the current vaccines. We can achieve all of the objectives of the current vaccination program (herd immunity, eradication of the virus, re-opening our economy, ditching of masks) with fewer deaths and near zero serious side effects. In addition, we would have less problem with variants since variants are less likely to be generated if everyone is naturally immune. So why not promote early treatments? Why not give them a try for a month while we hit the pause button on the vaccines? Would that be so bad?
Allowing natural infection will impart broad natural immunity. We should instruct the population how to treat early with early treatment protocols as soon as they believe they are infected. People should have the drugs on-hand so that treatment can be started without delay after speaking with their doctor. This results in superior risk reduction in terms of fewer fatalities and side effects compared to the current vaccines.
There was never a need for masking or social distancing as COVID is very treatable when treated early. Nobody has to die or be hospitalized. We can get to herd immunity quickly this way. The key is to treat the virus early with a proven early treatment cocktail of repurposed drugs, adding novel antivirals if/when available.
Unfortunately, the NIH has unethically suppressed all early treatments in order to push the vaccine narrative. This is clear with the publication of a systematic review of ivermectin, the highest level of evidence possible. Yet the NIH and WHO pretend that it never happened. It isn’t even acknowledged that the systematic review came out. There has never been a peer-reviewed systematic review that was later overturned. This is why they are the top of the evidence pyramid.
Early treatments were never funded. When evidence came in they worked, the NIH ignored it. The corruption at the NIH and FDA should be corrected by Congress. Now.
To prove the point about the unethical suppression of early treatments, I offered $2M to anyone who could show that the NIH got it right. Nobody stepped forward.
Similarly, I offered $1M to anyone who could show that the vaccines are safe. No takers, not even the drug companies.
If a safe sterilizing vaccine can be developed, we should test it adequately for safety before deploying it. We should not cut corners on safety again; with early treatments, there is no need to rush this.
Major medical journals have lost objectivity in publishing papers that go against the “safe” narrative. For example, the NEJM rejected a Letter to the Editor pointing out a flaw in a paper showing vaccines were safe for pregnant women. The Letter showed an alarming statistic. The NEJM refused to reveal their reasoning for the rejection. Three editors quit a journal after a peer-reviewed paper was published that showed that vaccination may cause more harm than good. Those who quit provided no evidence that the paper was in error.
The censorship of legitimate medical information on social networks must end. These networks are the new “public square” and should be regulated so that people are free to express their opinions to anyone who chooses to listen. There should be heavy monetary penalties for suppressing medical information that has the potential to save lives. Social networks should be required to compensate all those people who have been harmed by their actions.
Never again should we deploy a vaccine on the American public without proper testing and without informed consent. Databases such as V-SAFE that track safety data should be made transparent. Am I the only person who thinks that is a problem?
VAERS reporting should be required and the VAERS system should be modernized so that it is easy to use and results in records with consistent field coding. There should be a smaller lag time to get records into the database, all false reports should be 100% enforced as a criminal act, and the safety signal monitoring should be much stronger.
The cost-benefit analysis of the current gene-based vaccines for anyone of any age is at best a wash according to the scientific literature (new paper published June 24, 2021). This peer-reviewed paper looked at the real cost-benefit analysis and concluded that “This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.” As far as I know, this is the most optimistic of all the papers looking at actual death rates of COVID vs. the vaccine. All the other ones are even worse for the vaccine.
Independent analysis by a statistician friend shows a similar effect. Like me, Mathew has no axe to grind here, just trying to get at the truth of the risk/benefit for the current vaccines. His conclusion: “More importantly, I also still disagree with the mass vaccination program. In particular, nearly all lives saved are in the high risk group. While vaccinating those in the low risk group might decrease spread into the high risk group, that’s asking young healthy people to act as human shields.
I also believe that when the vaccine deaths and adverse events are finally tallied and compared to either a ring vaccination strategy or combination ring vaccination and early treatment strategy, the current plan will look quite foolish and possibly even nefarious.”
Since the focus today is on getting kids vaccinated, I ran the numbers in the VAERS database for 20-24 year olds and 25-29 year olds. In both age ranges, the number of deaths caused by the vaccine outnumber the number of deaths saved. The vaccines caused 1.89 deaths per 100,000 (ages 25-29) and 1.74 deaths per 100,000 (ages 20-24).
This means the vaccines are net killing machines since they kill more people than they save (.3 to 1.0 lives per 100K saved according to the most recent CDC presentation). My calculations are in the body of this document and the calculations show no net benefit for any age group based on real-world data from the US and UK.
The comparison is even more extreme if we tell kids to ignore the current CDC advice and use an early treatment program. In that case, we can reduce the death rate by more than two orders of magnitude from COVID, so that the number of lives saved by the vaccine is fewer than 1 in 10M. This means the vaccines need to be less toxic than the influenza vaccine (which has a death rate of 1 in 10M) in order to be considered. They are not even close to that. Not by a country mile.
For older people, the numbers don’t work out either. We looked at the UK data for <50 and >50 and we found that the absolute death rate is very small for <50 group. There was a high relative risk reduction, but the absolute deaths were small. If the vaccine kills more than 1 in 1 million, it’s game over for the vaccine being useful. For age >50, the UK data shows that even if the vaccines killed nobody, it is not beneficial. So when you factor the death rate of the vaccines and early treatment as the other option, the case is extremely lopsided.
In short, because the current vaccines are so dangerous and early treatment is so effective (relative risk reduction of 100 or more with no permanent side effects), there is no reasonable case that can be made for vaccinating any age group.
Although we just looked at deaths in the analysis above, the same can be true for other side effects as well: the range and intensity of side effects from the vaccine dwarf anything seen in natural COVID. It’s even a more stark contrast when early treatment is added to the mix.
Long term, untreated vax patients and untreated COVID patients are virtually identical in terms of symptoms (thanks to Ram Yogendra for that insight). By vaccinating patients, we are essentially giving a portion of those vaccinated long hauler COVID.
The case numbers in the UK (one of the most heavily vaccinated countries) are now climbing. It suggests we should have listened to the arguments of Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the most famous scientists in the vaccine field, which are further clarified in this excellent video by Chris Martenson which points out that there are really only two ways out of the pandemic: a sterilizing vaccine (using the complete virus as the antigen) or allowing infection and treating with early treatment leading to natural immunity.
The Yellow Card system in the UK showed a similar safety signal. Independent analysis of that data by an expert in medical evidence concluded that the vaccines are unsafe for use in humans. It wasn’t a close call. The death rates from the vaccines are far greater than any absolute risk reduction.
This is taken from a very long article. Read the rest here: docs.google.com
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From the Archives
Politicians lie
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Burnham’s UN debut… A masterclass in British disinformation
- Iran flights continue despite US aviation sanctions
- Global Tipping Points Lead the World Into a State of Entropy
- The day-after at the White House: USA and Xi Jinping
- The Geopolitical Balance in the Red Sea: The UAE Being Displaced by New Players
- Iraqi resistance group vows to stage airport sit-ins over Iran aerial blockade
- Turkish parliament to review Saudi-Pakistan defense pact next month
- DEATH SPIKES & RISING CANCER IN OUR YOUTH EXPLAINED
- Iran offers Trump deal before US election
- Merz regime wants ‘secret police’ – opposition
- If Americans Knew
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
