The Tabqa Dam in Syria. ©Claude Salhani / Sygma via Getty Images
In 2017, the US bombed a piece of strategic infrastructure in Syria, the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, despite it being on a no-strike list, the New York Times reported.
A B-52 bomber dropped some of the heaviest weapons in the US Air Force arsenal on the target, including at least one BLU-109 bunker buster, which is designed to destroy fortified concrete targets. This bomb pierced through five stories in one of the dam’s towers, but didn’t explode.
If the Soviet-designed earth-and-concrete structure had failed, tens of thousands of people living in a valley below would likely have died.
The dam wasn’t immediately destroyed, but damage to its equipment rendered it inoperational and at risk of overflowing. An unprecedented truce involving the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), US-backed forces on the ground, and Syrian government forces was hastlily struck with Russia’s help to allow a crane controlling emergency floodgates to be repaired.
After the work was done by a crew of 16 workers, a drone strike ordered by the same taskforce that called in the initial strike obliterated a van carrying some of them back. It killed a mechanical engineer, a technician, and a Syrian Red Crescent worker.
The events were described by the Times based on interviews with unnamed US military officials as well as people in Syria, including an engineer who was present at the dam on the day of the strike. It is the newspaper’s latest expose of Talon Anvil operations, which critics call reckless. The taskforce was created to coordinate the war effort against IS and was staffed by US Army Delta Force commandos, according to previous reporting.
The March 26 strike on the Tabqa Dam was attributed to US forces by Russia and Syria, but then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, under whose purview the taskforce operated, dismissed it as “a lot of crazy reporting.”
“The Tabqa Dam is not a coalition target and when strikes occur on military targets, at or near the dam, we use non-cratering munitions to avoid unnecessary damage to the facility,” he assured journalists.
According to Times sources, Talon Anvil routinely used a trick to circumvent the airstrike vetting process by senior command, citing the urgency of defending US allied forces from an imminent attack. The strike on the dam was also justified that way, but witnesses said no major fighting in the area was taking place before the bombs hit.
US Central Command acknowledged dropping three 2,000-pound bombs, but said they were targeting towers, not the dam itself. And that the fact it didn’t fail proved the safety of the operation, a spokesman for the military suggested. He denied that the usual procedures were sidestepped in authorizing the strikes.
The Times said a report requested from specialized engineers in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Resources and Infrastructure office prior to the strikes recommended against using any sort of explosives in the vicinity of the dam. Even relatively small munitions like Hellfire missiles could damage concrete structures controlling the flow of water, the four-page assessment said, according to the newspaper.
Talon Anvil had not reported the dam strikes. The US military had to piece together what had happened by reviewing logs from the B-52 bomber, a source told the Times. No disciplinary action was taken against members of the secret unit, the newspaper reported.
January 21, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Syria, United States |
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The prerogative to refuse medical intervention is a basic human right
As parents with young children will attest, the most frequently uttered word your toddler will use is not ‘mama’ or ‘dada’, or any word you desperately want them to say, but the word ‘no’.
At around 2 years, this word will issue from your child’s mouth at an astonishing and infuriating rate. ‘Yes’ isn’t any real competition in the pantheon of formative words for a two-year-old.
It would seem that this right to refuse is hard-wired into us, long before we develop a sense of self or begin to retreat into that private, internal landscape that becomes so important as we move away from childhood and into our teenage years.
So important is this formative word, that it has become enshrined in our laws and our culture. The right to refuse, to say ‘no,’ is the mark of a civilised, democratic society.
We had the Nuremberg trials and the civil rights movement. We said ‘no more’ and ‘never again’ to segregation, apartheid, eugenics and forced medical experimentation.
Any society that historically abused these most fundamental of human rights has been paraded in front of us (and rightly so) as a cautionary tale of what ‘not’ to do and what should ‘never’ be repeated.
In more recent history, the citizens of Northern Ireland said ‘no’ to sectarian violence and voted for the Good Friday Agreement; we said ‘no’ to homophobia and the awful violence that was perpetrated against our gay citizens.
We said ‘no’ to misogyny, sexism, ageism. We said ‘no’ and ‘never again’ to the horrific crimes perpetrated against children by those who chose to abuse their power and authority within the Catholic Church.
In fact, we said ‘no more’ to the historical interference of church within the State. We legalised contraception and divorce. Let us not forget that divorce only became legal here in 1995, a fact that often shocks those international students I teach Irish history to. And even in 1995, the ‘yes’ vote in the divorce referendum was only narrowly won with 50.3% voting in favour and 49.7% against.
This separation of church and state in an Irish context is perhaps best exemplified by the 2018 abortion referendum. Whatever your opinions may be on this subject, Irish people voted ‘yes’ for a woman’s right to say ‘no’ to a pregnancy. “My body, my choice” became the mantra of the pro-choice movement.
This referendum was won by a much larger majority than the divorce referendum of 1995, with 66.4% voting ‘yes’ to the legalisation of abortion, dealing perhaps the final blow to any significant influence the Catholic Church might have had in matters of state.
In the ever-changing world of today’s identity politics and its fluid nomenclature, it’s now ok to say ‘no’ to the gender you were born with and ‘no’ to the gender specific pronouns others label you with. I have learnt that words like ‘sex change’ or even ‘gender realignment’ are considered offensive to many trans citizens and that ‘gender confirmation’ is the appropriate description to use.
My point is that the right to say ‘no’ to something you fundamentally disagree with or which you feel is threatening to your person or liberty or identity is absolutely sacrosanct.
Or at least I thought it was, until now.
I have chosen not to participate in the Irish state’s Covid 19 injection programme. I am not going to try and convince anybody of the merit of my reasons. I know they are sound reasons, and my decision not to participate is not based on right wing, crazy conspiracy theories as the mainstream media repeatedly and disimulatively asserts, but on many months of research: reading and listening to epidemiologists, virologists and medical doctors with different specialities (from both sides of the argument).
It is not a decision I have taken lightly, and that decision to say ‘no’ has changed my life and affected my relationships with those around me so dramatically I barely recognise it anymore.
Since July 2021 I have become persona non grata. I got my first taste of what this feels like while on holiday in Wexford at the end of last summer. Myself and my brother were refused entry into a rural pub after a long walk during which we’d worked up quite an appetite. It was both embarrassing and humiliating.
Now I can’t go into bars, restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, cinemas, theatres or even a gym to get a bit of exercise. Arranging to meet a friend in winter in Ireland is challenging to say the least.
Dublin’s hospitality is no longer extended to all citizens
Last Christmas, the twinkling lights on Grafton Street felt like a personal rebuke. I walked the streets, permitted the luxury of spending money in crowded shops, but not allowed to take a load off by sitting down and having a coffee.
I ended up getting a takeaway sandwich and eating it standing up outside, alone in the cold on Grafton Street, until I was joined by a homeless man who convinced me to buy him some cigarettes.
And it got me thinking. I am not trying to compare my situation with the horrific life of somebody living on the streets in our capital. I do have a home, and I’m not alienated from my family (as so many homeless people so sadly are), but it gave me a small taste of what it must be like: the exclusion, the judgement, the physical moving away from you, as if you’re unclean or diseased in some way.
But luckily our free, democratic and liberal society would surely never discriminate against or encourage discrimination against its citizens for a personal medical decision?
Let’s just recap what our global leaders have been saying recently, shall we?
In France, president Emmanuel Macron says if you are unvaccinated you are “not a citizen” and that he wants to “piss (you) off.”
In America, Joe Biden advises parents to keep kids away from the unvaccinated and asserts that “this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
In Canada, Justin Trudeau blames lockdowns on the unvaccinated and claims that this group is “extremist”, “racist” and “misogynist” (this coming from a man who thought dressing up in blackface was hilarious in his student days).
Justin Trudeau (pictured above) claims the unvaccinated are racists
In Australia, Michael Gunner (Northern Territory Chief Minister) says that “work is not a reason to leave the home for the unvaccinated.”
And we all know how the world’s number one tennis player has been treated in Australia: leaving his detention centre (ahem ‘hotel’) to go to work was clearly not a good enough reason for him either.
I suppose Leo Varadkar’s remark that the 5% of the population who are not vaccinated are causing “a lot of the trouble” is relatively mild in comparison.
What is beyond dispute at this stage is that the State and mainstream media have been systematically encouraging (and applauding) vitriolic discrimination against Irish citizens for what should be a personal and private medical decision.
In March of last year, barrister and chairman of the ICHR (Irish Council of Human Rights), Tracey O’Mahony, initiated an email campaign to encourage Irish citizens to lobby Irish MEPs to vote against digital green certificates on the basis that they were unconstitutional and would potentially cause serious divisions among the population.
Irish MEPs received at that time an unprecedented number of emails from concerned citizens. Yet, we were portrayed in Irish mainstream publications such as the Irish TImes as crazed, right-wing lunatics, somehow intent on preventing others from being able to travel freely, while the same outlets totally ignored the very real human rights violations the introduction of these passes would mean.
Hindsight is a great thing as they say, so I can’t help but include a quote from MEP Billy Kelleher, who voted in favour of the digital green certificates. This is taken from his response, on 24th March 2021, to my email, which of course is a bulk response to all those who lobbied him:
Those who do not want to be vaccinated are free to choose to do so. However, for those that do choose to be vaccinated, we need a system that is secure and robust to allow those who have chosen to be vaccinated to travel unhindered.
In terms of the vaccine certificate, it should not be used for domestic purposes i.e.allowing access to gyms, restaurants etc. It should only be used for international travel purposes where a country requires an incoming traveller to prove they have been vaccinated in order to avoid a mandatory quarantine period.
So here we are, ten months later, and the use of the vaccine certificate for domestic purposes looks here to stay.
Perhaps I can look forward to being banned from public transport or a fine for every month I’m unvaccinated; locked down again and told not to leave my house; maybe my next holiday will be spent in an internment camp for the unvaccinated like in Australia, or maybe just prison. Who knows?
(Forgive me if I am not reassured by the recent vague comments made by Leo Varadkar about this matter).
Recently the ICHR published an online survey to find out if people have suffered any form of discrimination, since March 2020, arising from the Covid 19 pandemic. In only 2 weeks, 26,472 people responded.
If the Government’s figures are correct (the unvaccinated adult population of the Republic of Ireland is claimed to be somewhere between 5% – 7% by official sources), this means that between 10-14% of the unvaccinated adult population in the State responded to this survey.
The results are shocking and damning: 83.62% of those who participated (that’s 19,201 people) said they had experienced some form of discrimination arising from their health status.
Nearly 95% of respondents (22,243 people) said they believed discrimination in the provision of, or access to, goods and services has been on the rise since March of 2020, while 96% believed that discrimination based on health status has become more acceptable in this country since March 2020.
Nearly 90% (21,097 people) answered “yes” to the question “Has the prospect of being discriminated against prevented you from going about your daily life, since March of 2020?”
As Tracey O’Mahony notes in her analysis of the survey:
The government response to the pandemic has created an entirely new category of discrimination based on a person’s health immunistation status (and that) the evidence gathered through this survey suggests that it has become a virtuous act to seek out the personal medical information of strangers through uncomfortable and public interrogation.”
She says a lot more and I strongly urge anybody reading this to both read the survey and listen to Tracey O’Mahony’s astute and powerful analysis of it.
However, it is the personal descriptions of suffering that people who responded to the survey provide that for me had the biggest effect, and I’m so glad that a snapshot of these were included. It is alarming the number of references that are made to suicidal thoughts arising as a direct result of the discrimination people have experienced both personally and towards their families, and how that has seriously and negatively affected the mental health of their children.
So to read Fintan O’Toole’s article (O’Toole writes for both The Irish Times and The Guardian) from the 11th December 2021 in which he cruelly labels “The three anti-vaccine types” as “an ascending order of purposeful malignancy: the egoists, the paranoiacs and the fascists”, really puts into context the level of prejudice encouraged by the mainstream media in relation to those who are being punished by the state for a personal medical choice.
I shall repeat those words again: “purposeful malignancy,” as though we are a cancerous scourge that needs to be removed from society. That is the kind of language usually reserved for paedophiles, rapists, serial killers or war criminals.
O’Toole begins by stating that:
Vaccine sceptics form an objective threat to society, undermining the effectiveness of public health measures and, when they get sick with the virus whose existence they do not believe in, putting a dangerous burden on the hospital system.”
O’Toole, who has often championed various issues related to identity politics, seems to have no problem labelling and othering those who make a different decision about what is best for their health to his own.
I don’t think incitement to hatred is an unfair or inaccurate description of what O’Toole is saying and I think it is absolutely disgraceful that the Irish Times ever chose to publish this bigoted diatribe. So much for ‘we’re in this together.’ It’s now abundantly clear that we most certainly are not.
I and many others like me are sick to the teeth of being scapegoated and blamed for everything. We did not cause this crisis and we are not responsible for its continuation.
Even Doctor Fauci has admitted that a “fully vaccinated” individual with a “breakthrough infection” has a similar viral load (the concentration of infection present in the throat or nose) to an unvaccinated individual who contracts Covid-19.
In early 2021, Leo Varadkar said,
The vaccine passports don’t yet stack up scientifically or medically because we just don’t know at this stage what extent vaccines reduce transmission.”
Despite the fabulous claims made back then on behalf of Covid-19 vaccines, we know now that they do not stop transmission.
Bill Gates let this information slip during an interview with Jeremy Hunt last November, and CDC director Rochelle Walensky confirmed it last week.
Yet the vaccine certificate system remains in place, with absolutely no justification for its existance other than to coerce people into getting inoculated.
It seems to me that a person’s worth, measured in 2021 by one’s immunisation status, is now determined solely by one’s willingness to comply with the arbitrary and ever changing demands made by the State.
And that, in spite of no evidence that the domestic use of vaccine certificates offers any kind of benefit to the wider community, the act of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine is considered in and of itself the most noble of civic acts; one so righteous, in fact, that only those who have performed it are now permitted the full benefits of Irish citizenship.
Masked up with useless pieces of cloth on our faces, kept two metres apart at all times, obediently following ridiculous yellow lines on the floor as if the whole world has become one giant institution and we, in turn, institutionalised.
The constant and neurotic testing of ourselves when we have so much as a hint of a sniffle (or our smartphones pinging to tell us we’ve been in ‘close contact’ with somebody else who has); the excited waiting with bated breath to see if that antigen or lateral flow test is positive or negative. The abject horror of realising all the shops have run out of our precious tests. What have we become? When will this ever end?
It ends with one little word: no. No to it all and never again. So keep having the courage to say it. Keep repeating it like a two year old having a hissy fit. Don’t allow anybody to bully you or shame you, and call out anybody who thinks they can. No matter how powerful or influential they may be, you still have the power to tell them no.
January 21, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Here is an Announcement from the American Academy of Pediatrics website (May 4, 2021):
“Children ages 2-11 could potentially be eligible for (the still-experimental) COVID-19 vaccine this fall. Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, D.V.M., Ph.D. (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine), said on a quarterly earnings call Tuesday he expects to request (experimental) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September. Under his plan, an EUA request for ages six months to 2 years would follow in the fourth quarter.
“Pfizer and its partner BioNTech currently are waiting for an FDA decision on an EUA for adolescents ages 12-15 years.”
And here is a list of lawsuits related to sixteen Pfizer drugs that were FDA-approved before long-term safety studies were completed:
(And the CDC Wonders Why There is Such a Thing as “Big Pharma/Big Vaccine-hesitancy”)
List Collated by Gary G. Kohls, MD – March 10, 2021 – (1041 words)
Pfizer is one of the largest multinational drug companies on the planet – and one of the five largest vaccine manufacturers (the other four are Sanofi, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson $ Johnson. AstraZeneca is # 10). Pfizer has faced thousands of lawsuits for fraudulent marketing and medical injuries caused by some of its most profitable, drugs.
Pfizer has also set a record for the largest fine paid for a health care fraud lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Pfizer paid $2.3 billion in fines, penalties, and settlement for illegal marketing claims.
Here is a partial list of 13 of Pfizer’s most dangerous, most litigated, most potentially lethal drugs. (NOTE: If any reader had adverse effects to any of the following Pfizer drugs, he/she might want to consult an attorney).
Celebrex,
Bextra,
Geodon,
Zyvox,
Lyrica,
Neurontin,
Protonix,
Prempro,
Chantix,
Depo-Testosterone,
Zoloft,
Effexor,
Feldene,
Viagra,
Lipitor,
Zithromax,
Etc.
Celebrex and Bextra
Prizer promoted its two COX-2 pain relievers Celebrex and Bextra which generated 7000 lawsuits and a $894 million settlement. Both medications were me-too drugs similar to Merck’s infamous Vioxx, which caused 50,000 lawsuits because of cardiovascular deaths and injuries. Merck settled most of the cases with a $4.85 billion settlement.
Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica
Pfizer paid $1 billion to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs – Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug – and caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs for uses that were not medically accepted indications.
Neurontin
Pfizer paid out $142 million for committing racketeering fraud in the marketing of Neurontin.
Protonix
As part of a larger group of proton pump inhibitor lawsuits, Pfizer faced a number of Protonix lawsuits after it acquired drug company Wyeth who had been accused of marketing the drug for unapproved uses. In 2013, Pfizer agreed to pay $55 million to settle illegal marketing claims but the company may still be facing lawsuits for kidney injuries caused by the medication.
Prempro
Nearly 10,000 Prempro lawsuits were filed by women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The lawsuits were largely settled by 2012 for about $1 billion.
Chantix
Pfizer faced about 3,000 Chantix lawsuits filed by people who claimed they experienced suicidal thoughts and psychiatric disorders after using Chantix for smoking cessation. Pfizer set aside about $288 million and at least some of the cases were settled.
Depo-Testosterone
Thousands of cases of medical injury due to testosterone replacement therapy have been filed. Other drug companies have paid $ billions to settle their cases, however some Pfizer testosterone lawsuits were dismissed.
Zoloft
About 250 Zoloft lawsuits were filed, claiming Pfizer actively promoted the use of Zoloft to pregnant women despite knowledge of birth defect risks from their research. These cases were largely dismissed in 2016 when a judge concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove a link between birth defects and Zoloft use.
Effexor
Effexor was a medication originally produced by Wyeth which has also been the cause of multiple lawsuits. People who filed Effexor lawsuits claimed that it caused birth defects, and separately, suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In September 2015, Effexor lawsuits were dismissed but may have been eligible to refile.
Lipitor
Pfizer’s drug that lowers cholesterol (but only minimally decreases heart attack risk) but causes serious muscle damage, diabetes and other unforeseen health defects has generated billions of dollars of lawsuits.
Xeljanz
Pfizer’s arthritis and ulcerative colitis drug was only belatedly acknowledged by Pfizer to cause cancer, serious cardiovascular events and venous thromboembolism (such as pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis). Many lawsuits are in progress.
Feldene; Viagra, Zithromax, etc
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Environmental Pollution
In 1971 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked Pfizer to end its long-time practice of dumping industrial wastes from its plant in Groton, Connecticut in the Long Island Sound. The company was reported to be disposing of about 1 million gallons of waste each year by that method.
In 1991 Pfizer agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle EPA charges that the company seriously damaged the Delaware River by failing to install pollution-control equipment at one of its plants in Pennsylvania.
In 1994 Pfizer agreed to pay $1.5 million as part of a consent decree with the EPA in connection with its dumping at a toxic waste site in Rhode Island.
In 1998 Pfizer agreed to pay a civil penalty of $625,000 for environmental violations discovered at its research facilities in Groton, Connecticut.
In 2002 New Jersey fined Pfizer $538,000 for failing to properly monitor wastewater discharged from its plant in Parsippany.
In 2003, shortly after Pfizer acquired Pharmacia, the company (along with Monsanto) agreed to pay some $700 million to settle a lawsuit over the dumping of known-to-be-carcinogenic PCBs in Anniston, Alabama.
In 2005 Pfizer agreed to pay $22,500 to settle EPA claims that the company failed to properly notify state and federal officials of a 2002 chemical release from its plant in Groton that seriously injured several employees and necessitated a major emergency response.
Also in 2005, Pfizer agreed to pay $46,250 to settle charges that its Pharmacia & Upjohn operation had violated federal air pollution rules at its plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
In 2008 Pfizer agreed to pay a $975,000 civil penalty to resolved federal charges that it violated the Clean Air Act at its former manufacturing plant in Groton, Connecticut in the period from 2002 to 2005.
Environmental groups in New Jersey have criticized as inadequate a clean-up plan devised by Pfizer and the EPA for the American Cyanamid Superfund site in Bridgewater, which is considered one of the worst toxic waste sites in the country. Pfizer inherited responsibility for the clean-up through its 2009 purchase of Wyeth.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr Gary G. Kohls lives in the USA and writes articles that deal with the dangers of fascism, corporatism, totalitarianism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, and Big Pharma’s over-drugging and over-vaccinating agendas. In addition, his columns deal with cultural movements that threaten democracy, war, civility, health, freedom, the future of the children and the sustainability and livability of the planet.
January 21, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Pfizer |
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
How does the global public health mafia direct the health policy of nations around the world? In today’s conversation, James talks to Yohan Tengra of the Awaken Indian Movement to discuss Tengra’s article breaking down the Indian Covid-19 Task Force and how its members’ conflicts of interest relate to the decades-long takeover of India’s public health system.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee or Download the mp4
SHOW NOTES:
Yohan Tengra: AnarchyForFreedom.in / AwakenIndiaMovement / Telegram channel
Who Is Bill Gates?
India’s Covid-19 Task Force & “Experts” Exposed : Conflicts of Interest in Our Public Health System
HPV vaccine deaths: Parliament panel indicts PATH, health officials
Govt cancels FCRA licence of top public health NGO
NITI Aayog Launches Behaviour Change Campaign
A State of Fear: How the UK Weaponized Fear by Laura Dodsworth
Swedish company showcases microchip that can download COVID-19 passport status
Fact Check: Polio Vaccines, Tetanus Vaccines, and the Gates Foundation
Demonetization and You
January 21, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, India |
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Data should be fully and immediately available for public scrutiny
In the pages of The BMJ a decade ago, in the middle of a different pandemic, it came to light that governments around the world had spent billions stockpiling antivirals for influenza that had not been shown to reduce the risk of complications, hospital admissions, or death. The majority of trials that underpinned regulatory approval and government stockpiling of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) were sponsored by the manufacturer; most were unpublished, those that were published were ghostwritten by writers paid by the manufacturer, the people listed as principal authors lacked access to the raw data, and academics who requested access to the data for independent analysis were denied.1234
The Tamiflu saga heralded a decade of unprecedented attention to the importance of sharing clinical trial data.56 Public battles for drug company data,78 transparency campaigns with thousands of signatures,910 strengthened journal data sharing requirements,1112 explicit commitments from companies to share data,13 new data access website portals,8 and landmark transparency policies from medicines regulators1415 all promised a new era in data transparency.
Progress was made, but clearly not enough. The errors of the last pandemic are being repeated. Memories are short. Today, despite the global rollout of covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come.16 This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions.
Unacceptable delay
Pfizer’s pivotal covid vaccine trial was funded by the company and designed, run, analysed, and authored by Pfizer employees. The company and the contract research organisations that carried out the trial hold all the data.17 And Pfizer has indicated that it will not begin entertaining requests for trial data until May 2025, 24 months after the primary study completion date, which is listed on ClinicalTrials.gov as 15 May 2023 (NCT04368728).
The lack of access to data is consistent across vaccine manufacturers.16 Moderna says data “may be available … with publication of the final study results in 2022.”18 Datasets will be available “upon request and subject to review once the trial is complete,” which has an estimated primary completion date of 27 October 2022 (NCT04470427).
As of 31 December 2021, AstraZeneca may be ready to entertain requests for data from several of its large phase III trials.19 But actually obtaining data could be slow going. As its website explains, “timelines vary per request and can take up to a year upon full submission of the request.”20
Underlying data for covid-19 therapeutics are similarly hard to find. Published reports of Regeneron’s phase III trial of its monoclonal antibody therapy REGEN-COV flatly state that participant level data will not be made available to others.21 Should the drug be approved (and not just emergency authorised), sharing “will be considered.” For remdesivir, the US National Institutes of Health, which funded the trial, created a new portal to share data (https://accessclinicaldata.niaid.nih.gov/), but the dataset on offer is limited. An accompanying document explains: “The longitudinal data set only contains a small subset of the protocol and statistical analysis plan objectives.”
We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request. This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policy makers, and the public. The journals that have published these primary studies may argue that they faced an awkward dilemma, caught between making the summary findings available quickly and upholding the best ethical values that support timely access to underlying data. In our view, there is no dilemma; the anonymised individual participant data from clinical trials must be made available for independent scrutiny.
Journal editors, systematic reviewers, and the writers of clinical practice guideline generally obtain little beyond a journal publication, but regulatory agencies receive far more granular data as part of the regulatory review process. In the words of the European Medicine Agency’s former executive director and senior medical officer, “relying solely on the publications of clinical trials in scientific journals as the basis of healthcare decisions is not a good idea … Drug regulators have been aware of this limitation for a long time and routinely obtain and assess the full documentation (rather than just publications).”22
Among regulators, the US Food and Drug Administration is believed to receive the most raw data but does not proactively release them. After a freedom of information request to the agency for Pfizer’s vaccine data, the FDA offered to release 500 pages a month, a process that would take decades to complete, arguing in court that publicly releasing data was slow owing to the need to first redact sensitive information.23 This month, however, a judge rejected the FDA’s offer and ordered the data be released at a rate of 55 000 pages a month. The data are to be made available on the requesting organisation’s website (phmpt.org).
In releasing thousands of pages of clinical trial documents, Health Canada and the EMA have also provided a degree of transparency that deserves acknowledgment.2425 Until recently, however, the data remained of limited utility, with copious redactions aimed at protecting trial blinding. But study reports with fewer redactions have been available since September 2021,2425 and missing appendices may be accessible through freedom of information requests.
Even so, anyone looking for participant level datasets may be disappointed because Health Canada and the EMA do not receive or analyse these data, and it remains to be seen how the FDA responds to the court order. Moreover, the FDA is producing data only for Pfizer’s vaccine; other manufacturers’ data cannot be requested until the vaccines are approved, which the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are not. Industry, which holds the raw data, is not legally required to honour requests for access from independent researchers.
Like the FDA, and unlike its Canadian and European counterparts, the UK’s regulator—the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency—does not proactively release clinical trial documents, and it has also stopped posting information released in response to freedom of information requests on its website.26
Transparency and trust
As well as access to the underlying data, transparent decision making is essential. Regulators and public health bodies could release details27 such as why vaccine trials were not designed to test efficacy against infection and spread of SARS-CoV-2.28 Had regulators insisted on this outcome, countries would have learnt sooner about the effect of vaccines on transmission and been able to plan accordingly.29
Big pharma is the least trusted industry.30 At least three of the many companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars.31 One pleaded guilty to fraud.31 Other companies have no pre-covid track record. Now the covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue.32
The BMJ supports vaccination policies based on sound evidence. As the global vaccine rollout continues, it cannot be justifiable or in the best interests of patients and the public that we are left to just trust “in the system,” with the distant hope that the underlying data may become available for independent scrutiny at some point in the future. The same applies to treatments for covid-19. Transparency is the key to building trust and an important route to answering people’s legitimate questions about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and treatments and the clinical and public health policies established for their use.
Twelve years ago we called for the immediate release of raw data from clinical trials.1 We reiterate that call now. Data must be available when trial results are announced, published, or used to justify regulatory decisions. There is no place for wholesale exemptions from good practice during a pandemic. The public has paid for covid-19 vaccines through vast public funding of research, and it is the public that takes on the balance of benefits and harms that accompany vaccination. The public, therefore, has a right and entitlement to those data, as well as to the interrogation of those data by experts.
Pharmaceutical companies are reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims.33 The purpose of regulators is not to dance to the tune of rich global corporations and enrich them further; it is to protect the health of their populations. We need complete data transparency for all studies, we need it in the public interest, and we need it now.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that The BMJ is a co-founder of the AllTrials campaign. PD was one of the Cochrane reviewers studying influenza antivirals beginning in 2009, who campaigned for access to data. He also helped organise the Coalition Advocating for Adequately Licensed Medicines (CAALM), which formally petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year (docket FDA-2021-P-0786). PD is also a member of Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, which has sued the FDA to obtain the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine data. The views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Maryland.
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Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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Correspondence to: P Doshi Pdoshi@bmj.com
January 20, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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The Chinese regime is doubling down in its “zero covid” strategy. In recent weeks, new covid cases have been detected in several cities. In a world of the more-contagious omicron variant, this is to be expected.
But what has been the Chinese state’s response? It’s more of the same. Lockdowns, travel suspensions, and more. NBC reports:
Tianjin, which detected China’s first community spread of Omicron on Saturday, is rolling out a second round of mass testing on its 14 million residents on Wednesday. …The outbreak has already spread to Anyang, a city in Henan province some 300 miles (482 kilometers) away, prompting a full lockdown …Tianjin officials said at a news conference Tuesday that all bus services to Beijing had been suspended. … On Wednesday, 425 flights were canceled at Tianjin Binhai International Airport, accounting for 95% of all scheduled flights… Tianjin authorities on Sunday ordered citizens not to leave the city unless absolutely necessary. Those who want to leave must present a negative Covid test taken within 48 hours…
It’s hard to believe that anyone still believes that covid will go away if government authorities just “lock down harder.” But China is hardly the only example of how this delusion can win many adherents among the technocrats and the expert class.
After all, let it not be forgotten that much of the world had adopted a zero covid policy early on, and this absurd policy endured for months. In Europe, of course, millions upon millions of people were virtually locked in their homes for months on end. As Philipp Bagus reported from Spain in spring of 2020, one wasn’t allowed to go outside without facing the wrath of state enforcers.
In America, the “experts” frequently spoke out in favor of zero covid, stating that lockdowns could eradicate the disease and that people would have to stay on lockdown until that time. For example, on April 2 of 2020, Anthony Fauci endorsed this idea, stating that social distancing requirements could not be relaxed until there are “essentially no new cases, no deaths for a period of time.” Hawaii explicitly embraced zero covid, and adopted a policy in 2020 based on the idea that public schools would never reopen until there was no longer any “community spread” and “no new cases” were detected over a period of four weeks.
Needless to say, those were totally unrealistic goals. They reflected only the plans of technocrats who were more concerned with living out their bizarre fetishes for lockdowns and border closures than with gaining a better grasp of the situation or with respecting basic human rights. Even Australia—an island nation that could perhaps plausibly hope to actually close its borders—has given up on the idea.
In other words, the “experts” in America wanted to recreate Chinese despotism in America. They adopted a lockdown policy that had already long been rejected. Lockdowns were already expected to bring long term side effects, such as surges in mental health problems—some of the worst of it among the young—now being reported by hospitals. The WHO even concluded that lockdowns ought to be rejected because “there is no obvious rationale for this measure.”
But perhaps the media and government officials were so successful at sowing panic in the general population in the spring of 2020 that the health technocrats saw their chance to try a new experiment in social engineering that they had previously considered unfeasible.
Fortunately, though, by the middle of 2020, it became clear that lockdowns simply weren’t going to be tolerated by much of the general public. Most state and local governments in the US abandoned zero covid rapidly, although the usual totalitarians in the media bemoaned the end of the policy, insisting that the abandonment of lockdowns would drench the non-lockdown jurisdictions in blood. This was predicted for US states like Georgia, and for countries like Sweden—where lockdowns were quickly jettisoned or not imposed at all.
As time went on, it became obvious that the non-lockdown jurisdictions did not fare significantly worse than the locked down ones. Some areas—Sweden, for instance—fared better. Some of the world’s harshest lockdown regimes—such as those in Peru, Argentina, the UK, and New York—also had some of the worst rates of deaths per million.
For the zero-covid crowd, reality got in the way.
Neo-Zero Covid: The Pivot to Vaccines
The zero covid mentality endures, however. The second wave of the zero covid mentality came with the idea that with universal vaccination, covid would disappear.
And, of course, once vaccines began to appear, it was hailed as a magic bullet that would ensure that the vaccinated would be unable to spread the disease. This ideology was expressed in a rant by Rachel Maddow who back in March 2020 harangued her viewers with the “fact” that “virus stops with every vaccinated person.” She continued: “A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else.”
This was all a complete fabrication. The vaccine never stopped the spread, and with the advent of the omicron variant, it’s now apparently the case that the vaccine doesn’t even slow the spread. The virus is quickly spreading among vaccinated.
It’s no longer possible to even pretend that vaccination prevents transmission. The only argument left to supporters of the vaccine mandate is that vaccines help against serious disease and death. That’s excellent, but it has nothing to do with public health because it’s clear the unvaccinated aren’t the reason the disease has not been eradicated.
And then there is the fact that vaccination has, in part, likely contributed to new covid mutations. This isn’t new with covid. The idea that treatments can lead to new mutations is not new, of course, and it’s long been known that under a variety of situations, leaky vaccines can produce vaccine resistant mutations.
This is also known to occur in the case of covid. For example, in an article for the Journal of Physical Chemistry (December 2021), the authors note “vaccine-breakthrough or antibody-resistant mutations provide a new mechanism of viral evolution.” And specifically on covid, they write how mutations are often more common in places with higher vaccination rates:
we reveal that the occurrence and frequency of vaccine-resistant mutations correlate strongly with the vaccination rates in Europe and America. We anticipate that as a complementary transmission pathway, vaccine-breakthrough or antibody-resistant mutations, like those in Omicron, will become a dominating mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evolution when most of the world’s population is either vaccinated or infected.
This can make things even worse when coupled with other covid mitigation measures. As Vivek Ramaswamy and Apoorva Ramaswamy explained in the Wall Street Journal last week it’s simply not realistic to think vaccines can be constantly adjusted to keep up with new variants. And,
Meanwhile, mask mandates and social-distancing measures will have created fertile ground for new variants that evade vaccination even more effectively. Significant antigenic shifts may create new strains that are increasingly difficult to target with vaccines at all. There are no vaccines for many viruses, despite decades of effort to develop them.
That is, vaccination isn’t making covid go away. The politically correct version of the narrative also completely denies that the failure of vaccines to prevent the spread is even a significant factor in the spread of new mutations. The purveyors of the narrative still insist that only the unvaccinated have any responsibility in the continued existence of the disease. Consider, for example, a recent mainstream media report quoting a doctor who dutifully repeated the political orthodoxy that “Without a large percentage of people being vaccinated, the virus has been allowed to mutate.” Specifically, he further claimed that if “roughly 70% of the population” were vaccinated or naturally infected, this would bring the spread of the disease to a halt through “herd immunity.” But—as the doctor now intones in a forlorn voice—that can’t be achieved because there hasn’t been enough vaccination.
But given his criteria, we should expect places with at least 70% vaccination rates to have halted the spread of disease, right? Not surprisingly, this has not happened. In Portugal, for instance, the fully vaccinated rate—is at 90 percent. In Chile, it’s at 87 percent. It’s 75 percent in France. So, surely the spread of covid has been stopped in all these places? The answer is no. New cases are raging in Portugal, Chile, and France, with all these countries hitting new highs in recent days.
Whether we’re talking about vaccine mandates or lockdowns, it’s clear the zero covid strategy has been an abject failure. They’re still trying it in some places like China where government propaganda is largely unquestioned and where people practice unquestioning obedience to the regime at a scale that makes the all-too-complacent West look downright rebellious by comparison.
Don’t expect the “experts” in any country to give up on their slogans any time soon. But it is clear that reality will eventually catch up with them. Whether or not any respect for human rights remains at the end of it all is another matter.
January 20, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | China, Human rights, United States |
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Is the Ukraine/Russia conflict a US foreign policy goal?
Dare I say a dangerous truth, but there are politicians and analysts and journalists who want Russia to invade Ukraine.
Not because these folks are “Putin apologists,” to quote a popular insult they use against the anti-war crowd. But because they see Russian actions as a pretext for U.S. intervention and perpetual U.S. presence in Ukraine, if not elsewhere. (Poke the bear and you’re the antagonist. Get attacked by the bear and you’re the victim.)
How can Russian aggression best be used? For some, it is the justification for more troops and more weapons in Eastern Europe. NATO sees the opportunity to “reinforce its troop presence in the Black Sea and the Baltics.”
Here in the States, former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas advocates “U.S. leaders should be marshalling an international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.” Others argue for an aggressive military response or suggest the option of “U.S. boots on the ground.” Max Boot, a delusional journalist with a large platform, a silly fedora, and an appetite for war, promotes an urgent airlift of U.S. weapons systems to Ukraine. Boot goes so far as to issue a silly warning that Putin is attempting to resurrect the “evil empire.” If Boot believes these words, then he will eventually advocate the most extreme measures to counter Russia. Dangerous rhetoric indeed.
If recent history is any indication, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy certainly sees the current crisis, if you can call it that, as an opportunity. Last June, he tweeted “NATO leaders confirmed that Ukraine” will become a member of the Alliance.” This announcement came days before Biden’s scheduled meeting with President Vladimir Putin. In other words, it was planned. And while Biden’s response last summer was ambivalent on Ukraine joining NATO, more recently he assured Zelenskiy that “Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was in its own hands.” This comment came after Putin’s warning that Ukraine’s admission to NATO is a “red line” for Moscow.
Maybe the questions should have been how this crisis, the conclusion of which is unknown, could have been prevented. According to professor Stephen Walt, if the West had not “succumbed to hubris” and kept the promise to not include Ukraine in NATO, “Russia would probably never have seized Crimea.” Maybe it was hubris. Or maybe the U.S. anticipated Russia’s response and saw it as an opportunity to expand American influence?
On that question of influence, and as to Russian concerns about NATO, watch this essential explanation by the late Stephen Cohen:
While those supporting NATO expansion argue it is a defensive alliance, how is Moscow to react if those defensive weapons – with devastating offensive capabilities – are at its border and can strike targets within Russia in a matter of minutes?
Is there any doubt that the U.S. would not tolerate Russian missiles at its border?
These are issues that nations are entitled to answer, no matter if they are democratic or otherwise. (By no means does this ever condone wrongful conduct.) But you can’t observe such things in current America, dare you be accused of moral equivalence – or worse. Tucker Carlson makes these arguments and is branded a traitor by the media. Democrat operatives (with Ukrainian interests) demand he be prosecuted for treason for the crime of questioning our leaders. Even at National Review, a “conservative” publication, we see disgusting charges that “many of America’s most famous ‘nationalists’ don’t seem to be bothered by imperialism, so long as the imperialists speak Russian.” The standard attacks against those who dare challenge U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy.
Let us assume that Russia believes Ukraine will eventually join NATO, or at minimum assesses there is a likelihood it occurs. From the Russian point of view, their response – the seizure of Crimea, the current build-up of forces at the Russia-Ukraine border – is defensive in nature. (Not that it justifies conduct.) There is some irony that Russia is now applying neo-conservative principles of preemptive warfare and use of force to maintain its own national security interests.(1) The further irony is that the neo-conservatives now decry such actions.
Allegations of False Flags
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby alleges “Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine.” He claims they are planning “a false flag operation — an operation designed to look like an attack on … Russian speaking people in Ukraine, again, as an excuse to go in.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. The United States knows something about false flag operations, does it not?
War hawks within the Trump Administration took advantage of a likely false flag operation in Syria to justify intervention. As reported by Aaron Mate, “A series of leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) raise the possibility that the Trump administration bombed Syria on false grounds and pressured officials at the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog to cover it up.”
And how are we to assess the Pentagon’s claims about Russia, considering its recent blunders and history of outright lies to Americans?
The events of this past summer do not inspire confidence. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified there was no intelligence suggesting the quick collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban. Reporting from the New York Times disputed that testimony, citing classified intelligence assessments predicting a “Taliban takeover of Afghanistan” and warning of “the rapid collapse of the Afghan military.”
Ask yourself who is telling the truth, and you end up making a decision on which liar is to be believed. I’m not sure which is worse – General Milley lying, or the American intelligence community making such a catastrophic mistake. It’s a choice between personal failure and institutional failure.
Or consider the American drone strike which killed 10 innocent civilians in Kabul. Deaths to be blamed on intelligence reliance on bad sources (which might have been the Taliban) and bad information resulted in no punishment.
Undoubtedly, the worst of it was the thousands of American lives lost in the war in Afghanistan. Young men and women volunteered to fight what our officials promised was a just and necessary war, a war we were allegedly winning. In reality, these U.S. officials were “making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
To quote three-star Army General Douglas Lute:
“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”
The consequences of the lies and incompetence are still felt today. As the Russia-Ukraine crisis heats up, we have no idea whether American leadership is telling the truth.
(1) “Neoconservatives argued that the United States should use its military power to reorder the international system to suit America’s own national interests, and as Halper and Clarke have argued, ‘from its early beginnings, a proclivity toward the use of force has been an identifying badge of the neo-conservative ideology.’” The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War at 199.
January 20, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | NATO, Russia, United States |
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Survey shows how common serious vaccine side effects really are
The German journalist Boris Reitschuster did what really should have been the task of the health authorities and big media. The question is, of course, how common are serious side effects from the vaccinations? Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in his New Year’s speech that “almost four billion people around the world have now been vaccinated. Without major side effects». Although it is of course known that serious side effects do occur, it is very subjective whether you consider the number as “high” or “low”.
Many doubt the official figures. At the same time, a large number of doctors say that many side effects that are at least related in time to the vaccination have not even been registered, because it is too time-consuming and the doctors do not get paid for the work.
Because the large media corporations seem to avoid the question, Reitschuster commissioned a representative poll on the subject from a reputable polling institute. INSA asked 1004 adults in Germany if they had been vaccinated and if they had any side effects. The result is that the official narrative – “hardly any side effects” – collapses and confirms exactly what many medical professionals report from their own experience.
In order to collect the data accurately, INSA first had to ask the following questions: “Have you been vaccinated against the coronavirus?” According to impfdashboard.de, 57.60 million of the 69.4 million adults in Germany have been vaccinated. This corresponds to a vaccination rate of around 83 percent. This is exactly the result of the INSA survey:
60 percent have booster vaccination, 23 percent have two doses without booster vaccination. Another four percent answered that they have been partially vaccinated. 12 percent state that they have not been vaccinated – extrapolated to the population, that is to say 11.8 million people,
Voters from the right-wing party AfD state far more often than voters from other parties that as of today they have not received any vaccination against corona (44 percent). Green voters are the most vaccinated (96 percent), which is also remarkable, because this party is one of the strongest opponents of genetic engineering, and a large proportion of the new vaccines are based on such genetic technology.
There is also an east-west divide. Respondents from the former East Germany state more often than respondents from the Western parts that they have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus (19 vs 10 percent).
And now to the main result of the survey: 15 percent of the respondents stated that they suffered from severe/heavy side effects; Extrapolated to the 57.60 million vaccinated, it is 8.64 million victims. Although the “severity” of the side effects is definitely subjective – the official narrative, where there are hardly any serious side effects, has been shattered according to the results of this study.
And the number corresponds exactly to what many doctors say. A general practitioner Reitschuster asked, confirming that this exactly matches the figures from her practice – although she assumes more than 20 percent cases of serious side effects: “In my experience, young healthy people are prone to side effects, severe headaches, swelling in lymph nodes, fever. And also some thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in the elderly, although this is difficult to prove. Overall, the rate of heart attacks has increased. “
Dr. Gunter Frank comments on the results of the study: “In the 30 years I have been a doctor, I have only rarely experienced red injection sites after an ordinarily approved vaccination, or very rarely a fever that lasts for several days (somewhat more frequently after the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix), and once a rheumatic attack probably related to the vaccination. That’s it, after 30 years. And now this: 15 percent severe side effects after covid vaccination. Just like me and many of my colleagues have experienced for several months.”
The number who report serious side effects is particularly explosive, also in view of the excess mortality that has increased dramatically for several months and cannot be explained by corona deaths.
45 percent of those vaccinated report mild/weak side effects.
Only 40 percent of those vaccinated, less than half, state that they have not felt any side effects at all.
Those over 40 years and over were more likely to have no side effects at all than younger respondents with at least one corona vaccination.
Male respondents with at least one corona vaccination state significantly more often than female respondents that they have not experienced any side effects (48 versus 33 per cent). Female respondents, on the other hand, report mild side effects more often than men (51 versus 39 percent).
Extrapolated to the whole world, it would also mean that with 4 billion vaccinated, there are 600 million people who catagorize themselves with serious side effects.
January 20, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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In 2019 Netflix in conjunction with WWF broadcast Frozen Worlds, an episode in the Our Planet series and narrated by David Attenborough. The scenes it showed shocked and horrified viewers around the world.
After a brief introduction about the recent loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the ‘inevitable’ devastation this will cause for Arctic animals, it shifts to a series of amazing shots of tens of thousands of walrus, crowded cheek-by-jowl on a beach in Siberia.
The camera pans out to a rocky cliff, which several walrus are attempting to climb. Then suddenly, one after another, the walrus are shown falling off the cliff to their deaths on the rocky shore below.The scenes are shown in slow motion and repeated in order to maximise the shock effect.
As the scenes unfold, Attenborough coolly informs viewers that the walrus would not normally be there, but out on the sea ice instead. But because of man-made global warming, the poor walrus have been forced onto land in crowded conditions, where they will inevitably suffer and die.
But was it all as simple as Attenborough portrayed?
A number of suspicions were immediately evident. Far from these beach haulouts being unusual, walrus in fact regularly use these beaches every year, in order to rest and feed while waiting for the sea ice to move south in autumn.
Walrus also invariably crowd together in these situations, both for warmth and protection from polar bears. Indeed, far from walrus being threatened by climate change, their populations have been growing in recent years, explaining why so many were hauled out that day.
And what made those walrus try to climb the cliff?
Dr Susan Crockford is a professional zoologist, who has specialised in Arctic mammals for many years, particularly polar bears and walrus. She immediately smelled a rat.
Her newly released book, Fallen Icon, tells the story of how she uncovered exactly what went on that day on the Siberian beach. Her detective work reveals how it was polar bears stalking them that forced the walrus up that cliff; how this is a common hunting tactic and how the bears then fed off the carcasses down below.
She uncovers evidence that WWF already knew about this hunting tactic at that particular location, and that was precisely why this beach was chosen for the film.
She goes on to describe how retreating sea ice actually increases the food supply for walrus and how their populations are both healthy and increasing.
And how Attenborough used this horrifying imagery to jump-start a three year campaign against human-caused global warming that included ten documentaries laden with groundless climate emergency messaging, much of it aimed at the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Attenborough’s relentless climate activism included a utopian vision of global changes for society eerily similar to the one proposed by the World Economic Forum.
It is hard to disagree with Crockford’s conclusions:
The public’s trust in science and medicine now appears to be at an all-time low. People who had been blind to the abuse of science rampant in the climate change narrative have had their eyes opened by the pandemic response. These things cannot be unseen.
In a worrying trend, traditional scientists struggle to be heard or have their concerns and criticisms published, both for climate change and Covid-19 related issues. Research that features testable hypotheses and reproducible studies seem to be rare birds while predictive modelling projects gobble up grant funds as well as the media attention.
Is science as we used to know it already dead? If so, how much of a role has Attenborough played in this progression? Over the last three years, he has used weaponized science presented to a trusting public in a most egregious manner.
My ultimate goal in writing this book is not to denigrate Sir David but to correct the misinformation he has deliberately or unwittingly promoted in his documentaries and public statements.
I am a traditional scientist standing up for science as it is meant to be – without activism and without politicization – because its loss to society will be incalculable.
Over the years but especially since 2018, Attenborough has shown that he lets others do his serious thinking for him and has often placed his trust where it was ill-advised, as he has done with the WWF. By that I mean he has relied on others to present information to him in an easily digestible manner rather than delving into the literature himself.
And having spent a lifetime taking this easy way out, when he decided he wanted his legacy to be something more substantial than ‘a good storyteller’, he seemed to take on the role of spokesman for others with ideological political agendas.
It appears to me that when he agreed to present the gruesome falling walrus film footage in Our Planet as evidence of climate change, Attenborough compromised his principles to achieve a specific end result. Such noble cause corruption is common in the conservation world but it was new for Attenborough.
I am convinced that what Attenborough has done with the falling walrus episode will be remembered long after he’s dead but not for the reasons he intended. It will go down as another ‘own goal’ for the climate change movement and judged as the moment Attenborough fell from grace as a trusted British icon.
Susan Crockford’s book is now available on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0991796691
Susan Crockford adds:
As I point out in my new book, Fallen Icon, David Attenborough devised a three year campaign on the falsehood that hundreds of Russian walrus died falling off a cliff due to climate change because he also desired what the World Economic Forum (WEF), meeting online this week, say they want: immediate and drastic changes, supposedly to mitigate an invisible ‘climate emergency’ and other societal ills.
Despite the fact that walrus and polar bears are thriving in the Arctic, this fabricated ’emergency’ seems to be the reason that its new chairman plans to make the G7 into a ‘climate club’.
January 20, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Netflix, WWF |
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LAST October TCW reported on the concerning numbers of miscarriages and stillbirths reported to our drugs watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Pregnant women who had received a Covid jab and then lost their baby filled out Yellow Card reports in their hundreds. At that time nearly 600 mothers-to-be had suffered spontaneous abortions, as the MHRA refer to miscarriages, and felt the jab had been responsible. In just three months, that number increased by 100 to a total of 709.
Pfizer’s jab is associated with the highest casualty rate, with 425 miscarriages reported. That figure includes one premature baby death, one miscarriage-related death and 13 stillbirth/foetal deaths. Since May last year, the under-40s have not received the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine because it increases your risk of developing blood clots. AZ, introduced in January 2021, still has 229 reports of miscarriage with five stillbirths, while the Moderna jab, introduced in April 2021, has 51 miscarriage reports. Five mothers reported they did not know which vaccine they had received.
Since February last year, the BBC have been urging pregnant women to take the Covid vaccination despite the fact that no manufacturer was due to complete a scientific trial in expectant mothers before December. Their results are still to be released so all we have is the MHRA’s real-time data, which it seems is being ignored.
Instead, British health chiefs have relied on information from women in the US who accidentally found themselves pregnant having taken the Covid jab and reported the results of their pregnancy to the V-safe app. V-safe is hosted by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) but it is not a scientific study. It is a self-reporting database like the MHRA Yellow Card scheme which Reuters fact checkers like to tell us should not be relied on. So if we cannot rely on the Yellow Card, how can we rely on V-safe?
‘We cannot,’ said an obstetrician who did not want to be named, based in Scotland. ‘Frankly, it’s a mess and when you consider what is at stake, the healthy development of a baby, and the health of the mother, it’s a disgrace.’
This fact has not been acknowledged by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who updated their advice to pregnant and nursing mothers on 20 December 2021. They said: ‘Covid-19 vaccines are strongly recommended in pregnancy. Vaccination is the best way to protect against the known risks of Covid-19 in pregnancy for both women and babies, including admission of the woman to intensive care and premature birth of the baby.’
Three months ago TCW exposed how figures had been manipulated by the NHS to make unvaccinated pregnant mums think they had a higher risk of ending up in ICU than vaccinated mums. It was not true.
The chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health, Professor Lucy Chappell, has never satisfactorily addressed parents’ concerns about whether the vaccine can harm their unborn babies. Ms Chappell, who is also Professor in Obstetrics at King’s College London, tweeted last November: ‘Covid-19 vaccines have protected millions of women around the world – and are safe for pregnant women and women considering pregnancy.’ The tweet had a cool reception with just 116 likes and Dr Chappell had no data from any vaccine manufacturer to support her claim.
The same applies to MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine, who said in a statement in November: ‘We want to reassure all pregnant women that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective for them to use at all stages of pregnancy. Our rigorous safety monitoring of these vaccines in pregnancy shows that the vaccines are safe and that there is no increased risk of pregnancy complications, miscarriage, or stillbirth.’
A British funeral director known only as Wesley tells another story. On camera, he says how he saw newborn baby deaths increase tenfold after vaccination began.
Wesley says: ‘There are a lot of newborn babies in fridges in mortuaries. There were 30 in one hospital. Mortuary fridges usually hold about 6-10 babies maximum and they’re never normally full. ‘Now, they’re full and (the deceased babies) are being kept in the adult section.’ He agreed with the interviewer that the number was ten times higher than normal, and went on: ‘The babies have either been miscarried or they are full term stillbirths but not a lot has been said about it.’
If anyone wants to speak out, we promise we are listening.
Latest Yellow Card scheme figures published below with 1,932 fatalities reported to January 5 2022.
Adult – Primary & Booster/Third Dose, Child Administration
Pfizer – 25.3million people – 47.2m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 162 people impacted
AstraZeneca – 24.9m people – 49.1m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 103 people impacted
Moderna – 1.6m people – 3m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 50 people impacted
Overall, 1 in 120 people injected experiences a Yellow Card adverse event. A significant proportion require urgent medical care, may be life changing or long-lasting in effect. This may be less than 10 per cent of actual figures according to MHRA.
Adult Booster or 3rd Doses = 34,834,288 people
Booster Yellow Card Reports – 24,402 (Pfizer) + 371 (AZ) + 13,156 (Moderna) + 121 (Unknown) = 38,050
Reactions – 446,903 (Pfizer) + 855,968 (AZ) + 106,996 (Moderna) + 4,426 (Unknown) = 1,414,293
Reports – 156,250 (Pfizer) + 241,657 (AZ) + 32,133 (Moderna) + 1,442 (Unknown) = 431,482 people impacted
Fatal – 684 (Pfizer) + 1182 (AZ) + 29 (Moderna) + 37 (Unknown) = 1,932
Spontaneous Abortions – 425 + 1 premature baby death + 1 miscarriage related death/ 13 stillbirth/foetal deaths (9 recorded as fatal) (Pfizer) + 229 + 5 stillbirth (AZ) + 51 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 709 miscarriages
Blood Disorders – 16,056 (Pfizer) + 7,728 (AZ) + 2,228 (Moderna) + 62 (Unknown) = 26,074
Pulmonary Embolism & Deep Vein Thrombosis – 801 (Pfizer) + 2,991 (AZ) + 73 (Moderna) + 25 (Unknown) = 3,890
Anaphylaxis – 615 (Pfizer) + 863 (AZ) + 76 (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 1,556
Acute Cardiac – 10,703 (Pfizer) + 10,766 (AZ) + 2,408 (Moderna) + 83 (Unknown) = 23,960
Pericarditis/Myocarditis – 1,047 (Pfizer) + 414 (AZ) + 256 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 1,723
Infections – 10,568 (Pfizer) + 19,679 (AZ) + 1,861 (Moderna) + 136 (Unknown) = 32,244
Herpes – 2,048 (Pfizer) + 2,639 (AZ) + 208 (Moderna) + 20 (Unknown) = 4915
Blindness – 142 (Pfizer) + 309 (AZ) + 23 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 478
Eye Disorders – 7,310 (Pfizer) + 14,641 (AZ) + 1,276 (Moderna) + 82 (Unknown) = 23,309
Deafness – 268 (Pfizer) + 418 (AZ) + 40 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 730
Skin Disorders – 31,329 (Pfizer) + 52,749 (AZ) + 11,702 (Moderna) + 308 (Unknown) = 96,088
Psychiatric Disorders – 9,307 (Pfizer) + 18,117 (AZ) + 2,075 (Moderna) + 104 (Unknown) = 29,603
Headaches & Migraines – 33,635 (Pfizer) + 93,545 (AZ) + 8,280 (Moderna) + 323 (Unknown) = 135,783
Vomiting – 4,914 (Pfizer) + 11,594 (AZ) + 1,587 (Moderna) + 59 (Unknown) = 18,154
Nervous System Disorders – 75,192 (Pfizer) + 180,996 (AZ) + 17,398 (Moderna) + 816 (Unknown) = 274,402
Strokes and CNS haemorrhages – 707 (Pfizer) + 2,245 (AZ) + 34 (Moderna) + 13 (Unknown) = 2,999
Guillain-Barré Syndrome – 83 (Pfizer) + 483 (AZ) + 9 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 581
Facial Paralysis including Bell’s Palsy – 1,001 (Pfizer) + 978 (AZ) + 119 (Moderna) + 10 (Unknown) = 2,108
Tremor – 2,020 (Pfizer) + 9,897 (AZ) + 570 (Moderna) + 50 (Unknown) = 13,538
Seizures – 1,023 (Pfizer) + 2,028 (AZ) + 232 (Moderna) + 16 (Unknown) = 3,299
Paralysis – 463 (Pfizer) + 855 (AZ) + 81 (Moderna) + 8 (Unknown) = 1,407
Respiratory Disorders – 19,633 (Pfizer) + 29,211 (AZ) + 3,489 (Moderna) + 185 (Unknown) = 52,518
Reproductive/Breast Disorders – 27,738 (Pfizer) + 20,196 (AZ) + 4,211 (Moderna) + 177 (Unknown) = 52,322
CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE SPECIAL REPORT
Suspected side effects reported in individuals under 18
Pfizer – 3,000,000 children (1st doses) plus 900,000 second doses resulting in 2,471 Yellow Cards
AZ – 11,600 children (1st doses) plus 10,000 second doses resulting in 248 Yellow Cards – Reporting rate 1 in 47
Moderna – 21,500 children (1st doses) and 16,000 second doses resulting in 16 Yellow cards
Brand Unspecified – 11 Yellow Cards
Total = 3,033,100 children injected
Total Yellow Cards Under 18s = 2,746
Full reports including 339 pages of specific reaction listings are here.
January 19, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK |
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