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.
One of the reasons for broken science is nonsense being passed off as science. Today’s example, and a prominent example, too, comes from the peer-reviewed journal BioScience. From the paper “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” by William Ripple and others.
Now the word emergency isn’t undefined or unfamiliar: we know the difference between an emergency and a matter of concern, or even a problem. Further, we know the word so well that we know the weather we experience is not any kind of emergency, even if it might, possibly, someday, perhaps, who knows, maybe be a problem. Which it now is not; a problem, that is, let alone emergency. The weather is not acting in any extraordinary way.
Even though we know the word, it doesn’t have a scientific meaning. Emergency, as a word, has no place in scientific discourse. And neither does code red, a term used in the article’s opening sentences: “We are now at ‘code red’ on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”
What—what precisely—is a code red? Is it different from a code orange or code puce? What—what precisely—differentiates code red from code indigo? How many codes are there, and how do we measure or categorize without ambiguity their characteristics?
Obviously, we cannot answer any of those questions; they aren’t even meant to be asked. Which means the term is not part of science. It is instead hyperbolic, and editorial. It is scientific nonsense.
The paper, therefore, is off to a bad start. It has already signaled it is a work of politics and not science. Yet even though the work cannot function at all well as science, it might have value politically. Let’s see the very next sentences:
The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters. Therefore, we urge scientists, citizens, and world leaders to read this Special Report and quickly take the necessary actions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
The scale of human suffering due to poor or inclement weather is not “already immense”. The suffering is not “rapidly growing”, either. This we know from the work of men like Bjorn Lomberg. One citation will do, though there are many:
Lomberg is careful to make that graph scientific (links here), by defining just what he means by “climate deaths”. Naturally, the definition can be disputed, or changed, and the numbers would change, too. It is true, also, that measuring these things is subject to at least substantial uncertainty, so that the blue line should have something like a plus or minus around it.
Those are scientific criticisms because they speak to the measurements and the certainty we have in them. But, given this picture, and the work of others, it is clear that something like that picture is true; I mean the decrease in deaths. And that, therefore, Ripple’s “rapidly growing” is false.
Which doesn’t make his statement valueless. Since we are dealing, as we have learned, with a political paper, and not a scientific one, and in politics anything goes, Ripple will likely get away with his falsehood.
Which is why he goes from the political strength of “rapidly growing” to (in the next paragraph) “The consequences of global heating are becoming increasingly extreme, and outcomes such as global societal collapse are plausible and dangerously underexplored”.
Global societal collapse! I suppose we could criticize that term, too, since it, being undefined, means only what horrors are held in the mind of individual readers, but we see where we are now.
It’s not that this paper doesn’t have aspects that look like science. It does. For instance, there’s a table which claims “April 2022: Climate change likely contributed to extreme rainfall in Eastern South Africa, which triggered flooding and landslides that killed at least 435 people and affected more than 40,000 people.”
What makes this advocacy and not science is that Ripple makes no attempt to give alternate, and even more likely, explanations for the rain. There are also many critiques proving these attributions are, at absolute best, vastly over-certain, and most likely just plain wrong.
To make this paper science, and not advocacy, those legitimate and strong critiques must be at least mentioned, even if they are dismissed. Not just for this instance, but in each claim made about the causes of weather supposedly running amok.
Science is about discovering the causes of observables. If all possible likely causes are not given or investigated, then the work can be no better than bad science. Or no science at all, as we have here.
But this paper will be taken as science, especially by those rulers who have “solutions” to sell. Especially since its original 2020 version attracted “14,700 signatories from 158 countries”. If you are in the majority who take science to be a vote, then this number of signers is irresistible.
New documents provided in a lawsuit against top Biden administration officials reveal potential collusion between social media platforms and public health officials, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Blinded by Ideology: Part 4 in a series on Willful Blindness
Malcolm Muggeridge was an exceptionally talented journalist who lived in Moscow in 1933, working for the Manchester Guardian. Though attracted to communism in his youth, the experience of being in Stalin’s Russia and observing what was going on in it caused him to become disillusioned. Especially disturbing was his realization that Stalin’s army and police were—as part of their collectivization program—starving millions of landowning peasants (known as kulaks) in the Ukraine by confiscating their grain. This massive organized crime—known as the Holodomor—resulted in the deaths of millions in the winter of 1933.
Muggeridge was the only western journalist to report what was going on. When his reports were published, many of his fellow writers—including George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb—refused to believe them and passionately asserted that Muggeridge was spreading falsehoods about Stalin’s regime. Muggeridge was related to the Webbs by marriage, and years later he told a funny story about Beatrice.
I remember Mrs. Webb, who after all was a very cultivated upper-class liberal-minded person, an early member of the Fabian Society and so on, saying to me, ‘Yes, it’s true, people disappear in Russia.’ She said it with such great satisfaction that I couldn’t help thinking that there were a lot of people in England whose disappearance she would have liked to organize.”
For decades, Muggeridge’s accurate reporting of the Holodomor was denied and suppressed. The dominant narrative of Stalin’s Russia in the early thirties was that propagated by the New York Times Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, who vehemently denied the Holodomor. While Muggeridge’s true and courageous reporting was denied, Duranty won a Pulitzer Price for his concealment of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th Century. It’s a testament to the power of Duranty’s mendacious work that most Americans have still never heard of the Holodomor.
Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times
Over the last two years I’ve often thought about Muggeridge and Duranty as I have watched courageous scholars like Dr. Peter McCullough persecuted and censored, while COVID-19 vaccine ideologues are rewarded. Most notable is the COVID-19 vaccine propagandist, Dr. Peter Hotez, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize.
One of the most bizarre features of our bizarre time is that an experimental, gene transfer technology has become an object of unshakable devotion. Among members of the COVID-19 Vaccine Cult, belief in the substance (about which they know nothing) is an article of faith.
In the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s, many of the most prominent journalists, writers, intellectuals, and artists believed in Stalin’s Cult of Personality. Muggeridge knew (from his own observations) that they weren’t seeing the reality of Stalin’s regime. Because they viewed the world through the highly distorting lens of ideology, they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
In the past few months I’ve read newspaper articles warning of the increased risk of death following gardening, stress at work, solar flares, sleeping in front of the television, hot weather, cold weather, shock of high energy bills, the price of food, laughing too much and sleeping in the wrong position – these recent warnings add to the multitude of stories on the health consequences of our dietary choices, sedentary lifestyle and climate change. If that wasn’t scary enough, we’ve also seen efforts to educate the public about how common sudden deaths are in younger adults and teenagers. Given this background of suddenly emerging risks to life resulting from our modern lifestyle, it is clearly very important to fully understand all risks that might be emerging resulting from the Covid vaccines, no matter how trivial.
With the above in mind, it is perhaps rather surprising that the Vaccine Surveillance Report from the UKHSA has never actually mentioned vaccine side-effects or complications. Sure, the word ‘safe’ is typically used a few times in each report, but there’s never been a mention of side-effects and their rates. They don’t even like to use the term ‘rare side-effects’ – as far as the Vaccine Surveillance Reports are concerned the vaccines are simply ‘safe’. They’ve never reported any of the data from the Yellow Card side-effect reporting system, nor mentioned any of the increasing numbers of scientific studies reporting on an increasing number of ‘complications’ after receiving the various vaccines.
I suppose at this point I could stop – since side-effects aren’t covered in the Vaccine Surveillance Reports, and this is a series of posts reviewing the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Reports, there’s nothing to discuss. However, vaccine side-effects and complications are important, so I hope that I can be forgiven for exploring this aspect of the vaccines a little further in this post.
Over the past 18 months there have been many studies which have found worrying high side-effect rates following vaccination. The results of these studies have been discussed in multiple places across the internet, and many of these studies have been covered by the Daily Sceptic. The only common theme has been the remarkable insistence by authorities worldwide on ignoring the results of these studies, except where the evidence has become overwhelming and they are forced into some response.
The vast array of side-effects found by these investigative studies is now too voluminous to cover completely here, so instead I’ll focus on a few specific side-effects and discuss the response to these new findings.
Thrombocytopenia and blood-clotting related problems
The first inkling that there might be a risk of thrombocytopenia (low blood platelet count) after vaccination came in January 2021, a mere month after the vaccinations started, after a doctor in New York died of complications following acute thrombocytopenia about two weeks after being given the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer responded with a statement that this definitely wasn’t anything to do with their vaccine, despite acute thrombocytopenia being relatively rare and the doctor not being in a risk group. In the months that followed, many more cases of thrombocytopenia and other blood clotting disorders occurred, from Pfizer and the other vaccine offerings, but the official response remained coincidence. Eventually the volume of problems became too large to ignore, and in June 2021 the U.K. authorities decided that those aged under 40 shouldn’t be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine. I found this restriction to the AstraZeneca vaccine a bit odd, as the other vaccines appeared to have similarly high rates of clotting problems in the weeks following vaccination, but it appears that the authorities had chosen their demon to blame. Of course, older adults weren’t too keen to be told that they were going to have to take these risks, and demand for the AstraZeneca vaccine plummeted. A few months later the AstraZeneca vaccine was only made available to those who were unable to take the Pfizer vaccine (the only alternative in the U.K. at that time). Even though the known problems of clotting related disorders post-vaccination are bad enough, it isn’t clear if the instances of severe clotting related problems (resulting in hospitalisation) are also accompanied by higher numbers of clotting problems below the clinical threshold (‘microclotting’), or whether these mild cases might have longer term consequences. Another area of post-vaccine effects that demands more research.
Myocarditis
The risk from myocarditis first appeared in a leaked report out of Israel in April 2021 suggesting worryingly high rates occurring in younger males. Quite why it was deemed necessary for this safety-related information to be kept secret isn’t clear, but authorities worldwide responded quickly once the information was leaked to reassure everyone that this risk was very very low and that the vaccines were very very safe (and effective, of course). While the official line is that post-vaccination myocarditis is rare, studies keep on finding higher and higher incidence rates, particularly in the young male risk group. Indeed, in August a scientific paper describing the impact of Covid vaccination in Thailand suggested that the conditions suggestive of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination were found in over 29% of vaccine recipients aged between 13 and 18 years of age, and a similar result has since been described after vaccination in Switzerland. The longer term impact of these ‘mild problems related to the heart’ aren’t yet known.
Period related problems
All clinical studies into side-effects are mindful of the need to treat any issues related to sexual function carefully – individuals are less likely to seek medical attention when it comes to sex-related problems and those related to our reproductive systems in general. Thus it should have been a huge red-flag when anecdotal reports of heavy or missed periods following vaccination started to appear early in 2021. Alas, our authorities simply responded with the usual ‘it definitely isn’t the vaccines’ and ignored the problem. The complex situation regarding reporting of side-effects related to reproductive function is nicely illustrated by the number of problems reported to the Yellow Card side-effect reporting system – early May 2021 saw a huge increase in reporting of side-effects related to menstruation. The reason? Most likely, an article on the problem on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour in late March, in which listeners were urged to report any problems into the Yellow-Card system. It is very disappointing that our side-effect reporting system could be so heavily influenced by a radio programme in this way. Really there should have been active monitoring of post-vaccination complications and side-effects, but the inadequate Yellow Card system is all we had. Official guidelines now state that problems related to menstruation are relatively rare but even if they do occur they’ll be of no consequence whatsoever and women shouldn’t worry about taking the vaccines. Eventually we’ll find out if this reassurance was correct.
What’s also troubling is the way that the only side-effects that are discussed in the traditional media are the ones that have been officially recognised (albeit under duress). What about the increase in hospital consultant activity for stroke victims over the last 18 months?
Or the increase in consultant activity for hormonal problems?
Or the increase in referrals for suspected cancers?
Like the significant increase in excess deaths that we’ve seen this year, there seems to be much going on but little interest on the part of our authorities to investigate these issues at all. Maybe they’re all the result of the lockdowns, maybe they’re due to Covid itself, maybe it was the vaccines, and perhaps it is all just a massive coincidence – but it simply isn’t good enough to decide that it can’t possibly be the vaccines and refuse to even discuss undertaking the research that might clarify the situation.
At least in recent weeks we’ve had an increase in calls for some robust investigations to be undertaken, such as discussed in the Daily Sceptic in mid October. Then again, we’ve also had the brief hour-and-a-half spent a week ago by the House of Commons to debate the issues around vaccine safety. Despite some MPs detailing concerns about the safety of the vaccines, the Chair was quick to respond with empty reassurances and the debate ended with a statement urging people to get vaccinated to protect themselves, others and the NHS. I fear that there’ll be quite some way to go before the full impact of the vaccines is accepted by our authorities.
An important aspect of the rate of side-effects and complications is the impact on the risk-benefit analysis used by our authorities to determine who should take the vaccines. The risk of side-effects should be tolerable so long as the benefit offered by any medical product is greater than the risks. Since the vaccines were introduced back in December 2020 we have seen marked changes both in the risks posed by the vaccines (more side-effects and complications have come to light) and the benefits offered (the vaccines clearly offer little protection against infection, their protection against hospitalisation and death appears to be rather less than claimed, and at the same time Covid appears to have evolved to become much less virulent). In addition, nearly everyone in the Western world will now have had a Covid infection, resulting in at least some natural immunity. Unfortunately, our authorities have never actually published any of their risk-benefit analyses and how the ratio changes with age and morbidity, so we can’t tell how new information on risks and benefits has changed the calculation. Then again, I suppose it is easier to be inconsistent if you never actually tell anyone what factors your decisions are based upon.
One of the big problems regarding the Covid mRNA vaccines in particular is that there were only sparse data published on how long the mRNA would remain active in the body and where it would end up (pharmacokinetics and biodistribution). Originally the reassuring voices told us that the mRNA would break down within hours, and that the mRNA vesicles would remain close to the point of injection. However, evidence has emerged in the months since our authorities proceeded to inject everyone in the world that has suggested that the mRNA remains active for many weeks following vaccination, that it travels to multiple organs in the body and that the pharmaceutical companies knew this prior to the vaccines being released. Even worse, a recent study has suggested that the mRNA is present in breast milk for a short time following vaccination (for fairness I must point out that our authorities still think that it is completely and utterly safe for recently vaccinated mothers to continue breastfeeding). I find it concerning that we’re only now starting to find out the full complexity of the interaction of the mRNA vaccines with the body.
Recent studies have estimated the current rate of serious short-term side-effects after the Covid vaccines at around one in 800. I find this number interesting, as I suspect that this is as bad a side-effect rate as could be found for a supposedly benign or prophylactic treatment. I estimate that an incidence rate of around one in 1,000 marks the point at which problems become apparent even to a casual observer, provided sufficient numbers are given the medical product. If a side-effect rate for a benign or prophylactic treatment is worse than this people would notice and demand that the medicine or medical treatment is withdrawn. Thankfully, there aren’t too many examples of terrible medical mistakes – probably the most famous example is Thalidomide, where around one in 1,000 mothers who took the drug gave birth to a child with serious physical malformations. Even so, it took three years before the nature of the problem was understood and Thalidomide was withdrawn from sale. It is perhaps interesting to note that at least in the early stages of the problem being recognised the blame was put on the nuclear tests that had occurred in previous years – was this the 1950s equivalent of ‘climate change’?
Where serious side-effects are more common than this for a supposedly benign product, the response is typically more rapid. The famous example here is Elixir Sulphanilamide, a treatment for bacterial infections created in the 1930s that caused over 100 deaths in the few weeks that it was for sale. The problem with Elixir Sulphanilamide was that it hadn’t been tested before release and the manufacturers hadn’t realised that a primary component was highly toxic. The owner of the company that made the elixir famously denied responsibility, stating that “we have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked for results”. It was this scandal that led to the creation of the FDA in the USA, along with stringent requirements for the testing of new medical products. After the disaster it was demanded that never again would a medical treatment be released and given to many thousands of people without being fully tested to explore all potential problems (and not simply the ‘looked-for’ problems). As a side note, the outcome of the Elixir Sulphanilamide scandal was that the scientist who developed the formula committed suicide as a result of the extreme guilt of causing so much harm, while the company that released the medicine without testing was given a nominal fine. The manufacturer went on to produce further drugs (and profits) and after a succession of takeovers is now part of the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Funny how it all works.
Next time I’ll discuss one of the most wildly enthusiastic aspects of the Vaccine Surveillance Report – the predictions made by computer-models of the reduction in infections, hospitalisations and deaths offered by the vaccines.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly.
New research has revealed the countries that implemented the harshest lockdowns as part of ‘zero-COVID’ policies now have the least immunity from the virus itself.
The analysis by The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine estimates that China, which still has multiple lockdowns in place, has the lowest level of immunity to COVID-19 on the planet.
Other nations that didn’t institute harsh lockdowns, including Russia, Singapore and Brazil are thought to have the highest immunity levels, according to the research.
The research estimates immunity rates according to infection numbers, vaccination rates and how much time has passed in the interim.
The analysis posits that as of the end of October 2022, just 17.2% of the Chinese population have immunity from the virus, while Russia on the other hand is estimated to have an immunity rating of 74.5% with everyone in the country having contracted the virus.
While Singapore’s immunity rating is thought to be around 70%, and Brazil’s 68%, Japan, another country that put into place harsh restrictions is believed to have just 38.9% immunity.
The U.S. is believed to have 60.5% immunity at this time, according to the analysis.
Johns Hopkins University previously concluded that lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last month highlighted how a record number of children in the U.S. are now being hospitalised with common colds due to weakened immune systems.
The CDC data is consistent with research by scientists at Yale who warned that it is not normal to see children with combinations of seven common viruses, including adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza, as well as COVID-19.
As we previously highlighted, there has also been a global outbreak of hepatitis cases in children, with the media asserting the cause is “unknown.”
Biden administration officials have continuously pushed for children to keep wearing masks in schools, and there are still hordes of hypochondriacs forcing their children to do so, despite COVID posing virtually no risk to the health of children in normal circumstances.
The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA), Europe’s equivalent of the FDA, has also warned that relying on endless rounds of booster shots to fight COVID-19 could end up causing “immune response” problems.
By Jamal Kanj – Intifada-Palestine.com – January 14, 2011
Israel’s survival kit is: perpetuate conflict, insecurity to rationalize collective hate and finally playing victim.
Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism loses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist.
From its inception, the house of Zion has mastered exploiting adversarial powers to advance Israel’s cause. For instance, their influence over the Democratic Party in the US began with President Truman’s bid for 2nd term election in 1948.
Responding to strong opposition from Secretary of State General George Marshall and Department experts urging against recognition of Israel, President Truman replied: “I’m sorry gentlemen but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands [Jewish voters] who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of [voting] Arabs among my constituents”
Zionists influence over liberal American politics was matched with the doctrinal school of Conservative theoreticians aligning the Republican Party’s platform with Israel’s objectives. The Neoconservative Zionists, coined Zioncons, invented the “Clash of Civilization” concept to fight Israel’s wars. … continue
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