Heavily Criticised Pro-lockdown Paper Cited Far More Than Anti-lockdown Papers
BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 13, 2023
Formal scientific institutions took a battering during the pandemic, and deservedly so. From the wildly inaccurate predictions of SAGE modellers to the denial of natural immunity by signatories of the John Snow Memorandum, ‘Science’ (uppercase ‘s’) has not had a good three years.
A particularly striking illustration of this is citation patterns in the scientific literature. If things were working well, the best studies would get cited the most. Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case: citations have flowed disproportionately to studies that uphold The Narrative.
In June, 2020, researchers from Imperial College London (including our old friend Neil Ferguson) published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature titled ‘Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe’.
They concluded – on the basis of a complex model-fitting exercise – that lockdowns had saved the lives of 3.1 million people across 11 European countries. That’s right, 3.1 million lives saved, and during the first three months of the pandemic alone.
Doesn’t sound very plausible, does it? After all, Sweden didn’t lock down, and they saw about as many deaths – or even fewer – than the countries that did lockdown. So how did the researchers get to the figure of 3.1 million lives saved?
As Philippe Lemoine notes, they just assumed that death numbers would have been far greater in the absence of lockdowns, and then took the difference between those numbers and the ones that were actually observed, and concluded the difference was due to lockdowns. Okay, but what about Sweden?
Well, the researchers fit a model in which the effect of different interventions could vary from country to country. And while Sweden didn’t have a lockdown, they did have a ban on public gatherings (of more than 500 people). So in the researchers’ model, Sweden’s ban on public gatherings ended up having the same impact as lockdown in all the other countries.
They were effectively claiming that, in France, Italy, the UK etc., lockdowns succeeded in preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths, but in Sweden, the same effect was achieved by simply banning public gatherings. Like I said, not very plausible. In fact, it’s preposterous.
The paper has been heavily criticised. However, that hasn’t stopped it being cited 2779 times! Most researchers don’t get that many citations in their entire career, let alone on a single paper.
Now let’s look at the number of citations accrued by papers finding that lockdowns didn’t have much effect.
Simon Wood’s paper ‘Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown?’ concluded that “infections were in decline before full UK lockdown”. It has been cited a total of 40 times (across two different versions).
Christian Bjørnskov’s paper ‘Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison’ found “no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development”. It has been cited a total of 57 times.
Eran Bendavid and colleagues’ paper ‘Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19’ did “not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs”. It has been cited a total of 205 times.
Christopher Berry and colleagues’ paper ‘Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic’ did “not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths”. It has been cited a total of 68 times.
While none of these papers is perfect, they’re all vastly more rigorous than the Imperial College study published in Nature. Despite this, none of them has garnered even 1/10th as many citations as that study.
Something has gone seriously wrong when a flawed study gets almost three thousand citations, while more rigorous studies only pick up a few dozen. As to what explains this disparity, I can only speculate that most scientists haven’t come to terms with the fact that the ‘experts’ dropped the ball.
March 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights | Leave a comment
Courage of the teacher who refused to make his pupils wear masks
By Harry Hopkins | TCW Defending Freedom | March 14, 2023
Right from the outset of the ‘plandemic’ there have been those who recognised the evil in what was going on and who, in their own ways, have been making every effort to resist. Across the world many people have lost their jobs and their businesses, but perhaps giving up one’s livelihood on principle is the supreme act that a person with moral courage can do to oppose the enemy that confronts us.
There have been many such brave souls and Mark (not his real name) is such a person. A teacher at a large secondary school in Yorkshire, he realised that he would have difficulty doing his job when testing and then masking of his pupils was mandated. These instructions came from the local authority and were expected to be introduced without question. There were other teachers, too, who had grave misgivings, but they were in the minority and were openly mocked.
All teachers were given instructions about the distribution of testing kits and to organise pupil seating plans which had to be adhered to. All staff were expected to wear a face covering; there was no consultation about this. In the spring term of 2021 a box of testing kits arrived in Mark’s classroom, which he left untouched as the holiday was just about to start. On return from holiday he decided to write to the head teacher about his concerns, and you can read his email here.
Not only did the head not reply to this letter, but he didn’t speak to Mark again. Instead, he sent a teaching assistant, who was full on-narrative and was wearing two masks plus a visor, to admonish him for not complying. In Mark’s own words:
‘She commenced by bellowing instructions to maskless pupils to cover their faces. She glanced at me, clearly expecting a reaction. How could I possibly allow these potential vectors of death to be in school without covering their faces? I had never, and still have never instructed a child to obstruct their airways. It is a line I simply cannot cross. I suspect my response was neither wanted nor expected, since it appeared to make her address the children with yet more venom. I turned and smiled at the children instead who smiled back me. These confused souls seemed to prefer my smile to this clown’s anger, despite not being able to see her face.
‘I’m not seeking praise or recognition or anything at all here, I simply cannot in good conscience do it. As the school year progressed, things didn’t improve. Every few weeks she would arrive to carry out the task, a task that she clearly felt I should be doing and one I had no grounds to refuse. After she left the room, the masks would come down and an ever-increasing number of testing kits were discarded by the kids into the bin each time. My attitude was clearly causing an issue for some members of staff; many would blank me as we crossed in the corridor, and entering the staffroom sometimes felt like the scene from the movie An American Werewolf in London when the tourists walk into the Slaughtered Lamb pub and everyone suddenly stops talking to stare.’
When you read these words, describing the experience of a dedicated teacher who was untouched by the brainwashing that resulted in utter cruelty being inflicted on children across the country, it makes you shudder in disbelief. For Mark to maintain his moral stance in the face of such disgraceful behaviour from his colleagues surely speaks volumes for his strength of character. How on earth he managed to carry on, day after day, in the face of such hostility is a credit to his courage and steadfastness, not to mention his dedication to his pupils.
In July the headmaster was off work because he had tested positive for Covid. In his absence his deputies, clearly relishing the authority, upped the ante from passive-aggression to a decidedly more unpleasant tack. Mark’s pupil-centred teaching technique was deemed unsafe because he was not wearing a mask, did not sport PPE and was doing his best to help the kids in his charge by behaving in a ‘normal’ manner. He was told to go home, take a test or, if he preferred not to get tested, then allow other teachers to cover his classes for two weeks.
Confronted with such stupidity and total lack of any humanity regarding the care of pupils, Mark was pushed over the edge when another masked deputy began haranguing him about following ‘the science’. An argument ensued. It was the final straw and he collected his belongings and left for good.
It’s interesting to note that the decision to impose masks on schoolchildren in England was not ‘following the science’ at all but rather was purely for political expediency: ‘Face masks introduced in English secondary schools to avoid “argument” with Sturgeon’.
Mark gave up a career that he enjoyed tremendously because he would not subject his pupils to the Covid madness. The welfare of the children in his charge was always at the centre of his actions and he could not, in all conscience, inflict the insanity of masks, tests and distancing on his young charges.
As a conclusion, it is heartening to say that Mark now works as a supply teacher and devotes much time to opposing the narrative with practical actions. The wonderful thing from his point of view is that he stood by his conscience and has the satisfaction of going forward knowing that he kept his soul intact. One wonders how his headmaster, his deputies and other teachers who inflicted these despicable practices on young, impressionable youngsters justify their behaviour now that the truth about the Covid crimes is breaking by the day. Did they keep their souls intact? I think not.
March 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, UK | Leave a comment
Homelessness and Hardiness to COVID-19
Toronto Study Indicates Homeless Managed Just Fine Through Pandemic
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | March 16, 2023
It is well known that homeless populations have much higher rates of hospitalization for a variety of reasons including drug abuse, alcoholism, aspiration, pneumonia, and neuropsychiatric reasons. I have always wondered how they fared during COVID-19 having heard little about severe outcomes among those who live outside.
Lucie Richard and coworkers reported on 736 homeless individuals in Toronto, Ontario during 2021 and 2022. The majority managed through the illness with no reported difficulty over the time period, most with the Omicron variants. There were no reported severe cases, hospitalizations, or deaths.
Despite approximately two thirds taking a COVID-19 vaccine, the shots appeared to be useless in this population with no statistically significant vaccine efficacy. While the public has watched the relentless pursuit of well-employed adults, college age students, and children down to 6 months of age, the most economically deprived and vulnerable in society appear to be of little interest to the Biopharmaceutical Complex, and like the other groups, have no theoretical benefit from vaccination. As a general rule if the highest risk derive no reduction in hospitalization or death, then even lower risk individuals are not worth the effort for public health interventions such as vaccines.
March 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine | Leave a comment
US Nurtured Plans of Destroying Iraq Years Before 2003 Invasion, Ex-Official Says
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 19.03.2023
Based on what turned out to be the false premise that then-leader of Iraq Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, on March 19, 2003, the US launched its Operation Iraqi Freedom, which cost the lives of over 4,700 US and allied servicemen, and hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Iraqis.
The US was determined to destroy Iraq years before the 2003 invasion, an Iraqi official has told Sputnik.
Two decades since the US military entered Baghdad, Farouk Al Fityan, Iraq’s last ambassador to Greece before the US invasion of the country, has shared with Sputnik his recollections of what happened 20 years ago.
“We feared an invasion after the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent groundless, unrealistic accusations, claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and had possibly been involved in the 9/11 attack,” said the ex-director of the Iraqi foreign minister’s office before the US occupation.
On February 5, 2003, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations, claiming the United States had ample evidence of Iraq’s production of weapons of mass destruction, and demonstrated a vial containing “anthrax” to illustrate the point. However, the so-called proof presented by Washington failed to impress the UN Security Council, which did not authorize the United States to use force. Indeed, by the time of the unauthorized US-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein had eliminated the country’s chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction programs. The Bush administration was subsequently revealed to have fabricated evidence of Iraqi WMDs.
After the occupation of Afghanistan, it became evident that Iraq was next in line, Farouk Al Fityan said.
The US launched its invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the time, the US explained its move by highlighting that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the attacks, and that the Taliban* had offered sanctuary to members of al-Qaeda. However, the Taliban never recognized the US assertions that the group had any ties to the 2001 attacks. The US invasion went on to claim the lives of thousands of US soldiers, and more than 100,000 Afghan troops, police, as well as civilians caught in the crossfire.
Amid the hostility emanating from Washington, Baghdad attempted to consolidate international opinion, and the Iraqi foreign minister at the time, Naji Sabri, serving under then-President Saddam Hussein, was trying to involve a number of Arab countries, especially the Gulf States, in this process, Farouk Al Fityan said.
Shuttle diplomacy was undertaken to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Bahrain… After the Beirut summit in 2002, visits were made to Cairo, Damascus, and Algiers. The Foreign Ministry also reached out to Iran and other neighboring countries, hoping to “break the mechanism of war” conceived by the United States.
At the same time, the former Iraqi official said, American President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had already set the stage for what would follow.
“If we look at the Arab reality today, we will see that the scheme tested in Iraq was later implemented in Libya, Sudan, and Syria. The Arab world was thrust into a difficult situation 20 years ago.”
When the blockade of Iraq was imposed after the Gulf War (1990–1991), everyone suffered a lot. It was very difficult to get medicine for children, not to mention food. The hardest years were from 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi ex-official said, adding:
“We felt that the US was serious about destroying Iraq, because there had never been an international blockade like the one that was imposed upon us then.”
Subsequently, the Oil-for-Food Program (OIP) was established by the UN in 1995, allowing Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian necessities. Due to the blockade and false accusations of possession of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq had to deal with multiple international inspection teams. Baghdad opened the doors for the teams, albeit the Foreign Ministry was fully aware of their lack of impartiality.
“We knew that they were subordinate to the United States and Great Britain. But Iraq had no choice but to accept. And we, the diplomats and the military, were forced to come to terms with this. However, I was personally convinced that they had come to destroy Iraq, and not to ‘remove the threat of war.'”
According to Farouk Al Fityan, his country’s leadership was convinced that there would be no US offensive, as had happened in Afghanistan. They expected that everything would be limited to some air strikes on some objects, but in fact, “America’s decision to destroy Iraq had already been made.”
March 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iraq, United States | Leave a comment
COVID Amnesty for Decision Makers?
Dr. Scott Jensen | March 15, 2023
Folks starved to death, killed themselves, and stopped caring about living; this isn’t about ‘forgive and forget,’ it’s about accountability!
Help me keep my medical license: https://drscottjensen.com/
#Health #Freedom #COVID
March 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Covid-19, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment
Lancet Pushes Dangerous Theory That People Are Worth No More Than Rats
BY DR DAVID BELL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 17, 2023
There are various degrees of acceptable insanity, but in general you would not want a person who thought a toad had the same intrinsic value as your mother to manage her Alzheimer’s disease. You would not want a person who equated the value of your daughter with that of a rat to decide whether she be injected with medicine still under trial, such as an mRNA vaccine. Or perhaps you would, as you may agree with the Lancet editorial in January 2023 that equates these, insisting: “All life is equal, and of equal concern.”
Whatever value system you apply to other humans, it is important to understand that international public health is currently dominated by such rhetoric, if not such thinking. This will greatly influence society and your health for the next few decades.
The Lancet is one of the most influential international medical journals. The above passage is not taken out of context. The editorial recommends we change the way society is managed:
Taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.
To understand where public health has gone during the past few years, and why the Covid response could happen, it is important to pick this short editorial apart. Why did health professionals recommend children be denied the right to play together, and coerce pregnant women to be injected with novel pharmaceuticals that pass to their foetus? The answer lies partly in the dogma that now dominates health institutions and the journals that claim to inform them.
The concept that human health is influenced by the environment is as old as society itself. The ‘One Health’ label was attached to this a couple of decades ago to encompass the benefits of approaching public health in a more ecologically holistic manner. Bovine tuberculosis will affect humans less if it is controlled more effectively in cattle. Human well-being will benefit if forest preservation maintains local rainfall and shade, improving crop and animal production. Few would disagree.
Many religious beliefs also hold nature in high regard. Jains and some Buddhist schools hold that humans should minimise harm to any animal, maintaining strict vegetarian diets and taking steps to avoid the killing even of earthworms. Judaism and related beliefs hold that all of nature is God’s work and while humans have sovereignty over animals, they also have an obligation to nurture the world that God created. These religions maintain a strictly hierarchical view.
The difference with current One Health dogma is that it goes beyond revering nature to considering humans to be just one of many equal creatures. One Health in 2023, as the Lancet explains, involves “a revolutionary shift in perspective”. The Lancet’s editors are calling, specifically, for animals to be considered on a par with humans, dispensing with the “purely anthropocentric” or hierarchical view held by other nature-revering religions.
This insistence on inter-species equity is where the current One Health argument begins to come unstuck. Preserving an ecosystem (good) requires the infliction of staggering pain and suffering on many of its inhabitants by other, predatory animals (terrible for the victims). You cannot have it both ways. So, if you want animals to be treated like humans, either separate the animals from their natural predators, or leave humans also to the harsh cruelty of nature.
The Lancet opens by calling on indigenous peoples’ care for land to stand as an example. It then advocates that we do away with indigenous meat-dominated diets, quoting its EAT-Lancet Commission that it
…takes an equitable approach by recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.
The ‘welfare’ of animals, in the Lancet’s opinion, is better served by the cut and thrust of the savannah, where bovids are disemboweled alive by carnivores. This naïve view of indigenous people and nature smacks of the cultural paternalism of the Victorian romantics. Many indigenous peoples, together with species ranging from weasels to jaguars, will be hoping they take their equity elsewhere.
Being “as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals” as one is about humans (‘ecological equity’ in the Lancet’s parlance) is a dangerous position to hold. Equity means all animals and humans should have equal rights or outcomes. Consistent with this, management of a highway triage event would have to weigh a severely injured goat (or rabbit) against a severely injured human, and not discriminate based on species. If the goat is more likely to respond to emergency measures, then save it and leave the unfortunate human to his or her fate. While the Lancet‘s editorial team may hold this view, most people would recognise this as a degradation of humans. One Health, however, extends far beyond the Lancet, and is being woven into the proposed pandemic agreements by which the World Health Organisation and others hope to increase control of global public health.
If the public health industry truly views the world through this lens, then the public should consider whether its protagonists can be trusted with any influence or authority. If they view the world otherwise, then they should cease the false rhetoric. The idea that fellow humans are to be held at a higher level than animals underpins virtually all human ethical systems. These include the Nuremberg Codes developed after the medical profession led the degradation of human dignity before and during World War Two.
I, personally, shall not entrust my children’s welfare to the hands of people who consider them on a level with the rodents I regularly trap and kill. I want to minimise the trauma I put these rodents through, and I want to see their species thrive in the wild, but I don’t want them crawling in my children’s beds. That means killing them, because they thrive otherwise in the local environment in which we live, and we don’t have the capacity, as the Lancet editors might, to maintain a fully rodent-proof house.
One Health, as a recognition of the close ties between human health and the health of the environment, is not new. Caring for and loving nature is also nothing new, and is a healthy state in which to live. Minimising pollution and maintaining diversity is an important part of this. So, incidentally, is eating meat. Siberian tigers and poodles agree.
A rational One Health approach does not require a fanciful world in which gazelles, lions, hyaenas and humans drink from the same cup. It has nothing to do with a code of medical conduct in which the life of a lemming is weighed against the life of a baby. We have just been through three years in which novel drugs were trialled en masse on children and pregnant women, and corporate investors enriched themselves through the coercion of millions. This repulsive devaluation of our fellow humans needs to stop.
Health professionals who do not prioritise people over animals may get by as veterinary surgeons, but are unsafe with people. It is time for those who believe in the intrinsic and undefinable value of each human to find their voice, and rebuild our institutions on that basis. Public health should elevate humanity rather than degrade it.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.
March 18, 2023 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine | Leave a comment
The flu vaccine is too deadly to be used and should be pulled from the market
The Medicare data that the CDC never shows the public makes this crystal clear. I wonder what public benefit there is of hiding this data.
By Steve Kirsch | March 17, 2023
Executive summary
The Medicare data proves that the flu vaccine is too unsafe to use because it kills more than 1 person per million vaccinated, which is the safety threshold noted by vaccine expert Paul Offit.
The evidence has been in plain sight but nobody seems to care.
Introduction
I find it really annoying that our government is hiding the safety data on vaccines. How does hiding the data protect the public from harm?
Of course, I’m not a doctor and doctors don’t have any problem at all with their government hiding safety data. Have you ever seen any of them complain about the lack of transparency? Of course not! None of them want their licenses revoked or their grants canceled.
However, since I’m not a doctor, I’m not encumbered.
So I wanted to let you in on a little secret: the government hides the data from us because the vaccines they’ve been promoting are unsafe.
Let’s take the flu vaccine for example.
Have you noticed that the government NEVER shows you the data from Medicare, VSD, BEST, or any other database?
The record level data we need to make a proper safety assessment is simply never made publicly available.
The reason is simple: the shots are deadly and should be pulled. If they released the data, everyone would know this. So they keep the data hidden from public view.
Thanks to an anonymous HHS employee, I’ve been provided with the “days after death” for the flu vaccine.
I’ve already published the flu charts twice before (here and here) and nobody noticed, even though I pointed it out in my Feb 25 Game Over article, so I’m going to point it out once again now.

Figure 1. Number of deaths per day after taking the flu shot. See the spike on Day 0? It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking. That’s a problem. That could only be caused by the vaccine itself. There is no other way to explain this “coincidence.”
See the spike on Day 0?
At least 375 “excess deaths” on Day 0!
Last I checked, there is no need to vaccinate people for the flu right before they die because the vaccine takes time to have an effect. That’s why there is normally a reduced number of deaths on Day 0 vs. baseline: if you are about to die, they aren’t going to waste time vaccinating you.
But you can see there are 375 excess deaths on Day 0.
Now consider that this is a subset of all the people who get the flu vaccine in 2021:
- It’s only people in Medicare
- It’s only people who got the flu shot in Q1 of 2021
- It’s only people < 80
375 excess deaths times 1M is more than the population of the US.
So over 1 person per million died.
Summary
The flu vaccine kills > 1 person per million vaccinated.
This is above the safety threshold of a vaccine articulated by vaccine expert Paul Offit.
This means the flu vaccine should be pulled from the market.
I don’t know how I can make it any clearer than that.
And the COVID vaccine? Well, it’s killing people at a 1,000X greater rate than the flu shot. It should have been pulled long ago. Check out this analysis by Denis Rancourt that, after accumulating 100K views, was pulled from ResearchGate. It’s a quality analysis. For example, one of my colleagues who NEVER texts me on ANY papers, texted me to look at this one: “Just published. This data is really stunning.”
But the health authorities are looking the other way and the doctors just blindly do whatever the CDC says, no matter how many people are killed.
I guess that’s the way science works.
Tragic.
March 18, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CDC, United States | Leave a comment
mRNA Vaccine Contamination Much Worse Than Thought
Jabs “Up to 35%” DNA That Turns Human Cells into Long-Term Spike Protein Factories
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 13, 2023
The contamination of mRNA vaccines with DNA is far greater than initially thought at up to 35%, and the DNA’s role in inducing human cells to produce the spike protein long term has been confirmed, according to the latest research.
Earlier this month, the Daily Sceptic reported on the work of Dr. Kevin McKernan and his team who had subjected the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna to deep sequencing analysis and found alarming levels of DNA contaminants known as plasmids. These are small circular DNA molecules that in principle can self-replicate in bacterial and human cells and induce the cell to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein long term. Each vaccine dose was found to contain billions of these plasmids.
The Moderna vaccine appeared to contain DNA contamination at around the ‘safe’ level set by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) at the equivalent of one part per 3,000 mRNA molecules, though it’s not clear how safe this level really is. The Pfizer vaccine, on the other hand, was found to contain DNA contamination at 10 times the ‘safe’ level, at one plasmid per 350 mRNA molecules.
The DNA is part of the vaccine manufacturing process, providing the blueprint for the mRNA, but it should have been removed to at least the ‘safe’ level, though was not for reasons that are unclear.
Now, Dr. McKernan and his team have undertaken further analysis and found that the level of DNA contamination is much greater than originally reported, with up to 35% of the vaccine product being this DNA contamination. They write:
This equates to 20-35% of the nucleic acid in each vaccine being expression vector. This is several orders of magnitude over the the EMAs limit of 330ng/mg. With these levels of contamination, RT activity from LINE-1 is not a prerequisite for genome integration.
Molecular biologist Dr. Jessica Rose explains that this means each dose may contain trillions of DNA molecules, 100 times greater than previously reported: “The left-over expression vectors used to manufacture the mRNAs are at contamination levels 100-fold higher than originally proposed and imply trillions of DNA molecules per dose. This has implications for integration into our genome.”
The precise level of contamination is unknown as these are estimates with a wide margin of error. It may also vary by batch. What is certain, however, is that the contamination of both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is way above any official ‘safe’ level.
In the original analysis, Dr. McKernan had been looking primarily for RNA contamination and had used an additive that can suppress DNA amplification. By looking specifically for DNA contamination he and his team found that the amount of DNA present was far greater than the initial technique had indicated.
Further analysis by Dr. McKernan and his team has also confirmed that the plasmids are intact and capable of self-replicating, and that the relevant promoters are present that allow them to express mRNA for spike protein in human cells (and not just in bacteria).
This indicates that these DNA plasmids are likely to survive for long periods, be taken up by cells inside the body and induce the cells to produce spike protein for an indefinite period of time.
It is thought this could explain the observed persistence of spike protein in the blood of vaccinated persons for weeks or months after injection, which is believed by experts to be a contributor to adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Jessica Rose notes: “It is more than likely that these adverse effects are the direct result of t he contamination illuminated by Kevin and his team.”
These findings are obviously highly disturbing. Regulators ought to be making a priority of looking into these issues for themselves and, if confirmed, taking the appropriate action including removing the products from the market.
March 18, 2023 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine | Leave a comment
Launched on a Wing and a Prayer (For Billions of Dollars)

By Laurie Calhoun | Libertarian Institute | March 14, 2023
Way back in the spring of 2020, the provocative title of an article caught my eye. Upon reading it, I learned that researchers were rushing to create a vaccine before the COVID-19 virus mutated, which would render the vaccine nugatory and destroy all hopes of creating a blockbuster panacea. Curious at the time, such a warning can be viewed today as having been prophetic. (Note: That article, which offered a business slant on the historic vaccine competition, is no longer available through Google—“some results have been removed,” and are seemingly irretrievable—but here’s one with a similar title from April 2020: “Coronavirus mutation could threaten the race to develop vaccine.”)
Consider the stunning conclusion of a peer-reviewed scientific journal article published in January 2023:
“Viruses that replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2, endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other “common cold” viruses, cause significant mortality and morbidity and are important public health concerns. Because these viruses generally do not elicit complete and durable protective immunity by themselves, they have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines.”
Accustomed as everyone is by now to a relentless barrage of contradictory proclamations and retaliatory responses to them, the claim that mRNA was never fit to purpose for rapidly mutating coronaviruses might be written off by the usual suspects as the ravings of yet another antivaxxer conspiracy theorist. Except that this paper was co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible and persistent pusher of the newfangled COVID-19 vaccines throughout 2021 and 2022. So what happened?
Against all conventional wisdom on the ethical practice of medicine, Fauci did everything in his power to achieve maximal uptake of an experimental treatment by human beings across all cohorts, without regard to patient health, age, or any other identifying factor beyond their possession of an arm into which to inject a novel product granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) after an accelerated review by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Not only did Fauci ignore the vast disparities in vulnerability to severe illness and death between healthy infants and frail nonagenarians, but he also conducted himself for two years as though natural immunity through previous infection were somehow irrelevant to the question of whether a patient should roll up his sleeve.
Now, in the light of Fauci’s own published scientific findings, it would appear that he was right, in a sense, about natural immunity all along, albeit in an unexpectedly perverse way. First of all, as we already witnessed in real time, coronaviruses as a class, including SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), mutate rapidly in order to propagate themselves. This “discovery” served as the basis for the development of “boosters,” which, it was claimed, became necessary when “fully vaccinated” persons continued to become infected with COVID-19. Major outbreak-inducing strains such as Delta and Omicron, which arise through mutation, will always be one step ahead of last year’s vaccines, having survived precisely by evading the antibodies induced by injection into the body of the previous virus generation’s mRNA.
According to Fauci’s own findings, however, there is a second, even more compelling reason for denying that either vaccine or natural immunity to COVID-19 can ever be permanent. The primary difference between diseases such as measles, for which vaccines work, and the seasonal flu or SARS-CoV-2, for which they do not, is that the body’s natural immune response rises only to the level of the severity of the pathogen. Since most people can survive coronaviruses, the minimal response needed to defeat the invader is rather mild, which is why immunity dissipates rapidly over time and people can become reinfected again and again, even if they have recovered from natural infection, and whether or not they have undergone vaccination.
There are of course people who die of the flu or COVID-19, but they nearly always have comorbidities, infirmities or weaknesses, rendering them vulnerable to a pathogen which healthy bodies are capable of defeating. Notwithstanding the massive propaganda campaign for universal vaccination, most healthy young persons would have survived COVID-19, and would not have been hospitalized, with or without vaccination. Given the abundance of statistical evidence, there is simply no sense in which it can be truthfully asserted that healthy young persons with no comorbidities were “saved” by the shots. On the other hand, extremely frail and elderly persons can indeed be killed by the virus, regardless of how many “vaccines” they have taken. When it comes to the mercurial class of coronaviruses—instantiated by not only the common cold and the seasonal flu, but also COVID-19—so-called vaccines will never transcend their pedestrian identity as mere shots, for they are constitutionally incapable of offering longterm protection, not only because these viruses rapidly mutate, but also, and more fundamentally, because the body’s natural response to infection by such transitory viruses is never robust enough to be permanent. Just as having survived the flu one year has nearly no bearing on whether one will contract another case of the flu, from a different variant, in the future, no so-called vaccine solution to COVID-19 can confer longlasting protection.
Take as many boosters as you like, until the end of time, but having done so may or may not prevent you from contracting the latest iteration of the virus—or protect anyone else—since every booster or flu shot is the result of researchers’ “best guess” of what the specific properties of the next generation of viruses will be. It appears, then, that the widely celebrated and aggressively marketed, and in some cases mandated, COVID-19 vaccines, paid for thrice by the recipients of “free” shots, were in fact launched on a wing and a prayer. There was really no hope all along that the shots would or could offer longterm protection, although it was claimed for marketing purposes that they were highly effective and would save millions of lives. That those selling points were in fact lies may explain why they were supplemented all along the way with such eerily self-contradictory slogans as: “The vaccinated need to be protected from the unvaccinated!”
Dr. Fauci’s surprising publication reveals that the abundant optimism exuded by him and others in attempting to maximize vaccine uptake was scientifically unfounded from the beginning. Neither the mRNA technology nor the traditional vaccines (which introduce a small amount of the live or dead pathogen into the body to elicit an immune response) can be effective for rapidly evolving pathogens such as coronaviruses to which the highly efficient human body mounts the weakest possible effective response. But this is hardly news, for we already knew long before 2020 that, despite assiduous efforts spanning decades, no one ever managed to develop a vaccine against the common cold. Likewise, the widely touted flu shots, marketed in very public ad campaigns only slightly less aggressive than those for the COVID-19 treatments, are in fact mediocre at best, as Fauci himself has averred.
If vaccine technology, whether vector- or mRNA-based, is simply a mismatch for the nature of rapidly mutating viruses, and this is a matter of common knowledge, readily accessible to anyone working in virology, then how are we to understand Fauci’s comportment throughout the Coronapocalypse? And why did he and his coauthors boldly reaffirm in January 2023 what many other researchers have been saying for years, including a few brave souls who were silenced when they tried to suggest the same from 2020 to 2022?
Fauci faces something of a “Charybdis or Scylla” dilemma here, for if he was ignorant of basic truths of immunology known by competent and knowledgeable scientists before 2020, then he had no business serving as the nation’s fount of public health wisdom. Double-masked Fauci devotees, in the aftermath of what was empirically indistinguishable from a full-scale psyop spanning more than two years, will no doubt remain reluctant to renounce their allegiance to the person who, they believe, “guided” us through the pandemic. Confronted with the revelations of Fauci et al.’s January 2023 publication, such followers may most charitably conclude that the object of their reverence did genuinely believe in the mRNA vaccines and continues to follow “The Science” where it leads, in this case, to finally acknowledge failure.
That Fauci honestly did not know that the mRNA shots would never work has also been the conclusion of a few of his most vociferous critics, including Alex Berenson, who somewhat ironically was spurned as “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man” by The Atlantic back in April 2021. (Morally speaking, that title surely belongs to Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, for the sheer brazenness with which he defied all known principles of medical ethics in pushing for universal vaccination across all cohorts.) Berenson was banned from social media under pressure by no less a power than the U.S. government itself when he dared to question the Fauci script at the height of the Coronapocalyptic hysteria. (Berenson’s lawsuit alleging the government’s violation of his First Amendment right to free speech is pending.)
Notwithstanding the superficial appeal (and attendant Schadenfreude) of the “Fauci was ignorant and is now eating crow” hypothesis, the Scylla horn of the interpretive dilemma would seem to cohere far better with the character of a man who remarkably responded to his critics on national television that “You’re really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you’re attacking science.” Certainly such a person is not someone whom we would ordinarily regard as endowed with the humility needed to admit either ignorance or error. To my mind (and others, such as Dr. Robert Malone, agree) Fauci’s recent publication is yet another gambit perfectly consistent with his comportment throughout the pandemic. While Fauci’s admission that the mRNA technology is not fit to purpose for coronaviruses may on its face seem surprising, in fact, it is entirely true to form.
Yes, Fauci’s gambit is most plausibly interpreted as the latest chapter in his time-tested “fail forward” playbook: to use the outcome of the COVID-19 shot experiment to rally for yet more funding for the pharmaceutical industry. Like all good bureaucrats, Fauci uses government fiascos as a springboard to increase the reach and budget of his domain. In other words, Fauci, having quite effectively painted the COVID-19 virus as the most evil bogey man of them all, is simply continuing his efforts to impel politicians to dole out even more billions of dollars to the government-boosted industry which he has loyally supported throughout his entire career, as has been ably documented by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In addition to being consistent with Fauci’s dismissive, smug, and seemingly shameless character, this interpretation coheres well with the general modus operandi of the pharmaceutical industry, which has displayed in recent decades an uncanny capacity to “fail forward” by pivoting and innovating so as to be able to reap massive profits even when their products generate consequences worse than the conditions which they were intended to address.
Note that slippery snake-oil salesmen such as Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, carefully calibrated their pitches from the beginning so as to protect themselves from future allegations of fraud by equivocating about the “efficacy” of their COVID-19 treatments. When directly questioned in December 2020 about the vaccine’s ability to limit transmission of the virus, Bourla offered casual, off-the-cuff replies such as, “I think that’s something that needs to be examined. We’re not certain about that right now.” His colleague, Ugur Sahin (co-founder and CEO of BioNTech), cagily couched his anticipatory optimism in these terms: “The first interim analysis of our global Phase 3 study provides evidence that a vaccine may effectively prevent COVID-19.” [my emphasis] The rest is history. When it later emerged, to the surprise of everyone whose understanding of the crisis was shaped exclusively by the Pfizer-sponsored mainstream media, that the company never even tested the shots for their ability to prevent transmission, gaslighting fact-checkers rushed to the defense of the executives. Why in the world would anyone ever have believed that the new vaccines would prevent transmission and infection?
The government-subsidized pharma giants succeeded in profiting enormously from the politically amplified crisis by persistently touting the efficacy of their products against a virus which 99+% of people were perfectly capable of surviving on their own. The shot salesmen claimed victory when injected persons did not die, when in reality most of them would have survived even if they had declined the treatment or been injected with an inert placebo instead. But the scheme ultimately worked because marketers (including public health authorities such as Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky) unerringly referred to the shots as “vaccines,” a piece of sleight of hand made possible by the CDC’s own diluted redefinition of the term in 2021 to mean “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” This linguistic legerdemain worked wonders to promote the new shots, when in fact the new definition is so broad and open-ended as to make it possible to label as a vaccine anything that strengthens the immune system, including leafy green vegetables, vitamins C and D, etc.
In retrospect, there can be no doubt that the populace and the politicians crafting policy all assumed that the labeling of the mRNA treatment as vaccines implied that the shots stopped transmission and infection, even while the savviest of the snake-oil salesmen evinced ignorance from the start about the most important question of all: whether these “vaccines” were indeed like all of the other vaccines, capable not just of “stimulating” the immune system, but of producing dependable and durable immunity.
Given the statistics now available, even the more modest claim, continually chanted by pharma marketers and their lackeys in the media, that the mRNA treatment greatly diminished severe illness and hospitalization, may have been false. For the death toll of COVID-19 victims increased rather than decreased in the year after the “vaccine” launch, and the countries with the worst vaccine uptake had some of the best outcomes. On top of the virus deaths, thousands of people were diagnosed with post-vaccine injuries of a variety of sorts, believed by many of them, their families, and at least some of their doctors to have been caused by the shots. Some of the vaccine injured ended up dying long before their time, and excess deaths were also caused by the disastrous political response to the virus, with fatal drug overdoses reaching record levels. Millions of persons missed vital health screenings, having been terrorized into believing that they could not leave their homes (much less enter COVID-19–infested health facilities!) without contracting something akin to the Black Plague. Among those who sought help for their ailments, some were flat-out denied treatment for acute illnesses, either because they were not dying specifically of COVID-19, or because they had refused the experimental treatment.
In coming to terms with what transpired over the past three years, it is helpful to bear in mind pre-2020 history. When the pharmaceutical industry’s newfangled psychotropic medications did not work as advertised, they created and blitz-marketed “add-on” drugs to increase the efficacy of antidepressants now known to have exhibited success in clinical trials on a par with placebos, but with far worse longterm adverse effects, up to and including addiction and suicidal ideation. Similarly, the slick pivot of the industry in response to the opioid catastrophe (caused by itself) was to launch and market drugs which could help people in the throes of narcotics addiction.
The flu shots marketed in collaboration with and subsidized by governments have been demonstrated in clinical trials to succeed on a par with placebos, while post-flu shot deaths are invariably written off as “coincidental.” Nonetheless, the industry capitalizes on the fact that they are starting anew each year—the previous year’s flu shot results being irrelevant to the next year’s projected success. As a result, when heavily lobbied and propagandized authorities impose mandates in some places (such as the State of Massachusetts), this may lead others to follow suit. Crony capitalist windfall profits ensure the ever-augmenting marketing budget of pharma firms, with the result that each subsequent year’s sales will exceed the previous year’s tally.
Given such precedents, no one should be surprised if the failure of the COVID-19 shots to prevent infection and transmission, or even to diminish the number of persons who died from the virus, does indeed end up serving as the pretext for governments to infuse even more money into research and development of new and what are promised once again to be “miraculous” cures to be used in the future. Not long after the launch of the COVID-19 vaccines, auxiliary treatments such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s Lagevrio were developed to treat people who became infected with the virus despite having been “fully” vaccinated. As clear evidence that many people’s capacity for critical thought continues to be compromised by fear, when legislation to rescind the utterly illogical and unscientific COVID-19 vaccine mandate on foreigners entering the United States made it to the floor of the House of Representatives, 201 Democratic congresspersons voted to keep the executive order in place.
The ongoing support of the official government pro-pharma narrative by the president, the press secretary, the defense secretary, and most Democratic members of Congress, even in the face of ample evidence (including post-vaccination positive COVID-19 tests) demonstrating that the shots did not diminish the incidence of infection is best explained by the fact that policymakers prefer not to own up to their mistakes. Ordinarily, individuals base their future actions on what they have learned from past experience. The question arises in the present circumstance: Why is there still a push for vaccine passports when the COVID-19 vaccines do not in fact confer immunity? The assumptions funding the push for universal vaccination continue to be embraced, as though the vaccines worked resplendently, despite an accumulation of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Now that Fauci himself has clearly explained why the mRNA technology will never offer a lasting solution to COVID-19, why would anyone, including Joe Biden and other advocates for the WHO (World Health Organization), still be in favor of implementing a universal health passport system regulating the movement of persons throughout the world? The current crop of shots do not offer longterm protection and do not moderate illness except in the case of persons in a very narrow cohort. Why require anyone to demonstrate that they participated in the experimental mRNA trial more than two years ago in order to be able to enter a country where the circulating variants bear little resemblance to the strain used to determine the formula of the first crop of vaccines?
There is no plausible health pretext available to explain why political leaders around the world would be keen to impose such a restrictive health passport program on free people, preventing them from traveling unless they first demonstrate their willingness to comply with future possible arbitrary orders decreed by public health authorities. That anyone not holding pharma stocks would support at this point the adoption of a health passport is best explained, again, by the politically induced trauma which appears to have psychologically scarred some persons for life. But just as the failure of the lockdowns to “stop the spread!” impelled leaders at every level of government—local, state, and federal—to prolong and intensify the lockdowns, those who pushed vaccine mandates will continue to press for universal vaccination passport requirements under the flatly false assumption that the reason why so many people died of COVID-19 was because of the evil antivaxxers who refused to comply.
What we are witnessing, the strangely intransigent push for vaccine passports, is entirely consistent with the comportment of the very persons who just succeeded in selling billions of shots. They will continue to insist that what we need to do is provide even more government funding to the pharmaceutical industry so that they can develop more and better cures for our ills. As disturbing as this may be, the most plausible explanation for the vigorous attempt to impose a health credential system on the people of the world is to provide the pharmaceutical industry with a limitless supply of not only customers, but also future experimental subjects.
As we have seen, the addition of the COVID-19 shot to the CDC’s immunization schedule for children—whose chances of dying from the virus are minuscule—serves only industry interests, by ensuring an endless crop of healthy young arms into which to inject the latest and greatest snake oils claimed to be panaceas (until it emerges that they are not). Likewise, the implementation of a universal health passport scheme restricting the motion of persons who opt not to undergo medical treatments of which they have no need would not only reap massive profits to the pharmaceutical industry but also represent the dawning of the pharma-techno state, in which citizens are subjects whose bodies are owned by their government.
The upshot here is that all of the pro-mRNA treatment propaganda and the incredibly vicious efforts to denounce and blame the noncompliant as the reason for the lengthy duration of the COVID-19 pandemic were nothing more than marketing ploys. That those who work behind the scenes of this well-oiled marketing machine were willing to destroy people’s relationships, their livelihoods, and in some cases even their very lives, reveals that their true motives were never to save the world from the virus but, instead, to profit from it. This is why we must resist any and all attempts by these same people and their toadies to foist upon us legal requirements to serve as guinea pigs in their future experimental trials, which is precisely what “health passports” would bring.
Laurie Calhoun is the Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters. Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times will be published by the Libertarian Institute in 2023.
March 18, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Anthony Fauci, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States | Leave a comment
The False Tale of TWA 800
Tales of the American Empire | March 16, 2023
Those who control the United States government also control the major media and educational institutions so often create false realities. Anyone who questions obvious lies is demeaned and branded a conspiracy theorist. The best example in modern times occurred in 1996 when a US Navy missile accidentally shot down a huge airliner killing 230 people. The federal government and its lapdog media managed to suppress what happened despite overwhelming physical evidence and hundreds of eyewitnesses.
_________________________________________________
“Allegations that a missile hit Flight TWA 800”; Pierre Salinger news conference; March 13, 1997;
• France-Allegation…
“Flight TWA 800 Independent Investigation”; C-SPAN; August 27, 1999;
• TWA Flight 800 In…
“TWA 800 – with former CBS news producer Kristina Borjesson”; Democracy Now; PBS; June 20, 2013; https://www.democracynow.org/embed/st…
“Silenced: Flight 800 and the Subversion of Justice”; July 24, 2013;
• Feature Documenta…
“TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover up, and the Conspiracy”; Jack Cashill; 2016;
• Video
“TWA flight 800 NTSB investigator Hank Hughes”; News 12 Long Island; November 24, 2018;
• TWA flight 800 NT… T
March 18, 2023 Posted by aletho | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | United States | Leave a comment
“A Policy Error of Historic Proportions”
1997 letter to President Clinton by US cold warriors who opposed Nato expansion
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 17, 2023
When Dr. McCullough and I started this Substack, we agreed that he would primarily focus on COVID-19 scientific-medical scholarship, and I would investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic response is related to other major public policy issues. Occasionally, some of our readers have exhorted me to “stay in our lane”—that is, to remain focused on matters pertaining to the COVID-19 fiasco.
Because Substack is a free speech platform, and because we welcome critical opinions, I have never felt compelled to respond to these exhortations to “stay in our lane.” To some degree, I consider my critics to have a valid point. As Fitzgerald elegantly put it in The Great Gatsby, “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.”
On the other hand, I believe my critics are overlooking a point so obvious that it might as well strike them in the head with a baseball bat—namely, the same corrupt government nincompoops responsible for the COVID-19 fiasco are also responsible for every other catastrophic policy blunder they are currently afflicting on mankind.
For example, let’s take the U.S. government’s catastrophic mismanagement of its relations with Russia for the last thirty years. I have closely observed this disaster in the making since I moved to Vienna, Austria for an academic fellowship in 1996. On the plane to Vienna I read the July 15, 1996 Time Magazine cover story about how secret American advisors helped Boris Yeltsin to win that year’s presidential election.

Even at the time I remember thinking it was a bit presumptuous to think that it was perfectly okay for American agents to meddle in a Russian election, and I wondered how Americans would feel if it were reported that Russian agents had provided clandestine assistance to Bill Clinton in his 1996 presidential campaign against Bob Dole.
I read the Time cover story with keen interest, because for many years I’d been an avid student of 20th century Russian history. Yeltsin’s presidency marked the total triumph of American interests with respect to Russia, which had suffered a decisive loss of the Cold War. As I saw it—living in Austria, whose neutrality the Soviets had recognized and respected since 1955—in 1996 it was up to the Americans to welcome and assist Russia in becoming a partner with the West.
The following year, I read the news of how the Clinton Administration had decided to expand NATO membership to the east, ever closer to Russia’s border, and I wondered about the rationale for doing this. Though I’d never really known what to make of Henry Kissinger, I found his “Balance of Power” thesis compelling.
We humans are constantly making assurances of our good will and altruism, but it’s a rare man or woman indeed who doesn’t press his or her advantage if a disagreement arises. This is why the Soviet Premier Khrushchev refused to tolerate U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and why President Kennedy refused to tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba.
I therefore believed I understood why 50 major U.S. foreign policy experts—including top cold warriors such as Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and Stansfield Turner—wrote a letter to President Clinton on June 26, 1997, stating the following:
We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons:
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the “ins” and the “outs,” foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included;
In NATO, expansion, which the Alliance has indicated is open-ended, will inevitably degrade NATO’s ability to carry out its primary mission and will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems, and unevenly developed systems of democratic government;
In the U.S., NATO expansion will trigger an extended debate over its indeterminate, but certainly high, cost and will call into question the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, traditionally and rightly regarded as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.
Because of these serious objections, and in the absence of any reason for rapid decision, we strongly urge that the NATO expansion process be suspended while alternative actions are pursued. These include:
—opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe;
—developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program;
—supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and
—continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe.
Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is the first in a series about the war in Ukraine.
March 17, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | NATO, Russia, United States | Leave a comment
The CDC purchased private location data on over 55 million Americans to monitor lockdown compliance
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 17, 2023
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy people’s data from third party companies – SafeGraph and Cuebiq – who are in the business of tracking physical locations.
The CDC did this in a bid to check how citizens were complying with lockdown and other Covid restrictions, reports The Epoch Times, which has had access to the contracts between the parties.
One of these companies received $420,000, while the other deal was worth $208,000. The CDC was allowed to buy this data thanks to emergency rules enacted because of the pandemic.
They were designed to give the government organization the data it deemed necessary in order to properly react.
This included tracking people for the sake of “evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public health communications related to mask mandate, and other emerging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
The data SafeGraph and Cuebiq are able to get hold of and sell on comes from apps installed on phones. In SafeGraph’s case, this information covered points like neighborhood patterns – revealing the frequency at which somebody visited a place “of interest,” as well as where they came to that place from, and where they went from there.
Cuebiq, meanwhile, sold its shelter-in-place index dataset, and that reveals for how long a phone is inside a house, expressed in percentages, as well as the time people would spend in another state. The goal was to assess who was “sheltering in place” as the authorities had mandated.
The contracts were signed only in 2021 but the CDC at first, early into the pandemic, got a taste of the two companies’ location data offer for free.
The organization was not shy about it at the time, either, and in 2020, used the data to produce two studies, covering metropolitan areas in the US. The subject was how often the people tracked were moving around if distancing restrictions were in place – the result was, less often.
The same is true of movement during radical lockdown measures, and US taxpayers also footed the bill that allowed the CDC to come up with this “revolutionary” result: once states started lifting these measures, people started to move around more frequently.
Related: FBI admits to buying geolocation data
March 17, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Covid-19, Human rights, 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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