US Hatched Plan to Threaten Russia With Nord Stream Sabotage in Late 2021, Sy Hersh Says
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.04.2023
President Biden publicly warned Moscow in early February of 2022 that the US would bring “an end” to the Nord Stream network if Russia began a military operation in Ukraine. Washington made good on that promise last September, with veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh providing the details in a bombshell Substack piece this past February.
The Biden administration hatched plans to threaten Moscow with the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines about two months before the escalation of the Donbass crisis into a full-blown conflagration between Russia and Ukraine, Seymour Hersh has said.
“The demand was issued just before New Year’s Eve 2021, probably around Christmas,” Hersh said in an interview with independent German media published Monday. “The idea was to find something out of the ordinary that the president could use, a lure or a threat to convince Putin not to attack.”
“Above all, it was a threat. I don’t think this administration is very good at persuasion. They operate more along the lines of ‘you are either with us or against us.’ The idea was to tell Putin: if you cross the border into Ukraine, we will blow up the pipelines,” Hersh added.
The veteran investigative journalist also pointed to another interesting detail about the weeks leading up to the conflict in Ukraine, saying he found it interesting that “hardly anyone pays attention” to the fact that the forces Russia had at its disposal in February 2022 numbered about 120,000 men, far fewer than required to defeat a country the size of Ukraine.
“So if people are still saying that Putin wanted to ‘take’ Kiev, you have to tell them: that’s just not the case. That would not have been possible at all. There were at least 60,000 troops in Kiev [in the spring of 2022, ed.]. And because Putin didn’t take the city, people like to say he failed. But I just can’t imagine how he could have done it with so few troops. It’s also worth remembering that the US and NATO greatly increased the numbers and upgraded the capabilities of the Ukrainian army in recent years, making this army at least formidable,” Hersh said.
The journalist suggested that whatever motivated Russia’s actions in the early days of the conflict, “one thing is clear: [Putin] did not use extreme force.” Hersh believes that what Moscow wants in Ukraine isn’t “physical control” or annexation, but its demilitarization and a measure of “political control over an area, particularly as far as foreign policy is concerned.” The “problem” driving the crisis, in Hersh’s estimation, is that Kiev has rejected demilitarization.
Furthermore, he said, even if Moscow and Kiev were willing to negotiate a compromise, “in the end it won’t matter because we [the US, ed.] don’t want it that way. The US has promised new money, including for fighter jets. We could train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 – which, by the way, is an old plane that the Russians could shoot down relatively easily. But don’t tell that to the newspaper people. What the US and NATO are doing right now lies somewhere between ‘stupid’ and ‘crazy.’”
Whatever comes next with the Nord Stream investigations, Hersh is confident that the Biden administration will “never admit” its responsibility, and that the legacy media in the US would be “perfectly happy” with such a state of affairs. The journalist fears the conflict in Ukraine could drag on for years, although “if Putin deploys his troops more decisively, things might go faster.” The US, he said, has already spent nearly $120 billion on the conflict to date, and will need to spend a lot more – something that might prove difficult as public opinion gradually turns against US policy.
Hersh also reiterated that the Nord Stream attack was just as much an attack on Europe as it was on Russia, pointing out that when the attack took place in September, “winter was just around the corner,” and Germany had proven only “partially successful” in filling up its underground reserves. Unusually mild weather and deliveries of explosively-priced liquefied natural gas helped, but led to a state of permanently high energy prices.
“What happens next? If it gets colder again in the fall and gas prices don’t come down, there will be more resentment against the man who started this crisis, Joe Biden. I don’t know what your chancellor is doing or what he’s done. I don’t know if he knew in advance or not. But by blowing up the pipelines, Biden was telling the Europeans: I don’t have your support, I’m afraid you might falter if it comes to a stalemate with Russia. It was his way of saying: I need more money from the NATO partners, maybe even troops, especially from Germany,” Hersh said. This could prove important for Biden in the long term, the journalist believes, given the threat of a US economic downturn, inflation, high interest rates and bank failures.
Hersh compared the decision to strike Nord Stream to the Bush administration’s decision to respond to 9/11 by invading Iraq, saying there’s a “word for” such policy: stupidity.
“Biden certainly has a chance of being included in the list of dumbest post-war US presidents – blowing up an ally’s gas supply, leaving the German chancellor with problems keeping his citizens warm and Germany prosperous is unwise. I don’t know what will happen to Scholz. I really don’t know. I’m speaking to people from the Bundestag, but nothing seems to be happening there. Where is the German report [on Nord Stream, ed.]? When will it be published? In 3,000 years?”
The journalist pointed out that during the German chancellor’s famous visit to Washington in February 2022, about two weeks before Russia kicked off its special operation, where Biden warned openly that if Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream – we will bring an end to it,” the German chancellor remained silent instead of challenging the US president.
“It would have been nice if Scholz had said: I support the president in everything he said, but blowing up the pipelines would be unacceptable. But he didn’t say anything. His biggest problem is that he has become a collaborator since my first Nord Stream story. He denied nothing, protested nothing, investigated nothing,” Hersh said.
Hersh’s bombshell reporting on the Nord Stream attack now serves as the basis of Russia’s calls for an independent, international investigation into the act of terror. After ignoring his reporting and then trying to smear the Pulitzer Prize winner as a “discredited journalist,” legacy media have come up with alternative explanations about who was responsible, citing a mysterious “pro-Ukrainian group” with no links to any government and a rented yacht purportedly used to carry out the attack. Media tweaked the “yacht” story last week to say that it may have been “only a decoy” in a much larger operation after a backlash about the original story’s unbelievable claims.
April 10, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Germany, Joe Biden, United States | Leave a comment
U.S. Government Has an Accurate Measure of U.S. Temperature That Shows No Recent Warming But It’s Hidden, Says Meteorologist
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 8, 2023
Government-controlled surface datasets, the bedrock of climate thermogeddon fears promoting Net Zero, cannot possibly be accurate, and are only “an estimate with high uncertainty”. The claim comes from the noted U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, who has spent the last decade highlighting the numerous flaws built into global temperature monitoring systems. Data are collected by government bodies from a weather station network, “that was never intended to detect a ‘global warming signal’”, notes Watts. He goes on to call for a new independent global climate database. Given that governments are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on climate mitigation programmes, “doesn’t it make sense to get the most important thing – the actual temperature – as accurate as possible”, he asks.
To date, continues Watts, there is only one network of climate capable weather stations that is accurate enough to fully detect a climate change signal. This is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), started in 2005 as a state-of-the-art automated system designed specifically to accurately measure climate trends at the surface. It comprises 114 stations across North America sited well away from any non-climatic effects, such as urban heat caused by humans.

The USCRN graph above shows that there has been no significant warming trend over the last two decades in the United States. “Unfortunately, the data from the USCRN network are buried by the U.S. Government, and are not publicly reported in monthly or yearly global climate reports. [The network] has also not been deployed worldwide,” observed Watts.
Watts notes that past temperature records were collected to validate weather forecasting. Temperatures were rounded by volunteers to the nearest whole degree of Fahrenheit. When comparing such “coarsely recorded” data to claims of 1.8°F global warming since the late 1800s, “obvious questions” of accuracy arise. Referring to his own recent work, Watts says that even more concerning is the widespread corruption of data by urbanisation. Many stations are compromised by being placed next to air conditioners, jet exhausts and concrete, asphalt and nearby buildings. This happens not just in the USA but in many other territories, including the U.K.
In the U.K., the state-funded Met Office has become highly politicised in recent years as it relentlessly pushes the collectivist Net Zero project. Despite writing a paper on the temperature standstill between 2000-14, it removed the pause in later retrospective adjustments to its HadCRUT global database. In under 10 years it added 30% extra warming to the recent global record, at a time when accurate satellite measurements suggested global warming started running out of steam about 25 years ago. Last summer, the Met Office confirmed and promoted a new U.K. record temperature of 40.3°C at Coningsby. In fact the record was set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of Typhoon fighter jet squadrons, and lasted just 60 seconds. It was achieved with a sudden spike in temperature of 0.6°C followed by an almost immediate drop. To this day, the Met Office has refused to answer questions from the Daily Sceptic asking if jet aircraft movements were a contributing factor.
Watts is not the only scientist raising important concerns about the databases at the heart of the political campaign to promote panic about rising temperatures. Recent work by Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville found that up to a fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. The stations form part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are an important constituent of all global datasets. Interestingly, the two scientists noted that the U.S. weather service NOAA claims to remove urban heat distortions, but they found that on average it is “spuriously warming station temperature data trends when it should be cooling them”. The detailed reasons are given in a note published by Dr. Spencer, where he asks why NOAA adjustments are going in the wrong way. “To say the least, I find these results … curious”, he adds.
Lopping off chunks of recent warming at a time when very little ‘heating’ is occurring would be unwelcome in Net Zero extremist circles. Scientists such as Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen point out that the warming since the ending of the Baroque mini ice age is already tiny. Evidence continues to accumulate that recent periods were much warmer than the present. In February, a group of bio scientists (Brozova et al., 2023) presented evidence showing that the Arctic around Svalbard was 6°C warmer in the early Holocene around 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Further scientific evidence showing past warming can be found here, here and here.
Global surface temperatures recorded and compiled by government agencies are said by Watts to be a mishmash of rounded, adjusted and compromised readings, rather than being an accurate representation of Earth’s temperature. “Given the Government’s monopoly on use of corrupted temperature data, questionable accuracy, and a clear reticence to make highly accurate temperature data from the USCTN available to the public, it is time for a truly independent global temperature record to be produced,” Watts concludes.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
April 10, 2023 Posted by aletho | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment
HOW SWEDEN GOT COVID RIGHT
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 6, 2023
The data is in, and it suggests that government lockdowns killed people. Sweden led the world with the sanest, evidence-based response to the pandemic maximizing freedoms for its citizens while minimizing the litany of harms.
April 10, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights | Leave a comment
Analysis of Mortality Among Transgender Individuals
British Study Reveals Alarming Risks of Suicide and Homicide
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | April 9, 2023
Many of us have been struck by the rapid rise in clinical interest and reported studies on transgender persons. The main clinical indication for gender change medication and or surgery is gender dysphoria. This means that individuals are afflicted with a syndrome in which they are not happy with their natural gender from birth. While changing biological gender the opposite is associated with a modest improvement in gender dysphoria scores, one may wonder if there is a price to pay for such a substantial and and relatively permanent intervention for a psychiatric illness?
Jackson et al, recently reported on the outcomes of total of 1951 British transfeminine (male at birth) (mean [SE] age, 36.90 [0.34] years; 1801 White [92.3%]) and 1364 transmasculine (female at birth) (mean [SE] age, 29.20 [0.36] years. The normal control group was matched to 68,165 cisgender men (59 136 White [86.8%]) and 68,004 cisgender women (57 762 White [84.9%]). Compared with cisgender men, there was an increased risk of overall mortality for transfeminine (MRR, 1.34; 95%CI, 1.06-1.68). Compared with cisgender women, there was an increased risk of overall mortality for transmasculine (MRR, 1.75; 95%CI, 1.08-2.83) adults.

Jackson SS, Brown J, Pfeiffer RM, Shrewsbury D, O’Callaghan S, Berner AM, Gadalla SM, Shiels MS. Analysis of Mortality Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults in England. JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Jan 3;6(1):e2253687. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.53687. PMID: 36716027; PMCID: PMC9887492.
The most notable relative risks for those who changed genders was suicide and homicide as shown in the table. These data suggest that psychiatric and behavioral determinants arising from background gender dysphoria and the transgender process contribute to death at a relatively young age among those who have chosen to change from their original biological gender to the opposite.
April 9, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | UK | Leave a comment
Switzerland withdraws all Covid vaccination recommendations
They almost got it right. They stopped short of pulling the product from the market and properly investigating the net harms but I guess that can still come.
By Joel Smalley | Dead Man Talking | April 8, 2023
Switzerland stops the Covid vaccinations: all vaccination recommendations have been withdrawn, doctors can only administer the controversial vaccines in individual cases under certain conditions – but then bear the risk of liability for vaccination damage.
Whilst it is unfortunate that they cite high prevalence of natural immunity and low levels of virus circulation as primary motivation, rather than the complete ineffectiveness and damage caused by the “vaccine”, it still represents the most courageous act by a public health authority.
Nevertheless, they do still mention those last two facts. It’s progress. Pushing liability onto the doctors is very welcome. Maybe, they’ll put a bit more thought into the part they are playing in the democide.
Strangely, mainstream media missed this update…
The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and the Federal Commission for Vaccination Issues (EKIF) state, as of 3.4.23, in their vaccination recommendation (can be found on this website):
Covid-19 vaccination strategy
The Covid-19 vaccination strategy was developed and updated by the Federal Commission for Vaccination (EKIF) and the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG). The strategy defines the vaccination goals and forms the basis for the Covid-19 vaccination recommendations in Switzerland.
Vaccination recommendations
The vaccination recommendations are drawn up by the EKIF in cooperation with the BAG. As soon as Swissmedic grants approval for a vaccine, the EKIF draws up vaccination recommendations based on the results of the clinical studies and other available evidence.
The latest scientific findings are included in the vaccination recommendations and the current epidemiological situation is taken into account. As a result, the recommendations can partially deviate from the approval.
In addition to specific information on the vaccination target groups and the vaccination schemes, the vaccination recommendations also contain information on the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines as well as important information on the administration of the vaccinations.
Vaccination recommendation for the Covid-19 vaccination in spring/summer 2023
Corona Immunitas seroprevalence data (June/July 2022) show that more than 98% of the Swiss population have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Due to the immunity situation, the currently predominant virus variants and the expected low virus circulation in spring/summer 2023, it can be assumed that people without risk factors have a very low risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 in spring/summer 2023.
For this reason, no recommendation for vaccination against Covid-19 is formulated.
FOPH and EKIF only recommend vaccination for persons at particularly high risk (BGP) from the age of 16 if the attending physician considers it to be medically indicated in the individual case given the epidemiological situation and a temporarily increased protection against serious illness can be expected.
In the event of an emerging SARS-CoV-2 wave, vaccination against Covid-19 would be recommended for BGP. In this case, BAG and EKIF would update the recommendation accordingly.
The recommendations apply regardless of the type and number of vaccination doses already received and the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections that have occurred.
Vaccination is preferably recommended with bivalent mRNA vaccines or Nuvaxovid®. These vaccines, like the monovalent mRNA vaccine, are generally suitable and recommended to prevent serious infections. A minimum interval of 6 months to the last Covid-19 vaccination or known SARS-CoV-2 infection must be observed.
Information on groups of people with an increased risk of severe courses due to chronic diseases or specific conditions can be found in the document Categories of people at particularly high risk.
Differing vaccination recommendations apply to unvaccinated persons from the age of 5 with severe immunodeficiency.
For details on the recommendation situations and their exceptions: see Appendix 1 of the vaccination recommendation for the Covid-19 vaccination.
Recommended vaccinations are free for people from the target groups. Vaccinations that are not recommended but are carried out, for example for travel purposes, are available for a fee.
Such vaccinations are carried out without subsidiary liability by the federal government.
According to this (non MSM) news report, information from the full strategy document indicates that the liability is now entirely on the physician:
Compensation by the federal government to injured persons for vaccination damage can only be considered for vaccinations if they were officially recommended or ordered (see Art. 64 EpG).
Epimetheus makes similar comments on the matter:
Switzerland No Longer Recommends Covid Jabs, Declares that All Liability Rests w/Doctors
April 8, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Switzerland | Leave a comment
COVID deaths up 39% after vaccines rolled out in Ontario Canada
Weren’t the vaccines supposed to REDUCE deaths from COVID? Oddly, there was no press coverage on this.
By Steve Kirsch | April 7, 2023
Executive summary
The official government numbers show COVID deaths are up in Ontario by nearly 40% since the vaccines rolled out and hospitalizations due to COVID are up by 31%!
Both hospitalization and deaths from COVID were up dramatically.
You can see it yourself (see the red box below):

Deaths went from 5,485 in 2021 to 7,625 in 2022.
Could that be statistical noise? Not likely. Sigma is 74 so it’s a 29-sigma increase. In other words, this increase in death didn’t happen by chance; something caused it.
The data from the Ontario website
We know the vax makes you more likely to get COVID. If you had 3 shots, the Cleveland Clinic study showed you are about 2.5X more likely to get COVID. So that big spike in cases in 2022 is totally expected: it was our own doing. The more people who got COVID, the more people who died from COVID.
You’re less likely to die from a COVID case in 2022 than in 2021 because the variant is less deadly, not because the vaccine worked.

Cases

Hospitalizations

Deaths
Possible explanations
Was this because the virus was more deadly in 2022? I don’t think so.
Let’s look the world’s least vaccinated countries: Yemen, Haiti, and PNG. As you can see, deaths are way down in 2022 because the variants are less lethal:

These numbers show that the “it would have been worse if people weren’t vaccinated” excuse won’t hold any water.
Furthermore, we know the vaccines are super deadly. Consider the following recent post which is based on CDC data:

If it wasn’t the vaccine that caused this dramatic rise, what caused it?
Also, even the US data shows a decrease in 2022 vs. 2021, so it’s hard for Ontario to argue that the virus was more deadly in 2022:

This visualization was done on the CDC website on the Weekly Provisional Counts of Deaths page
So there is no rock they can hide under.
Of course, this is embarrassing for the narrative which is why nobody is talking about it.
Even Professor David Fisman is silent about the report. I reached out to him for an explanation and he ignored it, exactly as expected.
This is why there is no press coverage of this: because the numbers are inexplicable if the vaccine worked.
I just thought you’d like to know.
Summary
It’s unfortunate that the mainstream press isn’t covering this.
I can’t figure out why. The press is supposed to report this and get comments from both sides. Instead, they ignore the story.
A nearly 40% increase in COVID deaths and the mainstream press ignores the story!?! WTF is going on here?
But I thought people would want to know the truth.
April 8, 2023 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine | Leave a comment
Sometimes it’s so lonely being Unvaccinated
April 8, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine | Leave a comment
Half of ‘Long Covid’ Sufferers Have Never Had Covid, Says New Study

BY IAN MACLEOD | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 3, 2023
The battle of ideas around Covid has few clashes as hotly contested as Long Covid. Alarmists have hyped the frequency and severity with which infection causes long-term damage. Sceptics see no reason for panic. A new study helps to settle at least part of this debate.
The paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Network Open looked at “post–COVID-19 condition (PCC) in young people after mild acute infection” to find how common it was and to find risk factors. Participants were aged between 12 and 25.
The authors offer this straightforward conclusion: “PCC was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection.” That is, participants were equally likely to suffer from ‘Long Covid’, whether or not they had suffered from acute COVID-19.
The researchers concluded that Long Covid is predicted by “initial symptom severity” and, intriguingly, “psychosocial factors”.
The full article is available on JAMA Network Open.
The main results from the present study were: (1) the prevalence of PCC six months after acute COVID-19 was approximately 50%, but was equally high in a control group of comparable SARS-CoV-2-negative individuals; (2) acute COVID-19 was not an independent risk factor for PCC; (3) the severity of clinical symptoms at baseline, irrespective of SARS-CoV-2 status, was the main risk factor of persistent symptoms six months later.
Symptom prevalence data are consistent with other controlled studies of young people after acute COVID-19 reporting a high symptom load, with only subtle differences between individuals testing positive and negative for SARS-CoV-2. Correspondingly, a large population-based study found no associations between most persistent symptoms attributed to COVID-19 and serological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. …
These findings suggest that persistent symptoms in this age group are related to factors other than SARS-CoV-2 infection, and therefore question the usefulness of the WHO case definition of PCC.
Worth reading in full.
April 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 | Leave a comment
Highly Vaccinated COVID ‘Success’ New Zealand Sees Huge Increase in Death Rates
Concerning increase in mortality in New Zealand
By Ian Miller | Unmasked | April 7, 2023
COVID has unfortunately created any number of repetitive stories.
Jurisdiction imposes mask mandates, population complies, masks prove ineffective, media claims masks didn’t work because of lack of compliance.
Another example would be when countries with extraordinary compliance, such as Singapore or South Korea, would see increases ignored entirely, or blamed on the population not wearing masks of a correct level of quality.
Yet as a general rule, the most consistently predictable repetitive storyline has been the media and expert community declaring that a country was a pandemic success, only for their results to dramatically change in a relatively short period of time.
This was the case with the Czech Republic, with Australia, with Taiwan and many other locations.
Even within the United States adjustments showed that states like California – heralded as pandemic winners – actually had significantly worse results than previously realized.
But few places on earth have been as heavily praised as New Zealand.
Their science-following leadership was repeatedly hailed, honored, and praised for their effective communication, endless lockdowns, tyrannical response to protests, and prolific commitment to mandates.
All of the above, combined with their strict border controls, should have meant that New Zealand would avoid the significant increase in negative outcomes seen in other parts of the world.
At least, that’s what the media and activist public health authorities claimed would happen.
The reality is far more complicated.
New Zealand’s COVID Metrics
Throughout 2020 and into 2021, New Zealand saw very little COVID transmission.
Unsurprisingly, the BBC praised the country for their efforts, explaining in detail how the country had become “COVID free.”
Jacinda Arden, now former prime minister, was once so completely committed to maintaining an illusion of infallibility that she claimed that the only source of accurate information available to the public was the government.
Of course, Arden then made the provably inaccurate claim that those who were vaccinated would net get sick and would not die.
The ridiculous over-confidence in the proclamations of public health authorities led to Arden convincing New Zealanders that strict mandates and interventions could stop the spread of the virus.
As winter and new variants arrived in 2021, Arden and local leaders predictably enforced increasingly strict measures. Mask mandates, lockdowns and “red traffic light” policies include vaccine passports.
Surprise. None of it worked.

After several months of completely unchecked spread, even the country’s cumulative metrics, once seemingly so impressive, exploded in dramatic fashion.
Consistently and exceptionally high mask wearing rates were also entirely ineffective.

And yet defenders of New Zealand’s authoritarian policies still believed that the country’s strategy was warranted, for one specific reason.
They had delayed the spread of the virus until the COVID vaccines became widely available.
In theory, that was supposed to prevent a substantial increase in deaths, especially considering their extraordinary rate of uptake.
That didn’t work either.

While these rates were generally lower after adjusting for population than many other countries, they still represented an obvious, significant surge compared to previous time periods.
But COVID related deaths only tell a part of the story, often influenced by attribution methodology and testing.
In theory, New Zealand’s exceptional vaccination rate and consistently high mask compliance should have meant that all cause mortality would also remain low.
So did it?
Fortunately, thanks to the New Zealand government’s own data, we now have an answer. And just as the country’s failure to stop omicron, it presents another contradiction to the endless media praise.
All Cause Mortality Shows New Zealand’s Mandates Failed
Despite the exceptionally high vaccination rate, despite their exceptionally high booster rate, despite vaccine passports, strict lockdowns, “red traffic light” policies and border controls, the pandemic came for New Zealand as well.
The government’s own data shows that all cause deaths in New Zealand jumped significantly in 2022, to the highest level in recorded data.

The country universally praised for their dedication to following The Science™, whose leadership told the public that following her dictates would keep them safe, stop the spread and control outcomes, has seen a record level of all cause mortality.
Exactly the same as other countries who were criticized for their supposedly less effective response.
Even after adjusting for population, the scale of the surge in 2022 is exceptional.

In fact, it represents an over 17% increase from 2020.
Not to mention that the one year increase, over 10%, represented the largest single year increase in New Zealand since the 1918 flu.
So why didn’t their policies prevent this? Why didn’t waiting for widespread vaccination to open up prevent this?
The New Zealand government themselves blame COVID for at least a portion of the increase. So why were so many people dying of COVID given the country’s exceptional vaccination and booster uptake and masking?
After all, ~95% of the population over 12 had been fully vaccinated by the middle of 2022, with over 90% fully vaccinated by early 2022. Similarly, adult booster rates were nearly 80% by early in 2022.
Why didn’t it work?!
Some may try to claim that their results would have been worse had they not had such policies.
But countries like Sweden thoroughly debunk that theory. Sweden had one of the least restrictive responses anywhere on earth, yet their results were among the best in their region.
Even throughout 2022, excess deaths remained low.

So why did New Zealand fail?
Mistaken Assumptions
Compared to other countries, New Zealand’s cumulative COVID mortality rate still remains low. But the all cause mortality tells a different story.
Their strict policies and delayed opening were supposed to prevent this exact situation from occurring. All because the government put their faith in experts.
The experts mistakenly believed that vaccinations would prevent virtually all deaths, as Jacinda “we are your sole source of truth” Arden explained.
Obviously that was not the case.
It’s not clear what percentage of the excess mortality rate came from vaccinated people. But even more importantly, the majority of the increase was entirely unrelated to COVID.
Nearly 6,000 more people died in 2022 than did in 2020, despite a relatively small population increase. Yet the government says just 2,400 were associated with COVID.
So what caused the other 3,600 unexpected deaths?
In raw numbers, nearly 7,500 more people died in 2022 than in 2016. Accounting for population increases, that meant virtually 100 more people per 100,000 died in 2022 than in 2016.
What happened?
Whatever it was, it’s almost certainly related to New Zealand’s mistaken assumptions. Ancillary lockdown-related causes, missed health screenings, side effects — any or all of it could have contributed to the dramatic increase.
And all of it was because the government mistakenly proclaimed that they could control COVID. Instead, they delayed the inevitable.
Governments have many lessons to learn from the pandemic, but the first should be to never, ever, put blind faith in “experts.”
All too often they’re flying blind themselves.
April 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, New Zealand | Leave a comment
The West sets a disturbing new precedent over murdered Russian military blogger

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 6, 2023
Apparently terrorism and murdering reporters get a free pass if the Western establishment doesn’t like the target’s profile – or if the perpetrator risks being linked to an ally.
The radio silence from the West is deafening in the wake of the murder of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Tatarsky was killed after being handed a statue by a young woman, Darya Trepova, that subsequently blew up the entire venue.
For all of the Western officials’ differences with Russia, can they really not at least bring themselves to condemn a blatant act of terrorism in the middle of a major city center? We’re talking here about the same folks who spent two decades kicking down doors around the world under the guise of fighting a “Global War on Terrorism.”
Just a few years ago, cartoonists and writers for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down in broad daylight at their Paris office by jihadists who objected to the publication’s portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Western leaders roundly condemned that terrorist act, standing firmly on the principle that you couldn’t just go around murdering people who conveyed thoughts and views that you didn’t like. Many of these leaders even traveled to Paris to march alongside a massive crowd in defense of freedom of expression and the press.
Now, however, they can’t even bother to muster the most meager defense of the same principles in the wake of Tatarsky’s murder in an attack that investigators claim is linked to Ukraine.
It seems that whenever there’s any alleged involvement of Ukraine, the West conveniently turns a blind eye. The automobile explosion that killed Russian journalist and activist, Darya Dugina, near Moscow comes to mind. “American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it,” reported the New York Times last October. Similarly, the Washington Post reported this week that the “unwritten rule” among Western officials is “don’t talk about Nord Stream” – the pipeline network carrying gas from Russia to Europe that was mysteriously blown up last year – since they “would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or its allies were involved.”
Then there is the “Mirotvorets” list of journalists and activists maintained by Kiev-based NGO, the Mirotvorets Center, which names people “whose actions have signs of crimes against the national security of Ukraine, peace, human security, and the international law.” It has yet to either be shut down by the Ukrainian government or denounced by Western allies, despite a 2017 United Nations report on human rights in Ukraine urging Ukrainian authorities to address it.
Acts of terrorism and affronts to free speech are clearly in the eye of the Western beholder, which would explain why much of the media rhetoric focuses on Tatarsky’s pro-Russia stance. The void left by the lack of official reaction from Western officials is being filled with Western press articles focusing on the Ukrainian-born blogger’s prior involvement with Russian-backed separatist forces in 2014 in the Donbass. There, he got his start in covering events through his Telegram channel, which grew to become wildly popular, with CNN noting his “ardent pro-war commentary.” But if prior military experience of some kind, and taking sides in one’s coverage of armed conflict, was justification for murdering journalists, then every Western veteran who started a blog, and every opinion journalist, would be fair game.
There was no shortage of Western outrage over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul a few years ago, despite his longstanding activism against the Saudi leadership. Why should the death of this Russian blogger be treated any differently?
Bulgarian investigative journalist, Cristo Grozev, who was heavily featured in the Academy Award-winning feature documentary film about Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, apparently thinks that some people are just “legitimate targets” for terrorism, and argues that the cafe may not have been a “purely civilian location.” Although it was previously owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russian private military enterprise, Wagner Group, that doesn’t magically transform a dining establishment, which welcomes anyone right off the street in the middle of a major city, into some kind of a military base. If an American general walks into the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, it doesn’t suddenly turn the hotel or its bar into a legitimate military target for bombing by some entity that has a score to settle with Washington.
And what about every journalist who has been embedded as the guest of Western troops in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan and has promoted the talking points of their hosts while siding with their own country? Are they fair game for picking off now, too?
The prominent Washington Institute for the Study of War think tank, whose board members include American generals Jack Keane and David Petraeus, as well as Washington’s former ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, previously and routinely qualified Tatarsky as a prominent Russian military blogger whose work they apparently considered worthy of informing their research.
It seems like there’s an effort underway by some members of the Western establishment to reframe this egregious act of terrorism and murder as something trivial, all because the target was a Russian whose views they don’t like – and that’s an awfully slippery slope.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
April 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment
Almost two million unexploded bombs cleared after US war in Laos

RT | April 7, 2023
More than 1.8 million unexploded bombs were cleared in Laos between 1996 and February 2023, the Southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare revealed this week.
A total of 1,808,254 unexploded ordnances (UXOs) were removed from an area covering 80,000 hectares, making the land safe for farming and other forms of agricultural development, according to Minister Padeumphone Sonthany.
The figures were announced at a press conference in the country’s capital Vientiane on Tuesday on the 18th annual International Day for UXO/Mine Awareness.
Laos is, per capita, the most heavily-bombed country in the world. From 1964 to 1973, the US military dropped more than two million tons of bombs on the nation during the Vietnam War – more than on Germany and Japan combined throughout World War II. It is estimated that around 30% of the bombs dropped did not explode.
The US conducted prolonged bombing campaigns – the so-called ‘Secret War’ – in Laos during the Vietnam War in a bid to disrupt supply lines between the country and Vietnam. The scale of the attacks, which were conducted in secrecy by the CIA, were revealed during a 1971 congressional hearing, as well as by US media investigations.
Of the 1.8 million UXOs removed and safely detonated during the period, 1,056,393 were cluster bombs. Another 4,336 were characterized as ‘large’ bombs, and 2,456 were landmines. Some 745,069 of other types of munitions were included in the statistics reported by China’s Xinhua News Agency, which cited Laotian media reports from last Wednesday.
The report said that 2,846 people had been involved in UXO-related accidents between 2015 and 2022, and that people from 4,092 villages across the country had been educated about the risks posed by UXOs. It added that the munitions continue to pose a grave threat to civilians and remain a barrier to increased agricultural production.
Rice is a key agricultural product in Laos, with over 60% of arable land used for its cultivation.
It is estimated that around 80 million unexploded live bomblets remain obscured in Laos, a product of the 270 million cluster bombs previously dropped on the country by US forces.
April 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Laos, United States | Leave a comment
Joe Biden’s Most Awkward Gaffes | Biden 2020 Compilation
Matt Orfalea | March 25, 2023
Joe Biden 2020. The definitive compilation. I can mix up words & numbers as much as the next guy but no mentally fit person REPEATEDLY forgets that they are running for President of the United States. Yikes!
April 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, Video | Joe Biden, United States | Leave a comment
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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
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