Australia’s Labor Party asks Google what “misinformation” censorship plans it has for the next election
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 17, 2021
Australia’s Labor Party wants Google to explain the steps it has taken to ensure its platforms are not “exploited for misinformation” ahead of the next general election. The party says it fears its rivals will use “misinformation” to gain an edge in the upcoming election.
According to The Guardian, Labor’s national secretary Paul Erickson sent a letter to Google Australia’s managing director Mel Silva, asking if the company has improved its systems since the last election in 2019 to “ensure its platforms and advertising capabilities are not exploited for misinformation.”
In the letter, Erickson mentions Craig Kelly and businessman Clive Palmer for their criticism of the strict COVID-19 measures. He notes several videos posted by Kelly on his YouTube account “in which Mr Kelly promotes ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective treatments for COVID-19 or claims that Covid-19 vaccines are unsafe,” according to The Guardian.
Kelly, a former member of the Liberal Party, formed his own party, the United Australian Party (UAP).
Erickson’s letter further asks Google how it plans to handle “the elevated risk of misinformation in the context of the upcoming federal election, including in relation to content uploaded by the UAP.”
The Labor leader notes that the UAP “is already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on political advertising, including on Google’s platforms.” He insisted that it was crucial for Google’s platforms not to be “misused” amid a pandemic, “including by those with a track record of spreading politically motivated misinformation in the lead-up to the next federal election.”
“Regrettably, the response of digital platforms was wholly inadequate,” Erickson wrote. “These mistakes should not be repeated.”
The Labor party was the victim of a misinformation campaign relating to the “death tax” in the last election.
Kelly slammed Erickson for the letter.
“It is a disgrace and a new low that a political party would ask a foreign oligarch to censor freedom of speech in Australian politics,” the MP told The Guardian Australia. “The idea that an alternate opinion of an expert is misinformation is a claim I categorically reject.”
The UAP leader described Erickson’s letter as “silencing of genuine debate, and that will leave the public misinformed.”
Why the Biden COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate is Unconstitutional
Techno Fog | September 14, 2021
On September 9, President Biden announced he would circumvent the democratic process, ordering the Secretary of the Department of Labor to require employers with over 100 workers to “ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”
This was essential, as Biden said, “to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated workers.”
As we have explained, the Secretary of Labor will issue these regulations through OSHA by way of an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). The ETS would allow the Secretary of Labor to issue the vaccine mandate without the normal administrative rulemaking requirements (like notice and public comment periods).
While the Biden Administration tells the public that there’s no time to waste in issuing the mandate, the truth is that OSHA/Labor failed to argue the necessity of a vaccine mandate since the vaccines have been available – a time period approaching one year. Moreover, the Biden Department of Labor is secretly meeting with the US Chamber of Commerce and business lobbyists to gather support for the mandate. As Bloomberg Law reports:
Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda held a virtual meeting with Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer, and other business lobbyists. The Chamber, the largest business lobbying group in the U.S., has yet to publicly declare a position on the coming Occupational Safety and Health Administration emergency rulemaking.
It was one of at least three briefings the department held Friday for labor union leaders and employer associations—constituencies the White House hopes to forge partnerships with to lift the vaccination rate nationwide. Information from the calls was disclosed to Bloomberg Law by eight sources who took part, all of whom requested anonymity because they didn’t have approval to speak publicly.
Why the Vaccine Mandate is Unconstitutional
As you can imagine, the constitutionality of the vaccine mandate will be litigated as soon as OSHA issues the rules. The media is running interference, telling the public that challenges to the mandate are “unlikely to succeed.”
Do not believe them.
The legality of the vaccine mandate will be assessed under what is called the major rules doctrine (also known as the major questions doctrine). Under this doctrine, the courts look to (1) whether the agency action is a major rule; and (2) whether Congress has clearly authorized the agency action.
As Justice Scalia stated in 2014, “We expect congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”
From here we turn to the first question of the major rules doctrine: there is zero doubt that it is a major rule. It would affect the healthcare decisions – and implicate the personal autonomy – of “some 80 million private sector workers.” It is an action never before taken by OSHA, the Department of Labor, and any other federal agency. It would affect the entire US economy.
In support of my position, we have seen lesser invasive agency rules be determined to be major rules. For example, “rate-regulations” of telephone companies has been held to be a major rule. MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U.S. 218 (1994).
From there we get to the second question: whether Congress has clearly authorized the Department of Labor/OSHA to mandate vaccines. The answer is no.
If Congress clearly authorized (not just authorized, but clearly authorized) Labor/OSHA to mandate vaccines, then we would have seen such authority in the OSH Act of 1970. Look for yourself – the language isn’t there. Instead, there are general grants of authority to “set mandatory occupational safety and health standards.”
Looking to the history of OSHA, this authority has been understood to regulate employer actions to provide a safe workplace (Benzene limits) or employee actions at work (operation of heavy equipment). The OSH Act has never been understood historically to include mandatory vaccinations. This is significant because the Supreme Court recently looked to agency history to determine the CDC lacked the authority to issue its latest eviction mandate.
For an example of “clear authority” relating to public health, look to the authority Congress gave HHS to take action in case of “significant outbreaks of infectious diseases.” Going further, to allow the mandate would be to allow OSHA to require vaccination as a condition of employment. The OSH Act contains no such language or authority.
So there we have it. This is a “major rule” and Congress has not “clearly authorized” Labor/OSHA to issue a vaccine mandate. It is an unlawful – and unconstitutional – seizure of authority by the Executive. Expect further challenges on whether the ETS itself (and the finding of “grave danger”) is legal.
We also observe that we by no means concede Congressional authority to mandate vaccines. (In other words, Congress could not give OSHA/Labor this authority because Congress has no such authority to give.) You may have seen some pundits argue that the 1905 case of Jacobsen v. Massachusetts gives this authority. These arguments are misplaced, as that was the Supreme Court over 100 years ago considering state, and not federal, authority.
One Final Point – Why Justice Kavanaugh Matters
In 2017, when Justice Kavanaugh was sitting on the DC Circuit, he wrote a dissent from a denial of rehearing en banc, in which he thoroughly summarized the major rules doctrine. He argued that the FCC’s net neutrality rule was unlawful, in that it was a “major rule” that was not clearly authorized by Congress.
Kavanaugh’s 2017 dissent was one of the most (or perhaps the most) comprehensive discussions of the major rules doctrine ever written in the DC Circuit. Kavanaugh went through a number of Supreme Court cases in support of his position and argued the doctrine essential to uphold the separation of powers. To this author, it reveals Kavanaugh values this doctrine and believes it should be applied with vigor.
We see an example of this in Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the original application to vacate the stay of the CDC eviction moratorium (June 29, 2021), where Kavanaugh wrote “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium.”
Whether Kavanaugh has the courage to apply his convictions is another matter.
Facebook censors German anti-lockdown movement under new rules to prevent users from organizing & amplifying ‘harmful’ ideas
RT | September 17, 2021
No longer content to go just after bots and trolls, Facebook has established a new category of “social harm” posted by genuine users, starting with purging pages and Instagram accounts of a German anti-lockdown group Querdenken.
Facebook’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher announced the action on Thursday, saying that his team has been working for months to “expand our network disruption efforts so we can address threats that come from groups of authentic accounts coordinating on our platform to cause social harm.”
The closest his post comes to defining “social harm” is content that “calls for violence or to discredit medical science.”
Gleicher says his group has removed a network of Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups “for engaging in coordinated efforts to repeatedly violate our Community Standards, including posting harmful health misinformation, hate speech and incitement to violence.”
Sharing their domains on Facebook and Instagram has been blocked as well, he added, but noted that “we aren’t banning all Querdenken content.”
The Querdenken – German for “lateral thinking” – movement is “linked to off-platform violence and other social harms,” Gleicher wrote, adding that the content posted on the banned pages “primarily focused on promoting the conspiracy that the German government’s [Covid-19] restrictions are part of a larger plan to strip citizens of their freedoms and basic rights.”
According to Facebook, the group “typically portrayed violence as the way to overturn the pandemic-related government measures limiting personal freedoms.” The group “engaged in physical violence against journalists, police and medical practitioners in Germany,” Gleicher claimed citing “public reporting.”
Police officers scuffle with a demonstrator during a protest in Berlin, Germany, on August 1, 2021. © Reuters / Christian Mang
There have been multiple mass protests against coronavirus lockdowns in Germany, with the authorities denouncing them as the work of the “far-right,” neo-Nazis and other extremists. While the UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer raised concerns about police brutality in dispersing the demonstrations, last month, Berlin police responded that violence is “still part of our legal system.”
“Direct enforcement is violence. Violence harms. Violence hurts. Violence looks violent,” Berlin police spokesperson Thilo Cablitz told DPA last month.
Facebook has cracked down hard on “debunked” and “false” claims about the Covid-19 pandemic, loosely defined as anything that contradicts the guidance by the World Health Organization or national health authorities. It stopped censoring the claim that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China back in May, however, citing “new facts and trends” that emerged.
Experts Accuse CDC of ‘Cherry-Picking’ Data on Vaccine Immunity to Support Political Narrative
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | September 16, 2021
There is now a growing body of literature showing natural immunity not only confers robust, durable and high-level protection against COVID, but also provides better protection than vaccine-induced immunity.
Yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is ignoring the long-standing science of natural immunity when it comes to COVID — while acknowledging the benefits of natural immunity for other diseases — according to an expert who accused the agency of providing contradictory, ‘illogical’ COVID messaging.
Dr. Marty Makary, professor of surgery and health policy at John Hopkins University, on Tuesday accused the CDC of “cherry-picking” data and manipulating public health guidance surrounding vaccines and natural immunity to support a political narrative.
Makary joined the “Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” to discuss the clinical impact of natural immunity as it compares to the vaccine.
During the show, Travis pointed out the CDC’s guidance on COVID is inconsistent with its vaccine recommendations for other contagious viruses, like chickenpox.
The CDC’s current guidance for chickenpox, for example, does not encourage those who have contracted it to vaccinate themselves against the virus. The CDC only recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox.
“So why doesn’t the CDC say the same thing about those of us who already had COVID?” Travis asked.
Makary called the conflicting guidance “absolutely illogical,” and accused the agency of “ignoring natural immunity.”
“It doesn’t make sense with what they’re putting out on chickenpox,” Makary said. It’s like they have adopted the immune system for one virus, but not for another virus, he said, and “cherry-picking the data to support whatever they’ve already decided.”
“They salami slice it — something we call fishing in statistical techniques,” Makary said. “That is when you look for a tiny sliver of data that supports what you already believe.”
According to a Sept. 13 article in The BMJ, when the COVID vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than a quarter of Americans — 91 million — had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to CDC estimates.
As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults between the ages of 18 and 59.
However, the CDC instructed everyone, regardless of previous infection, to get fully vaccinated as soon as they were eligible. On its website, the agency in January justified its guidance by stating natural immunity “varies from person to person” and “experts do not yet know how long someone is protected.
By June, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found 57% of those previously infected got vaccinated.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, was asked Sept. 10 by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta whether people who have tested positive for the virus should still get a vaccine.
Gupta cited recent data from Israel suggesting people who recovered from COVID had better protection and a lower risk of contracting the Delta variant, compared to those with Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” Fauci said. “That’s something we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response.”
The research from Israel did not address the durability that natural immunity offers. Fauci said it is possible for a person to recover from COVID and develop natural immunity, but that protection might not last for nearly as long as the protection provided by the vaccine.
“I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously,” Fauci said.
Numerous studies, however, have shown people who recovered from COVID have robust, durable and long-lasting immunity.
Evidence of natural immunity
As early as November 2020, important studies showed memory B cells and memory T cells formed in response to natural infection — and memory cells respond by producing antibodies to variants at hand.
A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, found “durable immune responses” in 95% of the 200 participants up to eight months after infection.
One of the largest studies to date, published in Science in February 2021, found that although antibodies declined over eight months, memory B cells increased over time, and the half-life of memory CD8+ and CD4+ T cells suggests a steady presence.
In a study by New York University published May 3, the authors studied the contrast between vaccine immunity and immunity from prior infection as it relates to stimulating the innate T-cell immunity — which is more durable than adaptive immunity through antibodies alone.
The authors concluded:
“In COVID-19 patients, immune responses were characterized by a highly augmented interferon response which was largely absent in vaccine recipients. Increased interferon signaling likely contributed to the observed dramatic upregulation of cytotoxic genes in the peripheral T cells and innate-like lymphocytes in patients but not in immunized subjects.”
The study further noted:
“Analysis of B and T cell receptor repertoires revealed that while the majority of clonal B and T cells in COVID-19 patients were effector cells, in vaccine recipients, clonally expanded cells were primarily circulating memory cells.”
This means natural immunity conveys much more innate immunity, while the vaccine mainly stimulates adaptive immunity — as effector cells trigger an innate response that is quicker and more durable, whereas memory response requires an adaptive mode that is slower to respond.
According to a longitudinal analysis published July 14 in Cell Medicine, most recovered COVID patients produced durable antibodies, memory B cells and durable polyfunctional CD4 and CD8 T cells –– which target multiple parts of the virus.
“Taken together, these results suggest broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients,” the authors said.
In other words, unlike with the vaccines, no boosters are required to assist natural immunity.
In a May 12 study conducted by the University of California, researchers found natural immunity conveyed stronger immunity than the vaccine.
The researchers wrote:
“In infection-naïve individuals, the second [vaccine] dose boosted the quantity but not quality of the T cell response, while in convalescents the second dose helped neither. Spike-specific T cells from convalescent vaccinees differed strikingly from those of infection-naïve vaccinees, with phenotypic features suggesting superior long-term persistence and ability to home to the respiratory tract including the nasopharynx.”
According to The BMJ, studies in Qatar, England, Israel and the U.S. have found infection rates at equally low levels among people who are fully vaccinated and those who have previously had COVID.
As The Defender reported in June, the Cleveland Clinic surveyed more than 50,000 employees to compare four groups based on history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination status.
Not one of more than 1,300 unvaccinated employees who had been previously infected tested positive during the five months of the study. Researchers concluded the cohort “are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”
In the largest real-world observational study comparing natural immunity gained through previous SARS-CoV-2 infection to vaccine-induced immunity afforded by the Pfizer vaccine, researchers in Israel found people who recovered from COVID were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms or be hospitalized.
“Our results question the need to vaccinate previously infected individuals,” they concluded.
Experts speak out on natural immunity
In a recent letter to the editor of The BMJ, Dr. Manish Joshi, a pulmonologist at UAMS Health; Dr. Thaddeus Bartter, a pulmonologist at UAMS Health; and Anita Joshi, BDS, MPH, said data demonstrate both adequate and long-lasting protection in those who have recovered from COVID, while the duration of vaccine-induced immunity is not fully known.
The authors of the letter said the “SIREN” study in the Lancet addressed the relationships between seropositivity in people with previous COVID infection and subsequent risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome due to SARS-CoV-2 infection over the subsequent seven to 12 months.
The study found prior infection decreased risk of symptomatic reinfection by 93%.
A large cohort study published in JAMA Internal Medicine which looked at 3.2 million U.S. patients, showed the risk of infection was significantly lower (0.3%) in seropositive patients compared to those who were seronegative (3%).
A recent study published in May in the journal Nature demonstrated the presence of long-lived memory immune cells in those who have recovered from COVID-19 suggesting durable and long-lasting immunity.
“This implies a prolonged (perhaps years) capacity to respond to new infection with new antibodies,” the authors wrote.
© [Sept. 2021] 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.
The Meaning of the FDA Resignations
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | September 14, 2021
How significant is it that the two top FDA officials responsible for vaccine research resigned last week and this week signed a letter in The Lancet that strongly warns against vaccine boosters? This is a remarkable sign that the project of government-managed virus mitigation is in the final stages before falling apart.
The booster has already been promoted by top lockdown advocates Neil Ferguson of Imperial College and Anthony Fauci of NIH, even in the face of rising public incredulity toward their “expert” advice. For these two FDA officials to go on record with grave doubts – and their perspective is certainly backed by the unimpressive booster experience in Israel – introduces a major break in the narrative that the experts in charge deserve our trust and deference.
What’s at stake here? It’s about more than the boosters. It’s about the whole experience of taking away the control of health management from individuals and medical professionals and handing it over to modelers and government officials with coercive power.
From the first week of March 2020, the US embarked on a wild experiment in virus mitigation, deploying a series of measures with a sweep and scope that had never previously been attempted, not in modern times and not even in ancient times. The litany of controls and tactics is long. Many of these measures survive in most parts of the US. The retail landscape is still filled with plexiglass. We are still invited to sanitize ourselves when going indoors. People still mask up in proximity to others. The “Karens” of the world are still actively shaming and denouncing anyone suspected of non-compliance.
The vaccine push has been particularly divisive, with President Biden actively encouraging “anger” at those who don’t get the jab, even as he refuses to acknowledge the existence of infection-induced immunities. In several cities, people who refuse vaccines are being denied active participation in civic life, and a populist movement is rising up that scapegoats the refuseniks as the only reason that the virus continues to be a problem.
All these measures were deployed in waves of controls. It all began with event cancellations and school closures. It continued with travel bans, most of which are still in place. Sanitization and plexiglass were next. Masks were rolled out and then mandated. The principle of forced human separation governed social interactions. Capacity limits indoors were a common feature. The US example inspired many governments around the world to adopt these NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) and take away the liberties of the people.
At each stage of control, there were new claims that we’ve finally found the answer, the key technique that would finally slow and stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Nothing worked, as the virus seemed to follow its own course regardless of all these measures. Indeed there was no observable difference anywhere in the world based on whether and to what extent any of these measures were deployed.
Finally came the pharmaceutical interventions, voluntary at first but gradually mandatory, just as with each previous protocol began as a recommendation until it was mandated.
At no point in these 19 months have we seen a clear admission of failure on the part of government officials. Indeed, it’s mostly been the opposite, as the agencies double down, claiming effectiveness while citing no data or studies, while social media companies backed it all by taking down contrarian posts and brazenly deleting accounts of people who dare cite dissenting science.
The vaccine was the biggest gamble of all simply because the program was so expensive, so personal, and so wildly oversold. Even those of us who opposed every other mandate had hopes that the vaccines would finally end the public panic and provide governments a way to back out of all the other strategies that had failed.
That did not happen.
Most people believed that the vaccine would work like many others before them to block infection and spread. In this, people were merely believing what the head of the CDC said. “Our data from the C.D.C. today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Rochelle Walinsky told Rachel Maddow. “And that it’s not just in the clinical trials, it’s also in real-world data.”
“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,”President Biden said, reflecting what was the common view in the summer of 2021.
That of course turned out not to be the case. The vaccines appear to have been helpful in mitigating against some severe outcomes but it did not achieve victory over the virus. Israel’s surge in infections in August was among the fully vaccinated. The same happened in the UK and Scotland, and that precise result began to hit the US in September. Indeed, we all have vaccinated friends who caught the virus and were sick for days. Meanwhile, team natural immunity has received a huge boost from a large study in Israel that demonstrated that recovered Covid cases gain far more protection than is conferred by the vaccine.
The fallback position then became the booster. Surely this is the answer! Israel was first to mandate them. Here again, the problems began to show, as yet another magic bullet of disease mitigation failed. Then the inevitable headline came: Israel preparing for possible fourth COVID vaccine dose. So think about this because there is a sense in which the vaccines rank among the biggest failures: in a matter of a few short months, we’ve gone from the claim that they fully protect to they are pretty okay provided you get regularly scheduled boosters forever.
Now to the striking resignation of two top officials at the FDA who were in charge of vaccine safety and administration. It was the Director and Deputy Director of the Office of Vaccines Research, Marion Gruber and Phillip Kause. They gave no reason for their departure, which is scheduled for October and November.
The case is fascinating because 1) people rarely resign cushy government jobs unless a higher-paying, higher-prestige job in the private sector awaits, or 2) they are being pushed out. It’s rare for anyone in a position like that to resign over a principled matter of science. When I first read that they were going, I figured something else was up.
These days, extremely weird things are going on within the Biden administration. Even though his approval ratings are sinking, the president has to pretend that he has all the answers, that the science behind his mandates and virus war is universally settled, that anyone who disagrees with him is really just a political enemy. He has gone so far as to denounce, demonize, and legally threaten red-state governors who disagree with him.
This is a deep problem for actual scientists working within the bureaucracy because they know for sure that all of this is a pretense and that the government cannot win this war on the virus. They simply cannot preside over more false promises, especially when the whole of their professional training is about assessing the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
So what can they do? In this case, it appears they had to get away before they dropped a bombshell.
The bombshell is called “Considerations in boosting COVID-19 vaccine immune responses.” It appears in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet. The two top officials are among the authors. The article recommends against the Covid booster shot that the Biden administration, following Fauci’s advice, is suggesting as the key to making the vaccines work better and finally fulfill their promise.
Fauci and company are pushing boosters because they know what is coming. Essentially we are going the way of Israel: most everyone is vaccinated but the virus itself is not being controlled. More and more among those hospitalized and dying are vaccinated. This same trend is coming to the US. The boosters are a means by which government can save face, or so many believe.
The trouble now is that the top scientists at the FDA disagree. Further, they think that the push for boosters is courting problems. They think the current regime of one or two shots is working as well as one can expect. Nothing is gained on net from a booster, they say. There just isn’t enough evidence to take the risk of another booster, and another and another.
The authors knew this article was appearing. They knew that signing it under the FDA affiliation would lead to a push for their resignations. Life would get very difficult for both of them. They got ahead of the messaging and resigned before it came out. Very smart.
The signed article goes even further to warn of possible downsides. They point out that boosters might seem necessary because “variants expressing new antigens have evolved to the point at which immune responses to the original vaccine antigens no longer protect adequately against currently circulating viruses.” At the same time, there are possible side effects that could discredit all vaccines for a generation or more. “There could be risks,” they write, “if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines, or Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been associated with adenovirus-vectored COVID-19 vaccines.”)
Bringing up such side effects is essentially a taboo topic. That this was written by two top FDA officials is nothing short of remarkable, especially because it comes at a time when the Biden administration is going all in on vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, studies are showing that for teenage boys, the vaccine poses a greater risk to them than Covid itself. “For boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly COVID-19 hospitalization.”
From the beginning of these lockdowns – along with all the masks, restrictions, bogus health advice from plexiglass to sanitizer to universal vaccine mandates and so on – it was clear that there would someday be hell to pay. They wrecked rights and liberties, crashed economies, traumatized a whole generation of children and other students, ran roughshod over religious freedom, and for what? There is zero evidence that any of this has made any difference. We are surrounded by the carnage they created.
The appearance of The Lancet article by two top FDA vaccine scientists is truly devastating and revealing because it undermines the last plausible tool to save the whole machinery of government disease management that has been deployed at such enormous social, cultural, and economic cost for 19 months. Not in our lifetimes has a policy failed so badly. The intellectual and political implications here are monumental. It means that the real Covid crisis – the task of assigning responsibility for all the collateral damage – has just begun.
In 2006, during the early years of the birth of lockdown ideology, the great epidemiologist Donald Henderson warned that if any of these restrictive measures were deployed for a pandemic, the result would be a “loss of trust in government” and “a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.” Catastrophe is exactly what has happened. The current regime wants to point the finger toward the noncompliant. That is no longer believable. They cannot delay the inevitable for much longer: responsibility for this catastrophe belongs to those who embarked on this political experiment in the first place.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
35,000 Women Report Period Problems After Covid Jab
By Richie Allen | September 16, 2021
Around 35,000 women have come forward to report irregularities with their menstrual cycle, including abnormal period pain, after they received a covid jab.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Victoria Dale called for an investigation. She lectures on reproductive immunology at Imperial College London.
Incredibly, The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK’s drug watchdog, has refused to accept that there is a link between the jabs and menstrual cycle problems.
According to the MHRA:
“The rigorous evaluation completed to date does not support a link between changes to menstrual periods and related symptoms and Covid vaccines.”
According to The Mail Online this morning:
Data on the number of period problems following vaccination was collected from the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme, which keeps a record of every case of a potential side effect. But this data is reliant on women coming forward, meaning nearly 35,000 figure could be the tip of the iceberg.
So-called experts were rushed onto UK TV and radio shows this morning to assure the public that even if there is a link between the jabs and period problems, the jabs do not affect fertility.
They’re lying. I am not saying that I know the jabs affect fertility. I do not know that. But equally they cannot know that the jabs do not affect fertility in males or females.
That’s because they have no long-term data on how the jabs affect fertility or anything else for that matter. I really hope this information is getting through to people. The jabs are unnecessary, untried, unsafe and the manufacturers have been indemnified against legal action from anyone injured by their products.
The Media Is Lying About Greenland and Climate Change
By Vijay Jayaraj | Real Clear Energy | September 13, 2021
The mainstream media is hell-bent on instilling climate fear among the masses. This means that they can never get over their obsession with weather events in the Arctic, which is one of their favorite subjects for projecting a climate catastrophe.
The Greenland Ice Sheet has been of great interest to climate alarmists. Any small change in ice sheet mass is promoted in the media as a product of man-made climate change. Last week, media outlets across the globe claimed that there has been rain for the first time at the Greenland summit.
“Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record,” read CNN’s headlines. Others went a step further and declared it a sign of climate doomsday. “Rain On Greenland Ice Sheet, Possibly A First, Signals Climate Change Risk,” read another headline.
Unfortunately, for the mainstream media, climate history nearly always comes back to haunt their claims of unprecedented events. Records reveal that this is not the first rainfall in Greenland, and certainly not the first on the Greenland summit peak, which stands at around 10,000 feet.
Records Show Past Rain Events in Greenland
A 1975 report prepared for National Science Foundation (NSF) by Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory documented the summer climate at Greenland ice sheet. It showed at least two rainfall events have occurred, once in 1933 at 8,840 feet and again in 1950 at a much higher altitude. The 1950 rainfall event was above 9,500 feet and very close to the Greenland summit peak, thus contradicting mainstream media claims of unprecedented rainfall at the summit.
The NSF report states, “According to Hogue (1964) heavy rainfall seldom occurs above 6,000 ft on the Greenland ice sheet. However, at Watkins (75°N, 48°W, and elevation 8,840 ft) rain was reported to have occurred in July 1933. Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively.”
The site of the previous rainfall event, Centrale-Eismitte, is close to the 9,800-feet mark where the current rainfall event occurred. It would be a pure lie — or gross ignorance — to claim that rainfall at such an altitude has never occurred before at Greenland.
Headlines That Portray an Incomplete Reality
Besides misleading the public on the “first-time rain event,” these media outlets have also concealed the reality of the situation in Greenland, especially in 2021.
This year, Greenland’s surface mass balance (SMB) was higher than the 30-year average during many days of the year. SMB is the net balance between the accumulation and ablation on a glacier’s surface, typically denoted by mass gain and mass loss.
Data on Greenland’s SMB is available at Polar Portal, where Danish research institutions display the results of their monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice in the Arctic.
SMB data for 2021 show that there has been no significant melting and there was also a surprising gain in the SMB during the summer months, which is usually the melting season.
During July and August, the total accumulation of SMB (as measured in gigatons) was higher than the 30-year average (1981-2010). This can be attributed to the unexpected gain in SMB during the summer months.
So not only has the media lied to the public about the “never-before” rainfall event, it has also withheld the truth about the above-average SMB that was witnessed during the past 50 days.
This endless parade of lies about Greenland and the Arctic will likely continue. Even above-average snow accumulations will be kept out of the news and one-time warm weather events (especially during the melt season) will be used as “proof” for global warming.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Contributing Writer to the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master of science degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
AMA issues mix of mindless propaganda & “Trust the SCIENCE” jargon to teach doctors to lie about Covid jabs
By Meryl Nass, MD | September 14, 2021
I am looking over the “AMA Covid -19 Guide. Winter 2021. It is not a guide. It only deals with Covid vaccines, not treatment. It’s raison d’etre is:
“To overcome vaccine hesitancy and ensure widespread vaccine acceptance among all demographic groups, physicians and the broader public health community must continue working to build trust in vaccine safety and efficacy, especially in marginalized and minoritized (this is not my misspelling–Nass) communities with historically well-founded mistrust in medical institutions. As COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available, it is critical that physicians continue to ensure they practice and encourage their patients to wear masks, physical distance and wash hands until a critical mass of the population is vaccinated.”
It is an extraordinary document. I wonder how much the AMA got paid to put their name on it. Probably a lot.
It is extraordinary because it would repel most doctors. It was obviously written by a non-doctor. I have an idea of one person who may have had a hand in creating it–John Grabenstein, a pharmacist and propagandist extraordinaire, who helped craft the fake science on the anthrax vaccine. He works for the Immunization Action Coalition now. He is a one man band who knows how to pull all the levers to push terrible vaccine policies.
It turns out that the current AMA President, Gerald Harmon, was instrumental in pushing the experimental and dangerous anthrax vaccine, and punishing refusers and truth tellers. This got him rapid promotions, and he retired as a Major General. No doubt he worked with Grabenstein back then, and probably now.
Whoever wrote the “Guide” did not know that whooping cough and pertussis were the same thing, or that the DTP vaccine includes tetanus. It is of interest that there is no name on it, no clue about how it came into existence.
All this business about “equity.” If the federal government cared about equity, why are they always bombing and droning people of color? What equity means to them is that a 25% acceptance of the Covid vaccine by Black people cannot be allowed to stand. And the refusal by blacks to participate in clinical trials is especially egregious.
The document is really kind of a hoot, it is so out of 1984. It shows you what the propagandists are really worried about, for example, the fact that too many people have learned the FDA “review” and the Pfizer preclinical tests were bogus:
On combating the spread of vaccine misinformation:
• With misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine development process circulating widely, new AMA policy seeks to educate physicians on speaking with their patients about the vaccine and provide culturally appropriate education materials for all patients.
On vaccine development:
• To help physicians promote vaccine confidence among patients and the general public, we must continue to instill confidence in the information, education, and transparency around the FDA’s process for authorization or licensure, as well as the standards by which FDA will review future vaccine candidates and the clinical endpoints the FDA hopes to achieve.
• Physicians must be continuously updated about the review process for future COVID-19 vaccines. Any available safety and efficacy data must be in place as soon as possible so that any questions or concerns about the vaccine candidates can be addressed.
• The AMA has been talking to FDA officials about the role the agency needs to continue to play in alleviating vaccine concerns by ensuring the process is transparent and based on science.
• The widespread availability and adoption of a safe and efficacious vaccine will play an essential role in slowing transmission of COVID-19 and allow us to move safely and confidently toward the full re-opening of our businesses and schools, helping ease Americans back toward pre-pandemic life.
• Research shows growing levels of confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, but there continues to be vacancy hesitancy among some individuals and in some communities, which we are striving to overcome.
• What’s clear is that the benefits of getting the vaccine to protect you from COVID-19 exceed the risks, which is why medical experts strongly recommend getting the vaccine.
• To improve the dialogue and provide opportunities for physicians to learn more about vaccine development, approval, and ongoing distribution plans and challenges, AMA has initiated a series of “town hall” type webinars with physicians and career staff at both the FDA and CDC. All events are archived on AMA’s website.
• To develop the most effective COVID-19 vaccine, U.S. clinical trials must include representation of all Americans to ensure treatments are studied in every population that may use it.
The AMA is pleased that efforts have been made by institutions to acknowledge the exclusion of Black and Latinx people from clinical trials historically.
Now there are many efforts underway to ensure Black and Latinx people, who have been disproportionately affected by the virus, are prioritized in clinical trials.
This not only provides better safety and efficacy data but is a more equitable strategy that will hopefully contribute to trust in the vaccine once available.
Viral Reality Check – What’s going on, but with real logic and science
Ivor Cummins | September 13, 2021
Quick update on the evolving irrationality of our viral issue – couple of links below that were mentioned:
Revealing talk on one major reason WHY science died in early 2020: https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/Ernst-Wolff—Uncovering-the-Corona-Narrative—Aug-2021:8
Also our Covid Chronicles movie latest update here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/capecrusaders/the-covid-chronicles/posts/3279184
NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=69ZSTYXBMCN3W
Elizabeth Warren Demands Amazon Censor Best-Selling Books
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 14, 2021
Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding Amazon censor best-selling books because they contain information that challenges the official narrative on coronavirus.
Warren wrote a letter asserting that Amazon was complicit in spreading “COVID-19 misinformation” because it allows people to buy books authored by people like Dr. Joseph Mercola, who has been targeted by the mainstream media as a purveyor of “dangerous” fake news about COVID and vaccines.
“During the week of August 22, 2021, my staff conducted sample searches on Amazon.com of pandemic-related terms such as ‘COVID-19,’ ‘COVID,’ ‘vaccine,’ ‘COVID 19 vaccine,’ and ‘pandemic,’” Sen. Warren wrote in a letter addressed to Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy. “The top results consistently included highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures.”
Of course, the claim that these are “falsehoods” is a completely arbitrary assertion made by Warren and her staff, with no objective standard of proof required.
Mercola was again singled out for condemnation.
“[Dr. Mercola] has posted over 600 articles on Facebook casting doubt on COVID-19 vaccines and been subject to multiple federal investigations (with one false- advertising investigation leading to a $2.95 million consumer settlement). But Amazon’s algorithms promoted ‘The Truth About COVID-19’ as a best seller and top result in response to common pandemic-related search terms,” Warren wrote.
As Cindy Harper highlights, Warren’s efforts to have Amazon ban books follows a similar effort by Rep. Adam Schiff, who claimed that 10 per cent of Amazon search results related to vaccines returned “misinformation” (a description again solely determined by Schiff and his staff).
At what point did we enter an era where the very thing that drove scientific progress for hundreds of years – challenging the official orthodoxy – is now treated as heresy?
Putting people on lists with terrorists and sex traffickers before deplatforming them from social media sites is not enough.
Erasing information published by actual doctors and scientific experts that dares to question the ever-shifting goalposts of what “the science” says is also insufficient.
Now the digital book burnings must begin.
Cuba Says ‘Mysterious Syndrome’ is Not Scientifically Plausible
teleSUR | September 13, 2021
A technical report was released Monday by a multidisciplinary research team created by the Cuban Academy of Sciences (ACC) on the “unidentified health incidents” reported in Havana in which some U.S. employees complained of various symptoms when they were stationed in Havana. Similar symptoms apparently appeared in some Canadian citizens and, later, in U.S. employees in other countries.
The report debunks a narrative it calls “mystery syndrome,” which assumes that the cause of these incidents are attacks with some unidentified energy weapon. Its authors reveal that the narrative is based on the following – unverified – claims:
1) A novel syndrome with shared core symptoms and signs is present in the affected employees;
2) It is possible to detect in these employees brain damage originating during their stay in Havana;
3) A directed energy source exists that could affect people’s brains from great distances after crossing the physical barriers of homes or hotel rooms;
4) A weapon capable of generating such a physical agent is achievable and identified;
5) Evidence of an attack was discovered;
6): The available evidence rules out alternative medical explanations.
The report critically examines the plausibility of these claims and the evidence on which they are based, concluding that the “mystery syndrome” narrative is not scientifically acceptable in any of its components and has only survived because of a biased use of science.
Although the report lacks some information, it provides plausible interpretations that fit the available facts better than the “mystery syndrome” narrative, based on published reports in the United States and Canada and field studies in Havana.
The text details the arguments for these interpretations, which are that:
Possibly some U.S. employees while stationed in Havana felt ill due to a heterogeneous collection of medical conditions, some pre-existing before going to Cuba and others acquired due to simple or well-known causes.
Many diseases prevalent in the general population can explain most of the symptoms. Thus, there is no novel syndrome (something evident in the official U.S. reports). Only a minority of people have detectable brain dysfunction, most due to experiences prior to their stay in Havana and others due to well-known medical conditions.
No known form of energy can selectively cause brain damage (with spatial precision similar to a laser beam) under the conditions described for the alleged Havana incidents.
The laws of physics governing sound, ultrasound, infrasound or radio frequency waves (including microwaves) do not permit this. These forms of energy could not have damaged brains without being felt or heard by others, without disturbing electronic devices in the case of microwaves, or without producing other injuries (such as ruptured eardrums or skin burns).
The report assures that at no time was anything of the sort reported. Although there are weapons that use sound or microwaves they are large in size and there is no possibility that this type of weapon would not go unnoticed (or leave a trace) if it had been deployed in Havana. Neither the Cuban Police, nor the F.B.I., nor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, have discovered evidence of “attacks” on diplomats in Havana despite intensive investigations.
Finally, psychogenic and toxic explanations for many symptoms in some cases were rejected by adequate research. Specifically, all the conditions for the psychogenic spread of distress were present in this episode, including probably an inadequate initial medical response, early official U.S. government endorsement of an “attack” theory, and sensationalist media coverage, among others.
The experts stand ready to revise its conclusions if new evidence emerges, inviting efforts to refute its interpretations in a climate of open scientific collaboration. However, it firmly rejects as “established truth” a narrative built on flimsy foundations and flawed scientific practice. An example is the idea that there was an “attack,” which is accepted as “established truth without critical thinking.”
Some scientific articles – and most of the news read – accept as an axiom that there were attacks in Havana, so they take it as an idea on which to build theories. However, after four years, no evidence of attacks has surfaced, making it time to rethink the narrative, the report’s authors hold.
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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- RSF military group defects, joins Sudanese army: State media
- Ireland goalkeeper refuses to play ‘Israel’ as squad weighs boycott
- China pushes back against US on Cuba, Iran
- Ukrainian Soldiers, Potential Mercenaries: Have Gun, Will Travel!
- 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
- 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
