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Uruguay Halts COVID-19 Vaccine for Kids Under 13, Judge Demands Officials Turn Over Pfizer Contracts

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | July 8, 2022

Uruguay suspended COVID-19 vaccines for children under 13 after a judge on Thursday issued an injunction halting vaccinations in that age group until government officials turn over its contracts with Pfizer.

Uruguayan government officials and Pfizer were ordered on Wednesday to appear in court after judge Alejandro Recarey gave them 48 hours to present detailed information on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine while the court considered an injunction request to halt COVID-19 vaccinations for children 5 and older.

The government said a confidentiality clause in the contract prevents it from producing the documents, The Washington Post reported.

According to ABC News, the judge received answers to 18 questions about the safety and chemical composition of COVID-19 vaccines, signed by Health Minister Daniel Salinas, but did not turn over the contracts.

It is unknown whether the answers provided by government officials adequately addressed the questions posed by the judge, who ultimately ordered an injunction based on what was provided.

Salinas, after the court’s ruling, strongly defended the government’s vaccination plan and criticized the judge for questioning the safety of vaccines.

Alvaro Delgado, the secretary of the presidency, said the halt is a threat to public health.

“We’re convinced that it’s crazy to suspend voluntary vaccination because it has a strong scientific backing,” Delgado said at a news conference.

Vaccinations for those older than 13 will continue, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The government plans to appeal the decision, according to ABC News.

As The Defender reported Wednesday, judge Recarey of the Administrative Litigation Tribunal used his inquisitorial powers to demand the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Health, State Health Services Administration and the President’s Office submit all information regarding the contracts for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines, including contractual information related to any clauses of civil indemnity or criminal impunity of the suppliers in the event of adverse effects.

The judge is seeking, among other things, to know whether there are clauses in the contracts that promised pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer civil and criminal immunity for adverse effects caused by their vaccines.

Judge Recarey posed a series of questions to government officials and Pfizer regarding the chemical composition, efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, and required Pfizer to state whether it has “admitted, in any area, internal or external to it and its partners, the verification of adverse effects” of its COVID-19 vaccines in children.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

July 8, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ontario stops showing COVID by vaccine status

By Mike Campbel | The Counter Signal | July 8, 2022

After months of off-brand COVID stats, Ontario’s official reporting database has stopped showing cases and hospitalizations based on vaccine status.

Now, why would they do that?

Well, the reason given is to prevent false impressions that the vaccine isn’t working:

“This data set reported the total number of patients in hospital by vaccination status without taking into consideration the number of people in Ontario who are vaccinated overall. Comparing groups using count data (such as the number of patients) is appropriate when the groups being compared are about the same size (i.e. around mid-2021). However, now that approximately 87% of eligible Ontarians are fully vaccinated (compared to 3% partially vaccinated and 10% unvaccinated) This comparison is no longer appropriate and may be misleading.”

In other words, they’re hiding behind the “base rate fallacy,” which occurs when categories with different population sizes are compared. For example, if there are 10x as many Americans as Canadians, comparing deaths needs to be done per 100,000 people to show a rate rather than the base numbers, wherein American death totals will be higher because of their larger population alone.

However, this reason for pulling the data appears to be a cop-out and is misleading.

At The Counter Signal, we’ve reported that the rates themselves have become unfavourable and disproportional for the vaccinated categories.

In Ontario, by April 5, those who had not received two doses of the COVID vaccine have a COVID death rate of 0.02 per capita, as did the fully vaccinated. However, those who had received booster shots had a COVID death rate of 0.03 per capita.

Additionally, those with a booster dose were also more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than any other group. Those with booster doses had 22.35 cases per capita, fully vaccinated had 15.47 cases per capita, and partially vaccinated or unvaccinated had 12.75 cases per capita.

As for Canada more broadly, during the week of April 10-17, 222 fully vaccinated individuals died from COVID compared to only one unvaccinated person (among the eligible population). 99% of COVID deaths were in vaccinated persons that week, a higher percentage than the 85-90% of eligible Canadians who’d been fully vaccinated.

That’s beyond base rate fallacy.

Moreover, between May 8 to 22 in Canada, the vaccinated with at least one booster population accounted for 82 per cent of new COVID deaths — despite making up only 48.6 per cent of the population.

The following two weeks were similar.

Between May 22 and June 5, the unvaccinated population in Canada (at 5+ years old) made up 10.7% of the eligible population in Canada yet only accounted for 8% of COVID deaths.

It appears we’ve gone from trusting the science to hiding it.

July 8, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Anthony Fauci on day 26 of his Paxlovid- and vaccine-enhanced Corona experience

Says that he is “Close to if not at 100% the way I was before infection”

eugyppius – July 8, 2022

Despite not only following, but embodying, The Science, global vaccinator-in-chief Anthony Fauci caught Corona while attending his high school reunion on 11 June. While most Omicron infections resolve within a week, the quadruple-vaccinated NIAID director and blight upon human civilisation suffered Paxlovid rebound at the end of June and is now approaching a month of infection.

Yesterday, he ended his radio silence to give some press interviews:

I believe I’m about close to if not at 100% the way I was before infection. So I’m really fortunate that I’ve done very well. And I keep telling people when they ask me that, is that I was vaccinated, and doubly boosted, and I believe if I did not have that degree of background protection I would’ve had a much more serious course. My course was relatively light minor symptoms, and right now I’m completely without symptoms and I feel very good, very energetic.

Nonzero chance he rebounds again.

July 8, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Is a Colonoscopy Worth the Risk?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 16, 2019

Knowing your potential risk for developing cancer can help you weigh the risks against the benefits of different tests for your situation. According to the American Cancer Society,1 more than 16.9 million people in the U.S. have a history of cancer. At least 1.9 million new cases will be diagnosed in 2022, which does not include a diagnosis of carcinoma in situ (noninvasive cancer).

The society estimates 609,360 people will die from cancer in 2022, which is about 1,670 deaths per day. The four most common types include lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer. One of the screening tests commonly prescribed to rule out colorectal cancer is a colonoscopy.

Colorectal cancer can start in the colon or in the rectum but the two types are grouped together since they have many of the same characteristics.2 The society estimates that in 2022 there will be 106,180 new cases of colon cancer diagnosed and 44,850 new cases of rectal cancer. Although it remains the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and women, the rate has been dropping for several decades.3

According to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance,4 the five-year survival rate has been rising and there are more than 1 million colorectal cancer survivors alive in the U.S. Knowing your risk factors and making lifestyle changes to prevent the development of colorectal cancer are the basis of the most recently published Rapid Recommendation of The BMJ initiative.5

In Many Cases Routine Colonoscopies Are Unnecessary

The 2019 practice guidelines published in The BMJ 6 recommend physicians use a tool to estimate an individual’s potential risk for developing colorectal cancer in the next 15 years. The team recommends that only those who have a risk of 3% or greater should undergo screening tests.

Current guidelines recommend screening for everyone over the age of 50, without regard to their individual risk. At the age of 50, this is typically less than 3%.7 The international panel reviewed scientific evidence and research data to evaluate the risks versus the benefits of colonoscopies.

They found their recommendations could accurately be applied to healthy people from 50 to 79 years who expected to live another 15 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends colorectal cancer screening for those over 50.8

Using data from across the U.S., they found the number who were up to date with their screening went up 1.4% from 2016 to 2018, representing an additional 3.5 million people.

In addition to asking if screening made a difference in health outcomes, The BMJ initiative team also attempted to differentiate the type of testing best used to screen for colorectal cancer.9 They recommended that those with a 3% risk or greater over the following 15 years could choose from one of four screening options.

The first was a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) done every year, or every two years depending upon their risk factors. Patients may also choose a single sigmoidoscopy or, the weakest recommendation from the team, a single colonoscopy.

Possibility of Cancer Compared to Screening Hazards

From their examination of the evidence, the team believed a yearly FIT, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy could reduce the incidence of cancer while a FIT every two years may not have an effect on incidence over 15 years. They wrote:

“Based on benefits, harms, and burdens of screening, the panel inferred that most informed individuals with a 15-year risk of colorectal cancer of 3% or higher are likely to choose screening, and most individuals with a risk of below 3% are likely to decline screening. Given varying values and preferences, optimal care will require shared decision making.”

The team determined that the risks associated with colorectal cancer screening outweighed the benefits in many cases. For instance, the risk of death from a colonoscopy from one source was 1 in 16,318 procedures evaluated.10 In the same analysis, the researchers also found 82 suffered serious complications.

Colonoscopies Are Not Risk Free

Although a colonoscopy is supposed to help find early tumor growth, one study reported a 17% rate of missed diagnosis.11 Other risks associated with a colonoscopy include worsening stool patterns and contributing to the growth of colorectal polyps or tumors.

Perforation of the colon during the exam has an incidence of 0.2% to 5% and is widely recognized as a serious complication associated with a high morbidity and mortality rate.12 The risk of perforation rises with the age of the patient and the presence of two or more other health conditions. One study showed 51.9 people per 1,000 whose colons were perforated died within the first 14 days.13

Dysbiosis may occur after using harsh laxatives to prepare for a colonoscopy. A study published in Cell14 suggested even a short-term course of laxative use could trigger an immune response. Research on an animal model15 found treatment eliminated one family of beneficial gut bacteria and allowed another to flourish. Even two weeks after completing the laxatives the bacteria showed reduced diversity.

Many experts agree you should opt for the lightest level of sedation possible, or none at all, as full anesthesia increases risks. Those who have sleep apnea, are obese, have high blood pressure or diabetes are at increased risk from the anesthesia.16 Across the U.S. 34.4% of those undergoing a colonoscopy used anesthesia.17

The use of anesthesia was associated with a 13% increased risk of experiencing complications within 30 days of the procedure and specifically associated with an increased risk of perforations of the colon and/or a stroke. The risk of complications varied by area, with those in the Northeast reporting an increase of any complication of 12%, but among those performed in the West this increased to 60%.

Researchers who conducted one study found an increased risk of aspiration pneumonia.18 Another19 sought to determine if the procedure could be successfully completed without any sedation. Patients were given the option of undergoing a colonoscopy without premedication and then evaluated immediately following the procedure, two and five days later.

The researchers asked about the severity of pain and willingness to consider the procedure again without sedation. When questioned, only 5% experienced no pain; 41% had mild pain; 34% reported moderate pain and 20% said they experienced severe pain. However, despite the level of pain experienced, 73% were willing to repeat it without sedation and only 18% said they would request sedation the next time.

Equipment Contamination Another Risk of Colonoscopies

A real risk of undergoing an endoscopy of any nature is chance of improper sterilization of the flexible scope. David Lewis, Ph.D., and I discuss this in the short video above. One issue is the inability to thoroughly clean the inside of the scope.

Lewis describes a problem that he states is commonly experienced by physicians. During the examination the physician may be unable to see through the scope and is unsuccessful in the attempt to flush it using the air/water channel as it is clogged with human tissue from a past exam.20 The scope must be retracted and another one used.

Since endoscopes have sensitive equipment attached, they cannot be heat sterilized. Unfortunately, manufacturers have not been made to produce a scope with the ability to be heat sterilized. As Lewis points out:21 “We can put a Rover on Mars, surely we can build a flexible endoscope that we can put in an autoclave.”

These expensive tools are not disposable but require sterilization between each patient. Lewis reports that up to 80% of hospitals are sterilizing the flexible endoscopes with glutaraldehyde (Cidex). On testing, he finds this has complicated the process as it does not dissolve tissue in the endoscope but rather preserves it.

When sharp biopsy tools are run through the tube, patient material from past testing is scraped off and potentially carried into your body. This is why it’s important to find a clinic or hospital that uses peracetic acid to thoroughly sterilize the equipment by dissolving proteins found in the flexible endoscopes. Before scheduling any endoscopic examination call to ask how the equipment is sterilized between patients.

Tailor Lifestyle Choices to Reduce the Risk of Colon Cancer

Like many other types of cancer, colorectal cancer is often preventable. Research suggests only 5% to 10% of all cancer cases are due to genetic defects, while the rest are linked to environmental and lifestyle factors.22 The Mayo Clinic writes that one-third of the most diagnosed cancers in the U.S. could be prevented through diet and nutrition alone, i.e., with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.23

The extent that diet contributes to cancer death varies by the type of cancer, which researchers find is associated by as much as 70% in the case of colorectal cancer.24 For example, long-term exposure to chlorinated drinking water can increase the risk of leukemia, colorectal cancer and bladder cancer.

There are several strategies you can use to lower your risk of developing this potentially deadly disease as it is impacted by your diet, vitamin D levels, exercise and alcohol intake.

Sources and References

July 8, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Stop the War on Doctors

My Rather Public Reply To The Threat Made Against Me By The American Board Of Internal Medicine

By Pierre Kory | July 2, 2022

Anyone in America who deviates from the group-think enforced by public health bureaucrats runs the risk of cancellation. Politicians, parents, comedians, teachers – now they’re even coming for the doctors.

As a lung and ICU specialist, I have practiced medicine for 14 years and successfully treated more than 450 patients during the pandemic. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, I was studying and implementing cutting-edge methods to treat critically ill patients. I’m the Senior Editor of a best-selling textbook in my field, now in its second edition, which has been translated into seven languages.

For my efforts, I now find myself on the receiving end of “disciplinary sanctions” from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), who sent me a letter threatening “suspension or revocation of board certification.”

The “sin” threatening to end my medical career was my unwillingness to go along with Fauci’s monolithic vaccines-above-all-else strategy. The failure of this approach is plain to see, and anyone with an ounce of curiosity knows there are many methods of treating the virus.

Ivermectin is one of them. This cheap, readily available generic medicine is approved by the FDA for certain uses in humans – but not for Covid-19, despite 85 controlled trials from around the world demonstrating its effectiveness. In Brazil, the largest study to date found a reduction in Covid mortality rate of 70%. In India, the second most populated country in the world, the drug has been credited with near eradication of the disease. Studies attempting to discredit ivermectin have been debunked again and again.

Other trials, such as the recent TOGETHER trial, are designed to fail from the start to drive a desired narrative. In the National Institutes of Health’s ACTIV-6, despite starting the majority of patients on treatment after five days of Covid-19 symptoms at a lower than recommended dose, they found a statistically significant reduction in the time to recovery, particularly among the most severely ill. Unsurprisingly, major newspapers reported that the study showed ivermectin was ineffective.

Despite ivermectin’s proven effectiveness, in the opinion of the ABIM, advocating for its usage is a form of “disinformation” and carries the penalty of losing one’s medical license and livelihood.

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve maintained an open mind, analyzed what works for patients, discussed strategies with fellow doctors, and conducted my own extensive research. When new data arose that changed my understanding, I admitted as much and changed course—like with the vaccines. If only the powers that be at the ABIM and our government could say the same.

Consider the evolution of accepted facts about Covid-19 safety measures from Fauci and his ilk. Despite government mandates, neither lockdowns nor cloth masks prevent transmission. They never have. It turns out former Surgeon General Jerome Adams had it right when he tweeted in March 2020 that masks are, “NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus” – a comment for which he was pilloried. We are only beginning to learn the impact of the societal costs of these early preventative measures, a price our children who were kept home from school will be paying for years.

Second, there is no evidence the vaccines stop Covid-19, despite the constant lecturing from the Biden Administration and the mainstream media. In the United States and globally, cases continue to rise and fall without any correlation to the pace or percentage of population vaccinated. This is not what we were promised. In 2021, Fauci said vaccinated people were “dead ends” for the virus, and  President Biden declared, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Today, approximately 110,000 cases are announced daily in America, where more than two thirds of the population is fully vaccinated.

There is a backlash brewing in America right now, and it goes beyond inflation rates and gas prices. People are tired of arrogant public officials and compromised institutions who believe they have all the answers but constantly get it wrong and make no apologies as they steamroll those who don’t support the current narrative. The ABIM’s sudden (and suspiciously well-funded) persecution of doctors who stray from the party line is only the latest example.

Doctors on the ABIM’s board and across the country need to stand up against this witch hunt. It’s demeaning to honest doctors and dangerous to the patients we’ve dedicated our careers to serving.

Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.

July 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The dangers of gender-affirmative care

American doctors are unnecessarily harming children

By Eliza Mondegreen | UnHerd | July 5, 2022

The Biden administration recently announced a plan to ban “conversion therapy” and dismantle barriers to “gender-affirming care” for transgender-identifying children and adolescents. A few days later, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal introduced the  “Transgender Bill of Rights” on Capitol Hill which sought to legislate what the Biden Administration proposed to impose by executive order.

On this issue, the Democratic Party assumes the mantle of righteousness. Who could oppose “life-saving” “gender-affirming care”? Who supports “conversion therapy”, which the Biden administration described as “a discredited and dangerous practice that seeks to suppress or change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQI+ people”?

The reality diverges sharply from the loaded language the Biden Administration deploys, lifting terms directly from the most radical trans activists occupying positions at the outermost extreme of an ongoing debate between different factions of gender clinicians.

The dispute over how best to treat gender-questioning children that the Biden Administration seeks to resolve by enshrining “gender-affirming care” and stigmatising “conversion therapy” boils down to whether or not clinicians regard the children in their care as exceptions to everything we know about child development, human biology, sexual orientation, and more. Attending closely to the language of the activists with whom the Biden Administration has sided provides a masterclass in how to manipulate language to normalise risky and invasive medical intervention on a class of people — children — who are widely understood to be unable to provide consent in other contexts.

For exploratory providers, a child’s transgender identification is the beginning of a clinical inquiry that will travel through the individual patient’s biography, their social context, and the templates the culture at large offers that young patients use to make sense of suffering. Nothing magical or transformative happens when a patient experiences gender dysphoria or expresses a transgender identity. Children and adolescents remain children and adolescents. Clinical practice does not overthrow itself when a young patient changes her pronouns.

For affirmative clinicians, on the other hand, the declaration of a transgender identity and the desire for a particular gender presentation suffice. That’s what affirmation means: no further inquiry required. A transfer of loyalty takes place when affirmative clinicians are confronted with “trans” children and adolescents: clinicians’ sense of responsibility shifts from the patient in front of them to the patient’s transgender “alter”. Doctor and patient then collude to slice and drug the patient’s body into compliance with the new identity regime.

Across the Atlantic, countries such as Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom are stepping back and shifting away from hormones and surgeries and toward exploratory psychotherapy as evidence of harm mounts. It’s remarkable that the United States government has chosen this moment to double down, without reference to serious inquiries underway at home and abroad.

Rather than bending the arc of history toward justice, the Biden administration has put the full force of the federal government behind a treatment model that amounts to little more than an unregulated medical experiment on vulnerable children and adolescents. Don’t let the language of civil rights fool you.

To understand gender affirmation and the people who push it, we need to take a closer look at their belief in the utterly exceptional “transgender” child. What do affirmative clinicians believe about such a patient, who arrives in their office with a label firmly affixed? Affirmative care starts not with a question or a clinical assessment but with a moral imperative: validate the patient’s transgender identity.

Presented with a “transgender” patient, what else matters? Does a patient’s age or developmental stage matter? What about his or her sex or sexual orientation? What parts of a patient’s life story — or medical history — stand out?

Gender clinicians such as Johanna Olson-Kennedy prefer to talk about gender-questioning three-year-olds as “people”. And they are people. But when we talk about three-year-olds as “people”, rather than toddlers, important information gets lost, with consequences. When we talk about “people”, we think adults. We think autonomy. When we talk about “toddlers,” we think: tiny humans who need constant care and guidance, who cannot be trusted to brush their teeth or cross an empty street, much less start down a medical pathway.

That’s the reason Olson-Kennedy talks about “people” when she’s referring to toddlers. The ideas that underpin gender-affirming care lose their moral force when translated from “people know who they are” to “toddlers know who they are”.

What about sex and sexual orientation? As recently as the mid-2000s, medical providers understood cross-sex identification in childhood and adolescence to be a normal stage of homosexual development, resolving in the majority of cases as the child moved through adolescence and became comfortable with his or her sexual development and sexual orientation. Long before the concept of gender identity took root, the idea of being “born in the wrong body” resonated with many young gays and lesbians — not to mention medical providers, who viewed homosexuals as “inverts” in need of psychological or surgical “correction”.

Affirmative providers overlook, downplay, or outright deny the overrepresentation of same-sex attracted youth among youth seeking transition. But clinicians who rate the “gender presentation” of “transgender” preschoolers on a scale from stereotypical girl (fitted, sparkly, frilly) to stereotypical boy (baggy, sporty) inevitably sweep up children whose rejection of gender stereotypes is rooted in their same-sex orientation. Affirmative providers such as Diane Ehrensaft argue that “prototransgender youth use [same-sex] sexual identity as a stepping-stone toward their transgender true gender self”, a rhetorical move that overwrites the connection between homosexual development and gender dysphoria, and equates accepting your same-sex sexual orientation with pursuing irreversible medical interventions.

Much like their views on same-sex attraction as a “stepping stone” toward a young person’s “transgender true gender self”, affirmative providers treat just about any mental health comorbidities as secondary to gender dysphoria. Suicide attempts, psychotic episodes, anorexia nervosa, depression, anxiety, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, experiences of sexual abuse and trauma, and substance abuse aren’t taken as reasons to question or delay transition but instead are treated as evidence for the need to accelerate transition.

In order to grease the skids, affirmative providers have invented or adapted a wide range of new medical concepts, all of which operate to obscure what they do from the public and from providers themselves,  scrambling the complex clinical presentations they need to parse — and manipulating patients, parents, and policymakers. These concepts include “wrong puberty”, “sex assigned at birth”, “reconstructive surgeries”,  and “internalised transphobia”.

Reconceptualising patients as “wrongly sexed” (thus in need of reconstructive relief) and giving allegiance over to the patient’s transgender “alter” over the physical patient and her social and medical history skew clinical assessments and lower clinicians’ barriers to providing experimental medical interventions. Girls become “boys”, not in reality, but in the way gender clinicians talk about reality. Elective double mastectomies on girls become “reconstructive chest surgery” on “boys”. Exploratory therapy to understand where distress over sex and gender originates becomes “conversion therapy,” something no ethical clinician would practice. Drastic, life-altering medical interventions — such as “pausing” puberty and all the cognitive, physical, and emotional development that goes along with it — become conceptualised as non-interventions on the one hand, “life-saving” on the other. In any case, language becomes detached from reality, skewing risk analysis.

This language of determined identities and autonomous “people” speak to the way affirmative clinicians see their role: deferring to patient self-identification and facilitating hormonal and surgical interventions to bring patients’ bodies in line with how they want to “wear their gender”, Meanwhile, activists inside the medical profession push for policy changes to lower the age at which minors can consent to transition — a priority of the forthcoming guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — and remove requirements for parental assent. California legislators are on the verge of passing a bill that would equate denial of “gender-affirming care” with child abuse, a move advocates say would turn California into a “sanctuary state” for trans-identifying children.

Ask for stronger evidence or stricter safeguarding measures and you’ll get an earful about suicide and self harm: affirmation is a “matter of life and death.” (Never mind that researchers had to cook bad survey data at extremely high temperatures in order to make such dire claims.)

Affirmative clinicians frequently compare gender dysphoria to endocrine conditions such as diabetes. Take Johanna Olson-Kennedy, dismissing the need to explore the causes of a young person’s distress over gender: “I don’t send someone to a therapist when I’m going to start them on insulin”. Never mind that medical providers can test for diabetes (and monitor whether the treatment is working), while relying on patient testimony to initiate medical transition. Never mind that untreated diabetes kills. Analogies to cancer also abound, especially when clinicians need to justify serious risks like permanent loss of fertility and the very real possibility that patients will lead shorter, sicker lives after medical transition. Ask clinicians and they’ll tell you that gender dysphoria, like cancer, is a life-threatening condition. In the absence of supporting evidence, this is emotional extortion, nothing more.

Affirmative clinicians evade the possibility of regret and detransition. They prefer to talk about “gender fluidity” or “gender journeys”— “journeys” that may include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and elective double mastectomies. Journeys that could not and should not have been avoided, in other words.

Affirmative providers also cleave to a narrow set of explanations about why patients experience regret and detransition, pinning regret and detransition on lack of social support for the patient’s transgender identification. By placing the blame on factors outside the medical system, providers avoid the suggestion that regret and detransition may be the result of inadequate evaluation or inappropriate medical interventions. This interpretation also keeps patients firmly within the ideological framework that underlies affirmative care. Under this framework, a patient remains “really transgender”, even if external factors conspire to keep the patient from living out that identity. Even if the patient disavows their transgender identity entirely.

***

If affirmative providers’ belief in the exceptional “transgender” child bears out, we can make a strong case for affirmation. But if this belief is merely an article of faith, nothing more, clinicians risk doing serious harm to their patients under the banner of affirmation. In other words, if gender-dysphoric children and adolescents are truly exceptions to everything we know about identity formation, child and adolescent development, how humans make sense of distress and their susceptibility to social influence, the role of sexual orientation in gender dysphoria, and more, then affirmation may be the right approach.

But what if supporters of gender-affirming care are wrong?

What if children who identify as transgender are just that: children? What if they hurt, like other children? What if they’re trying to figure themselves out and learn how to navigate the strange world they live in, like other children?

What’s changed are the ideas and expectations that we’ve raised children on and the way we’ve turned them loose in an online world whose terrain no one has mapped. Many of these children have grown up with extended experiences of online disembodiment. They may not be free to run around outside with their friends but they’re free to roam the darkest corners of the Internet. Who knows what strangers and strange ideas they encounter there.

These children have grown up hearing a very new and confusing set of fairy tales about gendered souls that can end up in the ‘wrong bodies’. Adults who should know better — adults who do know better — have made these children impossible promises.

Children who identify as trans aren’t sages. They aren’t sacred. They haven’t been endowed with wisdom beyond their years. It’s not fair to treat them as exceptions to the safeguards we place around children, so that when they grow up and change their minds and ask why we let them do this, we say: You wanted it. You asked for it. You were so sure. What else could we have done?

There’s a way in which everything that touches trans must be exceptional — the children, the stakes, the feelings, the possibility of knowing anything for sure — because if these kids aren’t exceptional, then we threw everything we knew out the window. We didn’t ‘help’ exceptional children but harmed ordinary ones, struggling with ordinary challenges of development, sexual orientation, identity, meaning, and direction.

July 7, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

LOCKDOWN’S LASTING EFFECTS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | July 5, 2022

As we move past the COVID era, the devastating effects of lockdowns are becoming apparent, from the current mental health crisis, to substance abuse spikes and developmental delays in infants.

July 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Every third Dutch farm to be closed down or expropriated!

Free West Media | July 6, 2022

CO 2 hysteria was so yesterday. In the Netherlands there’s now a nitrogen alarm. Ironically, at a time when the specter of food shortages and hunger is looming, the “Green Deal” of the all-powerful, misanthropic EU has prompted Commissioner Frans Timmermans to demand that ten percent of agricultural land be set aside across Europe.

In order to help this madness prevail, a Dutch “nitrogen problem” has been invented. On this basis, they want to force the livestock farmers – who are named as the main culprits – to give up their businesses. The Dutch “Minister for the Environment and Nitrogen”, Christianne van der Wal, announced that 30 percent of livestock farmers would have to give up their farms. Those affected now have the choice to give up their farms voluntarily and leave, or to pledge never to practice their profession again – only then would they be compensated. Those who do not comply face expropriation by the state. The aim is to reduce nitrogen emissions by up to 95 percent by 2030.

The Netherlands is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of food, exceeded only by the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and China, according to World Bank statistics.

So for at least a third of farmers it is a matter of survival. No wonder, then, that the protest is huge. For weeks, the angry farmers have been blocking roads and marching in front of government buildings to make their displeasure visible. Among other things, the access roads to some supermarkets were blocked. It was also announced that the access roads to the international airport in Amsterdam would be closed.

A few days ago farmers broke through a police barrier with their tractors and sprayed the minister’s house with liquid manure – symbolically the right thing to do because nitrogen is a building block for biological life on earth, the most abundant element in the atmosphere. It needs carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, lightning and bacteria, to provide “reactive” nitrogen. Fertilizer is just the workaround. Unbelievably, the Rutte government is targeting the manure people!

The mainstream media tried to sweep the issue under the carpet as tens of thousands of farmers took to the streets for days to demonstrate against EU regulations and government plans that would ruin Dutch agriculture. The police announced tougher action against the demonstrators, which, however, will probably only result in further escalation.

In Stroe alone, 30,000 farmers from all over the Netherlands came together to demonstrate against the government’s plans. In concrete terms, these plans stipulate that nitrogen emissions must be greatly reduced following a ruling by the highest court. In natural areas, the value is to be reduced by 12 to 95 percent, depending on the area category. According to government figures, this could mean the end for about a third of Dutch livestock farms, but it is much higher, farmers say.

The police meanwhile speak of a “threatening and unacceptable situation”. According to polls, about 45 percent of the Dutch population back the protests. In October, it was still 38 percent.

Shooting at protesters

The police fired shots at a farmers’ protest in Heerenveen on Tuesday evening. According to Facebook group Verzet Friesland, 16-year-old Jouke was shot at by police as he drove off with his tractor.

“The media are shouting that he drove into them, but it is very clear on camera that that was not the case. He just wanted to drive home.” Police opened fired on Jouke. Fortunately he was not injured, but the bullet missed him by two centimetres.

“The photos that are circulating show that the bullet(s) hit the cab of the tractor and missed Jouke by a hair. There was no shooting at tyres or in the air. It is by sheer luck that the police and the ministry responsible do not have a fatality on their conscience,” said lawyer Sietske Bergsma. Dozens of farmers tell the same story of police brutality.

Dutch anti-globalists are praying that this protest be the straw that break the Rutte camel’s back.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?’ Asks Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Member

By Susan C. Olmstead | The Defender | July 5, 2022

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to extend Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old, writing that the decision was motivated by politics and pressure rather than science.

In her WSJ opinion piece — “Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?” — Allysia Finley wrote:

“The FDA standard for approving vaccines in otherwise healthy people, especially children, is supposed to be higher than for drugs that treat the sick.

“But the FDA conspicuously lowered its standards to approve COVID vaccines for toddlers. Why?”

Finley started her piece with a quote from President Biden, which praised the FDA’s recommendation: “This is a very historic milestone. The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.”

She responded, writing, “In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective.”

She continued:

“The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency.

“The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation.”

“Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach,” she wrote, listing many reasons for caution in vaccinating young children against COVID-19, including:

  • Children are at low risk of dying from COVID-19: Only 209 kids between 6 months and 4 years old have died from COVID-19 — about 0.02% of all virus deaths in the U.S. About half as many toddlers were hospitalized with COVID-19 between October 2020 and September 2021 as were hospitalized with the flu during the previous winter.
  • The two children in Pfizer’s trial who got sickest with COVID-19 also tested positive for other viruses. It’s possible that many hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19 this winter were instigated or exacerbated by other viruses.
  • The FDA authorized vaccines for toddlers based on a comparison of the antibodies they generated to the original Wuhan variant with those in young adults who had received two doses. But two doses offer little if any protection against Omicron infection in adults, and even protection against hospitalization is only around 40% to 60%.
  • Vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 than those who received a placebo. Most children who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated.

“FDA granted the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for toddlers an emergency-use authorization allowing the agency to expedite access for products that ‘prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions,’” wrote Finley.

“While adult COVID vaccines clearly met this standard in late 2020, the toddler vaccines don’t.”

As to why the FDA “rushed” and “bent its standards,” Finley suggested, “perhaps [the FDA] felt pressure from the White House as well as anxious parents.”

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha repeatedly told parents that he expected vaccines for toddlers would be available in June, she wrote.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Vaxsplainers

German state media “debunks” eugyppius

eugyppius – July 6, 2022

I’m happy to report that my remarks on lower case rates in lesser-vaccinated East Germany, after being recycled by BILD, are now the subject of a long state media debunking in Tagesschau.

Why Are Case Rates Lower in the East? ask “science” reporter Anna Behrend and official state media “fact-finder” Pascal Siggelkow.

The nationwide seven-day incidence in Germany has been on the rise again for several weeks now. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has already spoken of a summer Corona wave. But a look at the developments reveals that there are huge differences between the federal states:

While the incidences in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have already passed the threshold of 900, the numbers in Thuringia and Saxony are still under 400. In general, it’s remarkable that all the East German states – with the exception of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – are significantly below the national average incidence of of 687.7. And this is despite the fact that Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia have some of the poorest vaccination rates. In conspiracy-theory circles, people are already fantasising about “negative efficacy”, especially with regard to booster vaccinations, saying that the figures amount to proof that the vaccines are ineffective. But is there really a causal connection between the vaccination rate and the incidence?

Before they get into that, Siggelkow and Behrend light the incense and cycle through the familiar vaccinator nostrums. “Vaccination protects against severe outcomes and death,” even though the rise of Omicron has led to a great many “breakthrough infections.” Mysterious “studies,” which are never further characterised, are said to show “that vaccinated people … are slightly less contagious,” although they have to concede that “there isn’t enough data to conclude this decisively.”

Then, when they’re reasonably sure most people have stopped reading, comes an uncomfortable admission. Case incidences, the cornerstone of Tagesschau Corona reporting since 2020, are of, uh, “limited significance”:

If the vaccination rate … is not the decisive factor … how is it that the number of new infections in the East is comparatively low right now? First of all, it must be said that the current infection figures are only of limited significance. “One must always also consider that incidences are calculated on the basis of reported laboratory results,” says [virologist Johannes] Knobloch. As before, only positive PCR tests count in the RKI statistics. Willingness to be tested and the accessibility of PCR tests therefore have a very large influence on the measured incidence. … “The number of unreported cases is probably higher than in all previous phases of the pandemic.”

According to experts, the incidence continues to indicate whether the wave of infection is rising or falling. Caution is advised, however, when making regional comparisons, as the testing strategies and also the number of tests differ greatly across states. Fewer tests mean that fewer infections are detected. A high proportion of positive tests … indicates a high number of unreported cases …

Ah, so they just have super high positivity rates in the East then? That’s the explanation?

Ha no:

But it’s not the case that Eastern states have uniquely high positive rates compared to the others. So different testing patterns alone cannot explain the current low incidence there either.

It wasn’t that long ago that all manner of respectable journalists, especially those working for Pravda operations like Tagesschau, wrote long think pieces on the “global menace” of “vaccine scepticism,” complete with histrionics about the lower vaccination rates in Eastern Europe causing “much higher infection figures.” Lazy Googling yields many typical items, such as this piece from MDR in November, lamenting that the “incidence among unvaccinated in Sachsen-Anhalt is significantly higher than among the vaccinated.” This at a time when the vaccinated were exempt from most testing, while many unvaccinated had to submit to daily antigen tests before they could even go to work.

Now that these games no longer favour the vaccinated, though, we’re allowed to wonder about things like positivity rates. These certainly matter, but – unbeknownst to our crack fact-checking team – they’ve become totally meaningless in the era of lateral flow testing, as a plurality of PCR tests in Germany are conducted to confirm a positive antigen result, and nobody has any idea what the true rate of testing might be.

Frustrated on this front, Siggelkow and Behrend look for other signs that infections might really be higher in the East, even though the official incidence is lower there. More and more, you have the feeling of a desperate grasping after straws:

If the true incidence were in fact higher, you would expect to see this in ICU admissions …

Yet the proportion of Covid patients in ICU is currently not conspicuously high in the East compared to the rest of Germany.

Foiled again!

So were most people in the low-incidence states already infected and now immune? Those who become infected with the coronavirus usually form antibodies against it. How long and how well these antibodies protect against a new infection with the virus has not yet been conclusively researched.

However, if we assume that there is at least some protection for a while, one conceivable reason for the low incidence in some states would be that more people have already come into contact with the virus there and are therefore less likely to be infected now.

… It’s not known precisely how much of the population in which states has already recovered from infection. If you take the number of new infections … since the beginning of the year as a rough approximation of the circulation of Omicron, you find no confirmation of the assumption that the population of the East has had greater contact with the virus. …

How confusing. Do Tagesschau no longer stand by their dire proclamations, uttered just this past winter, that lower vaccination rates were to be blame for higher infections in the East? Is their position now that the East never saw higher rates of infection at all, even though the vaccines definitely protect against infection? Also too, why have we abandoned so soon our thesis that the incidence is of “limited significance,” can only tell us when cases are going up or down, and says nothing about how many cases there actually are? I thought regional comparisons of case numbers were bad?

Way down at the bottom, when Behrend and Siggelkow are triply sure nobody is reading anymore, they toss out the possibility that cases might indeed be lower in the East – not because of the vaccines, but because the new Omicron variants haven’t gotten there yet:

One reason the nationwide incidences are rising so sharply in the first place is the Omicron subtypes BA.4 and BA.5, which experts consider more contagious than the previously known “sister variants.” BA.5 is now dominant … It’s of course possible that some states are more affected by the new variants than others, where these variants have not yet arrived.

If BA.5 infects the vaccinated preferentially, and vaccination rates vary substantially across regions, there will be many places where BA.5 never quite seems to have arrived. Perhaps aware of this close brush with crimethink, our braintrust wraps things up with some cleansing mantras:

What is certain, though, is that there is no scientifically sound reason to assume that a high vaccination rate could be partly responsible for a high incidence. On the contrary: Scientific data show instead that people infected with Omicron are less likely to infect others than the unvaccinated.

Every conspiracy theory must first be ignored, then denied, and finally debunked, before it becomes true.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

‘We Need to Be Allowed to Ask Questions,’ Says Canadian Prof Suspended for Questioning COVID Shots for Kids

By Julie Comber, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 5, 2022

A Canadian university professor suspended for comments he made during a December 2021 conference about COVID-19 vaccines in an interview this week with The Defender called for “openness, critical thinking and to stop believing what we are being told is the truth.”

“We need to be allowed to question again,” said Patrick Provost, Ph.D., an infectious and immune diseases researcher who learned June 13 that Laval University in Quebec City was suspending him for eight weeks without pay.

Laval University also suspended Nicolas Derome, Ph.D., a professor in the university’s biology department, for concerns he raised in November 2021 about Quebec’s campaign to vaccinate 5— to 11-year-olds.

In his interview with The Defender, Provost also discussed an article he wrote questioning COVID-19 policies, published June 22 on the Québecor media platform, then retracted a day later.

For the article, Provost used Quebec’s publicly available data to raise questions about the province’s management of the pandemic. The province of Quebec is home to about 8.5 million people, the second-most populous province in Canada.

“I was so happy when I found out my article was going to be published,” Provost told The Defender, “I really thought it would be a game-changer in the public debate about COVID-19 [in Quebec]. That finally, based on official public data, we could start to discuss the situation.”

However, by the next day, June 23, Québecor had removed Provost’s article from all of its websites.

Sébastien Ménard, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Journal de Québec, one of Québecor’s publications, tweeted (in French):

“Although we encourage debating ideas, we have decided to remove this letter [by Dr. Provost] from our websites. After verification, some of the elements it contained were inaccurate or could mislead the public, which we cannot support.”

Commenting on the retraction, Provost said:

“I’m really worried about the direction we are heading, about our democracy. Why hide the truth? These numbers are real, this was just my analysis of them. Maybe it’s a disturbing truth.”

Libre Média, a new Quebec-based independent media website, on June 24 published Provost’s article so it is still publicly available.

Libre Média prefaced the article with a note that it was publishing Provost’s article in full, “in accordance with its mission to protect freedom of the press.”

Criticism of COVID vaccines for young children led to suspension

Two days after Québecor removed his article, Provost went public with the news that Laval notified him on June 13 that the university was suspending him, effective June 14.

Provost filed a grievance through his union, the Union of Laval University Professors.

According to Provost, he sent an email to all his colleagues at Laval University last December, in which he urged them to engage in debates on COVID-19 vaccination and public health measures, because he felt public debate had been lacking.

In the email, he gave the example of a lecture he had given at a conference on Dec. 7, 2021, in which he criticized Quebec’s campaign to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-old children against COVID-19.

The conference was organized by Réinfo Covid Québec, a Quebec collective of caregivers, doctors and citizens “gathered around an idea: the need for a fair and proportionate health policy in Quebec and elsewhere in the world.”

“As a result of this, a professor from the faculty of medicine filed a complaint against me in January, outraged that I was raising questions,” Provost told The Defender. “In particular, that I said the risks of adverse effects [of Pfizer’s mRNA shot] outweighed the benefits for children.”

Provost said his suspension didn’t factor into Québecor’s decision this week to censor his article, as he had not made the news of his suspension public before the article was removed.

COVID mortality rate ‘greatly overestimated’ data show

In his article, Provost noted that the vaccine mandates for travel within Canada and for federal public servants had been suspended two days before, on June 20.

However, mandates could be reimposed, so Provost invited readers to consider a true portrait of the impact of COVID-19 in Quebec, based on the province’s own publicly available data.

As of June 19, when Provost accessed the cumulative data online, there were 15,462 deaths related to COVID-19 (Chart 2.1) out of a total of 1,077,256 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (Chart 1.1), for a calculated mortality rate of 1.44%.

Provost wrote:

“This mortality rate is greatly overestimated, mainly (i) by including, in the numerator, deaths with, and not because of, COVID-19, which were apparently as numerous, and (ii) by excluding, in the denominator, cases of asymptomatic or unreported infections, which were several times higher than the reported symptomatic infections.”

Provost then turned to official figures from the Institut de la statistique du Québec and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), and made these five observations based on the data:

  1. There was no excess all-cause mortality since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, except for people age 70 and over during the first wave (April to June 2020) and in January 2022, shortly after the lockdowns and curfews were imposed, which was also when the third vaccine doses were offered.
  2. More than 90% of people age 70 or older who died with or from COVID-19 had two or more pre-existing medical conditions (Table 2.2).
  3. 69.2% of the people who died were over the age of 80 (Figure 2.3), thus the average age of people who died with or from COVID-19 was beyond their life expectancy at birth.
  4. The number of deaths (Table 2.1) compared to the number of cases (Table 1.1) is 0.07% in people with no pre-existing conditions, 6 times higher in people with one pre-existing medical condition (0.4%), and 98 times higher in people with two or more pre-existing conditions (6 .9%), according to data last updated on May 2.
  5. Between 0 and 5 people under the age of 40 (with less than one pre-existing medical condition) have died in Quebec since the start of the pandemic (Table 2.2).

According to Provost, early on in the pandemic, the analysis of official government data showed two of the main risk factors for complications and death from COVID-19: “advanced age and the number of pre-existing medical conditions, in particular, obesity.”

“The threat of COVID-19 was very real,” wrote Provost, “but was it of the magnitude that we have been told?”

According to the public data available on the sites of INSPQ and of Quebec Data Partnership, from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, there were 20,616 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 out of a total of 986,607 hospitalizations — so approximately 2.1% of hospitalizations were a result of COVID-19 infections.

At the worst point in the crisis, COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 5.9% of the total.

Given the above data, Provost asked if the public health measures taken were justified. He raised a series of questions, including:

  • Did the data support imposing such severe and comprehensive health measures, rather than targeted ones that would protect those most at risk?
  • Did the data justify not considering the collateral effects of restrictive health measures?
  • Did the data justify preventing physicians from making individualized risk versus benefit assessments of a medical intervention (COVID-19 vaccination) with their patients?

Provost also asked if the data justified overriding the right of individuals to consent, in a free and informed manner, to an injection that is still experimental.

He questioned mass vaccination of the entire population for a disease that particularly affects the very old and sick, and of imposing vaccination on young people and workers.

Quebec used vaccine passports, and Provost asked if the data justified restricting the right to access public places and hindering the freedom of movement by train or plane of people who were not “adequately” vaccinated, “even though the shots do not prevent infection or transmission.”

With respect to governance, Provost said the government assumed power by self-proclaiming and perpetuating a state of health emergency and certain measures beyond the emergency period.

He noted that professionals and academics were muzzled if they were critical of health measures, through pressure from their professional organizations or their institutions, under penalty of losing their jobs.

He also pointed out that the polarized and polarizing media coverage sowed fear, anxiety and division, and that citizens were encouraged to discriminate against people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19.

As part of the remedy to what he viewed to be heavy-handed public health measures, Provost stressed the “importance of depoliticizing decisions that infringe on individual rights and freedoms by establishing, for example, by a Council of Scholars that is independent from the government, so that these decisions are based on science and are made more quickly.”

Provost closed his article by calling for a review of the management of the pandemic:

“An assessment of the management of this crisis, which has revealed the limits, even the flaws, of our system and our democratic life, is essential.

“We owe it to too many seniors whom we have failed to protect, as well as to those whose rights and freedoms have been violated for too long.”

Dozens of messages of support

Provost told the Defender that in the hours before his article was pulled, one idea was to have another professor write a rebuttal to his article.

But instead, Quebecor’s news sites simply deleted the article.

On Monday, Joel Monzée wrote an article in Libre Média about the censorship of Provost’s article and its implications for science. “Science is only science because it questions itself,” Monzée wrote.

Monzée said that with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, “It is blithely claimed that there is a scientific consensus. However, this only exists because certain academic personalities seem to have enough influence over their colleagues to curb any questioning of the consensus, at least in public.”

Monzée asked, if there were inaccuracies in Provost’s article, then why not address them with a counter-analysis?

Provost is the supervisor of four Ph.D. students whose work has been affected by his suspension.

“Because of my suspension, I cannot go on the campus, enter the Research center or talk to them,” Provost said. “They are essentially left alone. They are collateral damage.”

Provost said that though the situation was difficult, in the past few days he had received dozens of messages of support, and also observed that a growing number of citizens “have a thirst for truth and openness.”

Provost told The Defender, “I would like to raise awareness about how our society is evolving, it’s not in a good direction. It is getting to the point where private interests will be directing our country, we will just be servants.”

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Crisis Highlights Concerns About Whether OPCW Still Has Any Global Relevance, Observers Say

Samizdat | July 6, 2022

The executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) kicked off its hundredth session at The Hague on Tuesday. Last month, the global watchdog assured that it was “monitoring the situation” in Ukraine closely as far as the potential use of chemical weapons is concerned.

The OPCW’s lack of a coherent, objective and fair-minded response to recent crises centered around Syria and Russia demonstrates its politicization and domination by Western interests, and the longer the watchdog stays out of Ukraine, the better, former diplomats, geopolitical observers, and international legal experts have told Sputnik.

“In Ukraine the OPCW has fortunately not been pressed into action. This, I suspect, is because the US is satisfied with the situation as it is, with no need for the US itself to be drawn in, as would no doubt be the case if a chemical attack was fabricated,” Peter Ford, Britain’s former ambassador to Syria, said.

The veteran diplomat, who warned the British government against the folly of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and stressed that Western powers’ campaign to topple the Syrian government in the 2010s could open a “Pandora’s box” of endless crises, said the Syria case demonstrated clearly that the OPCW is no longer an independent, impartial agency.

“The Syria crisis proved without a shadow of a doubt that the Western powers have bent the OPCW to their own will, destroying in the process the organization’s credibility, probably irretrievably. This is a tragedy for world peace,” Ford stressed, referring to documented OPCW efforts to censor and smear agency whistleblowers who revealed that the watchdog’s report on the April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria was doctored to implicate the Assad government.

In Ukraine, Ford fears, the international community can now only depend on “self-interested restraint on the part of the Pentagon in controlling its proxies rather than the deterrent power of a genuinely impartial international watchdog.”

Chemical Weapons Danger in Ukraine

Since the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine in February, Russia has sent the OPCW and its technical secretariat over two dozen notes warning of possible staged provocations by Ukrainian forces or radical nationalists involving chemical weapons. Last month, the agency assured the international community that it was “closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine” for chemical weapons use.

On Wednesday, Russian military indicated that it had information on plans by Kiev to stage a provocation in the Donetsk People’s Republic using chlorine gas to accuse Moscow on indiscriminate attacks targeting chemically hazardous objects.

Alessandro Bruno, a Toronto-based geopolitical analyst and political observer at Lombardi Letter, says that while the OPCW’s official mission and goals are “certainly worth pursuing,” the problem is the watchdog’s control by Western interests seeking to obfuscate the truth and objectivity in favor of politicized objectives.

“They seem to have targeted only specific sides in specific wars to suit specific aims, which typically are those of Western powers. There have been many efforts to manipulate these organizations by the dominant powers, particularly in the West,” Bruno said.

The scholar recalled instances of claims by the US and its allies about Russia’s use of chemical weapons, from the allegation that Russia poisoned pro-Western Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the mid-2000s, to the 2018 Novichok scandal in Britain, which “many thoughtful journalists have debunked,” to the Alexei Navalny “poisoning” saga of 2020, which doctors treating the opposition vlogger have debunked.

“Yet the accusations of chemical weapons that Russia used have persisted, even though they defied all logic. That’s the biggest issue with these organizations. They must be more neutral. Their headquarters must be in more neutral locations, because the fact that many of these organizations operate from Western capitals makes them more prone to Western media misinformation,” Bruno said.

The geopolitical analyst still fears that the West could use the pretext of ‘Russian chemical weapons use’ in Ukraine “to get more directly involved into the conflict and potentially trigger a much wider physical war.”

“So far, I think, some of the powers came to understand that making an accusation like that in this conflict would be riskier than the accusations they made in Syria and Iraq, Navalny and Yushchenko and so on, that this would have much bigger implications, that this would blow back against the West,” Bruno stressed.

Tool of US Interests

Christopher C. Black, an international criminal and human rights lawyer with 20 years of experience covering war crimes and international relations, echoed Bruno’s sentiments about the OPCW’s noble stated aims and their stark contrast with the body’s actual history, which “shows that [the watchdog] acts to serve the interests of the United States and its NATO and other allies.”

“We saw strong evidence of this when the USA tried to get rid of the Director General Jose Bustani of Brazil in 2002, when the United States was preparing its invasion of Iraq and John Bolton went to The Hague and threatened his family if he did not resign,” Black recalled, pointing to Bustani’s 2018 interview with The Intercept in which the former OPCW chief detailed the threats made against his children living in the United States.

“In August 2020, it was revealed through leaks from Austrian government sources that the OPCW and British claims that Novichok had been found in the blood of the Skripals allegedly poisoned in the UK were false, that in fact no such agent had been found in their blood at all. But the findings were suppressed and a false report issued to back the UK claims,” the lawyer added. “Similar results were seen regarding the alleged poisoning of Mr. Navalny. We can quickly understand what goes on behind the scenes at the OPCW,” Black said.

Black finds it unlikely that the chemical weapons watchdog will change “without a change in the balance of power in the world,” which is taking place, but whose effects on international organizations will be slow to appear.

In Ukraine, the lawyer fears, “We cannot expect any objective consideration of Kiev regime or NATO claims of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine for the reasons stated above, despite the fact that Russia has not used them, does not use them and will not use them. To the contrary we have a situation in which Kiev and NATO forces keep making false claims while themselves preparing chemical weapons attacks to be staged as false flag attacks to be blamed on Russia and when Russia asks the OPCW to investigate this, Russia is met with silence,” he said.

How OPCW Can Regain Credibility

Dr. Alfred De Zayas, a lawyer, writer and former independent expert on international order with the United Nations, similarly doubts the OPCW’s ability to reform in its current itteration, saying the agency “has long been instrumentalized to pursue the geopolitical interests of Western powers.”

The international legal expert is confident that agencies like the OPCW, the International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Council can regain their credibility by demonstrating impartiality. “This is possible if the BRICS countries become more vocal and more visible on the international scene. There is no reason why African, Asian and Latin American countries should dance to the tune of the ‘Washington consensus’,” De Zayas stressed.

In Ukraine, the OPCW’s assurance about “monitoring the situation” carries only a “purely propagandistic value,” and is “intended to charge and convict Russia even before there is any evidence of violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” the observer believes.

“If the OPCW investigates not only potential Russian war crimes, but also expands its investigation to potential chemical weapons violations and war crimes by Ukrainian forces and by foreign mercenaries, including US, UK, French, Georgian and others, then the OPCW might regain some credibility. That, however, would be ‘out of character’. It is not unlike the ICC, which in the eyes of many observers in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland – has lost its little credibility and will have no authority unless and until it indicts Western politicians and bureaucrats including Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Victoria Nuland, Barack Obama (the king of the drones), Donald Trump, Nikolas Sarkozy, etc.,” De Zayas concluded.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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