Australia’s excess death toll just keeps getting worse
By Dr Ah Kahn Syed | Arkmedic’s blog | August 27, 2022
The Australian Bureau of Statistics just released its latest all-cause mortality statistics which are about 3 months behind real time. It paints a horrific picture of the effects of public health policy with around 15,000 excess deaths since October 2021 (the red shaded area represents excess deaths over the prior upper limits). In July 2021 – when there were no excess deaths of any significance there was a coordinated effort from health ministers to “get vaccinated” and the “Warsaw ghetto” treatment of anybody that didn’t.
In fact the health departments went to such extremes that they chose to mispresent the death of Adriana Takara (and others) in order to sell the “if you don’t get vaccinated you will die” message.
Yet 80% of the adult population of Australia had received their COVID vaccine by the 5th October 2021. Then something happened as can be seen by the graphic. The all-cause mortality rate went up – and never came down again. It continues at 10% over baseline which is equivalent to about 15,000 deaths a year.
Given that the government themselves set the bar that their “job was to prevent you dying” – by which they meant “We are going to imprison or remove the rights of anyone that won’t do as they are told because we know better than you” – then I would like to know who is going to take responsibility for the manslaughter of 15,000 Australians?
You see, it isn’t enough that they thought they were doing the right thing. The government imposed “health orders” that were not only never shown to be of any benefit and contravened the established pandemic plan, but the evidence base for them was hidden from the public. Those health orders destroyed lives and are continuing to destroy (and, seemingly, end) lives. The government is not some abstract entity, it is people – and those people are subject to the same laws that the rest of us are, even if they think are are not.
It is not enough that we forget and just get on with it. Somebody needs to answer for 15,000 deaths that they took responsibility for when they imposed health orders that had consequences that they were warned about in September 2021. And that, presumably, has to include those that enabled the decision makers.
Diplomatic Immunity, American-Style
BY LARRY ROMANOFF • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 28, 2022
In a recent podcast, Kevin Barrett stated that the rule of law has disappeared in the US. This is so obviously true to outsiders looking in, and is even more true of American official conduct abroad, but I find myself wondering about the extent to which Americans generally are aware of this and how it is perceived.
In days gone by, this lawlessness was usually deeply buried and obfuscated but today it seems there is no longer even a pretense of any rule of law. We see this most recently in the so-called “sanctions” the US so freely applies to countries and individuals, being no more than illegal rampaging and looting.
But there is another category that may not be as visible and yet is indicative of an extreme breakdown of the rule of law, this applying to the category of “diplomatic immunity”, real or imagined, where the US government absolutely treads on a one-way street. This article is only a brief introduction with a few examples of hundreds that could be cited.
Devyani Khobragade
On late 2013 an Indian diplomat, 39-year-old Devyani Khobragade, was the Deputy Consul-General in New York, and by all reports had an excellent reputation and was honorably discharging her consular duties. But then she was suddenly charged with submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper. She was arrested and handcuffed while dropping her daughter off at school, was taken to a police station and strip-searched, given a body cavity search, then put into a cell with drug dealers and held there until she was finally released on $250,000 bail.[1]
The Federal Prosecutor, Preet Bharara, claimed agents had arrested her “in the most discreet way possible”, having doing so in full view of her daughter, her daughter’s friends, and most of the teachers and students. He said “there can be no plausible claim that this case was somehow an injustice”, calling her treatment “standard procedure” even for diplomatic personnel, claiming further that during her strip and cavity searches she had been “accorded courtesies well beyond what other defendants are accorded, most of whom are American citizens.” He claimed these procedures were “standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not, in order to make sure that no prisoner keeps anything on his person that could harm anyone, including himself”. He said his office’s sole motivation was to uphold the law, protect victims and hold lawbreakers accountable, “no matter what their societal status and no matter how powerful, rich or connected they are”.[2][3][4][5] It staggers the imagination and leaves us numb and unable to respond when faced with such incredibly shameful lies.
The mess was later blamed on a “mistake”, a claim that the low-level agent who drew up the charges against Ms. Khobragade had confused two documents – Ms. Khobragade’s US visa application and that of the employment contract with her housekeeper – and “misunderstood” Ms. Khobragade’s salary as the amount she meant to pay her maid. Yet those two documents are in an entirely different format and could not possibly have been confused one with the other. It would appear that no visa fraud actually occurred after all, and it was further discovered Ms. Khobragade was after all attached to the UN as an advisor, which function unquestionably granted her full diplomatic immunity. The US State department repeatedly refused to acknowledge her diplomatic status but let her leave the country.[6]
However, and if all the claims had been true, this really would have been at most a simple issue of a wage mis-statement which is a misdemeanor offense and not a felony, and would normally be investigated by the Department of Labor. In fact, this is a common issue with many foreign household and agricultural workers in the US, and also occurs daily with restaurant workers, but never in the history of America has a restaurant or farm owner been arrested and strip-searched because of a low-level wage or visa dispute. And for such a minor offense the bail is usually around $5,000, not $250,000. So what really happened?
Well, only a few weeks before being abruptly arrested and strip-searched in New York, Ms. Khobragade had managed to make some powerful enemies in the US pharmaceutical industry about India’s treatment of US so-called intellectual property. The Indian government and courts have taken IP actions that angered the Americans, including denial to US firms of pharmaceutical patents that were not a true innovation, and permitting compulsory licensing for production of generic medicines. The US Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) was hysterical at India’s actions, referring to “unprecedented patent revocations and denials” and accusing India of being “an outlier in the global economy”. AmCham’s “Global IP Center” held a public event in New York at which it attacked India’s practices, and at which Ms. Khobragade was “outspoken” in defense of her country’s practices, and where she engaged in “debate” with US industry executives, demanding that in future an Indian representative be given a formal place at these events to present India’s side of the story. Shortly thereafter, US officials were busy cavity-searching, humiliating, and deporting the woman who dared confront the IP kings of AmCham and the US pharma industry.
Preet Bharara later confirmed in an autobiography that Devyani Khobragade was indeed strip-searched and cavity-searched, and acknowledged, “That could have and should have been avoided, given that no one would have sought pretrial detention.”[7]
A bit too little and a bit too late.
The official position of all civilised nations toward a foreign diplomat resident in their countries is that “He is a diplomat and has the privileges of a diplomat. If you’re a diplomat and you commit any crime, the case is investigated and is forwarded to your embassy. That’s what the law says and we work within the law”. However, the official position of the American government toward foreign diplomats in the US is different. A State Department “guidance paper” for American law enforcement officials on how diplomatic immunity works even at the highest levels says that “diplomatic immunity is not intended to serve as a license for persons to flout the law and purposely avoid liability for their actions. The purpose of these privileges and immunities is not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient and effective performance of their official missions on behalf of their governments.”
In short, a foreign diplomat in the US has no immunity against prosecution by the US government for offenses real or imagined, but US citizens in other nations, diplomats or not, have full immunity even when clearly engaged in illegal activities that include drunk or reckless driving, espionage, and murder.
There are literally hundreds of cases where US consular officials in all countries regularly flout domestic labor and many other laws. American employment contracts in other countries are regularly violated with impunity, and typically specify that all staff issues including compensation will be decided exclusively by the US consular staff with no recourse to either domestic or US law – contract wording that is itself illegal, since no contract anywhere can eliminate recourse to local courts. But then, these are Americans, and their world is apparently different than ours. Americans in all countries violate both domestic tax laws and their visa status, in all cases being protected by the US government claiming “diplomatic status” for those who are clearly non-diplomats.
Raymond Davis
Here is another incident, this one from the other side of the fence. In January of 2011, CIA agent Raymond Davis was driving down a street in Lahore, Pakistan, when he stopped at a red light. A motorbike carrying two Pakistani Intelligence agents keeping Davis under surveillance due to suspicion of criminal activities, pulled in front of his car. Davis drew an automatic weapon and killed both men, claiming they had attempted to rob him and that he acted in self-defense.[8][9]
But the documented facts from multiple witnesses clearly proved that Davis initiated the violence. When the motorcycle stopped in front of his car, Davis first fired five shots through the windshield, killing one man and injuring the other, then got out of his vehicle, shot four more rounds into the two men as they lay on the pavement, then four more shots into one man’s back as he was trying to crawl away, killing him as well. Witnesses testified that Davis then walked back to his car, called for backup on a military radio, then took photos of the men he had just killed. One witness who watched from his restaurant across the street, said he was amazed at the American’s manner. “He was very peaceful and confident. I was wondering how he could be like that after killing two people,” he said.
Minutes later, four Americans in a Toyota jeep with fake registration plates left Davis’ home and made a frantic but unsuccessful attempt to reach Davis and rescue him. Finding their vehicle trapped in a traffic jam, they crossed the median and traveled against the oncoming traffic, colliding with a motorcycle and killing the driver. After the accident, they fled the scene and drove at high speed to the US Embassy, jettisoning many bits of evidence along the way including 100 bullets, knives, gloves, a blindfold. Witnesses later told police that one American opened the door to their vehicle, displayed a rifle and threatened to kill anyone who got in their way.
Davis also attempted to escape in his vehicle but was apprehended and charged with double murder, espionage and the illegal possession of a firearm. Although Davis was part of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, he was at the time doing some contract espionage work for Xe Services, the private company formerly known as Blackwater that was involved in a multitude of scandals in Iraq that included mass murders and many other crimes. Items recovered from Davis’s car included a Glock handgun, an infrared light, a portable telescope, GPS equipment, two mobile phones, a satellite phone, 9mm ammunition, multiple ATM and military ID cards, multiple ID cards from several different US consulates, facial disguise and makeup, and a camera. According to Pakistani officials, Davis’ camera contained photos of “prohibited areas such as installations along the border with India”, stating “This is not the work of a diplomat. He was doing espionage and other activities”.[10][11][12][13]
Then-US President Obama demanded that Pakistan free “our diplomat” under the Vienna convention rules, and the State Department exerted fierce and unrelenting pressure on Pakistan to release Davis. US officials insisted Davis was a diplomat doing “technical and administrative work” at the embassy and had to be treated as such, though he was a common criminal in the country on a tourist passport, had no diplomatic credentials and no consular functions. Pakistani officials demanded the US turn over for questioning the men in the Embassy who had attempted to rescue Davis and had killed the motorcyclist, but the Americans refused and spirited the men out of Pakistan. Davis was released after the families of the two killed men were paid $2.4 million in what is called “blood money”.
Joshua Walde
In another incident, in August of 2013 an American diplomat, Joshua Walde, an information management officer at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was driving his SUV at a high rate of speed when he made an illegal turn, crossed the highway center line, and rammed into a full mini-bus, killing a father of three whose widow was six months pregnant, and seriously injuring eight other people.[14] (15) US Embassy officials in Nairobi took advantage of Walde’s diplomatic immunity and rushed the American and his family out of Kenya the next day, leaving the crash victims with no financial assistance. Officials noted that embassy employees are typically evacuated “for medical evaluations” after traumatic events but also are flown out of a country “to avoid any possible retribution”. Hilary Renner, a State Department spokeswoman in Washington, said the embassy extends “its deepest condolences” to the family of the dead man, and “wishes a speedy recovery” to those injured.
Anne Sacoolas
More recently we had the case of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American employed at a UK consulate, who was formally charged in the death of British teenager Harry Dunn. Sacoolas was driving her car on the wrong side of the road, perhaps while impaired, and crashed into Dunn’s motorcycle, killing him. Sacoolas spoke later to the police, but then immediately headed for the airport and left the UK, claiming “diplomatic immunity” when of course she had none. However, the Americans refused to release her to return to the UK to stand trial.[16][17] Once safe at home in the US, Ms. Sacoolas offered to perform some “community service” as penance. Here are some media details if you are interested in more information:[18][19][20][21][22][23]
Julia Bravo
A current case is that of an American soldier in Italy, a young woman named Julia Bravo, who has been charged with vehicular homicide. Prosecutors in Pordenone, in Italy’s Northeast, charged the 20-year-old female soldier stationed at the US Air Force’s Aviano Air Base with vehicular manslaughter in the auto death of a young boy in Italy.
According to witness testimony, Bravo had left a disco in the small hours of the morning, was subsequently seen driving erratically on the road, drove over and through a traffic circle, crossed a median, crashed through a group of road signs at high speed and hit a group of young boys walking on the roadside, killing one of them instantly. According to an eyewitness who had been partying in the same club, Bravo was so drunk “she couldn’t even turn the ignition on”, and at first drove off in the opposite direction of her military base. The police said her blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit.
The dead boy’s mother said, “We all know that the soldiers on the Aviano base in this area do what they like, that they don’t respect the rules. There have been many incidents in the past that involved American troops. They have the freedom to do whatever they like and not be punished.” The mother told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that she wanted the soldier tried in Italy. “I don’t trust the American justice system.” However, the chance of that appears slight since the US Embassy is apparently exerting enormous pressure on the Italians to have the woman sent to the US for a “prosecution” which will never take place.[24][25][26][27][28]
However, being American, our sympathies must lie with the perpetrator. Her lawyer told the Italian media that his client was “extremely emotionally exhausted” from expressing her remorse and apologising to the family.
Capt. Richard Ashby
There have been many such occurrences involving US military personnel in countries throughout Europe and Asia, and invariably with the US applying immense diplomatic and military bullying to prevent Americans from being subject to the laws of any country. One notable case occurred some years back where a Capt. Richard Ashby, flying a military jet aircraft in Northern Italy, was displaying what he boasted as a “daredevil stunt” and severed the cables of a cable car line at an Italian ski resort, sending 20 people to their death. The military restrictions prohibited flight below 1,000 feet above ground level and at speeds more than 500 mph. Ashby was flying his aircraft at little over 300 feet and at more than 1,000 Kph when the accident occurred.[29][30][31]
Italian prosecutors had wanted four US airmen, including Ashby and his co-pilot, Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, and three officers from the US base at Aviano, to face charges of manslaughter and endangering the safety of transport, but the Americans bullied the Italians into surrendering the prisoners to an American court. Naturally, all were found not guilty of all charges. The Italians were infuriated, but there was nothing to be done. People still ask today why has no one has even been held to account for that tragedy.[32][33]
Epilogue
One of the distressing features of today’s world is that it is not only the US that has apparently abandoned any pretense of adhering to a rule of law; most other Western nations are as guilty, and some perhaps even more so.
Think of Canada during the recent truckers’ protest in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first had the nation’s law enforcement agencies track down the ownership of the vehicles and extort the insurance companies into canceling the insurance on all the trucks. When that failed, they used every manner of access to determine the identity of all protesters and forced the banks to freeze the accounts of all participants. When that still failed to frighten off the protesters, Trudeau had the local governments begin seizing the semi-trailers and selling them ($150,000 to $200,000 each) “to pay the costs of monitoring the protest”. All actions were openly and reprehensibly illegal, against all manner of law and justice, but seemingly of no concern.
It is incredible, unbelievable, that the government of any civilised country, the so-called democracies and “free nations”, could behave in such a manner, and yet this is where we are. The few examples in this essay are of rampant criminality and the immunity that comes with uncontrolled power in the hands of the wrong people. It is no longer a matter of law but of power to do. The US government recently confiscated the entire assets of Afghanistan’s central bank and arbitrarily decided to “donate” the money to American 9-11 victims. That is not different than seizing the assets of Russia’s central bank, and keeping the money, not different than seizing a $100 million yacht owned by an innocent individual, and selling it and keeping the money – because he’s Russian.
We see articles today warning us of the impending degeneration of the US and the West into totalitarian fascism, but that’s a delusion: we’re already there, but nobody seems to know. If you are on the wrong side of the political fence today, your life could easily become miserable and short. Dissidence is no longer a requirement; innocent questioning of the official narrative will be sufficient. By the time everyone wakes up, it will be too late and we will be in the middle of World War Three.
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. ([Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons]).
His full archive can be seen at https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
Notes
[1] https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/10/01/devyani-khobragade-whose-arrest-led-to-india-us-spat-made-envoy-to-cambodia.html#:~:text=Devyani%20Khobragade%20was%20charged%20and%20arrested%20by%20US,by%20paying%20her%20less%20than%20the%20stipulated%20wages
[2] IFS officer Devyani Khobragade, who was stripped searched in US, promoted after 7-month wait
[3] Who is Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat at the center of the firestorm?
[4] Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade leaves US under immunity
[5] U.S. officials made a mistake that led to Indian diplomat’s arrest and strip search over visa application for maid
[6] Devyani Khobragade: Diplomat row charges dropped in US
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26554245
[7] Preet Bharara says diplomat was strip-searched, could’ve been avoided
[8] American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA spy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia
[9] US gives fresh details of CIA agent who killed two men in Pakistan shootout
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-pakistan-cia-blackwater
[10] CIA killer Raymond Davis released by Pakistani authorities
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/03/pkst-m18.html
[11] CIA contractor Ray Davis freed over Pakistan killings
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12757244
[12] Revealed: What CIA agent was really doing in Lahore as it emerges even Pakistan officials are ‘worried for his safety’
[13] Pakistan defiant in face of US pressure to free CIA agent
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-cia-agent-pakistan
[14] https://www.rt.com/news/us-diplomat-flees-kenya-accident-979/
[15] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/02/diplomat-kenya-car-crash/2612229/
[16] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9280351/Harry-Dunns-family-lawyer-hits-diplomat-Anne-Sacoolas-offers-pay-funeral.html
[17] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/case-against-anne-sacoolas-over-death-of-harry-dunn-can-go-ahead-in-us-judge-rules/ar-BB1dKA18
[18] Anne Sacoolas to face UK court over death of Harry Dunn
[19] ANNE SACOOLAS has reached a “resolution” with Harry Dunn’s family after the teenager was killed in a car accident with her behind the wheel in 2019.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10079907/anne-sacoolas-us-diplomat-wife-harry-dunn-death/
[20] Anne Sacoolas: Harry Dunn suspect ‘willing to do community service’
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56326406
[21] Case against American woman accused of killing a UK teenager can go ahead in the US, judge rules
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/17/us/harry-dunn-anne-sacoolas-damages-intl/index.html
[22] The fugitive: US spy’s wife Anne Sacoolas is pictured driving HER children on the school run in America after fleeing Britain following car crash that killed teenager Harry Dunn
[23] US woman who killed teen biker Harry Dunn wouldn’t face prosecution in America, lawyer claims
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/09/uk/anne-sacoolas-harry-dunn-community-service-intl-gbr/index.html
[24] U.S. servicewoman in Italy charged with vehicular homicide in drunk driving accident
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/23/julia-bravo-us-servicewoman-italy-charged-vehicula/
[25] American service member, 20, is arrested in Italy for hitting and killing 15-year-old boy with her car while ‘driving drunk’
[26] Drunk US soldier kills boy in Italy
The American airwoman hit the 15-year-old while driving four times over the legal blood alcohol limit
https://www.rt.com/news/561418-american-pilot-drunk-driving-italy/
[27] US soldier held in Italy for allegedly killing 15-year-old while driving four times over legal alcohol limit
[28] US soldier under house arrest in Italy after driving drunk, killing teen
[29] 20 die as US warplane hits cable car in Italian resort
[30] 20 Die in Italy As U.S. Jet Cuts A Ski Lift Cable
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/04/world/20-die-in-italy-as-us-jet-cuts-a-ski-lift-cable.html
[31] Cable Car Plunges in Italy, Killing at Least 14 People
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/world/europe/italy-cable-car.html
[32] US pilot who killed twenty on ski gondola acquitted
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/03/ital-m06.html
[33] Cavalese cable-car disaster: It’s 20 years since a US aircraft killed 20 people in the Dolomites and still no one accepts responsibility.
The narrative managers have done their best to memory-hole the Nurenberg Codes
By Helen of desTroy | August 28, 2022
You would be forgiven for not knowing that last Friday was the 75th anniversary of the Doctors’ Trial, one of 13 Nazi war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg after World War II and the event that birthed the Nuremberg Codes, the most important medical ethics document of the modern era. The Codes set ground rules for requiring informed consent from experimental test subjects; they anchor international agreements like the Helsinki Declaration, the Geneva Convention and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and have been codified into law in the US and other countries.
Sixteen doctors were found guilty at Nuremberg of murder and torture for carrying out a euthanasia program on mentally and physically disabled German citizens deemed “unworthy of life” and experimenting on concentration camp inmates; nine were jailed and seven were executed. Yet the expected flood of commemoratory articles and events marking the anniversary of the Allies’ crowning (if illusory) moment of moral superiority over those Evil Nazis™ has not materialized. It’s downright unnatural for the US and Europe to miss a chance to give the dead Nazi horse a good beating, but any attempts to even discuss the Nuremberg Codes in the last two years have been squelched by militant fact-checkers. Meanwhile, a coterie of corrupt “public health professionals” and the international financial cartels who control them have pulled off perhaps the most shocking and deadly crime against humanity ever committed.
The Big Lie
Mentioning Nuremberg during Covid-19 was asking to be pilloried in the “respectable” press as an anti-science, horse-paste-guzzling right-wing extremist. Fact-checkers came out of the woodwork to reflexively deny that the Nuremberg Codes applied to any aspect of the Covid-19 response, from forced masking to vaccine mandates, sometimes issuing two denials in a single day in their compulsion to keep the claim from spreading. One particularly tenacious fact-check even took issue with the claim “It was the doctors on trial in Nuremberg,” arguing that because the other 12 trials put Nazi Party officials, lawyers, and corporate executives in the dock, the statement “lacked context.”
This display of ideological lockstep was supposed to intimidate anyone who wasn’t already 100% allied with society’s enlightened institutions in defense of The Science™ against the irrational, emotionally-driven forces of ignorance. Those still on the fence about getting their “Warp Speed” car-crash of a shot were shamed by peer pressure psyops like the UK’s “Clap for our carers,” while social media was seeded with controlled but approachable “experts” who carefully crafted the illusion of overwhelming consensus that the measures being taken in the name of “stopping the spread” were not only scientifically but morally beyond reproach.
But this wasn’t an organic moment of unity. These “fact-checkers” have all received big money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the eugenics enthusiasts who have rapidly become the most powerful force in global health policymaking and who also control huge chunks of the education, agriculture, and “green” energy spheres. Most fact-checking organizations pay lip service to the rules set by the International Fact-Checking Network, which while it sounds like an upstanding professional association that’s been around a while was actually launched less than a decade ago. The IFCN, which admits it doesn’t follow its own code of principles, has been funded since its 2015 beginnings by the Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Network, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Google, Facebook, the US State Department, and CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy, among others. It’s hard to think of a worse group of stewards for a gaggle of helpless facts, aside from perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation, about which more later.
The IFCN is run by the Poynter Institute, a “journalism education” nonprofit funded by many of the same entities as its IFCN subsidiary. Loaded down with enough conflicts of interest to make that code of principles swoon, Poynter selects, sponsors, and trains journalists, prioritizing obedience to authority, ideological inflexibility and a total absence of shame. They are then turned loose to mow the internet’s epistemological lawn in military fashion, doxxing some popular opposition voice while merely tagging others for later deplatforming, arrest, or worse. The tactic’s resemblance to the work of Ukrainian vigilante website Mirotvorets, unofficially operated by the country’s Ministry of Information, is unlikely to be an accident, given that Omidyar and Soros both poured billions of dollars into 2014’s Maidan Square color revolution, which was itself choreographed by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, who knows the value of a well-placed bullet or a warm cookie.
It’s easy to see why Gates just had to buy the industry for himself. If these fact-checkers could reinvent the most corrupt government in Europe, whose military was exposed by dozens of major western media outlets as a hive of neo-Nazi thugs, as a democratic paradise, surely they could spin the vaccine tycoon’s Final Solution as the solution to all humanity’s problems. The Covid-19 experiment saw the closest collaboration yet between the fact-checkers, Big Tech and governments around the world to construct an epistemological roach motel that users could enter easily but would face growing barriers – warning screens, computer failures, personal attacks, deplatforming, financial hardship and a lowered social credit score – if they tried to leave.
It’s no exaggeration to say Poynter’s army of fact-checkers set the narrative of Covid-19 for the public from Day One (or should we call it Year Zero?). The IFCN’s “Coronavirus Alliance” launched in January 2020, before most Americans even knew what a coronavirus was. While the first Twitter users in the western hemisphere were stumbling across bizarre videos of Chinese people dropping to the ground and convulsing, explained in the accompanying broken-English text to be the result of an unknown virus, the fact-checkers were implementing orders from their paymasters. One of the first narrative touchstones, the red and white 3D model of the coronavirus, soon became as ubiquitous as the footage of planes hitting towers on 9/11, triggering intense fear and doubt directed both at the outside world and at the self. After all, they might be an “asymptomatic carrier,” and the only way to be sure was to isolate from their loved ones. As with 9/11, this unfamiliar terror pushed the individual to seek solace in an increasingly totalitarian state that insisted its ‘tough love’ – locking us in our homes, forbidding us from earning money, and keeping us from our families – was for our own good. Frightened and confused, many turned on the TV and sucked down its narcotizing propaganda. Even CNN’s ratings went up that first pandemic year, as Chris Cuomo demanded Americans “sacrifice the me to the we” and compared binge-watching Netflix to landing on the beaches of Normandy while his brother mass-murdered elderly New Yorkers.
The complex choreography of the Covid-19 response could not have unfolded as it did without premeditation. The plot was lifted – not plagiarized, as the authors were the same – from Event 201, the tabletop coronavirus simulation sponsored by the Gates Foundation at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Public Health Security. This took place just a month after the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – the product of an unholy marriage between the WHO and the World Bank earlier that year – released a report demanding all UN member countries “conduct at least two system-wide training and simulation exercises” by the following September, “including one for covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen.” Video of Event 201 shows players uninterested in minimizing harm from the virus instead exploring how the “emergency” might be used to stifle undesirable narratives and ram through major changes in society. The “real” pandemic – simulation number two, by the GPMB’s counting – played out months later exactly along the exercise’s script. The WHO, Gates, the World Economic Forum and Big Business took the reins, filling the power vacuum left while individual governments, seemingly baffled by the outbreak despite having repeatedly run their own simulations, ran around in circles.
How to treat an Infodemic
The crisis was planned and then used to crack down on unauthorized views under the reasoning that humanity was in the midst of an infodemic – a surfeit of information encouraging irresponsible beliefs – and careless talk could cost lives. Spreading dissenting opinions could infect friends and loved ones with the virus of doubt, which while perhaps less deadly than the virus itself (with its 99.7% survival rate), could cause society to fracture at a time when all humanity had to unite or be destroyed by the invisible enemy. Reading or hearing “disinformation” about Covid could reduce one’s likelihood of getting vaccinated, putting one’s very life at risk.
Convincing test subjects to discard their self-preservation instincts and their critical capacity and embrace the most absurd statements as gospel truth was the main goal of the first part of the Covid-19 experiment, and given the single-mindedness with which the WHO zeroed in on the “infodemic” before it had even officially declared the real virus to be a pandemic, it’s hard to believe they were making it up as they went along, especially given that the term was allegedly invented during the original SARS outbreak in 2003 (by a Washington Post writer no less) and then apparently put on ice until almost two decades later. Seeking input on how to respond to this new threat, the WHO reached out to professionals of all stripes, with more than a quarter of advisory input coming from academics eager to test out their juiciest hypotheses on real people with no repercussions. Everyone who used social media in 2020 to discuss the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath thus became a test subject, “nudged” and prodded for the Public Good, and some of those experiments – particularly those aimed at developing an FBI-style psychological profile of believers in “conspiracy theories” so they can be locked up as domestic terrorists or institutionalized as incurable monsters are very much ongoing.
Those early academic papers describe a chaotic infosphere in which the WHO’s narrative failed to dominate on its merits alone. The academics rose to the challenge, burnishing their half-baked speculations with scientific-looking graphs and charts. Their solutions ranged from Orwellian – deploying “freedom of expression officers” to censor and label rogue content as much as European human rights law would allow; re-education programs for “influencers,” teachers, priests, and other likely “superspreaders,” who could then be suspended from social media entirely if they refused to get their minds right – to the lesser evils of sending in fact-checkers as the equivalent of UN peacekeeping troops to help “inoculate” social media users against the disinformation they were about to see. With distrust in public and private institutions hitting new highs, society didn’t just need a vaccine against the scary new virus, it needed one against “disinformation” as well! But like the Covid vaccines themselves, these digital inoculations didn’t come with an informed consent notice, and the clinical trial results aren’t looking good.
Experiment #1: Shock “therapy”
As the WEF’s Klaus Schwab himself admitted in his pandemic tome The Great Reset, Covid-19 is the least deadly ‘pandemic’ in the last two millennia. But he’s quite open about wanting to use the largely self-inflicted Covid-19 “crisis” to bring about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a transhumanist “green” dystopia lovingly crafted for “stakeholder capitalists” and inspired by technocratic parasites like Yuval Noah Harari. This is no experiment for the “good of society,” nor are any efforts made to “avoid unnecessary mental and physical suffering,” as Nuremberg demands. If anything, the experiment’s designers deliberately ratcheted up the suffering, believing this was necessary to unfreeze the fixed ideas of western civilization – free will, individuality, rationality, democracy (not to be confused with Our Democracy™) in our minds and replace them with the WEF’s preferred picks: obedience, “equity” (a Newspeak term meaning equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity), credulity, communitarianism. The group has admitted on its own website that the lockdowns and the rest of the “touchless torture” the Covid response has supposedly required constitute the “world’s biggest psychological experiment.”
The Great Reset is an especially noxious experiment in that it violates the minds and bodies of test subjects on multiple levels, burrowing down into the way we think in its megalomania. It’s the spiritual offspring of CIA-funded Canadian psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, who “de-patterned” his patients’ personalities with high-voltage electroshock, induced coma, and mega-doses of LSD, then attempted to’ ‘build them back better’ by playing their comatose forms 16 hours of tape-recorded messages at a time; and Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist and godfather of neoliberalism whose students, the so-called “Chicago Boys,” conducted campaigns of economic “shock therapy” on third-world nations the US worried were too left-wing, assisting far-right leaders in seizing power, further impoverishing the masses with austerity programs, terrorizing what political opposition remained with death squads and disappearances, and privatizing all state-run industries so as to attract foreign investors. Neither Cameron’s patients, most of whom came in with simple problems like anxiety or depression (and one of whom wasn’t even seeking treatment but just looking for a job) and left as husks no longer able to even use the bathroom themselves; nor the inhabitants of Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Indonesia, Russia, or any of the long list of other countries subject to some variation on Chicago School shock treatment over the years, were ever told they were part of an experiment, let alone asked if they wanted to be.
The Great Reset has not only targeted the entire world with economic shock therapy, triggering a massive depression the current financial system is unlikely to ever shake off (spoiler alert: another experiment coming…) – it funneled unprecedented amounts of fear into populations already thrown off balance by the blinding speed of policy shifts. First scolded for “selfishly” wearing a mask, then attacked for “selfishly” not wearing one; informed their city would be “locking down” at 10pm, when a peek out the window yielded crowds of restive youths hanging out on the corner with nary a cop in sight; told vaccinations were mandatory for school, then told their child could have just “masked up” when little Polly drops dead of a heart attack not 24 hours after her first shot of Moderna; the average person soon lapsed into learned helplessness and became a shut-in, depatterning daily in the glow of the television as they degenerated into an obedient vegetable, capable of “masking up” and socially distancing but little else. Despite leaving a horrific trail of devastation in their wake, the experimental lockdowns were praised by the WEF for the slight dip in carbon emissions they caused, all but guaranteeing phase II of the nonconsensual clinical trials – climate lockdowns – will be rolled out within the year.
Experiment #2: Hackable animals
Given the mountain of evidence against them, it’s perfectly logical that the ruling class would have tried to build up an impenetrable fort of bullshit using their captive fact-checking industry to deflect accusations of war crimes under the Codes. Several patterns pervade the apologist coverage, starting with the idea that these brand new mRNA Covid vaccines, tested on under 100,000 people by Pfizer and Moderna combined (and none who were pregnant or nursing) before receiving their coveted emergency authorization, are somehow not experimental procedures. They use the synonym investigational instead, as ‘experimental’ tends to trigger thoughts of, well, human experimentation, authoritarian regimes, the very Nuremberg Nazis the media establishment is trying its best to keep the average reader away from. But the effect is the same – mRNA vaccines of any kind weren’t tried on the general population until the end of 2020, and the torrent of side effects and death that has been unleashed in the meantime suggests neither Moderna nor Pfizer had informed consent from these gen-pop guinea pigs.
That’s a big deal, because Pfizer knew before it sought emergency authorization that more vaccinated test subjects had died than unvaccinated subjects – it even fudged the numbers for the FDA. Some 1,200 trial participants died in the 90 days following their injection, and Pfizer made sure to vaccinate the placebo group at the end of the trial in order to make sure further comparisons didn’t spoil its story. Indeed, it was so sure its vaccines were going to leave a pile of bodies behind that it refused to even sell them to countries whose governments wouldn’t shield them from liability for the damage caused. One should have expected this from a company with the dubious distinction of paying the largest fine in Justice Department history in 2009 for healthcare fraud, off-label prescribing, misleading marketing and miscellaneous criminality. Nevertheless, they won the “Warp Speed” lottery under Albert Bourla, a veterinarian with a doctorate in the biotechnology of reproduction who was for some reason promoted to CEO of the entire (human-focused) drug company a year before the Covid-19 outbreak. Given that his primary achievement prior to Operation Warp Speed was developing a “vaccine” that chemically castrated boars without ruining the meat, it becomes much more difficult to see the utter disaster the mRNA vaccines have created for both male and female fertility as an accident.
Still questioning authority? The fact-checkers then attempt to distance vaccine mandates – along with health passports, mask mandates, lockdowns and the other psychological aspects of the experiment conducted on the unwitting populace – from the Nuremberg zone by categorizing them as “public health interventions,” not research, or experiments. The Codes simply do not apply. Never mind that public health interventions are supposed to be evidence-based, and no western democracy has ever engaged in anything like the Covid lockdowns before, or that the CDC pulled the six-foot social distancing rule out of its ass, or even that the only “science” backing closing schools to “stop the spread” was a computer model from a 16 year old’s science project. Lockdowns arguably killed more people than Covid-19, and they have cut short many more lives by impoverishing, immiserating, and isolating millions. Arguing public health measures can’t be experimental because they’re public health measures is merely a last-ditch effort to wall the Codes off in a museum, inapplicable to anyone but those nasty Nazis who were – as the narrative managers never tire of reminding us – a unique and special case.
Discouraging cross-time contextualization is very important to the fact-checkers, who aren’t hesitant to shoot the messenger if all else fails. Anyone talking about the Nuremberg Codes in the context of Covid-19 is dismissed as an “alt-righter”, a “covid crazy,” dangerous “extremists,” “anti-vaxxers,” or even actual Nazis who apparently got confused about whose side their team was on back in WW2. In war, dehumanizing the enemy is key to beating him, and this is nothing if not a two-pronged war being fought in our brains and our bloodstreams. “Drawing a link between this final rollout of these vaccines and what the Nazi doctors were doing is morally grotesque,” the British Medical Association’s Dr Julian Sheather told FullFact ; he didn’t explain why, and it’s not apparent why one should not draw parallels between the two cases. According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), whose own creators admit it contains less than 1% of all adverse events associated with a given vaccine, the Covid shots have already caused nearly 30,000 deaths, over 170,000 hospitalizations, nearly 16,000 heart attacks (a common sight now on sports fields, where 60 times more athletes than normal are flatlining mid-game), and nearly 5,000 miscarriages in the US alone. Using tech entrepreneur Steven Kirsch’s calculations, the numbers are much higher: at least 478,000 Americans have been killed by Covid vaccines, to say nothing of millions permanently disabled, unable to work or function on a basic level. Worldwide, the number of deaths approaches 12 million.
While the number of victims the Nazi doctors left behind is not so meticulously recorded, especially given the high levels of typhus and malnutrition contributing to the mortality rate in the camps, one source has them consigning between 70,000 and 100,000 “unfit” Germans to death between 1939 and 1941 while sterilizing hundreds of thousands more – a detail that once again should send a chill down the spine of anyone who’s noticed the declining birthrates around the world. If the figures aren’t comparable, that’s only because the mRNA vaccine has been so much more efficient in its killing. There’s nothing “morally grotesque” about pointing that out. But since “everybody knows” the Nazis were the pinnacle of Evil™, the realization that Pfizer and Moderna’s death toll might have their doctors beat must be prevented at all costs. Thus even bringing up Nuremberg in relation to Covid-19 is deemed to be “trivializing” the crimes of the Nazis, even when the intention is to draw attention to the seriousness of their modern descendants’ crimes, and efforts are made to further poison the dialogue by suggesting there’s something antisemitic about the whole business.
In Part II: the war on “conspiracy theories,” why Nuremberg is to be memory-holed, infodemic terrorism, and more…
Exhaustive study of German mortality data finds excess deaths tightly correlated with mass vaccination
eugypius | August 27, 2022
Excess mortality in Germany 2020–2022 is a preprint by Christof Kuhbandner (a psychologist at Regensburg) and Matthias Reitzner (a statistician at Osnabrück) that applies sophisticated actuarial analysis to the publicly available all-cause mortality data provided by the German government. It turns out that when you account for historical mortality trends, the virus no longer looks so dangerous, and the vaccines no longer look so great.
From the abstract:
In 2020, the observed number of deaths was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number. The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021.
Something must have happened in April 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality in the age groups below 80 years, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic so far.
What happened in April 2021 was the beginning of mass vaccination across Germany.
Here’s an overview of mortality deficit or excess by age bracket:
As I’ve said many times, the first year of the German pandemic was a total nothingburger. There was no heightened mortality trend save for among the oldest groups, briefly, in December. In 2021, however, the Year of Maximum Vaccination, the authors estimate almost 32,000 excess deaths. Mortality rose across the board, especially among youngs, with those in their 40s seeing 9% more deaths than expected by their model.
Here are the same figures visualised:
Just looking at that 2021 graph, you can tell there’s something really wrong here. If it’s virus doing all this killing, why is it hardest on people aged 15 to 79? How is it leaving the oldest Germans almost entirely unscathed?
The authors also provide a month-by-month breakdown for the 15-59 age-group:
They note that “The significant excess mortality in December 2020 continues slightly in January 2021, and then is mostly compensated until March 2021. That is, by the end of March, the cumulative excess mortality was close to zero.” These are what the funeral industry would call “pull-forward” deaths. In Germany, the virus mainly kills people who are about to die anyway, such that mortality spikes are followed by counterbalancing mortality deficits.
The authors continue:
In April and May 2021, a significant increase in excess mortality is observed, followed by a decrease up to August. However … the increase in excess mortality in April and May is not compensated for. In September there is again a significant excess mortality, which increases in November and is more than doubled in December 2021.
The April increase obviously coincides with the vaccine rollout, while the Fall increase aligns fairly well with the booster campaign. It’s noteworthy that dose 2 doesn’t seem as dangerous as dose 1 or 3; and that the mortality signal is very tightly correlated with the date of vaccination. As soon as you stop vaccinating, excess deaths recede.
As for people 60 and older, there are two distinct trends: Rising mortality coinciding, again, with the mass administration of doses 1 and 3 in the 60-79 bracket, and nothing special in the 80+ bracket:
The vaccines obviously do most of their harm by inducing adverse immune reactions, and thus they’re relatively safe in the very elderly, who have weaker immune systems. This makes the oldest Germans a useful control, as they are the most sensitive to virus-associated mortality, and the least sensitive to vaccine-associated mortality. Thus, to anyone who objects that it’s really the April case spike that’s making the vaccines look bad here, or that it’s Delta causing those problems in the Fall, the reply is simple: The olds aren’t dying in April or September 2021, just the youngs. What kills mainly the youngs and spares mainly the olds? The answer is not SARS-2.
As the authors note:
The maybe most surprising fact is that [2021] produces in all age groups a significant mortality increase, which is in sharp contrast to the expectation that the vaccination should decrease the number of COVID-19 deaths. The only exception is the last age group [80+] … However, when interpreting this finding, it has to be taken into account that there wa sa huge mortality deficit in 2019 and until October 2020 which was compensated in November [and] December 2020 and January 2021.
It becomes very hard to doubt that the excess mortality of 2021 is vaccine related, when you compare the relative chronology of deaths and mass vaccination:
There are also more specific mortality correlations by age bracket. Thus the authors note the “further hint” that the vaccines are implicated in these deaths, “is the fact that the age group 0–29 has a peak in the excess mortality in June 2021 instead of April 2021,” precisely when these younger cohorts were lining up for their first dose.
A final intriguing finding relates to the relationship between official Corona death numbers and excess mortality. Nobody will be surprised to learn that the SARS-2 death toll is egregiously inflated, but the age-cohort patterns are worth a look:
The official figures are most accurate for those in their 60s and 70s. For those over 80 years old, they are almost entirely meaningless. This group saw less than 20,000 excess deaths in two-and-a-half years of Corona, while their official death count is approaching 100,000.
It’s no wonder that nothing—not lockdowns, not vaccines, not masks, not all the tests in the world—can drive down all-cause mortality in Germany. Most of the people the virus kills are on the verge of dying anyway, and if you spare them a death from SARS-2, they’ll just die of something else next month.
Democrats and Republicans Pretend They Have Massive, Unbridgeable Differences So They Can Unite Seamlessly on War
Bernie and Lindsey share a moment of collegiality. Photo by Matt Stone via Getty Images
By Michael Tracey | August 24, 2022
After endless rounds of Hamlet-style legislative tedium, Congressional Democrats finally muscled through a $430 billion spending bill this month which deals with a smattering of their domestic policy priorities. Because Republicans opposed the bill en masse, and Democrats supported it en masse, one might look at this development and conclude that standard-fare partisanship is just as indelible a feature of US politics as it’s ever been. After all, the partisan affiliation of Senators and House members was perfectly predictive of their voting behavior vis-a-vis the “Inflation Reduction Act.” When the rubber hits the road, it turns out Republicans and Democrats really do have competing, irreconcilable interests — right?
Thanks to these occasional instances of classically polarized partisan sausage-making, elected officials and media operatives can claim at least some basis for their frantic insistence that some titanic gulf separates the two parties. The ever-presence of bi-directional Culture War agitation can heighten this impression — upon which it always becomes existentially crucial that one or the other party gets put into power at the next election. Make sure to vote in the upcoming Midterms, because these Midterms just happen to be the most consequential Midterms of all time, at least since the 2018 Midterms. The fate of humanity hinges on whether Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, didn’t you know?
On the other hand, if you’re one of the vanishingly few Americans who’d like to think that your vote this year could meaningfully alter the course of US foreign policy, you’re bound for disappointment. Because even as both parties tried to make it seem like the “Inflation Reduction Act” vividly demonstrated the intractable differences between them, they were simultaneously demonstrating the exact opposite: that at least in regards to another set of issues which genuinely are “existential,” in that they impinge on such matters as whether you’re likely to get incinerated in a large radiation blast anytime soon, there is almost no meaningful distance at all between Democrats and the GOP. Over time, if anything, whatever distance might have previously existed has meaningfully shrunk. Because with limited and marginalized exceptions, both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly functioning as a unified bloc on the questions which most centrally bear on America’s posture as a global military and economic hegemon. As that posture becomes more fraught and antagonistic across multiple theaters, the two parties have become more and more ardent in constricting the range of acceptable debate. Democrats may spend the bulk of their time on social media or in front of TV cameras piously shrieking that the empowerment of Republicans would guarantee the implosion of “democracy,” and Republicans may make funhouse-mirror versions of the same argument. But this phony baloney two-way theater obscures just how much their worldviews have converged.
Earlier this month, the Senate approved the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO by a vote of 95-1 — formalizing the process by which those two countries have opted to repudiate their historic doctrines of military neutrality. (Finland is abandoning the precedent it adhered to throughout the entirety of the Cold War, while Sweden is abandoning the precedent it has adhered to since the reign of Napoleon.) Speaking from the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) joyously declared how “glad” he was that NATO enlargement is something “we can all pretty much agree on.” In a touching moment, Carper noted that he had both the “same initials” and the “same views” on the subject as his colleague Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) — perhaps the most ideologically zealous interventionist in the Senate. Cotton also happens to be one of the few remaining US political figures of any notoriety who’s still refused to budge in his conviction that it was a really great idea for George W. Bush to invade Iraq. And unless he just happens to have an unusually specific fondness for Iowa and New Hampshire, Cotton is clearly preparing to run for president — so it should bring Democrats great pleasure that someone they’re in such fundamental agreement with is gearing up to throw his hat in the ring.
“Probably one of the easiest votes I’ll ever make in the United States Senate,” announced Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), who seemed particularly appreciative that he barely had to give the Finland/Sweden issue more than a moment’s thought. “John McCain, I wish you were alive today to celebrate,” chimed in Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). And indeed, there’s little doubt that McCain would have reason to celebrate from beyond the grave: the US political class, whatever their surface-level partisan or factional disagreements, is barreling toward unshakable “unity” on the expansion of US hegemonic power, now arrayed with growing fervor against the reviled tandem of Russia and China. One of McCain’s favorite themes was always “unity,” but a peculiar kind of “unity” whose purpose was mainly to facilitate wars.
Even the lone senator who did vote against the accession of Finland and Sweden this month, Josh Hawley (R-MO), did so on grounds that made abundantly clear he had no objection on principle to the expansion of NATO — much less to the accelerated deployment of coercive US power around the world. What he objected to was simply that expanding NATO at this juncture reflected ineffectual resource allocation, as Hawley preferred that whatever the US may now be obliged to expend in Scandinavia should instead be expended in East Asia, to prepare for an allegedly looming war with China. Hawley stressed that he opposed bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO only insofar as it would be a hindrance to the US implementing “a coherent strategy for stopping China’s dominance in the Pacific, beginning with the possible invasion of Taiwan.”
Hawley explained, “Our military forces in Asia are not postured as they should be,” whether because “we don’t have enough advanced munitions” or because the current fleet of US attack submarines is “sinking.” Fundamentally, Hawley argued, the US is “simply not sized to handle two simultaneous conflicts.” And his objection to NATO expansion boils down to a preference for “handling” a conflict in the Pacific over one in Europe — not, it should be noted, a preference for mitigating conflict in the first place. But even going by his own stated rationale, it’s unclear what the operating principle is for Hawley: in 2019, he voted for the accession of well-known military powerhouse North Macedonia to NATO. All that’s seemingly changed in the interim is that Hawley has taken to framing his views more in terms of opposing what he calls a “globalist foreign policy” — which somehow coincides with his advocacy for dramatically ramping up US militarization on the other side of the globe in East Asia.
Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), among the dwindling group of national politicians one might expect to raise at least a perfunctory objection to NATO expansion, conceded during the Senate debate this month: “In this new world I am less adamant about preventing NATO’s expansion.”
It wasn’t always this way. In 1998, 19 senators voted against the accession to NATO of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic — not enough to prevent the proposal from obtaining the required two-thirds majority, but enough to at least prompt a reasonably robust debate, one which far exceeded the pittance that accompanied this month’s vote. Figures as high-profile as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), Hillary Clinton’s predecessor, argued against NATO expansion on the floor of the Senate in extremely stark terms: Moynihan declared his opposition stemmed from a keen wariness about “the dangers of nuclear war in the years ahead,” and said NATO expansion needlessly “put ourselves at risk of getting into a nuclear engagement, a nuclear war, with Russia — wholly unanticipated, for which we are not prepared, about which we are not thinking.”
Moynihan’s primary sparring partner during that 1998 debate was none other than Joe Biden, then the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who appointed himself point-person for the entire process of shepherding NATO expansion through the necessary procedural formalities. In fact, Biden’s conviction in the eternal virtue of NATO expansion seems to be one of the few positions he’s held consistently over the course of his comically long, decades-spanning career. That first round of expansion in 1998, Biden declared at the time, would mark “the beginning of another 50 years of peace” — a prophecy that today some might quibble with.
Though he didn’t succeed, Moynihan’s opposition showed it wasn’t an automatic career-ender to be associated with skepticism of this particular strand of US military expansionism — nor was raising concerns about the specter of nuclear war considered contemptibly “cringe.” Moynihan remained a highly revered figure among his colleagues; a new expansion of Penn Station in NYC was even just named after him last year. With a hot war raging today in Ukraine, in which the US is effectively the leading co-combatant against Russia, the risk of nuclear war is much more acute than when Moynihan warned about it 24 years ago. But almost no political figure of any prominence even appears to be “thinking” about the matter anymore. Indulge in such “thinking,” and you’re liable to be denounced as a Putin agent for your trouble, and/or field a barrage of angry accusations that you’re somehow in league with right-wing “insurrectionists.”
A few who voted against NATO expansion in 1998 are still in the Senate, like Pat Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — all of whom just supported Finland/Sweden accession this month, apparently without a second thought. (Leahy, at age 82, was technically absent for the vote due to hip problems.) Even Harry Reid (D-NV), who’d later become the Senate Majority Leader and therefore presumably could not be dismissed as some fringe agitator, voted against NATO expansion in 1998. There were weeks of formal debate back then — Senators actually engaged one another directly with arguments and counter-arguments, an extreme rarity in an otherwise stultified environment. And while Biden’s side prevailed, there was at least some notional sense that another “side” existed. Today, there is functionally just one “side,” with politicians flocking in unison to install another 830 miles of NATO “security umbrella” (by way of Finland) right smack dab on the border with Russia. This would’ve been almost unthinkable in 1998, even for the most ardent NATO expansion advocates — but today the move was swiftly ratified with hardly a critical word uttered.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was in the House at the time, not the Senate, and therefore did not specifically vote on the provision to amend the NATO treaty. But in 1997 he made a point to put some observations on the record concerning a concurrent measure that set the groundwork for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join NATO (which ultimately happened in 2004, thanks to the friendly bipartisan cooperation of Biden and George W. Bush). Sanders asked on the floor of the House: “First of all, Russia clearly perceives that the expansion of NATO into the Baltics would be an aggressive, wholly unjustifiable move by the United States… since the Cold War is over, why are we militarily provoking Russia?”
Today, Bernie is essentially mute on the subject — except when he votes unfalteringly in favor of the latest NATO-related initiative, such as the Finland/Sweden measure this month, or the $40 billion Ukraine war funding bill in May. And for the most part, he can’t even be bothered to explain his reasoning — which in a way is understandable, since it’s not like there’s some steady drumbeat of “progressive” activists/media holding his feet to the fire on these issues. Could figures who opposed NATO expansion in 1998 theoretically argue that conditions in 2022 have changed so radically that they’ve in turn changed their position? Yes, they could theoretically argue that. But they’re barely even asked to justify their positions, as the near-total eradication of any dissension on the matter has given way to an impenetrable consensus, such that no justification need be given.
The Washington Post was candid in 1998 about the reasons “approval was virtually assured” for NATO expansion, notwithstanding the minority of opposition led by Moynihan. “Pressure from ethnic constituencies and the prospect of new markets for the American defense industry at a time of shrinking US demand,” the newspaper reported, had already sealed the deal. Try mentioning either of those factors in polite company today with regard to the current posture of US foreign policy in Eastern Europe. You’ll probably find you’d prefer to stick with more standard-fare squabbling about things like the “Inflation Reduction Act.”
The latest on vaccination of 5-11 year-olds
When will the onslaught on children end?
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | August 23, 2022
In February 2022, the JCVI in their wisdom, made a ‘non-urgent offer’ of Covid-19 vaccination for healthy children aged 5-11, scheduled to begin in April. It is worth reading the full statement, which hardly makes a strong case. Here are a few quotes.
- In comparison to the rest of the population / older age groups, evidence indicates that children aged 5 to 11 are at the very lowest risk from COVID-19. Rates of hospitalisation, paediatric intensive care admission and death are lower in this age group than in all older age groups. In addition, the high level of prior infection in this age group of children can be expected to contribute towards their natural immunity against reinfection. There are some data to suggest that natural immunity may last longer than vaccine-induced immunity against non-severe infection.
- The impact of vaccination on school absences was indeterminate; the balance between school absences due to reactions following vaccination versus school absences avoided due to prevention of infection is highly influenced by the uncertain timing of any future wave of infection and of the vaccination programme.
- vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection due to Omicron (Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine) wanes over time from around 70% shortly after 2 vaccine doses to around 25% after 10 weeks and 10% after 20 weeks.
- [myocarditis] medium to long-term (months to years) prognosis remains less certain.
- It is estimated that over 85% of all children aged 5 to 11 will have had prior SARS-CoV-2 infection by the end of January 2022
This last point makes the programme for this age group even more ridiculous – the 85% estimate of January 2022 has now risen to 99%, and is perhaps the main reason why parents have not been clamouring to get their children vaccinated (10% to date). Despite this, the government is planning an enhanced programme this September to reach all the currently unvaccinated, in particular primary school children.
Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (NHS Kernow) are leading the way with advertisements and pop up clinics because of ‘a rise in cases’. As previously, petting dogs have been enrolled, and advertisements such as the one pictured here, are falsely claiming that somehow vaccinating small children who are already immune, will magically protect their grandparents.
Legal challenges: Meanwhile, disappointingly though not surprisingly, the Court has thrown out the request for a judicial review of the MHRA, the JCVI, and Secretary of State’s decision to vaccinate this age group and for the 12-15s another judge likewise rejected the legal challenge. A member of the legal team involved has published his response to these judgements here but in effect both judges were saying that the MHRA, the JCVI and the CMOs are self-evidently “experts”, thus the Secretary of State is clearly acting correctly to accept their advice, irrespective of whether their advice is sound. This is a bad day for UK citizens since it appears that drug regulators are now unaccountable.
The political route: The Children’s Covid Vaccines Advisory Committee (CCVAC) who helped with these cases, have recently sent a summary of all their concerns to Stephen Barclay, the latest Secretary of State for Health & Social Care. A reply has been received giving the usual bland “Vaccines are now safer than ever before.” and quoting the same data presented by the JCVI a year ago, totally failing to grasp that the current data give a very different risk:benefit balance. The CCVAC team have also drafted a letter for the new Prime Minister and they are seeking health professionals to add their signatures ready to have a very large letter to deliver to the new incumbent of No 10 in early September. The letter calls on the Prime Minister to halt the vaccination of children pending a full and independent safety review. Is there any chance that the new British Prime Minister will follow the lead taken by several Scandinavian countries? The Director of Denmark’s Board of Health for example was recently on record saying that the vaccination of children had achieved nothing. Meanwhile a report from Iceland shows that in their ~60,000 child population, serious vaccine injuries (eleven) far outweighed Covid-19 hospital admissions (zero).
Readers are invited to share this letter with any health professionals they know, including staff at their local medical centre. Letter to incoming PM: apply the precautionary principle (childrensunion.org)
Featured Video
John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- A Palantir Manifesto
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
- Palantir’s Technological Republic is a blueprint for digital tyranny
- Israeli-backed armed gang kidnaps 25 Palestinians in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighbourhood
- No war crimes in Gaza, says Nigel Farage’s Israel tsar
- IDF Gives Order To Fire On Civilians In Southern Lebanon
- Islamabad’s post-war push: A new Gulf security order takes shape
- IRGC seizes Israeli ship, second vessel for violations in Strait of Hormuz
- US Embargo on Iran Undermined as 34 Tankers Slip Through, Vortexa Says
- Trump’s erratic behavior signals US deadlock: Ansarullah
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- Eyes on Gaza, as trends reveal increased Israeli violence – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- Replay: Israel’s slow ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Holy Land
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 