In this short video posted on BitChute in December 2021, Brittany Galvin gives an overview of what she had to do in the previous six months to report her vaccine adverse events to VAERS. She begins by sharing that she has once again received an email asking for information on her VAERS report1 that was initially entered in May 2021.
VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System2 that was first established in 1990. It is coadministered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The system is supposed to be an early warning signal for vaccine manufacturers and health experts to identify vaccines that may be triggering a higher than expected number of adverse events. One of the primary objectives of the program is to:3
“Provide a national safety monitoring system that extends to the entire general population for response to public health emergencies, such as a large-scale pandemic influenza vaccination program.”
Anyone can make a report to VAERS — both patients and health professionals can use this system to report health concerns they suspect may be connected to a vaccine. Health professionals are required to use it for all adverse events that occur after the COVID-19 emergency use shots, but since the system is passive, whether the reports actually get filed depends entirely on each individual living up to that responsibility.
The reports must contain all hospital records and any other relevant medical information. Unfortunately, as Galvin succinctly notes in her video, the system is not efficient, and the data may be woefully out of date. This has a significant impact on monitoring the effects of the COVID inoculation program since it’s possible the currently published death and adverse event rates may be reprehensibly different from reality.
Magnetized Mom Tries to Report Injury to VAERS
Galvin has created many social media videos to document her journey. This four-minute synopsis begins with her vaccinations in May and ends in November 2021. In June 2021, in an interview with Stew Peters4 during her third hospitalization in two weeks, Galvin recalls that after her first injection, she immediately experienced chills, fever and many of the symptoms that others are reporting.
In addition to this, within four to five hours after the first shot, her legs felt heavy, which she described as feeling like she was walking through mud or cement. The experience left her nervous before the second dose. She put off getting the second shot for as long as she could. While she experienced no immediate symptoms after the second injection, on Day 13 her life changed.
Initially, she thought she had a seizure but later learned that her muscles had suddenly “seized up.” She passed out and reported severe pain in her head when she regained consciousness. Originally, the doctors believe she had had either a stroke or a seizure.
She was sent home from the first hospitalization with a diagnosis of pericarditis but when her symptoms didn’t get better, she was admitted two more times. On the third admission in two weeks, a neurologist told her that she had Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) because of the Moderna injection. In addition, she was also diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).
Stew Peters comments that this was the first time he and others on his team had heard a doctor admit the adverse events were from a genetic therapy COVID-19 shot, yet Galvin reports that the physicians and nurses who treated her told her they had seen many patients with adverse events after the shots.5
Galvin reports the first question she was asked at each of the three ER visits was had she gotten a vaccine, when and which one? This suggests that health care officials and hospitals are aware of adverse events that are not reported in mainstream media.
She told Peters that she has never been against vaccines but didn’t want this one. She took it so she could go back to work. Instead of listening to her intuition, she listened to the shaming and the commercials that said if you didn’t have a vaccine you’d have to live differently. Now she wonders why all the people who have been concerned about people who died from the infection aren’t as concerned about dying from the vaccine.
Galvin’s social media page was originally filled with videos she had taken of herself, placing metal objects on her body that stuck because she was inexplicably “magnetized.” She reports that the doctors in the hospital have also placed metal objects on her skin and have seen with their own eyes that she is magnetized.
In addition, the MRI tech discovered that his body was also magnetized after seeing Galvin demonstrate how a spoon could attach to her body. As of January 2022, she is eight months into the reporting process to VAERS and has been advised by VAERS staff that it may be another six to 12 months before her case is posted.6
VAERS Has Only 50 People Processing Reports
Galvin has created several videos talking about the journey she’s been on trying to report her adverse events to VAERS. In a video posted in January 2022 on Odysee,7 Galvin recorded her phone conversation with an investigator from VAERS to discuss why her report filed in late May 2021 had not yet been counted in the system.
In one conversation she learned that the process takes many steps through different departments. The first stop for the VAERS reports is in a department with only 50 employees.8 Once the package of information is completed by this department, it is sent to a team of nurses who read and review every page.
If the staff have any concerns or if they feel they need more information, the package will be sent back to the first department for further information gathering.9 According to the recorded conversation, one investigator suggested that since anyone can make a report to the system, it’s possible there could be multiple reports for an individual and that this may be a reason why Galvin received multiple requests for information to complete her VAERS report.
And, that’s what did happen: There were two VAERS reports in the system for Galvin, one submitted by Galvin, and another submitted by Moderna. The VAERS report was still missing hospital information, which had been requested several times through the medical records department of the hospital. The VAERS investigator acknowledged that the reporting is a long process and explained:10
“The hospitals, a lot of them are not sending the records. My last two reports where they said, “We didn’t receive the requests.” Well, I’m like, OK, is this your fax number. “Yes, this is our fax number” … so, a lot of them are not sending the records when we ask for it.”
Galvin expressed her concern that there were hundreds of thousands of people like her and just 50 VAERS employees trying to process these reports. It could be months before the CDC receives the report of her vaccine injuries that can be published.11
“Meanwhile the whole government is trying to force everyone to get this thing. Lying to the people telling them that “no one has gotten GBS from it” but here I sit barely able to walk and my case isn’t going to be ‘technically’ reported because the CDC hasn’t investigated yet because the hospitals are dragging their feet … it’s like a revolving crazy door and all of us humans on this planet and in this country are being lied to, and it’s unfair.”
More Reasons Why Adverse Events Are Underreported
At the end of the conversation with the investigator, Galvin learned that while her report was filed in May 2021, it wasn’t assigned to someone at VAERS until September or November 2021.12 In addition to short-staffing at VAERS and hospitals dragging their feet to produce the documentation needed to support claims, there are other reasons why there is a significant underreporting factor in the system.
In the latter months of 2021, Deborah Conrad, certified physician assistant who worked as a hospitalist at a local hospital, stepped forward to speak to Del Bigtree at “The Highwire” about the lack of reporting to VAERS within her hospital. She also provided a voice recording of a conversation with the chief medical officer who chastised her for spending her time off to make the reports to VAERS for other physicians.13
The chief medical officer said: “There is a risk to the organization from a perspective of both underreporting and overreporting.”14 In other words, the lives of the patients were not the issue. And, despite the diligence done by VAERS investigators to ensure the reports are complete and accurate, the hospital must not overreport any injury.
It’s shocking that many physicians are still not aware of VAERS. Before 2020, the system was used primarily by pediatricians to report adverse events from childhood vaccines. Doctors were not educated on how to identify potential injuries, how to report them, or that they have a legal requirement to report all emergency use vaccine injuries.
In fact, this was one of the reasons used by Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, for pausing administration of the Johnson & Johnson jab when it was first revealed that individuals who took it had a higher risk of blood clots. She told ABC News:15
“One of the reasons for the pause was to make sure clinicians knew how to diagnose and treat this, but also to report it. Because we don’t know if we’ve missed some cases, whether the risk really is 1 in 1 million, or perhaps more than that.”
In addition to the lack of education, another reason why so few physicians report suspected injuries is because there are no penalties for failing to fulfill this legal responsibility. In other words, this passive reporting system is not enforced. As Conrad described in her interview with Bigtree, the forms are also long and tedious to fill out.16
Additionally, not all of Conrad’s colleagues agreed that the injuries should be reported because they didn’t want to believe that the vaccines could cause injury. Historically, vaccine injuries have been routinely underreported, even among pediatricians. A report published in late 2010, which has become known as the Lazarus Report after the principal investigator Ross Lazarus, found:17
“Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
More recently, a group of scientists used an engineering algorithm to determine the underreporting factor and found it had improved to 41, not less than 1% as had been reported 11 years earlier.18,19 This may be due in part to the media attention on VAERS. Nonetheless, there continues to be a significant underreporting factor indicating the numbers in VAERS20 are likely 41 times higher than published.
CDC and NIAID Imply Car Crashes Are Reported in VAERS
In addition to the underreporting factor and overworked VAERS employees that have created a large gap between the number of reports being submitted and the number being published, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky appear bent on completely discrediting VAERS.21
Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Walensky is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since the CDC co-manages VAERS you would expect that she would have at least a working knowledge of how the reports are accepted and verified before being published.
During testimony January 11, 2022, before the Senate, both Fauci and Walensky very clearly stated that any death after a vaccine could be reported to VAERS. Both used the example of an individual who gets vaccinated, hit by a car and dies.
They implied without outright stating that this death would also be recorded in VAERS and logged as a death related to the vaccine. In other words, they both skirted the issue without outright lying to the Senate. Walensky said:22
“The vaccine adverse event reporting system is a mandatory system of any event that happens after being vaccinated. So, if you get hit by a car tragically after being vaccinated, that gets reported in the vaccine adverse event reporting system, the VAERS system.
So, the vaccines are incredibly safe. They protect us against omicron. They protect us against delta. They protect us against COVID. They don’t protect us against every other form of mortality out there.”
However, it’s evident not all medical professionals are reporting adverse events. Yes, you can report a car accident death after a vaccine, but the verification process will weed out that death.
Overall, the shots have not protected people from getting Omicron, Delta or any other form of COVID, which Walensky made clear in a CNN interview the day before testifying before the Senate.23 And, it goes without saying, that there is no shot that protects anyone from all forms of mortality.
Immediately after her response, Walensky was asked if the CDC kept data on the number of people who have died as a result of the vaccine. And she answered: “Absolutely yes. I couldn’t give you the number off the top of my head, but our staff could absolutely get back in touch with you.”
So, while publicly denying that any deaths have occurred from the jabs, Walensky is basically admitting that the CDC is aware that there have been people who died from this “incredibly safe” vaccine. Fauci was then asked if he knew the number or “had any clue on that, and he said:”24
“I don’t know the number, but I think part of the confusion is that when you do a reporting, when you get vaccinated, and you walk out and get hit by a car that is considered a death.
That’s the thing that gets confusing, that everything that happens after the vaccination, even if you die of something completely obviously unrelated, it’s considered a death. So, if I had metastatic cancer, got vaccinated and died two weeks later, that’s a death that gets counted.”
Fauci’s statement only implies that the death is counted as a vaccine death. That is, until his example of having metastatic cancer, when he says, “that gets counted.” Until that point, neither Fauci nor Walensky said it was anything more than a death. Meaning that they didn’t specifically say it would be recorded as caused by the vaccine.
When Fauci said “that gets counted,” Walensky immediately jumped in to save the explanation with, “And every one of those is adjudicated.”25 In other words, each of the reports of death not in any way associated with the shot are removed from the record. But unless you are listening carefully, you will mistakenly be led to believe that VAERS is riddled with reports of injuries and deaths not caused by the shot.
Sources and References
February 17, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | CDC, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States, VAERS |
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On Tuesday, after weeks of international uncertainty and fears of conflict, Russia announced it would be pulling its troops back from the border with Ukraine. This news came after repeated assurances from President Vladimir Putin and officials that Moscow had no desire for war, and that troop movements and positioning were merely training exercises.
Markets immediately responded to this development with renewed optimism, as the Dow jumped 400 points, European stocks closed higher on Tuesday, and natural gas and power prices fell. However, one group curiously silent in light of the seemingly positive turn of events was the war hawks, goaded by Western media, intelligence, and politicians, who in the preceding hours had all but assured the public that an invasion and armed conflict were inevitable.
And while the establishment neo-cons and neo-libs may say that their hawkish warnings and preparations were simply the logical conclusion given the information available at the time, it’s important to remember that throughout the recent hysteria, there have been voices who attempted to pull back the mounting calls for war. However, rather than address their reasoning, the pro-war camp instead resorted to smears in order to justify their peculiar need to stoke tensions with another global superpower.
Specifically, in one attempt to contextualize the intelligence communities’ assurances that Russia’s troop actions were a build-up to aggression against Ukraine, Green Party member and former presidential candidate Jill Stein reminded her social media followers of how officials had not just been wrong about previous conflicts, but had actually lied to the public to garner support for action in Vietnam and Iraq, among other wars. Similarly, many of these same insiders had also been less than truthful about recent stories involving Julian Assange and Russiagate.
The general response to Dr. Stein’s post was positive overall, in keeping with polling which suggests the American public has no interest in involving their country in new foreign engagements. However, the reaction from the pro-war camp was to accuse Dr. Stein of being a Russian asset. Because, of course, what other reason could there be for someone to oppose costly military intervention based on shaky intelligence other than disloyalty to their own country?
And in this same vein, Tulsi Gabbard, another vocal anti-war advocate who has fiercely criticized interventionist American foreign policy, has also spent weeks warning of the conflicting interests motivating those banging the war drums. Often, as Gabbard has pointed out, officials who are most supportive of American military action overseas are also those who stand to gain monetarily through defense contracts and spending.
What’s more, Gabbard has even gone so far as to suggest that by encouraging Ukraine to join NATO, certain American actors might actually be trying to spark a new Cold War, not to benefit US security interests, but rather the military industrial complex. After all, historically, American policy has considered breaches in spheres of influence occurring in countries close to them, such as Cuba, to be acts of aggression. What makes Western encroachment in Ukraine any different?
As with Dr. Stein, however, sadly Gabbard’s criticisms were met with the usual accusations of being a foreign asset, with little to no attempt to address the actual substance of her position.
Across the aisle on the political right, one of the most prominent anti-war voices that has emerged is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has likewise been attacked for his views. Carlson has frequently devoted time on his program to questioning whether, regardless of Russia’s intentions, involving the US in Ukrainian affairs is in America’s best interests, especially at a time when domestic problems abound. Additionally, Carlson has been skeptical of political attempts to paint Ukraine as a Western-style democracy in order to garner public support for any potential alliances or interventions.
For his efforts, Carlson has received especially vicious condemnation from the likes of David Frum, who in 2003 accused those who were against military action in Iraq of being “unpatriotic.” In a scathing article in The Athletic, Frum accused Carlson and others on the antiwar right of spouting “Vladimir Putin’s talking points,” and ironically likened his position to “isolationists who hoped to profit politically from that passivity.”
Russia’s troop withdrawal may have temporarily neutered the pro-war momentum building in Western discourse. However, the overt hostility toward those who argue against escalating tensions with Russia may signal that it’s only a matter of time before establishment forces are once more arguing that it is not just beneficiary, but rather necessary, for Western militaries to strike before Russian forces can do the same.
Lauren Chen is a political and social commentator. She began as a YouTuber, and has since gained millions of views on the platform and hundreds of thousands of followers.
February 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Even toddlers will eventually be required to get annual Covid-19 jabs, an FDA official said in the undercover clip
© Project Veritas
Investigative outlet Project Veritas has released footage of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) executive claiming that annual Covid-19 vaccine jabs are on the way, even for children under five.
In part one of a two-part undercover video series, Christopher Cole, an executive officer with the FDA and head of the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, told a Project Veritas reporter he is involved in the “approval process for the various” Covid vaccines. In the video released on Tuesday, Cole claimed more jabs are in the pipeline for everyone and acknowledged the “money incentive” for companies like Pfizer to promote more vaccination.
“It’ll be a recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring… if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company,” Cole said of vaccine manufacturers. At another point in the footage, the FDA official also admitted that the very companies the FDA regulates dump “almost a billion dollars a year” into its budget.
Cole said even toddlers would be included in this annual shot requirement, though he conceded that there hasn’t been enough testing on the long-term effects of the vaccines on various groups, including young children and pregnant women. Asked how he knew such a mandate could be coming, he said: “Just from everything I’ve heard, [the FDA] are not going to not approve it.”
The annual jab would be “just like the flu shot,” Cole said, and required as the effectiveness of vaccines “wanes.”
The FDA released a statement responding to Veritas’ video on Wednesday, saying Cole “does not work on vaccine matters” and “does not represent the views of the FDA.”
US President Joe Biden has not endorsed an annual vaccine jab, but Cole said the president “wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” Biden’s health officials have also floated the idea of regular jabs. White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has been open in recent talks to the idea of booster shots being needed regularly, though he has not endorsed annual shots for everyone.
“It will depend on who you are,” he told the Financial Times last week. “But if you are a normal, healthy, 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years.”
February 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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A remarkable trove of documents has been created in New Zealand by an organisation called Te Punaha Matatini—Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa hosted by the University of Auckland but funded directly by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is headed by the wildly inaccurate Covid modeller Dr Shaun Hendy who once predicted 80,000 imminent New Zealand deaths (currently at 53 in NZ) and includes the participation of academics from universities across New Zealand.
The documents are remarkable because they indicate the genesis of the unique and blinkered pandemic perspective of our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern which has diverged from that followed among other countries and from that found in global science publishing.
The documents in some cases exhibit in their referenced material, a lack of awareness of the extensive content of global science publishing on the pandemic.
One paper of particular interest is entitled:
Evaluating the infodemic: assessing the prevalence and nature of COVID-19 unreliable and untrustworthy information in Aotearoa New Zealand’s social media, January-August 2020
It is hardly remarkable that the New Zealand government uses sophisticated computer systems to closely monitor the social media content of its citizens (what government doesn’t?), but the methods used and the starting point of evaluation are highly indicative of where the repressive and controlling New Zealand Labour government Covid policy began:
- The paper accepts a number of controversial ideas as true at face value such as the zoonotic origin of Covid-19. It describes discussion of a bioengineered origin of Covid in a Chinese lab as Xenophobia and a conspiracy trope, when it actually was, at the time the article was published, a matter of general scientific debate.
- Table 2 (excerpted above) designates some common types of scientific discussion around Covid-19 as ‘disinformation’, most of which were actually the subject of science publishing even in mid 2020. It dismisses them as fallacious without justification. Subsequent data analysis has upheld them in large part. Yet the rejection by Ardern of their moderating tone, was and is used to stoke fear in the whole population.
- Concepts of herd immunity since found to play a highly significant role in reducing Covid severity are dismissed as oversimplification and misrepresentation despite their verified and time-honoured role in developing human immunity.
- Assertions that Covid-19 disproportionately affects those already ill with comorbidities or the aged (a highly verified fact) are outrageously dismissed as the result of ableism.
- Table 3 in the paper asserts additionally that suggestions that the vaccine might have adverse effects or may alter DNA is a conspiracy theory. Subsequently there have been over 1000 papers published worldwide examining the deficiencies in mRNA vaccination safety and adverse effects reporting including evidence published late in 2020 that RNA vaccine genetic sequences can and do integrate into the human genome.
- Mainstream scientists like Dr. Simon Thornley, media personalities like Mike Hosking, and politicians including Gerry Brownlee are described as using conspiracy theories to recruit NZers to right wing causes. All of whom should rightly have been described as high profile public figures stimulating discussion around political and scientific policies affecting a complex subject. The attempt to marginalise Ardern’s political opponents is obvious.
- The paper rejects health and wellbeing narratives, many of which are in fact grounded in mainstream medical advice, as misleading. Thus it specifically rejects self-care options. Yet prior and subsequent research has found many of these lifestyle and dietary options to be helpful if not critical to healthy Covid outcomes and avoidence of serious illness. These include adequate rest, exercise, a balanced diet, and nutritional supplements.
- This rejection of the value of wellbeing programmes has found its obvious conclusion in the formation of New Zealand government mandates. Yet the paper describes the suspicion that there are hidden government agendas to introduce ‘forced vaccination regimes’ as an ‘opportunistic conspiracy theory’. As we now know, these suspicions voiced early on social media are almost indistinguishable from the actual oppressive New Zealand vaccination mandates which Ardern eventually introduced denying employment and impoverishing those wishing to avoid risk and continue to make their own medical choices.
The push to introduce the censorship of scientific information and discussion that characterises the Ardern government is evident throughout the paper. Specific individual scientists tied to the government by both ideology, and in some cases by financial support, are picked out as people who should be the public’s sole sources of reliable information. These include: microbiologist Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles, physicist Professor Shaun Hendy, and epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker.
The paper says the aim of government messaging should take the form of ‘branding’ designed to teach the public to trust the government alone. Something so close to propaganda as to be almost indistinguishable.
Emphasis in social media on ‘individual rights’ is described as an undesirable import from America. Ardern’s more recent rejection of protests as ‘imported ideas’ echoes Trudeau’s recent dismissal of protestors as ‘taking up space’, both of which hint at exclusionary agendas to come.
In conclusion the paper hints that ‘simply relying on the successful multi-faceted science and public health communication approaches of the government earlier in the pandemic will not be sufficient to debunk’ what it describes as ‘increasing prevalence of conspiracy theories about state control and individual rights’.
And continues:‘a wide-ranging response to the increasing discussion of unreliable sources, untrustworthy narrators, and conspiracy narratives in media, political, and civil society discourses is required’.
It further reports that a computational methodology and process for on-going monitoring of the prevalence of mis- and dis-information, and conspiracy narratives, within Aotearoa New Zealand’s social and mainstream media ecosystems has been established. It describes public access to a plethora of social media platforms, as a problem that needs to be addressed.
The very limited scientific outlook of Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is evident in the many other papers it has produced for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In particular, their narrative has diverged in content from trends now well-understood through published data analysis around the world, including:
- The strident saturation advertising of Covid-19 mRNA vaccination referring to its absolute safety.
- The Ardern doctrine that the government should be the public’s only source of information.
- The confidence Ardern extends to tentative and often subsequently falsified science without feeling the need to update policy.
- The encouragement the government has offered to social media sites to censor content.
- The politicisation of NZ’s Covid-19 policy.
Obviously, the paper and others may have fuelled and validated Ardern’s limited understanding of science. Science is a global, rational, empirical endeavour to arrive at truth, not a process tailor-made to support ideology.
Perhaps its most frightening consequence is Ardern’s rejection of the notion of individual health rights which has obvious historical parallels.
Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a food testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID)
February 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New Zealand |
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Experts who spoke out against lockdowns were labelled as pseudo-scientists who possessed fringe ideas, because pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on social media, particularly Twitter.
Data Science expert Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, has compared the expertise of the experts who signed The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) with those who signed The John Snow Memorandum.
The GBD argued that vulnerable people should be shielded and that everyone else be allowed to get on with their lives in order to build natural immunity against the virus. They warned lockdowns would be devastating for public health and the economy.
The signatories of the Snow Memorandum argued that it would be unethical to let the virus rip, therefore lockdown was essential.
According to The Telegraph :
In an article published in BMJ Open Research, he (Professor Ioannidis) found that both letters were authored by very influential experts, but that the John Snow Memorandum authors had a far greater reach on social media, which made it appear that their view had more support.
By November 2021, just four key signatories of the GBD had more than 50,000 Twitter followers, compared with 13 of the key authors of the JSM.
Prof Ioannidis concluded: “Both the Great Barrington Declaration and John Snow Memorandum include many stellar scientists, but JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.
“GBD is clearly not a fringe minority report compared with JSM, as many social media and media allude.
“If knowledgeable scientists can have a strong social media presence, massively communicating accurate information to followers, the effect may be highly beneficial.
“Conversely, if scientists themselves are affected by the same problems (misinformation, animosity, loss of decorum and disinhibition, among others) when they communicate in social media, the consequences may be negative.”
Prof Ioannidis also said signatories of the JSM had contributed to the vilification of authors of the GBD through their tweets and op-eds.
John Ioannidis is right on when he says that social media skewed the debate in favour of the lockdown evangelicals, but he has missed one very important point. He seems to have overlooked shadow banning.
It shouldn’t have really mattered that pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on Twitter than their Great Barrington Declaration counterparts.
Twitter and Facebook worked in tandem from the outset of the scamdemic to amplify the posts of academics who supported lockdowns while at the same time limiting the reach of experts who opposed the tyrannical measures.
This meant that users were many times more likely to read pro-lockdown propaganda than they were to read the opinions of sceptics. The social media firms use not very sophisticated algorithms to ensure that their users read what they want them to read.
It’s happening today. The Welsh government has announced plans to give covid jabs to children over five years-old. England will announce later this week.
There are tens of thousands of doctors and scientists who are horrified at the prospect of jabbing young children with an unproven medicine that they do not need.
You and I know who they are, but the majority of people do not. This is because they will never see these experts in their news feeds. Free speech has no greater enemy than social media.
February 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Twitter |
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In late January, the CDC published a report that made what might have been regarded as a shocking claim. If you have had Covid, the CDC demonstrated in a chart, you gain robust immunity that is better than that of vaccination, especially concerning duration.
That should be nothing surprising. Brownstone has chronicled 150 studies making that point. What made this new chart different was that it came from the CDC, which has buried the point so deeply for so long as to amount to a near denial.
So there: the CDC says it. So nonchalant! So uneventful!
If people had understood this two years ago, plus been made more completely aware of the dramatic risk gradient by age and health, lockdowns would have been completely untenable.
The society-wide mandates and lockdowns depended on keeping the public ignorant on settled points of cell biology and immunology, plus pressuring social media companies to censor anyone who didn’t fall in line. Here we are all this time later and the truth is coming out.
Had the knowledge of risk gradients and immunities been in the forefront of policy makers’ minds – instead of wild fear and obsequious deference to Fauci – we would have focused on protecting the vulnerable and otherwise allowed society to function normally so that the virus would become endemic. We would not only have saved thousands of lives; we could have avoided the vast economic, educational, cultural, and public-health wreckage all around us.
Somehow at the time, that point was made unsayable for reasons on which we can only speculate. And yet today, the New York Times had said exactly this. In a piece by David Leonhardt called Protecting the Vulnerable, he writes:
With the Omicron wave receding, many places are starting to remove at least some of their remaining pandemic restrictions. This shift could have large benefits. It could reduce the isolation and disruption that have contributed to a long list of societal ills, like rising mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime and, as Substack’s Matthew Yglesias has written, “all kinds of bad behavior.”
At the same time, there remain those who are vulnerable and they deserve protection: “They include the elderly and people with immunodeficiencies that put them at greater Covid risk. According to the C.D.C., more than 75 percent of vaccinated people who have died from Covid had at least four medical risk factors.”
You can read that again: unhealthy but vaccinated people still die. What these people need is to enjoy the protection of herd immunity, the point at which the virus exhausts itself in the face of widespread immunity.
If you have followed this debate, you know exactly the origin of that precise idea now being pushed in part by Leonhardt: The Great Barrington Declaration. This is the document on which Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci ordered a media hit back in October 2020. It advocated nothing more than traditional public health measures as a moderate solution between lockdowns and complete negligence of the virus threat.
As decent as this article is, it overlooks a huge issue, namely why would non-vulnerable populations be forced to get a non-durable vaccine with risks when natural immunity is a known option? Leonhardt doesn’t go there but he should have.
Today, even Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune. He told the Financial Times:
“There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”
Further:
As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”
Again, this is straight out of the Great Barrington Declaration, almost to a word, but without acknowledgement.
There can be no question that early on in lockdowns, Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO all decided to bury the point that we would get to endemicity the same way we always have.
How did that happen? Paul Allan Offit is an epidemiologist who advises (or did advise) the Biden administration in the early days. He is not my favorite guy but, as things go, he is no Anthony Fauci. He seems sincere and intelligent.
Offit variously appears on podcasts. Last week, he let slip an astonishing thing. He said that early on in the pandemic, he met at the White House with Walensky, Fauci, Collins, and one other person. The topic was whether the Biden administration should recognize natural immunity to Covid — the most well-established fact about cell biology. He and one other person said absolutely. The rest said no.
Here is the remarkable clip.
Offit is fascinating in this interview because it was pretty clear to him that he was revealing something very important but he did not know whether this was going to be some kind of problem. He then proceeded to tell the story. He did not speculate about the reasons. He was smiling and laughing throughout the interview.
The immunity passports in place in three of the biggest American cities (though DC just repealed its own), the entire public sector, plus the attempt to impose them on the whole of the private sector, probably constitute the most invasive, aggressive, and controversial public policy since the Vietnam War draft. It all could have been fixed by a recognition of the immunological reality: the exposed and recovered are protected. That point of science was rejected by Fauci, Collins, and Walensky. The whole Biden administration went along.
We didn’t know until last week that this Offit meeting had even occurred. And surely this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that time goes on, the more questions are piling up about this gang that wrecked liberty in the US after Inauguration Day 2021, a time when they could have reversed all the restrictions but instead went the other way.
Central to the concern here is what precisely happened in February 2020 to cause Fauci to forge plans to lock down the entire American economy for a virus that he previously said repeatedly could not be stopped. Why did he change his mind? We have plenty of evidence that his change of mind was related to his fear — real or imagined — that the pathogen was made in a lab and was leaked either deliberately or accidentally and that he would likely bear responsibility. Fauci and his friends were on burner phones for weeks and holding secret meetings. The HHS document ordering lockdowns were all forged in these weeks.
If the Republicans take back Congress, they are going to have a real time discovering the inner workings of the deep state here, if they find the courage to look deeply enough. That such an obvious and settled point of science became taboo for a time is truly a scandal for the ages. Now we know that it was a deliberate decision. Why? And why are we only now hearing about it, long after knowing this truth might have saved so much destruction?
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
February 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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In 2017, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), citing “mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.” A few hours later, Israel followed suit, with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing the organisation as “a theatre of the absurd.” The Israeli ambassador to the UN at the time, Danny Danon, opined, “Today is a new day at the UN where there is a price to pay for discrimination against Israel.” On 1 January 2019, the US and Israel officially left the organisation.
Last year, though, the US announced its intention to re-join UNESCO, “to counter Chinese influence or promote other US interests,” reported Reuters. The Jerusalem Post added that Israel has no intention of rejoining, although last year Foreign Minister Yair Lapid considered following in America’s footsteps, arguing that Israel’s absence from UNESCO had no effect on “anti-Israel bias”. He also admitted that Israel’s decision to quit UNESCO made it difficult to influence foreign policy.
To rejoin UNESCO, the US Congress would have to waive a bill that prevents Washington from funding international organisations which accept the Palestinian Authority as a full member. The US decision is said to have been influenced by UNESCO changing its approach towards Israel, while America is expected to counter any anti-Israel bias, following talks between Israeli and US officials.
Israel had opposed UNESCO’s designations of Palestinian heritage sites, which it described as erasing history and memory. Never mind that Israel is built upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of their collective memory and sites. Perhaps the biggest and most obvious erasure in Israeli memory is that the settler-colonial state did not exist prior to the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and so neither Palestinians nor UNESCO can be faulted for designating Palestinian heritage sites which date from well before Israel was created as “Palestinian”.
Moreover, accusing UNESCO of anti-Israel bias follows no logic, given that UNESCO has recognised sites as pertaining to Israeli heritage, including Tel-Aviv’s “White City”, which means that the organisation has also legitimised Israel’s violent settler-colonial origins and existence. If Israel decides to follow Lapid’s suggestion, UNESCO is expected to increase the number of heritage sites attributed to Israel.
For now, the US is expected to pave the way for Israel’s return, hence the Israeli government’s insistence that it will not oppose the Biden administration’s decision to re-join the UN body. Meanwhile, Israel will seek to extort further concessions, all the while planning to return to the organisation and condescend to grace UNESCO with its presence, rather than a reappearance gloating at having colonised and appropriated more Palestinian land, history and memory.
This whole gimmicky process makes Israel’s accusations of international institutions harbouring “anti-Israel bias” collapse. All international institutions have legitimised Israel’s origins and existence, despite violations of international law and war crimes committed by Zionist paramilitary gangs prior to 1948, and in the uniforms of the “Israel Defence Forces” from then to the present day. The debacle of departing and hinting at returning is a ploy for colonial gain, and for such gain to be recognised by international resolutions and declarations. America’s return to UNESCO will thus work in Israel’s favour. It wouldn’t do so otherwise.
February 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, UNESCO, United States, Zionism |
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At nearly no other time in history has there been this level of fear generated across the world as experienced thus far in 2020 and 2021. The depth and breadth of the strategies used to stoke those fears has been overwhelming.
Emergency use authorizations for drugs that have not proven to be effective in trials,1,2 public mask mandates for which there is no scientific evidence3,4,5 and the suppression and censorship of health information has boosted public fear over a viral illness with a survival rate of over 99%.6
Unfortunately, many of the early effective treatment strategies that can be used at home have also fallen victim to censorship. Ivermectin is one of those strategies. In a computational analysis of the Omicron variant against several therapeutic agents, data show that ivermectin had the best results.7
Yet, as you look objectively at what’s been happening across the world, the fear being generated is not one-sided. The suppression of information by corporations, government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry is one indication of their concern and how far they’re willing to go to ensure the level of fear remains high enough to manipulate behavior.
Consider the statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2019, 4.6% of the U.S. population was diagnosed with heart disease.8 The population at the end of 2019 was 328,239,523.9 This means there were 15,099,018 people with heart disease in the U.S. in 2019. There were 696,962 people who died that year from heart disease,10 which is a death rate of 4.6%.
This is 20 times greater than the death rate from COVID-19. Yet these same agencies were not lobbying for mandates against soda or sugar-laden foods; they weren’t banning smoking and they weren’t mandating exercise — all heart disease risk factors.11
The censorship and suppression of information has hobbled early treatment of COVID-19 in many western nations. Through 2020, public health experts12,13 and the mainstream media14,15 warned against the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Both are on the World Health Organization’s list of essential drugs,16 but the benefits have been ignored by public health officials and buried by the media.
Newest Ivermectin Study Showed Best Results Against COVID
This study on Cornell University’s preprint website has not yet been peer-reviewed. Researchers used a computational analysis to look at the Omicron variant, which has demonstrated a lower clinical presentation and lower hospital admission rates.17
After having retrieved the complete genome sequence and collecting 30 variants from the database, the researchers analyzed 10 drugs against the virus, including:
- Nirmatrelvir
- Ritonvir
- Ivermectin
- Lopinavir
- Boceprevir
- MPro 13b
- MPro N3
- GC-373
- GC376
- PF-00835231
The researchers found that each of the drugs had some degree of effectiveness against the virus and most were currently in clinical trials. They used molecular docking to find that the mutations in the Omicron variant didn’t significantly affect the interaction between the drugs and the main protease.
An analysis of all 10 drugs found that ivermectin was the most effective drug candidate against the Omicron variant. The testing included Nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid), which is the new protease inhibitor for which the FDA provided an emergency use authorization against COVID in December 2021.18
In other words, Pfizer released a new drug which cost the U.S. taxpayers $5.29 billion or $529 per course of treatment19 and which received an EUA despite the availability of a similar drug that has proven to be more effective and is cheaper, priced between $4820 and $9521 for 20 pills depending on your location.
How Ivermectin Works
Ivermectin is best known for its antiparasitic properties.22 Yet, the drug also has antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties. Studies have shown that ivermectin helps to lower the viral load by inhibiting replication.23 A single dose of ivermectin can kill 99.8% of the virus within 48 hours.24
A meta-analysis in the American Journal of Therapeutics25 showed the drug reduced infection by an average of 86% when used preventively. An observational study26 in Bangladesh evaluated the effectiveness of ivermectin as a prophylaxis for COVID-19 in health care workers.
The data showed four of the 58 volunteers who took 12 mg of ivermectin once a month for four months developed mild COVID symptoms as compared to 44 of the 60 health care workers who declined the medication.
Ivermectin has also been shown to speed recovery, in part by inhibiting inflammation and protecting against organ damage.27 This pathway also lowers the risk of hospitalization and death. Meta analyses have shown an average reduction in mortality that ranges from 75%28 to 83%.29,30
Additionally, the drug also prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 when taken before or after exposure.31 Added together, these benefits make it clear that ivermectin could all but eliminate this pandemic.
Early Intervention Lowers Long COVID and Hospitalization
Some people who have had COVID-19 seem to be unable to fully recover and complain of lingering symptoms of chronic fatigue. Others struggle with mental health problems. One study,32,33 in November 2020, found 18.1% of people who had COVID-19 received their first psychiatric diagnosis in the 14 to 90 days after recovery. Most commonly diagnosed conditions were anxiety disorders, insomnia and dementia.
These symptoms have come to be called long COVID, long-haul COVID, post-COVID syndrome, chronic COVID or long-haul syndrome. They all refer to symptoms that persist for four more weeks after an initial COVID-19 infection. According to Dr. Peter McCullough, board-certified internist and cardiologist, 50% of those who have been sick enough to be hospitalized will have symptoms of long COVID:34
“So, the sicker someone is, and the longer the duration of COVID, the more likely they are to have long COVID syndrome. That’s the reason why we like early treatment. We shorten the duration of symptoms and there’s less of a chance for long COVID syndrome.”
Some of the common symptoms of long COVID include shortness of breath, joint pain, memory, concentration or sleeping problems, muscle pain or headache and loss of smell or taste. According to McCullough, a paper presented by Dr. Bruce Patterson at the International COVID Summit in Rome, September 11 to 14,35 2021:36
“… showed that in individuals who’ve had significant COVID illness, 15 months later the s1 segment of the spike protein is recoverable from human monocytes. That means the body literally has been sprayed with the virus and it spends 15 months, in a sense, trying to clean out the spike protein from our tissues. No wonder people have long COVID syndrome.”
It should come as no surprise that studies have also confirmed that early intervention improves mortality37 and reduces hospitalizations.38 Perhaps one of the greatest crimes in this whole pandemic is the refusal by reigning health authorities to issue early treatment guidance.
Instead, they’ve done everything possible to suppress remedies shown to work. Patients were simply told to stay home and do nothing. Once the infection had worsened to the point of near-death, patients were told to go to the hospital, where most were routinely placed on mechanical ventilation — a practice that was quickly discovered to be lethal.
However, as the featured study39 and others have demonstrated,40 ivermectin is one of the successful treatment protocols that can be used against SARS-CoV-2.
Africa Has Lowest Case and Death Rate, Likely From Ivermectin
Across the world, countries have taken different approaches to address the spread of the virus.41 The steps taken in Africa varied depending on the country, yet the infection and death rates were relatively stable and low across the continent.42
In the last year there have been reports of small areas in the world where the number of infections, deaths or case-fatality rates have been significantly lower than the rest of the world. For example, India’s Uttar Pradesh State43 reported a recovery rate of 98.6% and no further infections.
However, the entire continent of Africa appears to have sidestepped the massive number of infections and deaths predicted for these poorly funded countries with overcrowded cities. Early estimations were that millions would die, but that scenario has not materialized. The World Health Organization has called Africa “one of the least affected regions in the world.”44
There are several factors that may influence the infection rate in Africa. A study from Japan demonstrates that after just 12 days that doctors were allowed to legally prescribe Ivermectin to their patients, the cases dropped dramatically.45
The chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association46 had noticed the low number of infections and deaths in Africa, where many use ivermectin prophylactically and as the core strategy to treat onchocerciasis,47 a parasitic disease also known as river blindness. More than 99% of people infected with river blindness live in 31 African countries.
In addition to ivermectin use in Africa, other medications are also commonly available, such as hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which have long been used in the treatment and prevention of malaria,48 also endemic in Africa.49 In America, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has published successful results using hydroxychloroquine and zinc against COVID-19.50,51,52
Finally, Artemisia annua, also known as sweet wormwood, is an herb used in combination therapies to treat malaria.53 It was used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years to treat fever. Today artemisinin, a metabolite of Artemisia, is the current therapeutic option for malaria. The plant has also been studied since the 2003 SARS outbreak for the treatment of coronaviruses, with good results.54,55
In other words, whether by design or default, the medications that have proven to be successful against the virus are commonly used in Africa for other health conditions. While Pfizer tests the short- and long-term effects of a genetic experiment on Israel’s population,56 it appears one continent has demonstrated administration of a 30-year-old, inexpensive drug with a known safety profile could reduce the cases, severity and mortality from this infection.
The question that must be asked and answered to get to the bottom of this plandemic is what is blinding mainstream media, government agencies, public health experts, medical associations, doctors, nurses, and your next-door neighbor from recognizing and speaking out in support of science?
Sources and References
February 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Covid-19, FDA, United States |
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Democrats repress dissent to stay in power
In 2005, President George W. Bush allegedly addressed a meeting of Republicans discussing whether to renew the Patriot Act due to its possible unconstitutionality by angrily blurting out that the Constitution was “just a goddamned piece of paper!” If the story is true, it partly explains the numerous crimes committed by Bush and his associates, including the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq based on hyped and even fabricated intelligence. It also suggests the unwillingness of proponents of overriding executive authority to accept that the American people are the inheritors of a number of inalienable liberties to include freedom of speech and association, both of which were impacted negatively by the Patriot Act and the other legislation that followed.
I often think of George Bush when I observe the antics of Joe Biden and his claque of Trotskyites at work. To be sure, thanks to the Bill of Rights you can currently say anything you want in the United States, though there are limits on that freedom if one goes so far as to offend those who are powerful. If you do upset the oligarchs who run our country through corruption of public officials, they have a thousand ways to get you. I recently wrote an article on the use of lawfare to block people and views one objects to by taking them to court on some pretext and bankrupting them through legal fees and penalties. The court system hardly represents the people in any country. It is inevitably heavily politicized by the politicians that grant it its authority and ultimately represents the big money interests that the judges consider their real peers in the Establishment.
The United States government has in fact embraced the suppression of unpopular views and the nations and groups that it finds offensive through the use of sanctions, which are essentially punishments doled out arbitrarily as the government can issue a sanction on its own authority without having to provide any evidence or make a case. And when the White House sanctions a foreign government or group, secondary sanctions kick in to prevent anyone from exchanging goods or services with the targeted entity. I recently was on the receiving end of a Department of the Treasury demand that I stop writing for a foreign website which had been sanctioned. I was warned that I might be subject to a $311,562 fine if I failed to comply. Insofar as I could determine, the foreign website was only guilty of having strongly condemned United States foreign policy, as do I and many other Americans, but the threat of the government coming down with its thousands of lawyers meant that I and other US contributors terminated our relationship.
The federal government was telling us that we had a right to free speech and association except in cases where we were interacting with groups that the Treasury Department disapproved of. In a system as hopelessly corrupted as the US federal government, it is inevitable that powerful groups will surface that will be able to dictate what is acceptable and what is not. That very often comes down to what might once have been regarded as free speech and association issues. The Democratic Party might reasonably be described as a group of satrapies representing certain special interests, most visibly homo-and transsexuals, “choice” women, blacks and Jews. The balancing act required to keep all the subsets under control frequently strains credibility. Joe Biden recently made an impassioned speech demanding that the so-called Equal Rights Amendment should immediately become part of the Constitution because it is “the clear will of the American people.” Ironically, Joe heads a government that believes that gender discrimination is okay as long as it is directed against white men. He is also currently pushing for national education reform, which some refer to as either dumbing down or reverse racism, to bring more “diversity” and “equity” into the system. Doing so of course will require Affirmative Action style discrimination based on race and the president is also pledged to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice based solely on skin color and gender, not on qualifications or preparation for the position. Other candidates need not apply even if they are better qualified and “equal rights” depend on who you are in the Democratic Party pecking order. Leondra Kruger, reportedly a leading candidate is black, a woman and also Jewish.
So Joe Biden either understands the meaning of the words and expressions he uses, or he doesn’t. He probably thinks it doesn’t matter as he is speaking to a receptive and not very critical audience, which includes his mainstream media allies. And there is also his Chief of Staff Ron Klain there to poke him in the ribs when he is hesitating and has to say anything or look presidential.
In another speech in Atlanta regarding the so-called “right to vote,” Honest Joe explicitly compared skeptics in the Senate who would prefer to have the states determine who is a legal resident and citizen for voting purposes to historic racists Bull Connors and George Wallace. He then denied that he had been calling the dissidents out as racists. George Orwell’s “newspeak” is definitely on the way as the “right to vote” is little more than a pious slogan that is an invitation to widespread electoral fraud benefiting the Democrats through mail-in voting and registration without documentation.
And there is of course Israel, which has an entire government department dedicated to the propagation of expressions like “holocaust denial, “surging anti-Semitism” and “right to defend oneself.” January 27th was International Holocaust Remembrance Day and some of the antics engaged in by presumably well-educated adult politicians and government officials perhaps offer a glimpse into what is coming in terms of the waning ability to speak one’s mind. The United Nations approved an Israeli motion calling for a crackdown on “holocaust denial,” and the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan demanded that such content be banned from social networking media worldwide. He claimed that “Holocaust denial has spread like a cancer. It has spread under our watch. It has spread because people have chosen to be irresponsible and to avoid accountability…As you dodge responsibility, evil grows… Social media giants can no longer remain complacent to the hate that spreads on their platforms.”
To be accurate, the “avoiding accountability” claim sounds more reminiscent of Israeli and US behavior than that of those social media sites alleged to be in denial. And the malady appears to have taken hold in “liberal” Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denounced protesting truckers as “fascists” and “racists.” He is beginning to sound like Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett and I am waiting for the “domestic terrorist” and/or “anti-Semite” label to be applied to quell what is a genuine populist reaction to draconian government policies. To cite Orwell again, what Israel, Canada and the United States understand is that when it comes to establishing the preferred narrative “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past… The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” Labeling opponents as racists or Nazis delegitimizes them so you will not have to deal with their grievances or arguments, which is precisely what is intended.
The irony is that free speech is already a distant memory in many countries. Orwell opined that “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” Constitutions guaranteeing a right to free speech proliferate in the Old World but are ignored or circumvented by governments, particularly if one is addressing almost anything having to do with the Second World War. Witness how in Europe the issue of presumed “holocaust denial,” now sometimes referred to in the US as “holocaust denialism” as if it were a disease, has been widely criminalized. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the negation or revision of “clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Bear in mind that “holocaust denial” includes any questioning of any aspect of the standard narrative endorsed by the US and other governments. Interestingly, a bit of pushback against a holocaust exemption for free speech appeared in an issue of Foreign Policy magazine, entitled “First they came for the Holocaust Deniers and I did not speak out”. The author Jacob Mchangama observes how hate speech and similar legislation has an unfortunate tendency to propagate and be used by governments to block all kinds of speech and writing that is actually quite innocent of any agenda but disapproved of by those in power. He cites how in 2014 a Russian blogger named Vladimir Luzgin was arrested and imprisoned after writing quite innocently on social media that Communist Russia and Nazi Germany collaborated to invade Poland in 1939 and thus began World War 2. His account was undoubtedly historically accurate, but the way it was presented offended someone in power and he was found guilty of misrepresenting the accepted narrative relating to the “Great Patriotic War against Germany.”
It is not completely clear what kind of Brave New World the Democrats are intent on creating, but it should be accepted as certain that once free speech goes and the universities go “woke” there will no longer be platforms to challenge the status quo. Conservative or otherwise dissenting publications will come under pressure to toe the line or the arbiters of decorum in Washington will be quick to make sure that the message is received that there will be consequences. We have entered into a strange twilight zone where what really happens and happened in the past will not be subject to examination. Will it be a better or safer world because of that? Undoubtedly no, but living now in what are likely to be the twilight years of our tottering republic we can only hope that somehow sanity will prevail and we will again be able to experience real freedom.
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.
February 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Joe Biden, United States |
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When I try to answer my children’s questions, I am so furious that I can barely speak.
I choose my words slowly. “Many grownups around you have failed.”
Never have I wished so strongly to be wrong than when I remember predictions I made back in March of 2020. And instead, for almost two years and counting, we have collectively failed and keep failing at the primary goal of any society: protecting our children.
The sum total of youth Covid policy comes down to this: millions of kids wearing masks in school, being told to stay away from each other and obsessively avoid germs, and receiving vaccines en masse that they likely do not need.
Why are so few of us speaking up for the children?
“Always be skeptical,” I tell my children, “of anyone who wants you to be scared. Thoughtless fear is dangerous, and one should always try to make decisions when calm. Grownups haven’t been doing a good job of this lately.”
And here is the ultimate crime against our children, perpetuated by two administrations thus far: censorship and removal of jobs and licenses from thousands of respected doctors and researchers who disagree with the dominant Covid narrative, while repeatedly ignoring and ridiculing their simple and honorable message: “Early Covid treatment saves lives.”
This censorship and canceling does not “stop misinformation:” it interrupts the scientific process itself, and leaves a bad taste in the mouths of all who wish to live in a democratic society. And yes, it is still censorship if you urge private companies to do the dirty work for you, again and again.
“Kiddos,” I say, “science is something you DO, not a dogma to be obeyed. And we can all do science, and learn how to think scientifically.”
Many have recently and repeatedly urged our children to “listen to the experts.” To which I respond: a democratic society depends upon education, and not the rote and submissive variety. If we want one of those Democracies, we owe it to our children to model the complexity and necessity of using our brains to come up with our own opinions, in addition to learning what “experts” believe.
“But Mama, they wouldn’t make kids do these things if they were DANGEROUS… would they, Mama?”
And I have to look at my children and blink away tears, because yes: in the current social moment, we adults are allowing our society to slip ever further into Pharma totalitarianism.
“Okay, but Miss Matilsky, these vaccines are safe and effective, and masks are Not a Big Deal Anyway, so why get angry now? The kids should Do Their Part to social-distance, and Slow the Spread!”
Masks are actually part of a very big deal for children, because they interfere with every aspect of normal social functioning, also a big deal is raising an entire generation of kids to believe that hiding their faces is normal, and that it plus “testing” completes their civic duty toward our collective public health.
This is both shameful and a lie. There is not and has never been evidence justifying community-wide mask wearing (and the equally shamefully enormous quantity of plastic garbage that comes from it). It would be nice if masks worked well to protect their wearers and those around them from contagious disease, but they don’t.
Study after study refutes their benefit in community settings, and we can see around us that people spread Covid even when masks are worn scrupulously, even while statistical epidemiology modeling supports the possibility that they might slow the spread if they were thicker, bigger, more widely worn.
I am reminded of the plan to use smaller dinner plates, which in turn was supposed to reduce portion sizes and therefore cause widespread weight loss! But oh, wait… this was similarly a case of wishful theories being confused with actual results.
Ultimately: no amount of ever thicker and more stringently-worn masks, nor fanatic germ-avoidance, will ever make up for the true public health measures that do increase resistance to contagious disease: ensuring access to clean water, clean air, and clean, fresh, wholesome food, not to mention meeting our human need to gather socially for work, relaxation and spiritual pursuits.
And here we grownups must stop beating around the bush, and face the most shameful fact of all: condoning regulatory capture by pharmaceutical companies has become the defining feature in Covid policy mismanagement by two administrations.
Why should we trust them with our children’s health for even one moment, let alone rely on their press releases to guide public policy?
Presidents Trump and Biden, you should be ashamed to have been taken in by these corporations so incredibly adept at manipulation. We need leaders who can identify and protect children from the effects of such bullying.
It is not for me to decide if a vaccine is the right choice for you or your child. And it absolutely is up to me to insist that anyone trying to convince me to accept a medical treatment on my child’s behalf should never promote, pressure, or discuss the matter with my child separately from me (i.e. in schools or anywhere else, or by requiring a medical treatment, test, or vaccine for admission); and not be in the business of marketing their drugs to me for profit.
We failed our children when we made them put their lives on hold while we adults squabbled for two years, and now we fail them even further, while we let politicians and epidemiologists and drug companies experiment with their bodies for reasons that leave nobody healthier, while exposing them to known and unknown risks from policies that aren’t reducing transmission, cases, or the Covid death rate.
How incredibly lonely for our children, to be masked and told to interact with others only cautiously… because so many grownups around them are so fearful and unwilling to learn some of the basic principles of cell biology and scientific inquiry that our kids are supposed to be learning in grade school.
How shameful to coerce medical treatment on those who stand to benefit the least. How on earth will we build up enough trust in our government and our systems if we can’t admit our mistakes and apologize to our children, the way we make them do when they’re wrong?
Step up to the plate, grownups. It’s the least we can do for the generation that will have to care for our messes when we’re old; it would be nice if today’s kids could have productive, meaningful, healthy lives first.
February 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 |
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What had been a remarkably successful policing operation, handling the one million protestors who showed up in Canberra to protest two years of government overreach during the Covid era, turned sour in the final hours.
Until that point there had been no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly expect with such a wildly diverse and yes, angry crowd.
Although the crowd was unmasked, and certainly weren’t lining up to QR code in, the authoritarian derangement and violent police excesses the nation has become accustomed to were nowhere to be seen.
Australians are extremely slow to protest; but with millions having lost their jobs, their businesses, even contact with their families amidst deep social divisions created by being daily threatened or ostracised if they do not take “the jab”, they are silent no more.
The hands off policing which had characterised both the protest and the handling of the 200,000 campers at Camp Epic, only one of a number of campsites, were largely peaceful because the police did not seek confrontation.
That all ended on the 14th of February, 2022, two days after a million people marched on Parliament House in jubilant unity.
The putative and publicly squabbling leadership of the movement at Camp Epic did nothing to dispel tensions. And all of them disappeared on the penultimate day, leading to yet more fear and confusion amongst the thousands who remained on the site itself, including many with children who had no jobs and no homes to return to.
All the rhetoric from various members of the movement that they were there “until the job is done”, or “until this is over”, proved as substantial as smoke.
The social chaos and personal crises wrought by the blizzard of government diktats and authoritarian overreach of the past two years is now clearly evident.
Camp Epic was already rapidly emptying on the final day when police moved in and aggressively moved every last protestor off the site.
In the inflammatory leadup, sowing yet more tension and confusion, protestors were initially told that they would have to move on by midnight. One woman with two young children said people had come to her tent early in the evening and told her she would be bashed and arrested if she did not move on.
The woman did not have a car and had no way of complying.
The next rumour in this evolving drama was that campers had until 8am to comply.
As it turned out the police arrived in force at around 11am, repeatedly broadcasting the message: “Leave Now. You are trespassing. Leave immediately. If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
Police, tolerating no resistance, worked their way through from the showgrounds from the top camping ground until every last protestor had been evicted.
The irony of police aggressively moving demonstrators from the nation’s capital, ostensibly the heart of Australian democracy, was lost on nobody.
As more than 98% percent of protestors had already left, and of the holdouts most were already packing up to leave, it was a largely pointless show of force.
In one of those all too human moments, one protestor pleaded with the police: “Don’t vax your kids.”
One sign, emblematic of the passionate sincerity of protestors, read: “Touch Our Kids & It’s War.”
While from a policing point of view the dissolving of Camp Freedom may well be deemed a success and end up as a textbook model for policing in highly volatile situations, it has also left many questions over its inhumanity and deceptive nature.
Every last protestor moved on yesterday has one message in their head: “The government is my enemy.”
Campers were told multiple conflicting stories. They could move to a large holiday camp an hour outside of town; that they could move to another Council controlled camping ground Camp Cotter at Cotter Creek half an hour away; or that they would be safe and welcome to stay on Ground Seven, at the top of the Epic showgrounds.
In the dramatic unravelling, none of these stories, or deliberate falsehoods, turned out to be true.
The hundreds of people who moved up to Ground Seven on the understanding that as it was private property they would be safe to stay were easily kettled, or corralled, given no choice but to leave after more than 50 police entered the grounds with backup forces clearly evident behind them. While many wore the standard uniforms of local police, there were other heavily armed special operatives wearing masks and holding leashed dogs, adding to the fear and panic already spreading through the crowd.
Amid these surreal and frightening scenes, it was obvious that a few of the officers were enjoying their role perhaps “a little too much”; but that many were unhappy about the duties they were being asked to perform.
In the midst of this chaos, some of the younger officers in particular, were exceptionally polite, thanking the protestors for their cooperation.
Many protestors moved to Cotter Creek Campground, a council run venue, on the assurance that they would be safe and welcome there.
That also proved false, with police aggressively moving protestors on, despite the fact that they had already made bookings and paid for their visit.
Another suggestion that protestors could move to a large conference and adventure centre Caloola Farm, an hour outside of Canberra, provided free of charge by the sympathetic owner, also proved false.
Police blockaded the roads and refused to let protestors enter.
Owner Ralph Hurst-Meyers, well known for his community generosity, said: “After consultation with the authorities, Caloola Farm and the Hurst-Meyers Charity Limited will allow vulnerable people affected by recent events such as the elderly, the disabled, and the indigenous community, single mothers with children, vulnerable families with children to temporarily stay at Caloola Farm free of charge while they make preparations to return home.
The problem with that, of course, is that many of the remaining protestors have no home to return to.
As one of the many passionate people involved in the weeks events observed: “Everyone here is on the verge of losing everything.”
A million people on their doorstep has upset the smug disdain displayed towards the largely working class protestors by Canberra’s insular, well paid public servants and their political overlords.
But as the many Australians who are refusing to accede to the government’s vaccine mandates burn through their savings and resources, the social chaos inflicted on Australia’s working and middle classes by the Canberra elites can only intensify.
The authorities may have succeeded in moving the protestors on this time around, but this story is going nowhere.
February 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Australia, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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