In my research into “early spread,” one oddity that’s jumped out at me is how some people with antibody evidence of early infection seem to intuitively know this information is taboo or controversial. Some people clearly sense when they’re saying something that “goes against the narrative” … and this makes them very nervous.
On one level, this has always bothered me. What’s wrong with simply telling the truth? For an investigative journalist, it’s frustrating that some people with important information won’t go on the record and provide such information.
On the other hand, I get why some people would prefer to remain anonymous or not be mentioned in any story at all. Fear rules the thinking of just-about everyone (a maxim that also explains how those who create said fear effectively rule the world).
Many people with important information clearly fear some type of reprisals even if they are simply telling the truth. The disturbing point is that many of these people aren’t being paranoid. They probably would suffer some kind of negative blowback if they told the truth. This could be as extreme as losing a job or as prosaic as having friends or family members treat them differently because they said something others don’t agree with.
The story of ‘Jean’ from Washington state ….
I started thinking about this topic when I went back and re-read a couple of stories published by The Seattle Times that document two residents of Snohomish County who almost certainly had Covid in December 2019.
One of these two residents was not named. However, the other resident did exhibit some level of courage by allowing a reporter to interview her. But the lady was only identified in the story by her middle name. So “Jean,” a 64-year-old retired nurse from a rural area of Washington state, thinks she had Covid.
My hunch is Jean intuitively knew her story might upset some powerful people – people who did not want to “confirm” any evidence that Americans were coming down with this illness before the Wuhan Outbreak in China.
Or maybe Jean thought her claims might bother some of her friends and neighbors, friends who always trust the experts and authorities and don’t like it when anyone goes against, say, the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci … or CNN.
For whatever reason, Jean settled on a compromise. She’d share her story, but she wouldn’t use her full name.
And the example of Mayor Michael Melham ….
After researching the case of another “early spread” candidate, I understand why Jean might have wanted to be identified only by her middle name.
Michael Melham happens to be the mayor of Belleville, New Jersey. Along with Jean and the other unknown person from Washington, Melham is among the 17 Americans I’ve identified in previous articles as Americans who almost certainly had Covid weeks or months before the virus was supposed to be circulating in our country.
Michael Melham did go public with his story. Among the news organizations covering his claim was NJ.com.
The headline from the “straight news” piece makes this news organization’s point, as well as my point:
“N.J. mayor makes unfounded claim that he had coronavirus in November.”
One piece of yellow journalism apparently wasn’t enough so the news organization also published a scathing opinion column the next day.
Wrote columnist Jeremy Schneider:
“It needs to be said. Again. This is not the time for voluntary stupidity. If you have something to say about the coronavirus that is not supported by proven truths presented by experts, you should really, really just keep it to yourself. People are dying and you are almost certainly not an epidemiologist. Be quiet and listen.”
Schneider also called the people who suspect they may have had Covid before the experts said was possible, “a sub-sect of well-meaning dopes on social media.”
And although readers had already gotten the author’s unsubtle point – our official guidance – the writer made it again in the smear piece he was happy to pen: “Stay safe, listen to the experts.”
Basically, Schneider is calling Mayor Melham, and anyone else who believes they had Covid before mid-January 2020, idiots. It never occurs to the author he might be the real idiot. Nor does it occur to him that the experts he thinks are infallible may be using people like himself to advance their misery-producing agendas.
Why don’t more people come forward? Well …
Why don’t more people come forward as whistleblowers? Here we probably have part of our answer.
But the sociology and psychology component that really fascinates me is how so many people quickly accept the authorized “narrative” and then have a visceral reaction to people who do not happen to subscribe to this thinking.
This evidence of mass “groupthink” can also be seen from reading the 1,600 reader comments that followed a Fox News story on Michael Melham’s claim.
As I was doing my “due diligence” on early spread, I think I read every one of these comments. I would say that 95 percent of commenters thought Melham was simply wrong in thinking he had Covid or, like the NJ.com columnist, were angered the mayor had the temerity to share his own story and personal opinions.
What I’m really trying to understand is why so many people are so quick to share their disgust with individuals who don’t think like they do.
People with important information like Jean who are afraid to use their full name (or those who won’t come forward at all) must conclude that the potential wrath of their peers is not worth the benefits … and/or that there are no benefits from going against the narrative.
Due to this dynamic, the public is unlikely to learn important, narrative-changing information. The only thing that might change some harmful and false narratives is if people did come forward and expose this. However, in the “home of the brave” very few people are bold enough to do this.
And as we saw above, even when people like Mayor Melham do come forward, their revelations are dismissed or ridiculed by the people who matter – the watchdog press and authorities. That is, everything works to “protect the narrative.”
The real villain remains the AWOL ‘watchdog’ press
Which leads me to my final depressing point: If 99 percent of the people posting in Reader Comments sections happen to be dead wrong, this wouldn’t matter if, say, 10 percent of the country’s journalists were real skeptics and did the job of real journalists.
If this was the case, truth-seeking journalists would write important stories that might influence the 90 percent of the population who’ve been sold a bill of goods. That is, journalists – if they did their most important job – could maybe change a few bogus or dubious narratives.
But this isn’t going to happen because, at least regarding Covid narratives, the group think is 100 percent.
So what we have is some kind of “Catch-22” self-protecting loop of WrongThink. In such a world, the probability any taboo truths could break through the barricades erected by our “gatekeepers of the news” is probably zero. No false narratives will ever be de-bunked.
The journalists who are supposed to challenge narratives won’t do it because they always believe authorities and experts. As most people get their information from mainstream journalists, it’s a case of the dumb leading the …. ah, non-critical thinkers.
Anyway, all of this probably explains, at least in part, why so many would-be whistleblowers are afraid to blow any whistles.
In summary, many people intuitively sense when they posses information that contradicts the official narrative. This Sixth Sense makes many people leery of coming forward or attaching their name to revelations that go against conventional wisdom .
While this is a small observation, the implications which flow from it are probably large. For example, the quality of life of our children and grandchildren will be lower because important truths were not previously acknowledged, because rotten leaders were not previously exposed.
It might be counter-intuitive, but it’s not the false opinions of the masses that matter. It’s the views of a very small minority of truth-revealing contrarians, a group that’s too often afraid to come forward and reveal what they know.
Those who smear, bully or dismiss such people know not what they do … nor the harm they are really causing.
Part I in a series on Dr. Paul Marik—a magnificent doctor who was fired from his job and professorship because he successfully treated his COVID-19 patients with FDA-approved drugs and high-dose Vitamin C.
Dr. Paul Marik is to critical care medicine what Dr. McCullough is to cardio-renal medicine. The 65-year-old native of South Africa has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers and books, which made him the second most published critical care doctor in the history of medicine.
Dr. Paul Marik with Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake at the Nurses Freedom Network Conference in Franklin, TN, June 12, 2022
Upon meeting Dr. Marik, one is overwhelmed by the impression of his vast physical stature. His gentle manners and elegant South African accent conjure accounts of 19th century British gentleman explorers. Since the early days of his career, he’d been keenly interested in discovering how to treat sepsis—the body’s extreme, life-threatening response to an infection. Well into the 21st century, sepsis continued to be a major cause of death. According to the CDC, approximately 1.7 million American adults fall ill with sepsis every year, of which approximately 270,000 die in hospital. Globally, the sepsis burden is estimated at 15 to 19 million cases annually, with a mortality rate approaching 60% in low-income countries.
Dr. Marik knew the literature on sepsis treatment. Several studies had indicated that large doses of IV-administered Vitamin C and Vitamin B1 (thiamine) showed some benefit. Other studies indicated that hydrocortisone showed promise. Dr. Marik reasoned that combining the three into a cocktail could amplify their benefit. As had often been observed in medicine, combining agents seems to affect multiple pathways, causing an overlapping and synergistic effect.
In 2016, he and his colleagues conducted a study in which they compared 47 sepsis patients who received the cocktail to a control group of 47 patients who received sepsis standard of care at the time. The mortality rate of the treatment group was 8.5% compared to 40.4% of the control group—a stunning difference. Skeptics claimed the study was too small and nonrandomized. Nevertheless, what became known as the “Marik Cocktail” was adopted by critical care units all over the world, which reported excellent results with the therapy.
When COVID-19 struck and Dr. Marik’s critical care unit at the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital received its first patients, he observed they were suffering from an inflammatory lung reaction, and he suspected this could be treated with a corticosteroid. He contacted four other critical care specialists—Professor Joseph Varon at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston (who, in the year 2020, would work 268 days straight treating COVID-19 patients in his ICU) Professor Gianfranco Umberto Meduri at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Professor Jose Iglesias at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in Seton Hall, New Jersey, and Professor Pierre Kory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As author Michael Capuzzo pointed out in his marvelous story about these doctors, it would be hard to imagine a more experienced and scholarly team of pulmonary critical care doctors.
Together they formed the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium (FLCCC) and got to work on a protocol for saving hospitalized patients. They started their work by focusing on the extreme inflammation they were observing. Often called “cytokine storm” after the proteins produced by the immune system, this was an extreme and maladaptive immune response that had often been observed in other viral illnesses, including virulent influenza. It was this inflammation of the lungs, kidneys, and other organs that killed the patient, and not the virus itself. Thus, the key to treating the syndrome was reducing this inflammation.
Professor Meduri was a leading expert on corticosteroid therapy in critical illness. He conducted an exhaustive review of corticosteroid use against SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and H1N1 and found significant evidence that these agents had been lifesaving in their reduction of extreme inflammation. For decades the corticosteroid methylprednisolone had been the standard medication for suppressing cytokine storm. And yet, despite this glaring fact, every US federal health agency recommended against using corticosteroids against COVID-19 from the outset of the pandemic.
Unlike these agencies, the FLCCC concluded that their best bet for tackling the disease in hospitalized patients was a combination of Methylprednisolone and the antioxidant Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). To these they added Thiamine (Vitamin B1) to optimize cellular oxygen utilization and energy consumption, and the anticoagulant Heparin to prevent and help in dissolving blood clots that appear with high frequency.
There is nothing experimental about these drugs. Methylprednisolone and heparin had long been FDA-approved for treating inflammation and blood clotting. Vitamin C and B1 were available over the counter, though in the hospital setting they were IV-administered in high doses. The FLCCC doctors began giving this “MATH Protocol” to ICU patients and tracked their progress for a case study. By the end of April, they had treated 100. Of these, 98 survived. The two who died were in their eighties and had other advanced chronic illnesses. None of the patients had long durations on ventilators, were ventilator dependent, and or had long hospital stays.
During this period, Dr. Pierre Kory was in daily communication with ICU doctors in his native New York City, where he’d worked in multiple hospitals. His colleagues reported that they turned the tide in the ICUs as soon as they started using methylprednisolone. Other ICU doctors in hard hit New Orleans reported the same. Kory and colleagues therefore sent letters to the White House, the CDC, and the NIH, presenting their real-world evidence of the corticosteroid’s efficacy—all to no avail.
Dr. Kory’s efforts were drawn to the attention of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who was chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Since his daughter had been born with a congenital heart defect—successfully corrected by an innovative operation—Senator Johnson had believed that if citizens were faced with a life-threatening condition for which there was no proven treatment, they should have the right to try drugs or operations that seem to offer some benefit, even if these had not yet passed the conventional FDA-approval process. The alternative was to do nothing and accept the high probability of death.
Critics of the right to try claim that unless procedures and medications are carefully regulated by the FDA, unscrupulous doctors will create false hope by offering them to desperate patients, even if there is little trial data to prove their efficacy. Senator Johnson did not find this argument persuasive and he introduced his federal right to try bill in 2017. A companion bill was introduced in the House, ultimately passed in both houses, and was signed into law by President Trump in 2018.
Upon Senator Johnson’s invitation, Professor Kory addressed the Senate Homeland Security Committee on May 6, 2020. Speaking via WebEx, Kory stated the credentials of the FLCCC doctors, and then explained the rationale for using their protocol. He then reported the success they and other doctors were having with it. This was excellent news, and a naive viewer would likely assume that it would be welcomed by the entire medical profession.
And yet, despite the FLCCC’s well-founded rationale for their therapy, broad consensus for the efficacy of its components in related conditions, and their success with it, they continued to get pushback from the CDC and NIH, which refused to change their advisory against using corticosteroids to treat COVID-19. On four occasions, the FLCCC tried to notify the White House of their favorable results, but they received no reply.
On Monday, October 24th a debate on vaccine safety took place in Parliament. Three MPs, Danny Kruger, Sir Christopher Chope and Andrew Bridgen, discussed a number of issues the mainstream media have not been reporting on. The health concerns raised appear to be receiving very little, if any, serious recognition by the Government. It was the safety of children and young adults that concerned me most in this debate and in this article I want to explore whether the medical profession is being as cautious and conscientious as it should be in the administration of medication, including but not limited to Covid vaccines, to children. How well are children and young adults being monitored following medical interventions?
A few days ago it was reported that dozens of children between the ages of five and 11 were given higher doses of the Covid vaccine “by mistake”. Solent NHS Trust operated the ‘pop-up’ vaccine clinic (see later) and one mother was told that “she shouldn’t expect anything significant” to happen to her daughter following the mistake but that any reaction to the jab “would last longer”. The Chief Medical Officer for the Trust said that this was an isolated occurrence.
In other news, the Indonesian Health Ministry said on Thursday, October 20th that it had found traces of three hazardous chemicals in children with acute kidney injury, two of which are present in Indian-manufactured syrups suspected to be linked to dozens of deaths in Gambia. According to the Ministry, at least 70 cases of children under the age of five years with acute kidney failure are being detected every month with a mortality rate of about 50%.
This type of news is always disturbing to hear, not only because innocent young lives are involved but also because these children had little, if any, choice in the administration of a treatment that might not even have been necessary. It seems all too easy to reach out to the medicine cabinet for just about any ailment, no matter how mild or trivial these days. Likewise, it seems too easy for parents to be made to believe that Covid vaccinations offered to their child are essential for their health and wellbeing.
Errors in paediatric doses are not in fact uncommon. Research shows that potential adverse drug events occur three times more frequently among paediatric patients than among adults. Some of these differences in error rates are due to:
larger volumes of stock solution for adults;
greater variability in weight and body surface area of children;
differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics;
children’s kidneys, liver and immune systems are still developing;
children not being able to communicate what they are feeling;
Monitoring of adverse events in children is also much more difficult than for adults and conducting and monitoring long term drug trials for children is even more problematic. The conclusion of a 2019 medical study was that: “Paediatric clinical trials designed to sufficiently investigate drug safety and efficacy to support approval are of relatively limited duration. Given the potential long-term exposure of patients to these drugs, the clinical community should consider whether new approaches are needed to better understand the safety of long-term use of these drugs.”
An example of a recent attempt to monitor the effect (and therefore safety) of Covid vaccines on children has been the reliance on testing for antibody production against the disease. A recent JAMA study suggests that these trials have been inadequate and inappropriate. It found that such antibody production provides children with little or no protection against infection. The main determinant is actually cellular immunity (i.e., T Cells). The study even found that having antibodies to Omicron increased the infection risk, which may help to explain the negative vaccine effectiveness seen in a number ofstudies where infection rates are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Whilst evidence of the adverse reactions and immediate harms of Covid vaccines on young people is building at an alarming rate, it is easy to overlook the possible unknown long term consequences. History has taught us that medical experts can fail to see harms in both pre-licensed and post-licensed pharmaceuticals and in non-licensed or non-prescription drugs for dangerously long periods. There are too many examples to list here, but in the early 1900s concern about smoking was considered alarmist. There was no definitive evidence that smoking was bad for you. By the 1930s, tobacco companies had an army of doctors ready to debunk you as a quack for even suggesting something as benign as a cigarette could give you cancer. By the 1960s, the evidence against smoking was more than damning. By then, the debate over smoking’s deadly impact had been raging around the world for more than a generation and medical experts were slowly reaching the same conclusion.
In July 1956, medical authorities in West Germany licensed a drug for sale without a prescription. Thalidomide had been developed as a sedative or tranquiliser, but people were soon taking it for a range of conditions, including pneumonia, colds and the flu, as well as to relieve nausea in early pregnancy. Six years later, more than 10,000 babies had been born with physical abnormalities caused by the drug. It wasn’t until 1962 that Thalidomide was banned in most countries in which it was sold – and this for a drug with such early and devastating side effects. In the U.K., the MHRA Yellow Card adverse event reporting system was introduced partly as a result of Thalidomide, but we know that average reporting rates are estimated to be around 10% of actual adverse events under this system.
Scandals are often associated with a failure to learn from history. In the early 50’s a Dr. Krugman wanted to create a vaccine for hepatitis. He deceptively coerced carers and parents into forcing 50 children from a home for developmentally challenged kids to be injected with the virus itself or by making them drink chocolate milk mixed with faeces from other infected children. Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician, said that “Krugman certainly did speed up the development of a hepatitis B vaccine but I don’t think you’re ever justified to inoculate a child with an infectious virus that might kill them”. In 1979 the Belmont Report was published in an effort to learn from this and provide a comprehensive guideline of basic ethical principles.
Augmenting the hoped for protections of the Belmont Report, a 2004 article described the main ways in which the risk of medication errors for children could be minimised. It said it is critical to have
personnel trained in paediatrics to prescribe, prepare, dispense and administer medications;
a quality review system in place to review drug use and medication errors, and;
to implement computerised physician order entry with decision support and other tools in the next decade to improve pharmacologic therapy for paediatric patients.
It is concerning therefore, in relation to the above, that the ‘pop-up’ Covid vaccine clinics in the U.K. are often staffed by volunteers who may have had no prior medical, nursing or any type of clinical experience. The BMA paper on the recruitment of these Covid vaccination volunteers lists the minimal qualifications. The volunteer has to:
be between the age of 18 and 69;
have at least two or more A-levels or equivalent;
be at low risk of COVID-19;
be prepared to undergo a reference check.
How can we be sure that the Solent NHS Trust incident was an “isolated occurrence” and how can we be sure that nothing “significant” will happen to the children (estimated to have received three times the correct dose)?
Surely this cannot be right, 70 years on from the days of Krugman? Is it also acceptable for parents to have been pressured (in the case of Covid, through fear from Government, scientists and the media) into providing consent for a novel ‘vaccine’, without long term data, on behalf of their healthy offspring? This fear was instilled through overstating the risk of Covid to healthy children, misinforming the public that the vaccines prevented transmission and describing vaccine effectiveness in a misleading way by claiming up to 95% effectiveness (relative risk) instead of the actual or absolute reduction in risk which in the trial was less than 1% in adults and is now possibly less than nil for children (see above).
I try to put myself in the shoes of these children when, possibly some time later in their lives, they are told of their participation in the administration of a not yet fully licensed medication. Or not told. They were possibly too young to comprehend the personal risk and bodily infringement inflicted. Andrew Bridgen MP reported one study alone involving several thousand vaccinated children showing that one in 500 under five years of age who received a Pfizer Covid vaccine were hospitalised with a vaccine injury and one in 200 had symptoms ongoing for weeks or months afterwards.
Why has the Government, the medical profession and media not allowed the public to be informed that the Yellow Card reports, and those of the American equivalent, VAERS, show up more adverse Covid vaccine incidents in young people than all other known vaccinations combined? Around 6,000 doctors, scientists and professionals in more than 34 countries have declared an international medical crisis due to “diseases and death associated with the COVID-19 vaccines”. Their report highlights the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people who were inoculated with these ‘vaccines’, and the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths which have not been investigated.
Danny Kruger MP said: “The MHRA is funded by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs and vaccines that it regulates. There might be some universe in which that makes sense, but this is not it.”
In 1995, the comedienne Mrs Merton famously asked Debbie McGee (unfairly I thought): “So what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Similar could be asked of Government and others involved in the rollout of experimental mRNA Covid vaccinations: “So why were healthy children and young adults coerced into receiving unnecessary multiple Covid vaccinations from a $1.4 trillion global pharmaceutical industry?”
A prominent Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, will be hosting a keynote speech from an accused Israeli military official alleged to have committed serious war crimes at their annual New York conference on Thursday.
The powerful ADL bills itself as a civil society organization dedicated to battling expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and hate. The purpose of the upcoming conference, titled “Never Is Now,” will be to foster “meaningful dialogue, education and interpersonal connections,” in order to “continue the fight against antisemitism, hate and bias in all its forms—together.”
Featured speakers will include figures such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and actor David Schwimmer.
They will be sharing a stage with retired Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, a man who was the subject of outstanding arrest warrants in the United Kingdom for crimes against humanity.
In 2005, the chief London magistrate issued a warrant for Almog’s arrest for his actions as head of the IDF’s Southern Command between 2000 and 2003. British law asserts universal jurisdiction for war crimes.
According to the indictment, Almog ordered his forces to indiscriminately bulldoze the houses of Arabs living in the occupied Gaza Strip in the Egyptian border city of Rafah, an ethnic cleansing campaign which turned over 10,000 people into homeless refugees.
On July 22nd, 2002, Almog ordered a military strike on the residence of a Palestinian activist resisting the demolition campaign, which killed over a dozen people, including nine children, according to court records.
During a 2005 incident, Almog learned that he was the subject of a secret warrant when he landed at Heathrow airport, which led him to return to his plane and hide until it returned to Israel. Scotland Yard documents show that British counter-terrorism officers did not arrest the fugitive due to fear that Almog would open fire on them and cause a gun battle to break out in the middle of the airport.
After Almog’s getaway, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International publicly condemned British security forces for allowing the dangerous and egregious violator of the Geneva convention to escape justice.
While the warrant for the suspect’s arrest appears to have expired due to subsequent amendments to British human rights laws, Almog continues to avoid setting foot in the UK.
Almog remains a highly controversial figure among non-Jews internationally, but global Jewry has embraced him as a hero. In 2016, Almog was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, and earlier this year, he was made head of the Jewish Agency, suggesting that there is no stigma with being associated to the military figure among Jews.
The ADL has been the subject of intense public scrutiny in recent years for its campaigns targeting Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Kyrie Irving in the name of combating what it perceives as speech and action that undermines the interests of the Jewish community. The group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, also admitted responsibility for the deplatforming of President Donald Trump from social media.
It is now two and a half years since the first lockdown and eighteen months since HART published its paper COVID-19: an overview of the evidence. Over the last few months, we asked all the original authors to go back and review their articles and update with relevant publications, revising their conclusions as appropriate. These chapters spelled out either evidence of harms from the pandemic policies or theoretical concerns.
A year later the evidence is coming in and it is damning. This ‘updates’ series will hopefully form part of HART’s evidence to the Independent Review.
Without an introspective ability to learn from its collective mistakes, societies run the risk of causing irreparable damage to themselves. HART came together as a grass-roots organisation in late 2020 to challenge what we thought were a series of incorrect prevailing narratives, specifically the alleged efficacy of novel interventions (both of the pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical varieties) and a lack of careful consideration of their collateral harms. Why did Parliament not ask these questions before meekly surrendering power to HM Government for a two-year period back during the early panic in March 2020? How did age-old disease management principles get tossed to one side in favour of hocus-pocus measures based on ‘science’ that was anything but settled?
We do not claim to have got everything right and we have continued to probe and challenge our own thinking. HART remains a broad church and we encourage debate and discussion from a wide range of disciplines — how else will we learn?
But we will not stand by while those in authority — and their cheerleaders — censor and stifle this debate, brush aside some of the occurrences of the last few years with a breezy “never mind” while at the same time rushing to impose the next set of half-baked, inappropriate, economically damaging or downright harmful measures that got dreamed up in a think tank or focus group. It must be possible to do better than this. Our children’s futures depend on it.
We invite you to read the updated chapters of our initial evidence review:
Somehow cruises are still a thing, which people are still somehow doing.
Specifically, around 4,600 people are currently aboard the Majestic Princess as she approaches Sydney. Among the amusements provided them by the wise administrators of Princess Cruises is apparently a rigorous antigen testing regimen, doubtless because passengers and crew alike believe this is hygienic and responsible, even though none of them, if challenged, could defend their bizarre compulsion or explain its benefits in any way at all. Alas, idiocy has consequences, and suddenly around 800 testees turn out to have SARS-2 antigens in their mucus. This is now a newspaper storyin multiple languages, because everything has to be extremely, unbearably stupid all the time now.
According to press reports, some of these 800 people feel mildly unwell, while others feel totally healthy. Nobody is dying or seriously ill in any way. Regardless of anybody’s actual medical condition, all 800 have been confined to quarters, while the rest of the passengers have been required to don masks, and – I swear this is real – “crew members have been advised to wear full PPE.”
Australian news also notes that “The Majestic Princess has been ranked by NSW Health as a tier three risk level,” which sounds extremely terrible. They report further that “there are no plans to prevent any unwell passengers from disembarking” when the ship arrives at port tomorrow morning, and if you can detect a little regret behind those words, perhaps it’s because 800 positive passengers represents a staggering 4% increase in the current case count of New South Wales.
Some days I am very optimistic that the pandemic at least is behind us, and then I stumble across a story like this one, and I basically want to abandon all of civilisation and take up residence by myself on a desert island somewhere. While the most intrusive pandemicist policies have died an ignominious death, the toxic and idiotic cultural attitudes that supported them are still alive and well, and waiting – just waiting – to seize the levers of policy once again.
Americans are taught their nation fought World War II to free Europe from Nazi tyranny, but historical accounts prove otherwise. President Franklin Roosevelt continued President Woodrow Wilson’s effort to unite all nations under a world government based in New York. Creating a United Nations under American control required destroying the growing German and Japanese empires, dismantling the huge British and French empires, and weakening the growing Soviet Union. Roosevelt had no interest in fighting the Germans to win the war quickly. He wanted Germany and the Soviets to destroy each other while he expanded his United Nations to rule the world.
Big news from the World Economic Forum’s agenda article: Eco-anxiety is a major mental health issue for our young people.
67% of young people are concerned about the impact of climate change on their mental health.
Reread this, please!
They are not merely worried about climate change. They are concerned about the impact ofworrying about “climate change” on their MENTAL HEALTH!
Since many of my readers are not currently suffering from eco-anxiety, some may not immediately understand the mental struggle. But it is real, I assure you.
So bad is the climate change anxiety that there exists a “Climate Psychiatry Alliance,” an organization of psychiatrists helping those suffering from climate change anxiety. Watch the co-founder of “Climate Psychiatry Alliance” explain her work helping sufferers of climate anxiety.
World Economic Forum’s article acknowledges that there is a mental health pandemic caused by eco-anxiety:
Identifying as female, using social media, and having a sense of helplessness all increase susceptibility to this new global mental health pandemic.
Fortunately, the WEF has a suggestion on how to cope with climate anxiety: engage in activism. A young sufferer of climate change anxiety Sofia Palau, did just that. To alleviate her sense of helplessness, she joined a youth climate activism group, “Youth vs. Apocalypse,” whose purpose is actually to create MORE climate anxiety:
No doubt, like most in-groups, “Youth vs. Apocalypse” take pains to validate and normalize their climate anxieties. Having “climate change panic attacks” is a matter of course for them and is celebrated.
Recruiting more young people into their climate advocacy group reaffirms their general outlook. It finds an outlet for frustrations that rule its members. Watch the video if you want.
The WEF agenda article explains the theoretical underpinnings:
While emotion-focused coping has been the most common strategy used by adolescents and young adults to date, research has found that meaning-focused coping is the most effective in regards to eco-anxiety. When done correctly, meaning-focused coping, such as getting involved in the fight against climate change through volunteering or campaigning, facilitates positive emotions like hope without ignoring negative ones like anger or anxiety.
The end result is processing, rather than getting stuck in, anxiety and feeling motivated to engage in activism and other pro-environmental behavior.
What is the result? More and more anxiety-affected young people suffering from real mental health problems, with adults in charge recommending that they get together and recruit more people who would also be made to suffer from climate anxiety.
The likely outcome is mass psychosis or mass formation of people who are good and well-intentioned but stuck in an anxiety-ridden in-group circular dynamic.
This pandemic of climate fear is not entirely dissimilar to the “mass formation” that Matias Desmet discussed so many times concerning whipping up fear during the Covid pandemic. Is the climate anxiety mass formation purely accidental? Not really.
All this is facilitated by rich old men with well-positioned investments, of course.
Kids are particularly targeted with child-friendly but anxiety-provoking messaging:
Please be Respectful to Your Own Kids!
I hope my somewhat tongue-in-cheek but completely accurate retelling of what is going on in the mental health/climate activism world was interesting and perhaps made you smile.
Do NOT, please, make my story into a justification to dismiss your children! If your children, or young friends, suffer from climate anxiety, remember that
they are human beings
they base their emotions on what they see on TV and on their social feeds
that stuff is important to them
rebelliousness is a part of growing up
anxiety, helplessness, and hysteria do NOT need to be parts of growing up
we live in an uncertain world, and some of their concerns may be justified
the number one goal is NOT to lose their trust and respect
never dismiss them as persons or make fun of their anxieties
Any parent whose child has ANY anxiety needs to engage with the child, listen to them, NOT be judgmental, offer support, etc. Our children are NOT copies of ourselves (I bet you changed compared to when you were 16 also,) and we cannot force them to think the way we want.
A bonus is instilling a sense of self-reliance and internal locus of control in your children so that they do not feel “helplessness” and are not compelled to be a part of groups to normalize their anxieties. Helplessness drives many bad decisions and affects mental and physical health.
I am not a child psychiatrist or anything, but if my own hypothetical daughter (I have two great sons) suffered from climate anxiety, I would listen to her extensively. Then I would plant trees with her and make her dig big holes (the bigger, the better) to plant larger trees. Small trees are too easy. Perhaps plant a garden to “use less diesel fuel to grow food.”
Challenge some of their most anxiety-provoking beliefs without dismissing them. Explain how this tree needs CO2 to grow. That could give the child a sense of purpose and balance instead of falling prey to lunatic groups like “Youth Apocalypse.”
If you, my reader, disagree with me, you are welcome to comment and explain why.
Covid-Skeptics, in-Group Mentality, Anxiety, and Helplessness
My message would be remiss without noting that we, Covid-skeptics, also form an in-group with a very special narrative. Being vilified and targeted by the media, of course, does not help. Worrying about our health and loved ones could also create anxiety — oftentimes justified. A sense of helplessness among the unvaccinated was purposely instilled:
I am also, frankly, worried about what will happen with excess mortality and reduction in births!
Thus, we could be susceptible to the same challenges as some climate-anxious young people. So let’s make sure that we keep each other challenged, debate, and use our virtual gatherings to at least somewhat alleviate our anxieties instead of always whipping them up.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated last month that the alliance “is not [a] party to the conflict” in Ukraine, echoing similar claims made by US and European leaders in recent months. But can one ever be sure about their involvement in a security crisis threatening to escalate into a global inferno? Here are a few warning signs.
The “NATO is not a party” in Ukraine talking point has been repeated ad nauseam over the past eight months, with Moscow catching the military bloc tripping up in its own lies last month after Mr. Stoltenberg warned that a Russian victory in Ukraine would constitute a “defeat” for NATO that would “make the world more dangerous.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the NATO chief’s comments were direct confirmation of the Western military bloc’s involvement in the crisis.
$100 Billion Worth of ‘Non-Involvement’
According to this handy Ukraine aid funding tracker, Washington and its allies have already poured more than $100 billion worth of military and economic support to Kiev since February, with the Kiel Institute of World Economy’s “Ukraine Support Tracker” estimating that some $27.5 billion of that constitutes US military aid alone. The UK, Poland, Germany, Canada, and other NATO allies have contributed more than $9 billion in additional weapons assistance.
What’s Ukraine getting for this? The list is quite comprehensive, and includes stuff you’d expect in a Cold War-style proxy conflict, from Stinger and Javelin missiles and precision rocket artillery to troop transporters, drones, radars, night vision, helmets, and body armor. There’s also some unusual “assistance,” like a CIA slush fund (size unknown), $900 million for non-profits, and even $54 million in COVID aid (after all, gotta keep troops safe from the virus as bombs and bullets literally rain down all around them).
Intelligence, Fire Support, and Planning Assistance
NATO’s “non-involvement” isn’t limited to weapons and cash. According to the US Congressional Research Service, Washington has gifted Kiev a broad range of “security assistance” going back to the 2014 Euromaidan coup, including intelligence support, “electronic warfare detection and secure communications,” and “satellite imagery and analysis capability.” This includes a continuous stream of access to images obtained by commercial satellites for use by Ukrainian military planners.
What does the latter mean in practice? Put simply, it gives the Ukrainian Armed Forces access to the Western bloc’s spy satellites – which are the most advanced in the world thanks to bottomless funding and three decades of US and NATO wars of aggression across the Middle East, Yugoslavia, Asia, and North Africa.
In September, French media reported that the Pentagon has even been directly involved in planning Ukrainian military operations, complementing Sputnik’s reporting from the summer revealing that Ukraine’s HIMARS were being manned by outstaffed NATO military personnel. How’s that for “non-involvement”?
Boots on the Ground, Boots in the Ground?
Late last month, the Pentagon confirmed that “small teams” of US military personnel have been dispatched to Ukraine, ostensibly to inspect weapons deliveries to ensure that Western military aid is going where it needs to after a series of reports that much of the military aid was being smuggled out of the warzone by arms dealers.
The story has gone heavily underreported, drowned out by the US midterms and celebrity gossip. However, a few outlets have sounded the alarm about this development, pointing out that the repercussions of US troops potentially getting injured or killed in a Russian military strike on a Ukrainian arms cache have not been sufficiently mapped out.
Diplomatic Doldrums
NATO’s fingerprints are all over Ukraine even on the diplomatic front. This week, Volodymyr Zelensky expressed openness to “genuine peace talks” with Russia, walking back a decree signed just last month ruling out any negotiations with President Vladimir Putin altogether.
US security officials were quick to take credit for the Ukrainian president’s apparent change of heart, telling media that it was made possible “due to soft nudging by the Biden administration.” One security official explained that Zelensky’s new stance came following a visit to Kiev by Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who reportedly “relayed” to Kiev that Washington considers it essential for Ukraine to show willingness to put an end to the crisis in a “reasonable” and “peaceful” manner.
Washington’s direct influence on Kiev has not escaped the eyes of Russian officials, who have spent the past eight-and-a-half years blasting the US, the EU, and NATO for starting the Ukrainian crisis in the first place. On Wednesday, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov reiterated in an interview with Sputnik that “the decision-making center” determining Ukraine’s fate is not even located in Kiev.
“Everyone could see this in March, when one cry from Washington was enough for the Zelensky regime to nullify the agreements reached during intensive contacts” between Kiev and Moscow, Antonov said, recalling the reports that now-former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was speedily dispatched to Kiev at Washington’s behest to sabotage Russian-Ukrainian peace talks.
‘iStand With Ukraine’
All this costly and exhausting non-involvement by NATO in the Ukraine crisis has been accompanied by wartime footing against Russia not just by Western governments and militaries, but by corporations as well. Since February, over 1,000 companies have cut, partially curtailed, or dramatically downsized operations in Russia in a bid to “punish” Moscow and demonstrate that they “Stand With Ukraine.” The campaign has been accompanied by a massive ad campaign targeting Russian IPs informing the hip urban youth and yuppie masses that Putin had robbed them of their beloved symbols of Western consumerism, from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to iPhones and Mercedes. So far, though, the Russian people seem to have been able to cope with these terrible losses somehow, replacing Coke with Chernogolovka and CoolCola, swapping Mickey D’s for Vkusno I tochka, and ramping up the production of domestic brand vehicles while negotiating the import of more cars from countries like Iran, China, and Turkey.
Exercise in Political Sophistry
NATO’s “non-involvement” rhetoric is little more than an act of political “sophistry,” according to Global Policy Institute senior research fellow George Szamuely.
“According to Stoltenberg, unless you have troops of your own on the ground you are not a combatant. This is the very acme of sophistry. There is nothing in international law to support his contention,” Szamuely said in a recent op-ed.
The observer pointed out that under the Hague Convention Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers in Cases of War on Land, “a neutral power is not permitted to use its territory for purposes of moving troops or munitions to a combatant.” The analogous convention concerning naval warfare is even more explicit, stating that “the supply in any manner, directly or indirectly, by a neutral power to a belligerent power of ammunition or war material of any kind is forbidden.”
“There’s nothing here to suggest that it’s okay to do so as long as you don’t have forces of your own taking part in armed combat. The NATO powers in fact are doing much more than providing Ukraine with weaponry. They are also providing training on their own and on Ukrainian territory. NATO powers are also involved in targeting decisions,” Szamuely said. “Multiple sources have revealed that the US is directly involved in Ukrainian tactical and operational decisions… NATO’s assertion that it’s not a combatant is as plausible as its claim that it’s a defensive alliance,” the observer emphasized.
In the U.K. one of the ways in which the message of global warming has been subliminally insinuated into the minds of the general public is in the reporting of the huge growth in the number of English vineyards in the last 20 years. Seldom a week goes by without this message appearing in the mainstream media. Worldwide, the meme ranks alongside swimming polar bears, dying barrier reefs and islands sinking beneath the rise in sea levels.
Yet does this have any basis in fact? The answer is no. To see this we need to look at the history of the renaissance in wine growing in England. From the 1960s onwards, vineyards were seemingly owned by an army of amiable retired Colonel Bufton Tuftons who made a range of very pleasant, drinkable wines using German grape varieties. These wines benefited from the cooler English climate to resemble German wines but were more flowery and fresh.
It took the somewhat more hard-headed and business savvy Americans to transform the English wine scene to the booming industry it is now. In 1986, a wealthy U.S. couple, Stuart and Sandy Moss, bought the Nyetimber wine estate in West Sussex, and established a vineyard there two years later. They realised that the Champagne varieties of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier would be ideally suited to the production of sparkling wines in England and so they planted these varieties. This is for two reasons, one being that Champagne is the most northerly region for wine production in France. Secondly, grapes for sparkling wines are picked at a lower level of ripeness than those for still wines, and so require less sunshine and are picked earlier.
It is bizarre that global warming would be proved by a style of wine that can only be grown in a cool climate at the margins of what is warm enough for successful grape growing.
The Mosses were straight away successful in their experiment and won awards for their first harvests in 1992 and 1993.
This led to a huge expansion in the production of wines made from the same grape varieties and with the same methods of production as Champagne. English sparkling wines have subsequently proven in competitions and blind tastings to be at the same level of quality as those of Champagne, if not higher.
Although the total acreage of vines in the U.K. has quadrupled since the 1990s, 75% of the acreage of English vineyards is now Champagne varieties and the acreage of grape varieties for still wine has increased very little. As control of wine production has moved into the hands of more trendy Islington types, the old fresh and flowery still wines have been replaced by still wines which are “fruit driven” with notes of lychees, leather and oak.
It may surprise mainstream media consumers to know that England has always been very well suited to the production of Champagne style wines. In the 1750s they were being produced most successfully. Charles Hamilton planted a vineyard at his landscape garden at Painshill in Surrey and was succesfully producing and selling a sparkling wine from Champagne grapes during the 1750s. The wine was considered by himself and the French ambassador to be superior to any from Champagne. From the records kept, it appears that climate conditions were very similar to today and they faced similar problems, such as occasional cold wet years and too vigorous plant growth.
The vineyard continued for at least 40 years. It has recently been replanted and produces the same sparkling wines of very good quality, and is only 10 miles from Denbies, the largest vineyard in the U.K.
In short, the booming English wine industry has nothing to do with rising temperatures – if, indeed, temperatures are rising. Nearly all the grape varieties being cultivated in England are only suitable for growing in colder, Northern European climates and in some cases have been successfully cultivated in England since the 1750s.
The author of this piece wants to remain anonymous to protect his career as a budding vinter.
Researchers say the 5300 year old Ötzi corpse didn’t remain covered by ice 5300 years long, but in fact was exposed again and again!
Lots of experts believe that Ötzi, the corpse found at the Tisenjoch in the Alps in 1991, got uncovered for the first time in 5300 years due to the ice melting – from 20th century manmade global warming.
However, glacial archaeologists from Norway, Austria and Switzerland now believe Ötzi had been exposed “several times in the past 5300 years” and have published their findings in the journal The Holocene. This is reported in an article appearing here in the Swiss online NZZ.
In general, Ötzi researchers are quite sure about what had led to the ancient traveler’s death, but little was ever asked about what happened after he died. It was simply assumed that he stayed covered by ice 5300 years long – until modern manmade global warming caused the ice to melt and expose the body for the first time, allowing it to be discovered in 1991 in a hollow at an altitude of 3210 meters. Freed for the first time by global warming!
But now a team of glacial archaeologists think the body must have slid into the hollow afterwards and did not spend the millennia constantly covered by the ice, “but lay exposed again and again”.
“Ötzi’s body and its equipment are not the pristine time capsule they are portrayed as,” reports the NZZ.
This means the climate cycled between warm and cold phases during these 5000 years and the melting like that of today happened again and again. The climate had not been “more or less constant” like many researchers like to suggest.
The authors of the new study conclude that Ötzi likely died on the snow at a higher elevation, and then afterwards his corpse and equipment slid into the hollow. The ice field formed was “relatively small and thin and therefore probably melted several times”.
“The state of preservation also speaks against Ötzi being a time capsule from the ice. Twenty years ago, examinations of hairline cracks in the skull already showed that the corpse had repeatedly thawed and refrozen, reports the NZZ.
Also: “The part of the fur coat lying under the body was much better preserved than the rest, and on the back of Ötzi’s head – he was lying face down – the skin had disappeared. This also indicates that the body was exposed several times.”
Moreover, if Ötzi had actually been under the ice for 5300 years, nothing younger than the corpse should have been found on the floor of the hollow. But that is not the case, as a large number of much younger articles like plants, animal droppings, feathers and a piece of wood were found there as well, meaning the ice had to have melted again and again.
“Thus, even thousands of years after Ötzi’s death, material landed in the hollow again and again; consequently, it was not permanently covered by ice.”
Frank Snepp arrived in Vietnam in 1969 and stayed on until he was evacuated as Saigon fell in 1975.
He spent a good deal of time working with the press while there and developed the ability to plant stories in major media outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the LA Times, Chicago Daily News and others that supported the Agency’s goals.
The younger reporters like the Associated Press’s Peter Arnett wouldn’t take the bait.
After he left the CIA he wrote a book, Decent Interval, that talked about his time in Vietnam. The CIA made his life hell and took a case all the way to the Supreme Court where they won a verdict that required Snepp to turn over all the money the book had made. That was $300,000.
To Snepp, that decision and the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court decided in some instances the government could impose prior restraint on the media meant the only victory the US could show for its war in Vietnam was undoing the first amendment.
Witness to War
Clete Roberts, correspondent
Ian Masters, Producer, Director
Michael Rose, Producer
Haskell Wexler, Camera (along with others)
Susan Cope, Sound
Eric Vollmer, Coordinator
Anne Vermillion, Coordinator
Snepp went on to be a journalist working for some of the same outlets he’d once duped into printing fake news. But as a reformed spy he earned a Peabody award and an Emmy for his investigative reports.
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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