STAT News has a new article titled, “The ‘five pandemics’ driving 1 million U.S. Covid deaths.” Like almost everything they publish, the article is clever, well-written, and almost entirely wrong. The author, J. Emory Parker, claims that the pandemic is primarily a story of older, unvaccinated, rural, poor people with a deadly initial wave that has faded into a lower infection fatality rate today. I’m not going to refute it point-by-point other than to say that he is missing the forest for the trees.
Democrats now interpret all data through the lens of The Narrative(TM) that makes Dems look like heroes, Pharma look like Gods, and Republicans look like unwashed barbarians who deserve death for their failure to obey their betters. It’s not so much science as bougie-supremacy. Self-reflection, paradox, and admitting mistakes are of course banned from the bougie lexicon.
In this short article, I’ve stolen his title (in hopes of messing with the search engines) and I set the record straight. Any honest assessment of the last two years leads to the inexorable conclusion that every facet of the pandemic is a direct result of the intellectual and moral failures of the “expert class” itself.
1. Tony Fauci created the pandemic by funding risky gain-of-function research at a bioweapons lab in Wuhan China. Somehow a chimera virus, engineered to be more lethal to humans, escaped. No Tony Fauci, no pandemic. All else flows from this.
2. Fauci, the FDA, and CDC blocked access to prophylaxis and early treatment. The CDC’s own research showed that chloroquine is safe and effective for prophylaxis and early treatment of SARS coronaviruses (hydroxychloroquine is even safer than chloroquine). The U.S. had a massive stockpile for this very purpose that was never used. About 90% of Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. could have been prevented if public health officials had followed proper protocols and used about twenty off-the-shelf treatments that are safe and effective. Instead the FDA and CDC ridiculed the best treatments, stopped doctors from prescribing them, and prohibited pharmacies from filling these prescriptions.
3. Hospitals used the wrong protocols and continue to use the wrong protocols. Failing to provide early treatment (turning people away from hospitals to preserve capacity), ventilators, and Remdesivir are all death sentences. Large hospitals have such abysmal outcomes because they used the wrong protocols and they seem to have no ability to course-correct based on actual data.
4. Blue states that followed the CDC’s advice to return Covid+ patients to nursing homes committed senicide — the systematic murder of the elderly. The death toll in the elderly was and is so high because they were never provided prophylaxis, immune support, nor any early treatment and their residences were intentionally seeded with the sick — once again in the misguided attempt to preserve hospital capacity(TM).
5. Promoting mass injections with negative efficacy, keeps the pandemic going indefinitely. These useless shots also seem to be driving the evolution of variants. The pandemic will never end as long as the government continues to promote these mRNA shots that lack sterilizing immunity.
The entire pandemic, from the origins, through the early days, until now, is a self-inflicted, man-made crisis. This is iatrogenic pandemicide — created, spread, and made more deadly by the people who claim that they are “experts”. Everything that public health has done for two years has made things significantly worse. As long as the people who are wrong about everything remain in power, the crisis will continue.
The Russian military began reporting on the extent of US military biological activities in Ukraine in March, citing seized documents and other materials on the study of a range of potentially deadly bioweapon agents, including diseases which can be spread naturally using local geography, flora and fauna, and target certain ethnic groups.
Senior Democratic Party politicians are the chief “ideologists” of America’s illegal operations in biolabs operating throughout Ukraine, and have involved major multinational biotech companies in their activities, Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops, has indicated.
Speaking at a briefing in Moscow on Wednesday and citing an MoD analysis of documentary evidence, the RCB Troops chief said the profits US politicians earn for the private biotech sector helps to pay for their re-election via campaign donations.
According to Kirillov, the US executive branch has also worked to create a “legislative framework to finance military biological research directly from the federal budget”, and with funds of non-government organisations underwritten by the state and controlled by the leadership of the Democratic Party, including charitable foundations affiliated with the Clinton family, the Rockerfellers, George Soros, and Hunter Biden.
Major global pharmaceutical companies have become involved in these shady “public-private” partnership schemes, including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, and Pentagon-affiliated biotech firm Gilead, Kirillov said.
“US specialists are working [in Ukraine] on the testing of new medicines, bypassing international safety standards. As a result, Western companies seriously reduce the costs of research programmes and gain significant competitive advantages”, the officer said.
State Structures’ Involvement
Ukrainian state structures are also involved in the US-funded and organised military biological activities in their country, Kirillov said, with Kiev’s main job being “to conceal illegal activities, conduct field and clinical trials and provide the necessary biomaterial”.
In 2020, Kirillov said, an attempt was made to infect the residents of the settlement of Stepovoye in the Lugansk People’s Republic with a multi-drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis using counterfeit banknotes contaminated with the disease’s causative agent and spread among local youth.
Additionally, the RCB Troops chief said that his agency has received information detailing the Pentagon’s experiments on Ukrainian nationals at Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 in the village of Strelechie, Kharkov region, with the research targeting male patients aged 40-60 with a high stage of physical exhaustion, and overseen by a US national.
The Russian military operation in Ukraine has stopped the spread of US military activities in Ukraine, and halted these “criminal experiments” on its civilian population, Kirillov stressed.
In the case of the research taking place at the Kharkov mental hospital, Western specialists were evacuated in January 2022, and the equipment and pharmaceutical preparations involved relocated to western Ukraine, he said.
Polish specialists have also been working with Ukraine’s biolabs, Kirillov said, citing documents detailing the work of the Polish Institute of Veterinary Medicine and the US’ Battelle Memorial Institute – a Pentagon contractor – on research assessing epidemiological threats and the spread of the rabies virus in Ukraine.
“In addition, documentary evidence has been obtained about Poland’s funding of Lvov Medical University, which includes a participant in US military biological projects – the Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene. Since 2002, this organisation has been implementing a retraining programme for specialists with experience working with dual-use materials and technologies”, the officer said.
The German military has also been involved in research in Ukraine, Kirillov said, citing documents indicating that the Bundeswehr’s Institute of Microbiology had taken some 3,500 blood serum samples from 25 Ukrainian regions back to Germany between 2016 and 2019. The officer said the Institute’s as yet unidentified interest in these biomaterials “raises questions about the goals [being] pursued” by the German Armed Forces. The complete, Ukrainian-language document can be found in RTF format here.
According to the MoD’s information, along with the Munich-based Institute of Microbiology, the Berlin-based Robert Koch Institute, the Loffler Institute in Greifswald, and the Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hamburg are also participating in biological research activities in Ukraine. The complete presentation can be downloaded here.
Mariupol Samples Partially Recovered
An RCB Troops investigation of samples from a veterinary laboratory in Mariupol has concluded that it also may have been involved in the broader US-led biological research activities, Kirillov said, pointing to the presence of pathogens uncharacteristic of veterinary diseases, such as typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, and gas gangrene at the lab. Part of the lab’s collection of samples was destroyed on 25 February, but due to the rush, some of it has been preserved intact, and is now being analysed by Russia. To ensure safety and safe storage, Russian specialists exported 124 strains and have organised their study”, Kirillov said. The complete batch of documents can be found here.
The officer also revealed that Russian specialists have carried out work “directly in two biological laboratories in Mariupol”, and that “evidence has been obtained of the emergency destruction of documents confirming their work with the US military. A preliminary analysis of the surviving documentation indicates that Mariupol was used as a regional centre for the collection and certification of the cholera pathogen”, with the samples sent to the Centre for Public Health in Kiev, which transferred the materials on to the United States.
Kirillov stressed that the information that continues to be gathered and analysed by the Russian MoD casts doubt on assurances by US specialists that Ukraine does not have the capability to develop and produce bioweapons, and that the US itself has not “found” any evidence of biological weapons in Ukraine.
WMD Provocations Possible
The RCB Troops chief also indicated that Moscow has intelligence related to the preparation of possible provocations involving weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine to accuse the Russian military of using such arms along a “Syrian-style” scenario, in which the necessary evidence is fabricated and the “perpetrators” are appointed ahead of time.
One piece of evidence suggesting the high likelihood of such provocations taking place is Kiev’s request in a letter to European Union officials for personal protective equipment that provides protection against toxic chemicals and biological agents, Kirillov said.
The supply of organophosphate toxicity medications to Ukraine is also a concern for the Russian military, the officer noted, pointing out that in the first months of 2022, over 220,000 ampoules of atropine, as well as medicines for treatment and disinfection following a chemical attack, have been delivered to Ukraine by the United States.
Letter from Mayor of Kiev Vitaliy Klitschko to “International Charity Organizations” dated 20 March 2022 requesting a range of equipment to protect against WMD attack.
Additionally, Kirillov said, 10 more drones equipped with 30-litre containers and spraying equipment were found in the town of Kakhovka, Kherson region in late April, on top of three others with similar equipment found in the Kherson region in March.
Kirillov’s RCB Troops have spent over two months investigating and reporting on the US-sponsored military biological activities taking place at 30 separate facilities across Ukraine going back to at least 2005.
Western officials and media have largely dismissed the information provided as a “conspiracy theory”, notwithstanding Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s admission at a Senate hearing in March that “biological research facilities” do in fact exist in the Eastern European country and that the US was “working with” the Ukrainians to ensure that these materials “do not fall into the hands of Russian forces”. Investigations by the few Western outlets that have conducted their own research have confirmed individual details of the Russian MoD’s allegations – such as Hunter Biden’s role in securing millions of dollars in funding for a US contractor working in Ukraine.
This is the second instalment of Paula Jardine’s five-part investigation into the planning behind ensuring vaccine acceptance and countering vaccine ‘hesitancy’. You can read Part 1, published yesterday, here.
IN 2010, as GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations (now called The Vaccine Alliance) was setting out on its ambitious ten-year strategic plan called the Decade of the Vaccine, Dr Heidi Larson, a professor of anthropology, risk and decision science, set up the ‘Vaccine Confidence Project’ at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It was funded by vaccine manufacturers and their European lobby group in conjunction with the European Commission, UNICEF and University College London. The ubiquitous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is unusually absent from this list. The project’s purpose was to challenge vaccine scepticism.
With the number of approved vaccines on national immunisation schedules increasing and with dozens of new vaccines in the pipeline, GAVI’s game plan had become ‘demand generation’, in other words getting people actively to seek out vaccination (the intention being for people to create bottom-up pressure on their governments). Strategic Objective 2 of the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), the implementation plan for the Decade of the Vaccine, which remains today, is that ‘individuals and communities understand the value of vaccines and demand immunisation as both their right and responsibility.’
The GVAP reframing of vaccination in terms of rights and responsibilities transforms vaccination from an individual (private) medical choice (even in the context of a national public health programme) into a civic rights issue, pitting choice against a (spurious) socio-political ordinance. Writing on her blog, Larson explains, ‘Immunisation, since its beginning, has always walked a tense line between individual rights to choice and societal rights to health. A tense line between rights and responsibilities – the right to choose, with the caveat that it does not injure those around you.’
The principal value of this utilitarian collectivist perspective is that it displaces, for ‘the greater good’ (as defined by certain elites), the well-established medical ethics principle that the benefit of a procedure to each individual recipient must outweigh the risk. The assumption here is that for an act to be morally right it has to be judged only on its consequences for the majority. And since vaccines are supposed to induce immunity and consequently prevent transmission of infectious diseases, mass vaccination in pursuit of disease eradication must be for the greater good. As the utilitarians say, the end justifies the means.
Winning confidence in vaccines, which means winning trust in their safety and efficacy, is therefore imperative. From the health system administering them to the motives of the policy makers, this is the requisite of demand generation. When and where this fails has been dubbed ‘hesitancy’, the reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated despite the availability of vaccines (as though vaccines were, per se and in all circumstances, an unquestionable good regardless of the chequered history of many). According to a World Health Organisation working group report, ‘As hesitancy undermines demand, to achieve the GVAP defined vaccine demand goal, countries will need to address hesitancy. High rates of hesitancy mean low demand.’
Vaccines have been recognised by courts in the US, including its Supreme Court, as unavoidably unsafe products. However, based on the precedent of smallpox eradication, public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) remain determined to use vaccination to eradicate diseases and therefore argue that the overall value of vaccines to the community outweighs the risk to any single individual.
Diseases are no longer just diseases, we’re told they’re vaccine preventable diseases. Evidence in the medical literature of people who fail to respond to vaccination (primary failure) or of waning protection following vaccination (secondary failure) is simply ignored. The single greater good concept has provided the justification for mandatory vaccination and, in Covid times, for restricting the freedoms of those who exercise their right to bodily autonomy by refusing a medical procedure. Those unlucky enough to be injured or die from vaccine administration are what the American bioethicist Dr Leroy Walters has called ‘injured recruits in the war on infectious disease’.
Despite the rationale that society benefits from universal vaccination, the burden of vaccine injury is largely borne by individuals. It’s now standard practice for vaccine manufacturers to bear no liability for their products. The precedent of indemnification was set by the ill-fated 1976 US swine flu vaccination campaign when the US government stepped in because insurers balked. It paid out almost as much in compensation for vaccine injuries as it spent on the programme, thanks to an active surveillance reporting system for vaccine injuries. Active surveillance has never been repeated. Today only 27 countries have compensation programmes for vaccine injuries, a small improvement on the dozen that had them when GAVI was created in 1999. As for the rest, their injured citizens are collateral damage in the Rockefeller-conceived War on Microbes.
In the U.S., an estimated 21 million American adults experienced at least one major depressive episode in 2020.1 The reported numbers for the past several years2 have consistently been highest among those aged between 18 and 25.3 However, not only is there evidence that depression is vastly overdiagnosed, but there’s also evidence showing it’s routinely mistreated.
With regard to overdiagnosis, it’s been ongoing for a long time, with one 2013 study4 finding only 38.4% of participants with clinician-identified depression actually met the DSM-4 criteria for a major depressive episode, and only 14.3% of seniors 65 and older met the criteria.
As for treatment, the vast majority are prescribed antidepressant drugs, despite the fact there’s little to no evidence to suggest they provide meaningful help, and plenty of evidence showing the harms are greater than patients are being told.
According to a 2017 study,5 1 in 6 Americans between the ages of 18 and 85 were on psychiatric drugs, most of them antidepressants, and 84.3% reported long-term use (three years or more). Out of 242 million U.S. adults, 12% were found to have filled one or more prescriptions for an antidepressant, specifically, in 2013. By 2021 in the midst of the pandemic, 1 in 4 Americans over age 18, or 50 million persons, were on prescription mental health drugs.6
According to data7 presented by a watchdog group in 2014, hundreds of thousands of toddlers are also being medicated with powerful psychiatric drugs, raising serious ethical questions, along with questions about the future mental and physical health of these children.
And, a study published in The BMJ in 20138 found that “In utero exposure to both SSRIs and non-selective monoamine reuptake inhibitors (tricyclic antidepressants) was associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders, particularly without intellectual disability” in the offspring.
Studies are also shedding much needed light on the addictive nature of many antidepressants, and demonstrate that the benefits of these drugs have been overblown while their side effects — including suicidal ideation — and have been downplayed and ignored for decades, placing patients at unnecessary risk.
The Chemical Imbalance Myth
One researcher responsible for raising awareness about these important mental health issues is professor Peter C. Gøtzsche, a Danish physician-researcher and outspoken critic of the drug industry (as his book, “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare,”9 suggests).
Gøtzsche helped found the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and later launched the Nordic Cochrane Centre. In 2018, he was expelled by the Cochrane governing board following the publication of a scathing critique of a Cochrane review of the HPV in which he and his coauthors pointed out several methodological flaws and conflicts of interest.
Over the past several years, Gøtzsche has published a number of scientific papers on antidepressants and media articles and a book discussing the findings. In a June 28, 2019 article,10 Gøtzsche addresses “the harmful myth” about chemical imbalances — a debunked hypothesis that continues to drive the use of antidepressants to this day. He writes, in part:11
“Psychiatrists routinely tell their patients that they are ill because they have a chemical imbalance in the brain and they will receive a drug that fixes this …
Last summer, one of my researchers and I collected information about depression from 39 popular websites in 10 countries, and we found that 29 (74%) websites attributed depression to a chemical imbalance or claimed that antidepressants could fix or correct that imbalance …
It has never been possible to show that common mental disorders start with a chemical imbalance in the brain. The studies that have claimed this are all unreliable.12
A difference in dopamine levels, for example, between patients with schizophrenia and healthy people cannot tell us anything about what started the psychosis … [I]f a lion attacks us, we get terribly frightened and produce stress hormones, but this does not prove that it was the stress hormones that made us scared.
People with psychoses have often suffered traumatic experiences in the past, so we should see these traumas as contributing causal factors and not reduce suffering to some biochemical imbalance that, if it exists at all, is more likely to be the result of the psychosis rather than its cause.13
The myth about chemical imbalance is very harmful. It makes people believe there is something seriously wrong with them, and sometimes they are even told that it is hereditary.
The result of this is that patients continue to take harmful drugs, year after year, perhaps even for the entirety of their lives. They fear what would happen if they stopped, particularly when the psychiatrists have told them that their situation is like patients with diabetes needing insulin.”
Real Cause of Depression Is Typically Ignored
According to Gøtzsche, there is no known mental health issue that is caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals. In many cases, the true cause is unknown, but “very often, it is a response to unhealthy living conditions,” he writes.14
He also cites the book,15 “Anxiety — The Inside Story: How Biological Psychiatry Got It Wrong,” written by Dr. Niall McLaren, in which the author shows that anxiety is a major factor in and trigger of most psychiatric disorders.
“A psychiatrist I respect highly, who only uses psychiatric drugs in rare cases … has said that most people are depressed because they live depressing lives,” Gøtzsche writes.
“No drug can help them live better lives. It has never been shown in placebo-controlled trials that a psychiatric drug can improve people’s lives — e.g., help them return to work, improve their social relationships or performance at school, or prevent crime and delinquency. The drugs worsen people’s lives, at least in the long run.16“
Gøtzsche rightfully points out that antipsychotic drugs create chemical imbalances; they don’t fix them. As a group, they’re also somewhat misnamed, as they do not address psychotic states. Rather, they are tranquilizers, rendering the patient passive. However, calming the patient down does not actually help them heal the underlying trauma that, in many cases, is what triggered the psychosis in the first place.
As noted in one 2012 meta-analysis17 of studies looking at childhood trauma — including sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional/psychological abuse, neglect, parental death and bullying — and subsequent risk of psychosis:
“There were significant associations between adversity and psychosis across all research designs … Patients with psychosis were 2.72 times more likely to have been exposed to childhood adversity than controls … The estimated population attributable risk was 33% (16%-47%). These findings indicate that childhood adversity is strongly associated with increased risk for psychosis.”
Economy of Influence in Psychiatry
A related article,18 written by investigative journalist Robert Whitaker in 2017, addresses the “economy of influence” driving the use of antidepressant drugs in psychiatric treatment — and the “social injury” that results. As noted by Whitaker, mental disorders were initially categorized according to a disease model in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association.
“We’re all familiar with the second ‘economy of influence’ that has exerted a corrupting influence on psychiatry — pharmaceutical money — but I believe the guild influence is really the bigger problem,” he writes.
Whitaker details the corruption within the APA in his book “Psychiatry Under the Influence,” one facet of which is “the false story told to the public about drugs that fixed chemical imbalances in the brain.” Other forms of corrupt behavior include:
The biased designs of clinical trials to achieve a predetermined result
Spinning results to support preconceived conclusions
Hiding poor long-term outcomes
Expanding diagnostic categories for the purpose of commercial gain
Creating clinical trial guidelines that promote drug use
In his article, Whitaker goes on to dissect a 2017 review19 published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, which Whitaker claims “defends the profession’s current protocols for prescribing antipsychotics, which includes their regular long-term use.”
As Whitaker points out, there’s ample evidence showing antipsychotic drugs worsen outcomes over the long term in those diagnosed with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
The review in question, led by American psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, was aimed at answering persistent questions raised by the mounting of such evidence. Alas, their conclusions dismissed concerns that the current drug paradigm might be doing more harm than good.
“In a subsequent press release and a video for a Medscape commentary, Lieberman has touted it as proving that antipsychotics provide a great benefit, psychiatry’s protocols are just fine, and that the critics are ‘nefarious’ individuals intent on doing harm,” Whitaker writes.20
The Scientific Bias of Psychiatric Treatment
Five of the eight researchers listed on the review have financial ties to drug companies, three are speakers for multiple drug companies and all eight are psychiatrists, “and thus there is a ‘guild’ interest present in this review, given that they are investigating whether one of their treatments is harmful over the long-term,” Whitaker notes.21
Not surprisingly, the review ignored studies showing negative effects, including studies showing antipsychotics have a detrimental effect on brain volume. What’s more, while withdrawal studies support the use of antipsychotics as maintenance therapy over the long term, these studies do not address how the drugs affect patients’ long-term health.
“They simply reveal that once a person has stabilized on the medication, going abruptly off the drug is likely to lead to relapse,” Whitaker writes.22 “The focus on long-term outcomes, at least as presented by critics, provides evidence that psychiatry should adopt a selective-use protocol.
If first-episode patients are not immediately put on antipsychotics, there is a significant percentage that will recover, and this ‘spontaneous recovery’ puts them onto a good long-term course. As for patients treated with the medications, the goal would be to minimize long-term use, as there is evidence that antipsychotics, on the whole, worsen long-term outcomes.”
Vast Majority of Psychotic Patients Are Harmed, Not Helped
In his deconstruction of Lieberman’s review, Whitaker details how biased thinking influenced the review’s conclusions. It’s a rather long article, but well worth reading through if you want to understand how a scientific review can be skewed to accord with a preconceived view.
Details I want to highlight, however, include findings relating to the number needed to treat (NNT) and the percentage of patients harmed by the routine use of antipsychotic drugs as a first-line treatment.
As noted by Whitaker, while placebo-controlled studies reveal the effectiveness of a drug compared to an inert substance, they do not effectively reveal the ratio of benefit versus harm among the patient population. NNT refers to the number of patients that have to take the drug in order to get one positive response.
A meta-analysis cited in Lieberman’s review had an NNT of 6, meaning that six patients must take the drug in order for one to benefit from the treatment. The remaining five patients — 83% — are potentially harmed by the treatment. As noted by Whitaker:23
“The point … is this: reviewers seeking to promote their drug treatment as effective will look solely at whether it produces a superior response to placebo. This leads to a one-size-fits-all protocol.
Reviewers that want to assess the benefit-harm effect of the treatment on all patients will look at NNT numbers. In this instance, the NNT calculations argue for selective use of the drugs …”
Antidepressants Are Not Beneficial in the Long Term
While typically not as destructive as antipsychotics, antidepressants also leave a trail of destruction in their wake. A systematic review24 by Gøtzsche published in 2019 found studies assessing harm from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) fail to provide a clear and accurate picture of the harms, and therefore “cannot be used to investigate persistent harms of antidepressants.”
In this review, Gøtzsche and colleagues sought to assess “harms of SSRIs … that persist after end of drug intake.” The primary outcomes included mortality, functional outcomes, quality of life and core psychiatric events. In all, 22 papers on 12 SSRI trials were included. Gøtzsche found several distinct problems with these trials. For starters, only two of the 12 trials had a drop-out rate below 20%.
Gøtzsche and his team also note that “Outcome reporting was less thorough during follow-up than for the intervention period and only two trials maintained the blind during follow-up.” Importantly, though, all of the 22 papers came to the conclusion that “the drugs were not beneficial in the long term.”
Another important finding was that all trials either “reported harms outcomes selectively or did not report any,” and “Only two trials reported on any of our primary outcomes (school attendance and number of heavy drinking days).”
A few years later, in April 2022, a study using data from the United States’ Medical Expenditures Panel Survey for patients who had depression found, “The real-world effect of using antidepressant medications does not continue to improve patients” health-related quality of life (HRQoL) over time.25
Antidepressants Are More Addictive Than Admitted
In a June 4, 2019, article,26 “The Depression Pill Epidemic,” Gøtzsche writes that antidepressant drugs:
“… do not have relevant effects on depression; they increase the risk of suicide and violence; and they make it more difficult for patients to live normal lives.27 They should therefore be avoided.
We have been fooled by the drug industry, corrupt doctors on industry payroll, and by our drug regulators.28 Surely, many patients and doctors believe the pills are helpful, but they cannot know this, because people tend to become much better with time even if they are not treated.29
This is why we need placebo-controlled trials to find out what the drugs do to people. Unfortunately, virtually all trials are flawed, exaggerate the benefits of the drugs, and underestimate their harms.”30
Addictive Nature of Antidepressants Skews Results
In his article,31 Gøtzsche reviews several of the strategies used in antidepressant drug trials to exaggerate benefits and underestimate the harms. One little-known truth that helps skew study results in the drug’s favor is the fact that antidepressants tend to be far more addictive than officially admitted. He explains how this conveniently hides the skewing of results as follows:32
“Virtually all patients in the trials are already on a drug similar to the one being tested against placebo. Therefore, as the drugs are addictive, some of the patients will get abstinence symptoms … when randomized to placebo …
These abstinence symptoms are very similar to those patients experience when they try to stop benzodiazepines. It is no wonder that new drugs outperform the placebo in patients who have experienced harm as a result of cold turkey effects.
To find out how long patients need to continue taking drugs, so-called maintenance (withdrawal) studies have been carried out, but such studies also are compromised by cold turkey effects. Leading psychiatrists don’t understand this, or they pretend they don’t.
Most interpret the maintenance studies of depression pills to mean that these drugs are very effective at preventing new episodes of depression and that patients should therefore continue taking the drugs for years or even for life.”
Scientific Literature Supports Reality of User Complaints
Over the years, several studies on the dependence and withdrawal reactions associated with SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs have been published, including the following:
•In a 2011 paper33 in the journal Addiction, Gøtzsche and his team looked at the difference between dependence and withdrawal reactions by comparing benzodiazepines and SSRIs. Benzodiazepines are known to cause dependence, while SSRIs are said to not be addictive.
Despite such claims, Gøtzsche’s team found that “discontinuation symptoms were described with similar terms for benzodiazepines and SSRIs and were very similar for 37 of 42 identified symptoms described as withdrawal reactions,” which led them to conclude that:
“Withdrawal reactions to selective serotonin re‐uptake inhibitors appear to be similar to those for benzodiazepines; referring to these reactions as part of a dependence syndrome in the case of benzodiazepines, but not selective serotonin re‐uptake inhibitors, does not seem rational.”
•Two years later, in 2013, Gøtzsche’s team published a paper34 in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, in which they analyzed “communications from drug agencies about benzodiazepine and SSRI withdrawal reactions over time.”
By searching the websites of drug agencies in Europe, the U.S., U.K. and Denmark, they found that it took years before drug regulators finally acknowledged the reality of benzodiazepine dependence and SSRI withdrawal reactions and began informing prescribers and patients about these risks.
A significant part of the problem, they found, is that drug agencies rely on spontaneous reporting of adverse effects, which “leads to underestimation and delayed information about the problems.”
In conclusion, they state that “Given the experience with the benzodiazepines, we believe the regulatory bodies should have required studies from the manufacturers that could have elucidated the dependence potential of the SSRIs before marketing authorization was granted.”
•A 2019 paper35 in the Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences journal notes “It took almost two decades after the SSRIs entered the market for the first systematic review to be published.” It also points out that reviews claiming withdrawal effects to be mild, brief in duration and rare “was at odds with the sparse but growing evidence base.”
In reality, “What the scientific literature reveals is in close agreement with the thousands of service user testimonies available online in large forums. It suggests that withdrawal reactions are quite common, that they may last from a few weeks to several months or even longer, and that they are often severe.”
Antidepressants Increase Your Risk of Suicide and Violence
In his June 2019 article,36 Gøtzsche also stresses the fact that antidepressants can be lethal. In one of his studies,37 published in 2016, he found antidepressants “double the occurrence of events that can lead to suicide and violence in healthy adult volunteers.”
Other research38 has shown they “increase aggression in children and adolescents by a factor of 2 to 3 — an important finding considering the many school shootings where the killers were on depression pills,” Gøtzsche writes.
In middle-aged women with stress urinary incontinence, the selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) duloxetine, which is also used to treat incontinence, has been shown to double the risk of a psychotic episode and increase the risk of violence and suicide four to five times,39 leading the authors to conclude that harms outweighed the benefits.
“I have described the dirty tricks and scientific dishonesty involved when drug companies and leading psychiatrists try convincing us that these drugs protect against suicide and other forms of violence,”40 Gøtzsche writes.41 “Even the FDA was forced to give in when it admitted in 2007, at least indirectly, that depression pills can cause suicide and madness at any age.
There is no doubt that the massive use of depression pills is harmful. In all countries where this relationship has been examined, the sharp rise in disability pensions due to psychiatric disorders has coincided with the rise of psychiatric drug usage, and depression pills are those which are used the most by far. This is not what one would expect if the drugs were helpful.”
Drugmaker Lied About Paxil’s Suicide Risk
In 2017, Wendy Dolin was awarded $3 million by a jury in a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil. Dolin’s husband committed suicide six days after taking his first dose of a Paxil generic, and evidence brought forth in the case convincingly showed his suicide was the result of the drug, not emotional stress or mental illness.42
The legal team behind that victory, Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, also represented other victims of Paxil-induced violence and death. At the time, attorney R. Brent Wisner said:43
“The Dolin verdict sent a clear message to GSK and other drug manufacturers that hiding data and manipulating science will not be tolerated … If you create a drug and know that it poses serious risks, regardless of whether consumers use the brand name or generic version of that drug, you have a duty to warn.”
GSK’s own clinical placebo-controlled trials actually revealed subjects on Paxil had nearly nine times the risk of attempting or committing suicide than the placebo group. To gain drug approval, GSK misrepresented this shocking data, falsely reporting a higher number of suicide attempts in the placebo group and deleting some of the suicide attempts in the drug group.
An internal GSK analysis of its suicide data also showed that “patients taking Paxil were nearly seven times more likely to attempt suicide than those on placebo,” Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman reports, adding:44
“Jurors in the Dolin trial also heard from psychiatrist David Healy, one of the world’s foremost experts on Paxil and drugs in its class … Healy told the jurors that Paxil and drugs like it can create in some people a state of extreme ’emotional turmoil’ and intense inner restlessness known as akathisia …
‘People have described it like a state worse than death. Death will be a blessed relief. I want to jump out of my skin,’ Dr. Healy said. Healthy volunteer studies have found that akathisia can happen even to people with no psychiatric condition who take the drug …
Another Paxil side effect known to increase the risk of suicide is emotional blunting … apathy or emotional indifference … [E]motional blunting, combined with akathisia, can lead to a mental state in which an individual has thoughts of harming themselves or others, but is ‘numbed’ to the consequences of their actions. Drugs in the Paxil class can also cause someone to ‘go psychotic, become delirious,’ Dr. Healy explained.”
Hundreds of Thousands of Toddlers on Psychiatric Drugs
Considering the many serious psychological and physical risks associated with psychiatric drugs, it’s shocking to learn that hundreds of thousands of American toddlers are on them. In 2014, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog group, highlighted data showing that in 2013:45
274,000 babies aged 1 and younger were given psychiatric drugs — Of these, 249,699 were on anti-anxiety meds like Xanax; 26,406 were on antidepressants such as Prozac or Paxil, 1,422 were on ADHD drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall, and 654 were on antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa
In the toddler category (2- to 3-year-olds), 318,997 were on anti-anxiety drugs, 46,102 were on antidepressants, 10,000 were prescribed ADHD drugs and 3,760 were on antipsychotics
Among children aged 5 and younger, 1,080,168 were on psychiatric drugs
These are shocking figures that challenge logic. How and why are so many children, babies even, on addictive and dangerously mind-altering medications? Considering these statistics are 6 years old, chances are they’re even higher today. Just what will happen to all of these youngsters as they grow up? As mentioned in the article:46
“When it comes to the psychiatric drugs used to treat ADHD, these are referred to as ‘kiddie cocaine’ for a reason. Ritalin (methylphenidate), Adderall (amphetamine) and Concerta are all considered by the federal government as Schedule II drugs — the most addictive.
ADHD drugs also have serious side effects such as agitation, mania, aggressive or hostile behavior, seizures, hallucinations, and even sudden death, according to the National Institutes of Health …
As far as antipsychotics, antianxiety drugs and antidepressants, the FDA and international drug regulatory agencies cite side effects including, but not limited to, psychosis, mania, suicidal ideation, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and even sudden death.”
Children Increasingly Prescribed Psych Drugs Off-Label
Making matters even worse, recent research shows the number of children being prescribed medication off-label is also on the rise. An example offered by StudyFinds.org,47 which reported the findings, is “a doctor recommending antidepressant medication for ADHD symptoms.”
The study,48 published in the journal Pediatrics, looked at trends in off-label drug prescriptions made for children under the age of 18 by office-based physicians between 2006 and 2015. Findings revealed:
“Physicians ordered ≥1 off-label systemic drug at 18.5% of visits, usually (74.6%) because of unapproved conditions. Off-label ordering was most common proportionally in neonates (83%) and in absolute terms among adolescents (322 orders out of 1000 visits).
Off-label ordering was associated with female sex, subspecialists, polypharmacy, and chronic conditions. Rates and reasons for off-label orders varied considerably by age. Relative and absolute rates of off-label orders rose over time. Among common classes, off-label orders for antihistamines and several psychotropics increased over time …
US office-based physicians have ordered systemic drugs off label for children at increasing rates, most often for unapproved conditions, despite recent efforts to increase evidence and drug approvals for children.”
The researchers were taken aback by the findings, and expressed serious concern over this trend. While legal, many of the drugs prescribed off-label have not been properly tested to ensure safety and efficacy for young children and adolescents.
As noted by senior author Daniel Horton, assistant professor of pediatrics and pediatric rheumatologist at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, “We don’t always understand how off-label medications will affect children, who don’t always respond to medications as adults do. They may not respond as desired to these drugs and could experience harmful effects.”
In 2020 mental health experts and reviewers were still at-odds over prescribing these drugs for children, yet hesitant to call a stop to it:49
“Antidepressants are prescribed for the treatment of a number of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents, however there is still controversy about whether they should be used in this population …
Treatment decisions should be tailored to patients on an individual basis, so we recommend clinicians, patients and policy makers to refer to the evidence provided in the present meta-review and make decisions about the use of antidepressants in children and adolescents taking into account a number of clinical and personal variables.”
Educate Yourself About the Risks
If you, your child or another family member is on a psychiatric drug, I urge you to educate yourself about the true risks and to consider switching to safer alternatives. When it comes to children, I cannot fathom a situation in which a toddler would need a psychiatric drug and I find it shocking that there are so many doctors out there that, based on a subjective evaluation, would deem a psychiatric drug necessary.
Have you read How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates yet? Well, I have, and let me tell you: it’s every bit as infuriating, nauseating, ridiculous, laughable and risible as you would expect. Here are the details.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
The FDA is reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for infants and toddlers 6 months to 2 years old, and for children 2 to 6 years old.
The agency is awaiting data on Pfizer and BioNTech’s three-dose regimen for children under age 5 after two doses of its pediatric vaccine failed to trigger an immune response in 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds comparable to the response generated in teens and adults.
According to Endpoints News, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis the agency would not withhold authorization of a pediatric vaccine if it fails to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold for blocking symptomatic infections.
COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.
“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.
The FDA on June 30, 2020, issued guidance that in order for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to obtain EUA, it must “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50 percent of people who are vaccinated.”
The guidelines were issued during a briefing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, during which senators sought assurances from former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials that the expedited speed of development of COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the final product.
All previously authorized COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for all age groups were required to meet the FDA’s 50% requirement prior to obtaining EUA.
Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco posted a video responding to the news the FDA would bypass its own standard to authorize pediatric COVID-19 vaccines for kids.
Prasad said:
“Peter Marks from the FDA — he’s the defacto regulator-in-chief when it comes to vaccines — is saying that kids’ vaccines don’t need to hit the target. They don’t need to hit the 50% vaccine efficacy against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 target. That was the target that the FDA themselves came up with in the original pandemic.
“They came up with this target 50% point estimate above, and the lower bound to the 95% confidence interval has to be above 30%. That was their minimum efficacy standard for vaccination. That was the standard they themselves set and that was the standard initial vaccine trials did clear for adults.
“But the pediatric vaccine trials — both the Pfizer and Moderna — appear not to have cleared that bar, and Peter Marks is talking to congressional officials and he is saying that it’s okay, we’ll probably authorize it anyway.”
Vasad said it was “incredible” that Marks would sign off on a pediatric vaccine if it seems to be mirroring efficacy in adults but is less effective against Omicron.
“We have standards for a reason,” Vasad said. The standard chosen by the FDA was “arbitrary and if anything I’d argue it was on the low side — 50% isn’t as good as what we wanted,” Vasad said.
“Fifty percent is quite low, and if you have a very low vaccine efficacy […] you can have compensatory behavior that actually leads to a lot more viral spread,” he added.
Vasad said when it comes to kids, it’s “kind of a moot point” because estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a few months ago showed 75% of children had zero prevalence — and it’s “probably higher now.”
“Taking a child under the age of 5 who already had and recovered from COVID and trying to make them better off with a vaccine against the original Wuhan ancestral strain — that’s an uphill battle,” Vasad said.
“The absolute upper bound, absolute risk reduction, has got to be super super low because once kids have it and recover from it they generally do pretty well. If they get it again they do even better than the first time.”
Lowering the regulatory standards for vaccine products is not the direction FDA should go, Vasad said. “They need to be upholding the standards they’ve set and raising the standards.”
Vasad raised concerns over what the standard will be moving forward if the agency doesn’t abide by its own minimum requirement.
“At what point will vaccine efficacy arrive at something the agency doesn’t accept?” He asked.
Vasad said once the FDA does away with EUA, many preschools will immediately mandate COVID-19 vaccines, and they won’t make exceptions for natural immunity or provide any exceptions at all.
“And so what he’s talking about is authorizing a vaccine in a setting where you have 75% minimum zero prevalence and the vaccine efficacy could be less than 50%,” Vasad said. “How much less?”
Pointing to a Moderna press release stating one arm of its trial showed its pediatric vaccines were only 37% and 23% effective, Vasad asked, “How much lower can it go — 10%? How low before Peter Marks says that’s too low?”
Vasad said if the adult vaccine becomes less effective over time, “tell me why that means you should accept the less effective kids’ vaccine?”
Vasad explained:
“If a therapy loses efficacy over time, why does that mean the bar to be a therapy is lower? It should mean that we need new therapies. We need a new mRNA construct.
“You need to kind of aim at the thing that’s actually out there now and not the original thing from two years ago. Maybe you want to rejigger your process. Try something new but it doesn’t mean we keep lowering the bar. This is ridiculous.”
Moderna reports concerning efficacy data for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines
As The Defender reported, Moderna on April 28 asked the FDA to approve its COVID-19 mRNA-1273 vaccine for children 6 months to 6 years old, citing different efficacy numbers than it disclosed in March.
The company conducted separate trials for two versions of the vaccine, one for infants and toddlers aged 6 months to 2 years, and one for children 2 to 6 years, and claimed data showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” and “a favorable safety profile.”
Yet, Moderna’s KidCOVE study showed the company’s COVID-19 vaccine failed to meet the FDA’s minimum efficacy requirements for EUA in the 2- to under-6 age group, and barely surpassed the agency’s 50% efficacy requirement in the 6-month to 2-year age group — even after the vaccine maker changed its analysis of the study to meet the threshold.
Moderna also did not follow trial participants beyond 28 days, so vaccine effectiveness after that time is unknown. Data from New York state show vaccine effectiveness for the 5-to-11 age group plummets within seven weeks to 12%.
“Here, we’re looking only at the first four weeks,” Dr. Madhava Setty told The Defender. “Although data from New York were in a different age group using a different mRNA vaccine, the effectiveness was remarkably similar after four weeks. Why wouldn’t we expect that the same thing is going to happen?”
The House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Crisis on April 26 asked the FDA for a status update on COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5.
The agency said it was considering holding off on reviewing Moderna’s request to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 until it has data from Pfizer and BioNTech on their vaccine for children, pushing the earliest possible authorization of a vaccine from May to June.
When asked on Friday whether the FDA’s vaccine advisors would slow-roll Moderna’s applications and wait to review Pfizer’s and Moderna’s applications together, Marks said the meetings set for next month could move up if necessary.
“Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said.
According to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) account of the meeting, Marks said the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has reserved earlier dates, enabling the agency to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.”
“At the end of the day, we want people to have confidence in getting vaccinated,” Marks said. “We need to get more kids vaccinated, not just in the younger than 5 age range, but also older than 5.”
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
Once upon a time United States foreign policy was based on actual national interests, but that was long ago and far away before the country was beguiled into a colonial war with Spain followed by a twentieth century that was chock-a-block full of any type and intensity of warfare that one might imagine, including the use of nuclear weapons. Some might consider that the United States has become a nation made by war, to include a presumption that all the war-making has been both just and necessary, since America is “exceptional” and by default “the leader of the Free World.” Witness what is taking place vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia right now, pressing forward with a full-scale economic war against Moscow while arming one of the belligerents in support of no actual national interest, as if by habit. The propensity of American politicians to resort to arms to compensate for their other failures is such that among circles in Washington and the media there has long been a joke making the rounds observing that no matter who is nominated and elected president we always wind up with John McCain. But if one is seriously concerned about the tendency of the United States to view nearly every foreign problem as solvable if only one uses enough military force, the joke might be updated to suggest that we Americans now always wind up with the Kagans, the first family of neoconservative/neoliberal advocates for an aggressive, interventionist US foreign policy.
Victoria Nuland, the architect of the disaster in Ukraine and a Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protege, is married to Robert Kagan and now serving as number three in the State Department. Robert is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and is also a regular contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His brother is Fred, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Fred’s wife Kimberley is head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War.
When Congress-critters want to justify a new war, they frequently cite judgements made by one of the various groups associated with the Kagans. Robert is a frequent contributor to the national media both in interviews and opinion pieces calling inevitably for harsh measures against countries like Russia and Iran while Fred uses his bully pulpit to argue in favor of a large increases in military spending to counter “future threats.” Fred and Robert are members of the Aspen Strategy Group. They and their father, Donald, were all signatories to the neocon Project for the New American Century manifesto, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000).
Characteristically, the Kagan brothers love war but expect someone else to do the fighting. They are both considerably overweight and could never pass a military entrance physical if they were so inclined, which, of course they are not. The Kagans have been closely tied to the Democratic Party on many social issues and would likely describe themselves as liberal interventionists as well as neocons, since in practice both labels mean the same thing in terms of an assertive foreign policy backed by force. Plus, their flexibility gives them access to the foreign policy establishments of both major parties, as also does their support of Israeli interests in the Middle East, to include outspoken support of the Iraq War and for a covert war against Iran.
The Kagans are labeled by many as conservative, but they are not reliably Republican. Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. The Kagans were foremost among those pundits. Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the #NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. Many other notable neocons also declared themselves to be #NeverTrump, including Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Daniel Pipes, Reuel Gerecht, Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg.
To be sure, some high-profile neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but later became the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran, attracted by Trump’s hardline with both countries. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran in particular as exemplified by his ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also for a time a neocon in the White House fold, though he later became an enemy after being fired by the president and then wrote a book critical of Trump.
Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they maintained relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement together with its liberal interventionist colleagues are dominating foreign policy thinking across the board in Congress and the White House. That development has been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” still to this day being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016 and for its dreary prospects in midterm elections later this year. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to US national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum have been favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC. Russian-Jewish import hardliner Max Boot is a regular feature contributor at the Post.
The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standardvirtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the US taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon political and media support for the currently highly aggressive and dangerous policy against Russia, due in part to its involvement in defense of Israeli target Syria. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively exploited the largely illusory policy of “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective, both coming together nicely to justify the current chaos in Ukraine.
The neocons and liberal interventionists are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are largely funded by Jewish billionaires and defense contractors. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University.
Many former Barack Obama White House senior officials who believe in liberal interventionism and democracy promotion while also hating Russia and Vladimir Putin have developed comfortable working relationships with the neocons. Foreign policy hawks including Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice and Samantha Power are calling most of the shots given Biden’s senility but with neocon political and media support.
Unfortunately, nowhere in Biden’s foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to an actual shooting war with major competitor power Russia and also possibly China. In fact, Biden himself embraces a characteristically extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with foreign nations “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language and authoritarian governing style leave no wiggle room for constructive dialogue with adversaries. The script being written by his Administration on how to deal with the rest of the world promises nothing but unending trouble and quite possibly sharp economic decline in the US for the foreseeable future.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted fast track designation to UB-311, a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease made by biotechnology company Vaxxinity.1 The shot is an anti-amyloid beta immunotherapeutic vaccine that reportedly treats Alzheimer’s disease by targeting aggregated amyloid beta in the brain.2
Aside from the potential problems that can arise when a vaccine is rushed to market, the vaccine may be problematic from the get-go because amyloid beta may be a symptom of Alzheimer’s — not the cause — and could even have a protective role in the disease process.3
Fast-tracking a vaccine that’s targeting an isolated element of Alzheimer’s disease that is not the underlying cause is destined to be a massive disaster.
Alzheimer’s Vaccine Being Fast-Tracked to Market
UB-311 is being touted for eliciting a “robust and durable anti-amyloid beta antibody responses in patients,” according to Vaxxinity.4 Phase 1, Phase 2a and Phase 2a long-term extension trials have already been completed, with the company stating that the vaccine was “well tolerated in mild-to-moderate AD patients over three years of repeat dosing, with a safety profile comparable to placebo and no cases of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities-edema (“ARIA-E”) in the main study.”5
ARIA-E, a marker of fluid retention and microhemorrhages in the brain, occurs in about one-third of people taking the Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm).6 Similar to UB-311, Aduhelm was brought to market under an accelerated approval pathway by the FDA, despite uncertainty about the clinical benefit.7 The action sparked protests within the FDA advisory panel, and three members subsequently resigned.8
As an amyloid beta-directed antibody drug, Aduhelm also works by targeting amyloid beta in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, but the findings of ARIA-E in many taking the drugs are alarming. Adam Brickman with Columbia University, New York City, suggested that the drug could potentially make cognitive decline worse instead of better. “It’s hard to put a positive spin on the neuroimaging abnormalities,” he wrote. “… [W]e simply do not know the long-term consequences.”9
While Vaxxinity is touting no cases of ARIA-E among its subjects as a success, the same holds true about the vaccine in that no one knows the long-term consequences. Vaxxinity has planned a Phase 2b trial for late 2022.10 It’s worth noting that drug development for Alzheimer’s has so far been a dismal failure, with at least 300 failed trials to date.11
One study, which was a collaboration between Washington University in St. Louis, drug companies Eli Lilly and Roche, the National Institutes of Health and others, involved 194 participants, of which 52 took Roche’s drug gantenerumab and 52 took Eli Lilly’s solanezumab.12
The drugs were intended to remove amyloid beta (Aβ) from the brain, but they failed to achieve the primary outcome of the study, which was slowed cognitive decline, as measured by tests on thinking and memory.
In fact, while the drugs did target amyloid beta, they had no effect on cognitive measures, with the researchers writing, “Both drugs engaged their Aβ targets but neither demonstrated a beneficial effect on cognitive measures compared to controls.”13
Is Amyloid Beta the Problem?
Even if drugs reduce amyloid beta plaques in Alzheimer’s patients, how this translates to affecting cognitive decline remains to be seen. While Alzheimer’s is characterized by an accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain, there is controversy over their role in the development of the disease.
As researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, department of dementia and higher brain function, wrote in Frontiers in Neuroscience :14
“The so-called amyloid hypothesis, that the accumulation and deposition of oligomeric or fibrillar amyloid β (Aβ) peptide is the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has been the mainstream concept underlying AD research for over 20 years. However, all attempts to develop Aβ-targeting drugs to treat AD have ended in failure.”
In 2009, researchers brought attention to the misguided premise of oversimplifying Alzheimer’s disease down to the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP) molecule, “implying that this molecule encapsulates AD so completely that the disease itself is almost of secondary importance.” This, they noted, ignores “the complexity of chronic diseases in general” and added:15
“A great deal of attention has focused on amyloid-β as the major pathogenic mechanisms with the ultimate goal of using amyloid-β lowering therapies as an avenue of treatment. Unfortunately, nearly a quarter century later, no tangible progress has been offered, whereas spectacular failure tends to be the most compelling.
We have long contended, as has substantial literature, that proteinaceous accumulations are simply downstream and, often, endstage manifestations of disease.
Their overall poor correlation with the level of dementia, and their presence in the cognitively intact is evidence that is often ignored as an inconvenient truth. Current research examining amyloid oligomers, therefore, will add copious details to what is, in essence, a reductionist distraction from upstream pleiotrophic processes such as oxidative stress, cell cycle dysfunction, and inflammation.
It is now long overdue that the neuroscientists avoid the pitfall of perseverating on ‘proteinopathies’ and recognize that the continued targeting of end stage lesions in the face of repeated failure, or worse, is a losing proposition.”
Amyloid Beta May Be Protective
There is even research to suggest that advanced protein aggregation, such as that seen in Alzheimer’s disease, could offer protective functions, perhaps protecting cells from toxic intermediates.16 Writing in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers suggested that amyloid beta is a response to neuronal stress, one that functions as a protective adaptation to the disease.17
Amyloid beta, they argued, accumulates relatively late in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, and while it has been found to be toxic in cell culture models, this may not hold true in humans. Instead of the prevailing notion that a mutation leads to increased amyloid beta and that leads to Alzheimer’s, the team suggested that a mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, which in turn triggers increased amyloid beta:18
“Mutations lead to cellular stress, which, in turn, leads to increased amyloid-β … in AD, cellular stress precedes increases in amyloid-β … Proteins, such as amyloid-β, that are induced under oxidative conditions and act to lessen oxidative damage are typically thought of as antioxidants and, in this regard, we recently demonstrated that amyloid-β is a bona fide antioxidant that can act as a potent superoxide dismutase.”
This would explain, they suggest, why the brains of most elderly people contain amyloid-β, often in amounts similar to those found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). They noted:19
“While such production and deposition of amyloid-β appears to successfully stave off age-related redox imbalances in normal aging, in AD, where there is a profound and chronic redox imbalance, the presence of amyloid-β, even at high levels, proves insufficient.”
The Link Between Alzheimer’s and Your Gut
If Alzheimer’s pathogenesis cannot be blamed entirely on amyloid beta, what, then, is the cause? It’s likely that many factors are to blame, with imbalances in gut microbiota among them. Research suggests, for example, that the bacteria in your intestines may influence brain functioning and can even promote neurodegeneration.20
In a study of 89 people, high blood levels of lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) and the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate and valerate were associated with large amyloid deposits in the brain.21 LPSs and SCFAs are markers of inflammation and proteins produced by intestinal bacteria.
High levels of butyrate — an SCFA produced when gut bacteria ferment fiber —were associated with less amyloid. The study represents a continuation of prior research by the team, which found that the gut microbiota in people with Alzheimer’s disease differs from those without the condition; in those with Alzheimer’s, microbial diversity is reduced, with certain bacteria being overrepresented and other microbes decreased.22
“Our results are indisputable: certain bacterial products of the intestinal microbiota are correlated with the quantity of amyloid plaques in the brain,” explains Moira Marizzoni, a study author with the Fatebenefratelli Center in Brescia, Italy.23
Still other research suggests gut microbiota may contribute to Alzheimer’s risk via multiple avenues, including by influencing aging, diabetes, sleep and circadian rhythm.24
It’s also possible, researchers hypothesize, that decades of factors such as diet, stress, aging and genetics, combine to disrupt gut permeability and the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the entry of inflammatory agents and pathogens and inducing an inflammatory response that triggers a neuroinflammatory response in the brain.25
There’s More to Alzheimer’s Than Amyloid Beta
UB-311 — the fast-tracked Alzheimer’s vaccine — is not going to touch the many complex factors leading to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and is likely to have unintended adverse consequences. Dietary factors, for instance, are being completely overlooked by focusing on a vaccine to target amyloid beta.
Not only does what you eat affect your gut health but it also impacts cholesterol, and cholesterol also plays an important role in the formation of memories and is vital for healthy neurological function. As noted by senior research scientist Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., insufficient fat and cholesterol in your brain play a crucial role in the Alzheimer’s disease process, detailed in her 2009 paper “APOE-4: The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins May Cause Alzheimer’s.”26
Time-restricted eating is another important strategy, as is reducing your intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils, trans fat and plant oils. For a more targeted approach, natural options are available.
Animal and laboratory studies demonstrate that the spice saffron is neuroprotective, for instance. Data also show it is as effective as the drug memantine to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease.27 One of the most comprehensive assessments of Alzheimer’s risk is Dr. Dale Bredesen’s ReCODE protocol, which evaluates 150 factors, including biochemistry, genetics and historical imaging, known to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
In his book, “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,”28 which describes the complete protocol, you will also find a list of suggested screening tests and the recommended ranges for each test, along with some of Bredesen’s treatment suggestions.
Overall, nourishing your brain health is best done with a comprehensively healthy lifestyle. By leveraging 36 healthy lifestyle parameters, Bredesen was able to reverse Alzheimer’s in 9 out of 10 patients.
This included the use of exercise, ketogenic diet, optimized vitamin D and other hormones, increased sleep, meditation, detoxification and the elimination of gluten and processed food. For more details, you can download Bredesen’s full-text case paper online, which details the full program.29
Germany and Qatar have failed to reach an agreement regarding long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply contracts, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing people close to the talks.
According to the outlet, Berlin will not agree to Qatar’s demand to sign deals for a duration of at least 20 years. Despite seeking to end its reliance on Russian natural gas amid the situation in Ukraine, Berlin reportedly views this timeframe as contradicting its plan to slash carbon emissions by 88% by 2040.
“The issue of LNG contract length potentially putting Germany’s decarbonization targets at risk is part of the ongoing discussions with Qatar,” one of the sources told Reuters, noting that Germany is not the only nation eager to secure LNG supplies from Qatar.
Qatar also wants to contractually prevent Germany from rerouting the LNG deliveries to other European states, and this measure is not welcome by the EU, the sources said.
One of the sources told the publication that the LNG deal between Qatar and Germany “is not expected to happen soon.”
Qatar is the world’s largest LNG supplier. Major German power producer RWE already has a deal with Qatargas dating back to 2016 for 1.1 million tons of LNG annually until the end of 2023. RWE officials, as well as representatives from another German utility, Uniper, and German Economy Minister Robert Habeck visited Qatar in March to secure additional volumes of LNG supplies, but have not agreed on a long-term deal so far.
The delegation is set to return to Qatar later this month to resume negotiations, according to Reuters sources. They claim that Germany aims to reach a two-way partnership with Qatar, exchanging additional LNG supply contracts for assistance from German firms in the Qatari move toward sustainability.
“There needs to be a gentlemen’s agreement between the Qataris and German companies, that LNG should only be the first step in a longer collaboration between the two countries,” an unnamed German industry source said.
The European Union is, as usual, taking the wrong approach when it comes to dealing with Israel’s violations of international law. With over 1,200 Palestinians facing forced eviction from Masafer Yatta, also known as “Firing Zone 918”, after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favour of demolishing eight villages, the EU merely summarised what Israel and the international community already know: Israel has obligations under international law.
“Under international law, individual or mass forcible transfers and deportation of protected persons from the occupied territories are prohibited, regardless of their motive,” the EU’s delegation to the Palestinians tweeted. “As the occupying power, Israel has the obligation to protect the Palestinian population and not displace it.” As the occupying power, Israel knows this, but ignores it nonetheless.
Indeed, Israel has no need for a reminder of its obligations; it needs, and we need, the international community to hold it to account for those obligations. The international community, though, is invested heavily in Israel, both politically and economically.
Once again, Israel has used its fake security narrative to usurp the land on which Masafer Yatta is built. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claim that the land is needed for military training purposes. According to the Jerusalem Post, Palestinians living in the villages slated for demolition can still reach an agreement with the IDF to access some of the land for agricultural purposes. There are, however, many examples where Palestinians have been deprived of their agricultural land permanently, but have had to face Israeli settler and military violence forcing them to stay away from their land even when such “access” has been agreed in advance.
Documents dating back to 1981 reveal that Ariel Sharon offered Masafer Yatta to the IDF in order to forcibly displace Palestinians so that Israel can retain the territory for its expansion. “We definitely have an interest in enlarging our territory there… given the spread of the rural Arabs on the ‘back of the mountain’ towards the desert.”
Masafer Yatta’s Mayor, Nidal Abu Younis, said that, “This [ruling] proves that this court is part of the occupation.” It is a pity that such statements are made as if he or anyone else has just realised the nature of Israel’s Supreme Court. There was no need for this or any other ruling to prove the court’s loyalty to the settler-colonial state. No state or judicial institution in Israel will work against the colonial process. And neither will the EU, which has financed dwellings for the communities living in Masafer Yatta. In January this year, Israel destroyed eight structures in the area, leaving 19 people, along them 11 children, forcibly displaced.
The humanitarian agenda employed by the EU only serves the bloc’s interests. EU investment in Palestine is minimal and corrupted, as is its statement reminding Israel of its obligations under international law. Israel has violated international law to guarantee its existence and it is given diplomatic support for doing so, which takes precedence over any humanitarian aid allocated to Palestinians by the same political actors supporting Israel. When will the EU issue a statement that expresses its contempt for the forced transfer of Palestinians, for example, and link it to this historical disregard which the international community has for ongoing forced displacement that has happened ever since and including the Nakba?
Israel has just celebrated what it calls Independence Day, which is based on the myth of national liberation from British colonialism and the establishment of an independent state dreamt about by successive generations of Jews. On this day every year, Israel flexes its military muscles and holds celebrations across the country.
The Israelis celebrate their theft and occupation of Palestine, a land with deep Arab roots. Israel’s “independence” replaced British colonialism with an even more horrific settler-colonialism. Not for nothing do the Palestinians call the establishment of the colonial state of Israel the Nakba — the Catastrophe — because what happened in 1948 was not liberation from colonialism or independence, but the greatest armed robbery of the twentieth century. An entire country was seized through the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. What’s more, the Nakba didn’t begin and end in 1948; it is ongoing.
As such, Israeli “independence” celebrations do not commemorate the past; they encourage what is still happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Negev, the Galilee and the rest of occupied Palestine. The Palestinians in Israel remember the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing under the slogan “Your Independence Day is our Nakba Day” to emphasise the fact that their land has been stolen and occupied by force, deception and the falsification of history. That is why it was shameful for the UAE to send Israel a congratulatory telegram on this day.
Arguably even more shameful is the fact that the Nakba was blessed by the international community when recognition of Israel was granted with a seat in the UN General Assembly, even though it has never fulfilled the condition of its membership, the return of Palestinian refugees. The occupation state has been protected ever since by the “permanent members” of the UN Security Council, which was established specifically to achieve the goals of the nuclear powers post-Second World War. The colonial countries rushed to recognise the settler-colonial entity planted on Arab land; first up was the Soviet Union, followed by the US (not the other way round, as is often believed). East and West worked together to stab the Arab people in the back, although if it wasn’t for the plotting of Arab states, the West wouldn’t have been able to carry out its conspiracy in Arab Palestine.
The planning for the Zionist entity began in the late nineteenth century. Serious lobbying of colonial states led to the issue of the disastrous 1917 Balfour Declaration in which the British government promised its support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. It was a promise made by those who did not own the land to those who had no legitimate claim to it. The promise was fulfilled on 14 May 1948, since when Palestinians have lived in exile and under occupation, with all of the suffering that that implies. The Palestinians’ struggle against the occupation of their land has carried on for 74 years, despite the plotting of the Arab rulers against them. The world has not served them justice or restored their usurped rights or land; the international community, headed by the US, supports Israel, and the Arab countries loyal to the US act as guardians for Israel’s as yet undeclared borders. It is an expansionist colonial project.
All Arab rulers, without exception, have traded with the Palestinian issue in front of their people who love Palestine, from the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser until today, in order to consolidate their own grip on power. What has been going on behind the scenes is, though, completely different, and only came to light after years of deception in the peace treaties signed with the Israeli enemy. The PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel on 13 September, 1993, in which the “liberation” organisation recognised Israel and removed from its national charter the clause about the armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the sea to the river in return for imaginary “authority” that was created to do nothing more than provide security for the occupation state and be the forerunner of an independent state that was never really intended to come into being.
The theft of Palestinian land has been ongoing throughout the years of the so-called “peace process”, with ever more and ever larger illegal Israeli settlements and infrastructure making it impossible for there to be enough contiguous territory for such a state to exist. There remains less than 20 per cent of historic Palestine left for the Palestinians, and all of it is dominated by Israel’s military occupation.
The ill-fated Oslo Accords have led to more killing and arrests — by Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces — of Palestinians struggling for their freedom. The Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 restored the spirit of resistance to the Palestinian people under the late leader Yasser Arafat. He came back from the US frustrated after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David, under the auspices of US President Bill Clinton; he was convinced by that stage that there was no point in peace agreements with Israel. The establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of Palestinian refugees to their land was an illusion.
Arafat himself led the intifada. The uprising included the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which had not abandoned the Palestinian constants and the restoration of all of Palestine, from the sea to the river. There was no way for this to be achieved except through legitimate resistance.
Thus began a new phase of the Palestinian struggle which has continued since Arafat was besieged in his Ramallah compound and then killed in 2004 as a “punishment” for the intifada. Israel’s unilateral 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip under the weight of Hamas resistance, which was steadfast despite the assassination of its founder and spiritual guide, the quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, its leader Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi and others. Four major military offensives have since been launched against the Palestinians in Gaza accompanied by a comprehensive land, sea and air blockade after Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election. Through all of this, legitimate resistance has been neither weakened nor undermined; the resolve of the Palestinian people to make huge sacrifices to liberate their land remains strong. They do so with dignity and honour.
The Israeli enemy has failed to bring the Palestinian people to their knees in Gaza, just as it has failed to defeat Hamas. That is why the head of the “sacred” security coordination authority in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas, is tasked with trying to discredit the Islamic movement and bring it down. He joins in the accusations of “terrorism” used to describe legitimate resistance to Israel’s military occupation. He also cut the salaries of PA employees in the Gaza Strip to turn the people against Hamas, but his plan failed.
There is no doubt that there is optimism within the great Palestinian nation, which is inspirational. The people have been able to turn the tables on the occupation state on many occasions, with their innovation and creativity in the struggle. The Israelis live in fear, while the Palestinians believe that they will either win or die in the process. Such a people are unbeatable.
The current generation includes the great-grandchildren of the Palestinians who were expelled from their land in the first wave of ethnic cleansing during the Nakba. Most have not been to their grandparents’ homes and land in what is now the usurper state of Israel, but they still live in Palestine in their hearts and minds. They are living proof that the Zionist claim that, “The old will die and the young will forget” is a lie. The old did die, but only after handing over the keys to the young, passing on the mission so that they will never forget. The Palestinian people will not be defeated in their struggle to live with honour, freedom and dignity.
Climate activists’ ill-founded opposition to fossil fuels threatens to stop a major pipeline project in East Africa and stymie economic growth in Uganda and Tanzania — home to some of the world’s poorest people.
Uganda is betting big on its fossil fuel reserves. In February, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and France’s TotalEnergies agreed to invest $10 billion to develop two Ugandan oil reserves. But the landlocked country needs the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project (EACOP) to transport its product to a port in Tanzania.
The 895-mile-long pipeline from Uganda’s Lake Alberta region to the seaport of Tanga will be the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world and will carry 216,000 barrels per day. The project received a green light for construction after the completion of an Environment and Social Impact Assessment.
The Africa Reportsays that the investment will be huge: “(A)bout $10 billion will be invested in the sector (oil and gas) before first oil is produced in 2025, mainly on the pipeline, refinery, and infrastructure. The government has been commissioning road construction in the region where oil will be produced, in Buliisa and Hoima districts, and an airport is also being constructed in the region.” The project is expected to generate around 10,000 jobs even after the construction phase.
The Government of Uganda expects massive employment of its citizens during construction: “This will be through direct employment of about 14,000 people by the companies, indirect employment of about 45,000 people by the contractors, and induced employment of about 105,000 people as a result of utilization of other services by the oil and gas sector. Of the direct employment, 57 percent are expected to be Ugandans, which is expected to result in an estimated $48.5 million annual payment to Ugandan employees.”
However, the global war against fossil fuel has now reached Ugandan soil and extremists are determined to stop this lifesaving, economically critical project.
Vanessa Nakate of StopEACOP rants against the pipeline in a recent column in the New York Times, saying the project would bring poverty and destruction to the people of Africa. She also references extreme weather in implying the pipeline will worsen the climate.
During a visit to the ultra-rich Vatican, Vanessa says: “It is evident that there is no future in the fossil fuel industry…. we know the impacts on our food. We know the impacts on our water. We know the impacts on our livelihood…… the climate crisis is already affecting so many people not only in Uganda, but the African continent.”
But her reasons for opposing the pipeline are scientifically inaccurate and logically senseless.
She points to a forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that predicts African droughts. But IPCC, by its own admission, has indicated that extreme weather events have no significant correlation with rising global average temperatures. Neither has there been any significant increase in the frequency of extreme cyclones, droughts, rainfall, and fires. Even if droughts and cyclones were to increase, a better socio-economic condition would enable people to adapt more effectively.
Contrary to Vanessa’s hyperbole, the world is experiencing near optimum temperatures for global food production and the advancement of human society, much as it did 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period and 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period. Globally, we now have better access to clean water, better access to nutritious food, people with higher income, and a very rapid increase in life expectancy rates. How are we in a crisis if climate is aiding the improvement of every metric used to measure the quality of people’s lives?
It is shocking how Vanessa ignores the plight of millions of her own people dwelling in persistent poverty and in need of affordable, dependable energy sources like coal, oil, and gas. It is less shocking if we understand the DNA of climate extremists, which has them deny the reality of energy needs and promote unreliable, primitive, and expensive wind turbines that even economic giants like Germany and the U.S. hesitate to adopt completely.
Climate extremists like Vanessa are fostering the continuation of abject poverty in Africa — a continent with the lowest level of electrification and highest rates of poverty in the world. Vanessa claims that the pipeline is another colonial project subjecting Africans to slavery. But, it is Vanessa and her ilk who are the colonialists and would-be slave masters.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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