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By endorsing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, Europe stifles academic freedom

By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | October 6, 2021

The European Commission is set to incorporate the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as part of Europe’s strategy to combat anti-Jewish racism. Details of the Commission’s plan were outlined yesterday in a 26-page programme. The three central goals are to prevent anti-Semitism in all its forms; protect and foster Jewish life; and promote Holocaust research, education and remembrance.

None of this, of course, is particularly controversial. Indeed, we would expect the Commission, if it were likewise to adopt a programme for combating Islamophobia, to include the protection and fostering of Muslim life as a goal while also promoting research and education to expose groups peddling anti-Muslim bigotry.

“We want to see Jewish life thriving again in the heart of our communities,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is how it should be. The strategy we are presenting today is a step-change in how we respond to anti-Semitism. Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities feel safe and prosper.”

European Union member states are encouraged to develop national strategies by the end of 2022 to tackle anti-Semitism, or include measures in their national action plans against racism and provide sufficient funding to implement them.

More controversially, but unsurprising nonetheless, the EU said that it will strengthen its cooperation with Israel and use the IHRA “working definition” to determine what constitutes anti-Jewish racism. It will also encourage local authorities, regions, cities and other institutions and organisations to do the same.

Putting aside the obvious contradiction in working with a state practicing apartheid and promoting Jewish supremacy, in order to combat racism, the incorporation of the highly contested IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into a programme as important as this risks undermining the very goal that the Commission has set out to achieve.

The problem with the IHRA is not the actual definition. No one opposes the text at the heart of the document: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Nevertheless, the IHRA and the European Commission’s strategy are good examples of how well-meaning endeavours are hijacked for use as weapons in someone else’s propaganda war.

Seven of the 11 illustrative examples within the IHRA definition conflate racism towards Jews with criticism of the state of Israel. It is this that is having a chilling effect on free speech across Europe and elsewhere, despite the insistence by its supporters that the IHRA text has no legal force and is meant to serve only as a guide. If the Commission were to adopt a programme to combat Islamophobia, would it incorporate a definition that included criticism of “Islamism” or any so-called “Islamic” countries as examples of anti-Muslim racism? I doubt it. Just as it would reject China’s insistence that criticising Beijing is in any way anti-Chinese.

Recent high-profile cases illustrate why critics are right to fear that the IHRA has been weaponised for Israel’s benefit. The University of Bristol, for instance, has dismissed a leading British critic of Israel and its lobby, Professor David Miller, following a long “pressure campaign by Israel’s assets in the UK.” An expert in propaganda and political pressure groups, Miller has been a key critic of the pro-Israel lobby for the past decade, as well as of Zionism, the state’s racist official ideology.

Some 200 academics and public intellectuals signed an open letter to the university in support of Miller and his work. Denouncing the attack against him as the “weaponisation” of anti-Semitism, the signatories said: “We oppose anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate. We do so because such vilification has little to do with defeating the harms caused by racism. Instead, efforts to target, isolate and purge individuals in this manner are aimed at deterring evidence-based research, teaching and debate.”

Bristol University claimed that it was committed to an environment preserving “academic freedom” and admitted that Miller’s anti-Israel remarks did not constitute “unlawful speech”. Nonetheless, the university apparently caved in under pressure from groups describing themselves as “proud” Zionists that have been leading the campaign to have him sacked. The very same groups are also pushing for the blanket adoption of the IHRA definition in order to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.

In America, the latest example of the chilling effect of the IHRA definition has seen Israeli diplomats reportedly put pressure on the dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to have Kylie Broderick, a teacher critical of the occupation state, removed from her job. The intervention by the Israeli officials followed a campaign by right-wing, pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group who highlighted Broderick’s Twitter account and posts which criticised Israel and Zionism. They cited the posts as evidence of anti-Semitism. The university said it followed guidelines in the IHRA definition to assess whether Broderick’s remarks were anti-Semitic or not.

These are just two of the most recent examples of how the IHRA definition has been used to crackdown on free-speech. It has had the impact about which its many critics have warned, including the drafter of the IHRA text, Kenneth Stern. “Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently anti-Semitic and must be suppressed,” wrote Stern in a sensational article in the Times of Israel. He claimed that pro-Israel lobby groups have weaponised the definition in an attempt to silence critics of Zionism.

As the European Commission was busy adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the Senate in France, which in recent years has adopted a number of laws slammed by critics as Islamophobic, duly adopted the working definition. The decision has been applauded by anti-Palestinian groups, which have urged other European parliaments to follow suit.

Freedom of speech is often described as one of the pillars of liberal democracy but not, it seems, when that freedom is used to express legitimate criticism of the Zionist state of Israel and its pernicious, racist ideology. As many pro-Palestine activists have said, “Anti-Semitism is a crime; anti-Zionism is a duty.” The two should never be conflated.

October 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Mainstream Press Silence on the JFK Deadline

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 6, 2021

Sometimes silence by the mainstream press speaks volumes about where they stand on important issues of the day. A perfect example is the absence of editorials and commentaries on the upcoming October 26 deadline for releasing the CIA’s long-secret records relating to the Kennedy assassination, which have been kept secret now for almost 60 years.

Take a look, for example, at all the mainstream papers. I could be mistaken, but as far as I know not one of them has addressed the upcoming deadline, one way or the other.

The mainstream press is in a pickle. On the one hand, they stand for the principle of “transparency” in governmental operations, especially in foreign regimes, which would argue for full release of those decades-old records. On the other hand, however, the last thing they want to do is upset the Pentagon and the CIA, which they know they would do by calling for the release of the records.

So, what do they do? They punt by just deciding to remain silent, acting as if the matter just doesn’t exist and hoping that no one notices.

Well, I’ve noticed! Hopefully other people have noticed as well!

There is another factor to consider. For decades the mainstream press has mocked and ridiculed the notion that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation orchestrated and carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment on grounds of “national security.” Following the cue that the CIA sent out to its Operation Mockingbird assets decades ago, the mainstream press has reveled in labeling anyone who has concluded that the assassination was a regime-change operation as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Okay, then why not openly demand the disclosure of the CIA’s long-secret assassination records? Given that the mainstream press is so convinced of the validity of the official lone-nut theory of the assassination, why not call for the release of those records to prove that the lone-nut theory is true and correct?

There is one possible reason they don’t do that: They’re nervous about what those thousands of still-secret records show.

After all, let’s face it: The notion that the release of 60-year-old records could threaten “national security,” no matter what definition is placed on that meaningless term, is patently ludicrous. Whatever evidence the records contain, their disclosure will not cause the United States to fall into the ocean. Communist Cuba will not invade and conquer the United States. The dominoes near North Vietnam will not start falling. The North Korean communists will not come and get us. And the supposed communist conspiracy to take over America that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia) during the Cold War terminated a long time ago.

My hunch is that if you gave lie detector tests to the editorial and op-ed writers in the mainstream press as well as to the Washington, D.C., establishment, the tests would reveal that 95 percent of them, deep down, know that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation. They just don’t want to “know know” that it was a regime-change operation. They just want what happened to be kept secret under the carpet. Their mindset is: What good will it do to “know know” that the U.S. national-security establishment took out a sitting U.S. president based on the need to protect “national security” from his policies?

After all these years, they have to be basically familiar with the fraudulent autopsy that the national-security establishment conducted on the president’s body on the very evening of the assassination. (See my two books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2.) As I have repeatedly emphasized over the years, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. A fraudulent autopsy equals guilt in the assassination.

It’s not as though those long-secret records will contain any confessions. Nobody would be that stupid. Moreover, from its beginning the CIA had a longstanding policy to never mention its state-sponsored assassinations in writing.

But given all the evidence establishing the fraudulent autopsy that came out during the ARRB years in the 1990s, it is a virtual certainty that that those still-secret records contain more evidence that fills out the regime-change mosaic even more, very likely the Mexico City part of the operation, which clearly went awry and is still shrouded to this day in “national-security” secrecy.

One darkly ironic aspect of all this is that if the national-security establishment concluded that a president really did pose a threat to “national security,” much of the mainstream press would undoubtedly want the national-security establishment to act to save the nation. They just would hope that it would be done in a way that would not cause them to “know know” what had to be done in the name of protecting “national security.”

The CIA knows that another request for secrecy will look bad, very bad. But they themselves are in a pickle. There is a reason they kept those records secret 60 years ago and 30 years ago. It is the same reason they sought an extension of time when the deadline for release came due under the Trump administration. Undoubtedly, that reason is still motivating them today to keep those records secret.

So, the problem for the CIA is: Should it seek another extension of time for secrecy, which will look even more incriminating? Or should it release those long-secret records know that they contain incriminating evidence? The answer is obvious: Better to take the heat for continuing the cover-up than to have the regime-change mosaic filled out even further with incriminating evidence.

My prediction? The CIA will seek still another extension of time for secrecy and President Biden, citing “national security,” will grant it. I also predict that the mainstream press will continue to remain silent on the matter, doing its best not to upset the Pentagon and the CIA but continuing to stand for “transparency,” especially within foreign regimes.

October 6, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Why Are People’s Risk Perceptions So Skewed?

By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • October 5, 2021

Yesterday I noted that, 18 months after the start of the pandemic, a sizeable chunk of Americans still dramatically overestimate the risks of Covid. In a recent poll, more than one third said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%.

Of course, you’d expect some people to get the answer wrong just because we’re dealing with a small quantity, and there’s always going to be some degree of overestimation. But many people were off by a factor more than 10. What accounts for this?

Interestingly, Democrat voters’ guesses were much higher than Republican voters’ – about twice as many Democrats said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%. This suggests a role for ideology.

Throughout the pandemic, the ‘Democrat position’ has been to support restrictions and mandates, whereas the ‘Republican position’ has been to oppose such measures. This is clearly visible in a plot of U.S. states by average stringency index. Almost all the ‘red’ states are on the left-hand side, while almost all the ‘blue’ states are on the right.

Given that partisans (on all sides) like to avoid cognitive dissonance, they tend to adopt beliefs that are consistent with their party’s platform. Since Democrat politicians have been busy imposing all sorts of restrictions and mandates, Democrat voters have adopted beliefs that imply those measures were justified.

Most survey respondents don’t know numbers like ‘the risk of hospitalisation for people who aren’t vaccinated’ off the top of their head. Instead, they probably make a guess based on all the relevant information they can recall.

Democrat voters, who’ve spent the pandemic consuming media like MSNBC, CNN and NPR, will recall numerous incidents of pundits saying that Covid is extremely dangerous, and we have to do whatever we can to stop the spread.

They will also recall that they were locked down for months, that their kids’ schools were closed, and that they had to wear a mask whenever they went to the grocery store.

Putting all this information together, they will tend to assume that the risk of being hospitalised from Covid is extremely high. ‘Why else,’ they might ask, ‘would there have been so many restrictions?’

Note: Republicans also overestimated the risk of being hospitalised from Covid, albeit to a lesser extent than Democrats. This indicates that people’s skewed risk perceptions cannot be blamed solely on the content of left-wing media (or the policies implemented in ‘blue’ states).

The psychological quirk that may account for people’s skewed risk perceptions has a name in psychology: the availability heuristic. As Steven Pinker notes, “people estimate the probability of an event or the frequency of a kind of thing by the ease with which instances come to mind”.

Because plane crashes always make the news, people tend to overestimate the risks of air travel. And they may overestimate the risks of Covid for the same reason.

Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve been treated to morbid ‘daily death numbers’ – but for only one cause of death. Perhaps if these figures had been reported for all causes of death, people’s risk perceptions would be slightly less skewed. (Or perhaps they’d just be terrified of everything…)

During a pandemic, we obviously do want people to take precautions; we don’t want them nonchalantly walking into a care home when they have a high fever and a nasty cough. Yet – contrary to what some in government seem to believe – we don’t want people to be utterly terrified either.

There’s been so much attention on people claiming Covid is “just the flu” that the media has largely ignored the other end of the spectrum: people who believe Covid is the bubonic plague!

We can agree it’s bad if people underestimate the risks. But it’s also bad if they overestimate the risks. We want them to have the right risk perceptions. That way, they can make informed decisions.

October 6, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Video emerges where Fauci and others plan for a “Universal mRNA Flu Vaccine” which became the “COVID-19 Vaccine”

Because People were not Afraid Enough of the Flu Virus

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | October 5, 2021

Last night Alex Jones of Infowars.com did a special broadcast regarding an October, 2019 video that they had just become aware of that was a panel discussion hosted by the Milken Institute discussing the need for a Universal Flu Vaccine.

The video clip that they played of this event was a 1 minute and 51 second dialogue between the moderator, Michael Specter, a journalist who is a New Yorker staff writer and also an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

In this short clip, which was extracted from the hour long panel discussion, Anthony Fauci explains that bringing a new, untested kind of vaccine like an mRNA vaccine, would take at least a decade (“if everything goes perfectly”) to go through proper trials and be approved by the FDA.

He would know, because he had been trying to do it for about a decade already by then (October, 2019), trying to develop an mRNA based vaccine for HIV.

But now they were discussing something much bigger than just a vaccine for AIDS patients. They are talking about a “Universal Flu Vaccine” that everyone would have to take – a huge market for Big Pharma!

Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), then speaks and states that what could happen is that “an entity of excitement that is completely disruptive and is not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes” could change that.

Here is the short clip which I put on our Bitchute and Rumble channels last night:

Alex Jones spent over 50 minutes covering this on his show last night, and it looks like he covered it on his show today as well.

I have not had a chance to watch these yet, as I went and found the original 1 hour panel discussion video, and spent the day listening to and analyzing that, so that I could supply this report to our readers.

Joining Fauci, Rick Bright, and Michael Specter at this event were:

  • Margaret Hamburg, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine
  • Bruce Gellin, President, Global Immunization, Sabin Vaccine Institute
  • Casey Wright, CEO, FluLab

In short, this panel discussion focused on what they perceived as the need for a universal flu vaccine, but they admitted that the old way of producing vaccines was not sufficient for their purposes, and that they needed some kind of global event where many people were dying to be able to roll out a new mRNA vaccine to be tested on the public.

They all agreed that the annual flu virus was not scary enough to create an event that would convince people to get a universal vaccine.

And as we now know today, about 2 years after this event, that “terrifying virus” that was introduced was the COVID-19 Sars virus.

And so now we know why the flu just “disappeared” in the 2020-21 flu season. It was simply replaced by COVID-19, in a worldwide cleverly planned “pandemic” to roll out the world’s first universal mRNA vaccines.

This was always the goal, and previous efforts through various influenzas, AIDS, Ebola, and other “viruses” were all unsuccessful in leading to the development of a universal vaccine to inject into the entire world’s population.

Margaret Hamburg stated regarding getting a “Universal Vaccine” into the market:

“It’s time to stop talking, and it’s time to act.”

“I think it is also because we haven’t had a sense of urgency.”

Michael Specter asks:

“Do we need lots of people to die for that sense of urgency to occur?”

Hamburg replies that: “There are already lots of people dying” from the flu each year.

Bruce Gellin states that basically people just are not afraid enough of the term “the flu.”

There are so many things that are revealed about how Big Pharma and government health authorities think in this panel discussion. For example, they bemoan the fact that if they do too good of a job in public health, then they lose funding to develop products that fight viruses.

Michael Specter states: “It seems to me that one of the curses of the public health world is, if you guys do your job well, everyone goes along well and healthy.”

Hamburg: “And they cut your funding.”

Rick Bright complains that the yearly distribution of flu vaccines is inefficient in terms of collecting data, and in the process actually admits that some vaccines just don’t work well:

“We distribute 150 million doses of the seasonal (flu) vaccines every year, we don’t even know how many people are being vaccinated from the doses that are delivered to the people, which doses they got, and what the real outcome was, so that we can learn from that knowledge base on how to optimize or improve our vaccine. So there are opportunities that we have today…”

I think if we uncloaked the poorest performing vaccines in the market place today, it might be very revealing to tell us which of the technologies we have, and allow us to go deeper into those technologies to determine why they are more effective. There are vaccines licenses today that are more effective. I think that we’re just afraid to admit the truth.”

So much for the public mantra that is espoused by Big Pharma and government that the “science” of vaccines is “settled,” and that they are completely “safe and effective.”

Casey Wright repeats the mantra that was publicized every year, before COVID, about just how deadly the flu virus was: “650,000 people die every year from the flu.”

As we have documented many times over the past decade here at Health Impact News, this is simply not true. This is an estimate because actual laboratory confirmed cases of influenza each year are very small, probably less than 1000 in the U.S.

Most flu-like symptoms are never tested in a lab to determine what is causing the symptoms. They were always just classified as “flu” to inflate the numbers to justify the very profitable flu shot each year. Some of our previous coverage of this issue:

CDC Inflates Flu Death Stats to Sell More Flu Vaccines

Did 80,000 People Really Die from the Flu Last Year? Inflating Flu Death Estimates to Sell Flu Shots

So as they have inflated the COVID-19 cases since last year, they are simply continuing their policy of inflating flu numbers each year in order to sell their vaccines. They obviously could not have done both last year, as the public would have quickly seen that the math doesn’t work.

And yet, so many in the public bought the lie that the COVID-19 measures got rid of the flu, but not COVID-19.

Ultimately, this panel discussion can be boiled down to: Nobody wants to fund research for a universal flu vaccine. So how do we change that? Create a pandemic of fear over the flu (but they couldn’t call it the “flu” because people are no longer afraid of influenza, and the fear over “AIDS” had also subsided.)

Fauci then addressed this “perception problem.”

There’s this perception (about the flu), if it’s so serious, how come people get the flu each year and it isn’t a catastrophe?

When you’re dealing with a disease like HIV, if you get HIV, it’s serious. Whether you’re young, whether you’re middle aged, or whether you’re old. If you get cancer, that’s bad. Whether you’re young, whether it’s intermediate… whereas if it’s influenza, some people, they go throughout life and it doesn’t impact them at all.

There isn’t anyone who is afraid of influenza. You go into a focus group and you say: Are you afraid of getting HIV if you’re at risk? Oh, absolutely.

Are you afraid of getting cancer? Absolutely. Are you afraid of the flu? Don’t bother me.

That’s the reality of how people perceive flu.

And it is going to be very difficult to change that, unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem, in a disruptive way…

Specter then asks:

In the long run, over time, if the 2009 pandemic had been much more deadly, would that have ended up being a better thing for humanity?

Everyone is silent as they obviously were thinking about how to answer that, and Specter says: “Come on gang.”

Fauci ultimately answers and says “No” because there were other years that were worse than 2009 and it didn’t change a thing in terms of creating a universal vaccine.

Hamburg then states:

The sad truth is that when there is a major crisis, it focuses attention and usually resources and some significant mobilization follows.

We need, #1, this time to be different, and we also need to really organize ourselves in a way where there will be accountability for sustained action, and not just response.

Specter states:

Craig Venter, who is a controversial person, but interesting to me, has written that he thinks we ought to have a vaccine, such that, if you take off in a plane from Hong Kong, and are infected, by the time your plane lands in New York, there ought to be a vaccine assembled and deliverable to you.

How crazy is that? How far are we from that? Are we ever going to get there?

Bright replies:

I’m not going to say how far away, but I don’t think that’s too crazy.

I think that if we move towards the era of synthetic-based vaccines, I think we remove the dependencies of thinking the vaccine that has be grown into something else, an egg, a cell, or insect cell – any type of dependency embryo.

If we can move into more synthetic, the nucleic acid based, messenger RNA based, those sequences can be rapidly shared around the world.

He then goes on to talk about using a 3D printer to print out a “vaccine patch” that people use to administer the “vaccine.”

We also learn in this panel discussion why Anthony Fauci is so opposed to natural immunity, because natural immunity for influenza, according to his view, translates to an immune response against other strains of a particular influenza virus, which will interfere with what they are trying to do with the vaccines.

That is why he wants to inject infants as young as 6 months old with a universal vaccine, as he states here, to prevent that “confused” natural immunity from happening before the child grows older.

So the big question that this panel was tackling, was how do they implement their strategies, and what is holding them back?

Certainly the government/regulatory issue is a big one, and now two years later we can see exactly how they did that, by controlling the FDA and the CDC to promote the “killer virus pandemic” narrative as long as possible to justify taking emergency measures that short-cut the normal procedures for bringing novel, new drugs to the market.

It also clearly explains the vicious opposition to existing, cheap therapeutics that very easily treated what is really just the seasonal flu “virus,” which stood in their way of rolling out a universal vaccine.

Casey Wright then made a rather remarkable comment about “philanthropy” and its role in this effort:

There’s a potential role for philanthropy to play there… we are in a position to take on a little more risk (she smiles eerily as she says this), to be open to a little bit more experimentation and methods in how we do things. That’s what I think is unique about FluLab, and its unique about other philanthropies.

I think they can play a really important role there, and fund a set of bolder, maybe earlier promising concepts.

Bingo! Think Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other “philanthropies” that are “unburdened” by regulatory issues as they spend their money pretty much unchecked, with no accountability, all in the name of “science” and the “greater good.”

We have seen most certainly how the Gates Foundation has done this in India by luring poor people into highly questionable ethical experimentations with vaccines, such as the Gardasil vaccine which we have covered so often over the years here at Health Impact News.

Bruce Gellin then talks about a report published by his organization that called for an “entity” that would make these decisions and bring everyone together to collaborate to create this universal vaccine, and eliminate those who oppose.

The report was published in 2019, and here is the press release.

He states:

They called for this “entity” which is the collaboration we talked about. They called for the need to infuse innovation, to find some of these people who we don’t know might be part of the problem to come into this. And to try to think about how we talk about this differently so that your stomach flu doesn’t keep us from making progress. (everyone laughs…)

I assume that this “entity” is Gellin’s group, The Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science & Policy Group.

Today, this is the main group fighting “vaccine hesitancy” and trying to silence any dissenting voices that get in their way of rolling out this universal vaccine, which of course we now know is the COVID-19 vaccine.

Online Misinformation about Vaccines

Watch the entire panel discussion to learn just how arrogant these people are. This is on our Bitchute and Rumble channels… Further analysis at Health Impact News.

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The Amen Corner Strikes Again

Congress is in Israel’s pocket

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 5, 2021

Once upon a time the Israel Lobby destroyed critics of the Jewish state and its behavior by stealth. If a Congressman or Senator were speaking honestly about the lopsided relationship with Israel which required suppressing, it was done by making sure that individual was not reelected. This was normally accomplished by vetting an attractive opposition primary candidate who would do Israel’s bidding, funding him or her generously and providing unfavorable press coverage of the incumbent.

One great victory for Israel using that technique was the 1992 defeat of George H. W. Bush by Bill Clinton. Bush had dared to withhold guarantees on loans sought to fund Israel’s expansion of its settlements, clearly a genuine American interest as the settlements were a violation of international law. Going into the election, he appeared to be the much stronger candidate, but then the captive media starting to write about how the economy was in bad shape, which was not true, and switched over to deeply negative coverage of his campaign. The Lobby also heavily contributed financially to the Clinton campaign. George H.W. subsequently privately blamed the Israel Lobby for his defeat, a lesson his son George W. clearly absorbed in that he took pains to never anger Israel. He went rather the other way, surrounding himself with Jewish neocons as his national security policy team, which in turn produced Afghanistan and, quite plausibly, was the driving force behind the catastrophic attack on Iraq.

Legislators who have been dethroned by Israel using the same technique are Senators Chuck Percy and William Fulbright as well as congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and James Traficant. They all faced credible, well-funded opponents and lost their seats. And the Israel Lobby, behind it all, never even had to complain about their views on Israel. In fact, it was believed to be better to not raise that issue directly.

Well, with great power frequently comes what the Greeks called hubris, and Israel has undoubtedly the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington. And that power is unique in that it also extends to many states and even local jurisdictions. As Lord Acton put it, “All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” meaning inter alia that the power wielded by Israel has corrupted our entire political system. What Israel wants, Israel gets, as became clear two weeks ago in the near unanimous vote for $1 billion dollars in extra Iron Dome expenses by the US Congress.

The critical difference is that now the Israelis have become so disdainful of their United States benefactor that the gloves are off when it comes to making their demands clear and insisting on positive responses. Those who do not go along are no longer brought down in semi-clandestine fashion. They are instead openly and explicitly denounced as anti-Semites and holocaust-deniers. Anti-Semitism has become the hot wire in American political discourse. Or, as one of Israel’s many proxies in Congress, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer put it, all who support the “American way” cherish the relationship with “the Democratic state of Israel.” Surely there is a double entendre in the use of “democratic,” though Hoyer, who was acting on a demand made by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, appears to have somehow confused democracy with apartheid.

The Israel Lobby has for several years now been vexed by the group of recently elected congressional progressives who have not been particularly shy about criticizing the Jewish state, though they have frequently had to backtrack of statements under intense pressure from the party leadership. The pushback from other Congressmen and from the media frequently accuses them of being flat out anti-Semites or often inclined to use anti-Semitic “tropes.” A favorite point of attack is to deny that Jewish groups and billionaires use money to advance their political objectives, prominently among which is uncritical support of Israel.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar notoriously once responded to a question raised by journalist Glen Greenwald, who had posted his observation that “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” Omar tweeted in a curt response to Greenwald: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” Benjamins means one-hundred-dollar bills, which bear the image of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. The entire Democratic Party leadership and every media pundit immediately voiced outrage at the antisemitic “trope.” Apparently, linking Jewish groups and money as part of America’s political corruption, which even the casual observer can hardly miss, had been elevated to something like a hate crime within the Democratic Party.

Sometimes the pressure is more subtle in the old-fashioned way. In the voting two weeks ago on Iron Dome one progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez surprisingly voted “present” instead of “no.” It turns out that her own party is preparing to gerrymander her congressional district to put more Jewish voters in it and hopefully remove her by running a well-funded candidate against her. One might suggest that she put ambition ahead of ethical behavior in her voting, but as the Lobby is out to get her one tiny gesture will hardly prove to be her salvation.

Only one Republican voted against the Iron Dome money, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. He pointed out that most foreign aid comes down to the effectiveness of the foreign influence exerted on US politicians at home. It is a perfect pithy explanation of how the Israel Lobby operates. For his pains, Massie is being subjected to the hardball treatment. The American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), which is the most active player in the Lobby, published a Facebook ad that included a picture of Massie and a text stating “Efforts to cut, add conditions, or restrict America’s strong, bipartisan commitment to Israel will only harm America’s national interests.” A caption claimed that “when Israel faced rocket attacks, Tom Massie voted against Iron Dome.” The ad attracted numerous comments asserting that Massie is an anti-Semite.

Massie opposed nearly all foreign aid based on principle, saying that “My position of ‘no foreign aid’ might sound extreme to some, but I think it’s extreme to bankrupt our country and put future generations of Americans in hock to our debtors.” He responded to the AIPAC ad with “How is THIS not foreign interference in our elections?” and AIPAC answered Massie’s tweet with one of its own, saying it “will not be deterred in any way by ill-informed and illegitimate attacks on this important work. We are proud that we are engaged in the democratic process to strengthen the US-Israel relationship. Our bipartisan efforts are reflective of American values and interests.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is also hunting Republicans who are not toeing the line. It has focused on Tucker Carlson in particular. It has demanded that Fox News fire Tucker for promoting the “great replacement” theory as well as other white-nationalist talking points. “To use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic, antisemitic, and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Under-fire Republican Representative Matt Gaetz also became involved in the argument, saying that Tucker Carlson is correct about white nationalist ‘replacement’ conspiracy theory and he called the ADL racist.

AIPAC has also been active in denigrating the progressive Democrats of the so-called “Squad.” In August, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused the pro-Israel lobby of deliberately putting herself at risk with an ad campaign that featured her photo and was headlined, “Stand with America. Stand against Terrorists.” The ad included: “For Ilhan Omar, there is no difference between America and the Taliban; between Israel and Hamas; between democracies and terrorists; tell Rep. Omar: Condemn terrorists, not America.”

Israel’s ability to influence developments in the US is such that it also believes itself to be empowered to interfere in American education, promoting mandatory holocaust courses at all levels and stifling any serious study of what is going on in the Middle East. In August, Israeli Consul General to the Southeastern United States Anat Sultan-Dadon demanded a meeting with a dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to discuss a graduate student teaching a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli claimed the PhD student Kylie Broderick was an anti-Semite and said she was unfit to teach the course.

The intervention by an Israeli government official came after a pressure campaign by right-wing pro-Israel websites and advocacy groups to remove the student from teaching a history department course called “The Conflict Over Israel/Palestine.” Now, Ted Budd, a Congressional Representative from North Carolina has joined the fray, including writing a letter to the president of UNC:

“President Hans: I write to express my concern over repeated antisemitic activity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Kylie Broderick, a graduate student, is scheduled to teach a course titled ‘The Conflict over Israel/Palestine.’ Ms Broderick has a troubling history of public antisemitic statements. In her public tweets she has lamented how hard it is for her to pretend that there are two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the classroom, noting that ‘there is only 1 legitimate side ­– the oppressed – versus imperialist propaganda. I don’t ever want to encourage them to believe there is reason to take on good faith the oppressive ideologies of American and Western imperialism, Zionists, & autocrats.’ Among other things, she has also falsely and unapologetically accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and denied Israel’s right to exist.”

Other pro-Israel groups have joined in, even claiming that Broderick was engaging activity that is illegal under both local and federal law! Indeed, one might suggest that what Israel and its friends are seeking is a world in which even thinking about the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Jewish state will be strictly illegal. The Ukraine, which has been heavily Israel-ized since its pro-Russian government was removed through US interference in 2014, has, in fact, just passed a law banning anti-Semitic sentiment. Sentiment means what is inside one’s head. In other European countries anti-Semitic acts, which include criticism of Israel and expressions disparaging Jews, are illegal, but this is a first step to criminalize anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic thoughts. Could something similar be coming to the United States? Judging from the resistance that an occupied Congress is likely to put up, which is zero, it is more than likely that we will be heading in the same direction.

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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Pfizer Scientist: ‘Your Antibodies are Probably Better than the Vaccination’

Project Veritas | October 4, 2021
  • Nick Karl, Pfizer Scientist: “When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus…When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination.”
  • Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “You’re protected for longer” if you have natural COVID antibodies compared to the COVID vaccine.
  • Croce: “I work for an evil corporation… Our organization is run on COVID money.”
  • Rahul Khandke, Pfizer Scientist: “If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up.”

[NEW YORK – Project Veritas released the fourth video in its COVID vaccine investigative series today which exposed three Pfizer officials saying that antibodies lead to equal, if not better, protection against the virus compared to the vaccine.

Nick Karl, a scientist who is directly involved in the production of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, said that natural immunity is more effective than the very vaccine he works on, and Pfizer produces.

“When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus… When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination,” Karl said. Notwithstanding, Karl still believes that vaccine mandates are positive for society.

“The city [of New York] needs like vax cards and everything. It’s just about making it so inconvenient for unvaccinated people to the point where they’re just like, ‘F*ck it. I’ll get it.’ You know?”

A second Pfizer official, Senior Associate Scientist, Chris Croce, corroborated Karl’s assertion about COVID immunity derivative of antibodies:

Veritas Journalist: “So, I am well-protected [with antibodies]?”
Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “Yeah.”

Veritas Journalist: “Like as much as the vaccine?”

Croce: “Probably more.”

Veritas Journalist: “How so? Like, how much more?”

Croce: “You’re protected most likely for longer since there was a natural response.”

Croce expressed dismay with his company’s direction and moral compass:

Veritas Journalist: “So, what happened to the monoclonal antibody treatments?”

Croce: “[It got] pushed to the side.”

Veritas Journalist: “Why?”

Croce: “Money. It’s disgusting.”

…

Croce: “I still feel like I work for an evil corporation because it comes down to profits in the end. I mean, I’m there to help people, not to make millions and millions of dollars. So, I mean, that’s the moral dilemma.”

Veritas Journalist: “Isn’t it billions and billions?”

Croce: “I’m trying to be nice.”

Veritas Journalist: “No, I hear you. I hear you. I do. I mean, I’ll still give you a hard time about it.”

Croce: “Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.”

The third Pfizer scientist, Rahul Khandke, admitted his company demands that its employees keep information from the public.

“We’re bred and taught to be like, ‘vaccine is safer than actually getting COVID.’ Honestly, we had to do so many seminars on this. You have no idea. Like, we have to sit there for hours and hours and listen to like — be like, ‘you cannot talk about this in public,’” Khandke said.

Khandke also signaled that proof of antibodies is on par with proof of vaccination.

“If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up,” he said.

Project Veritas will be releasing more Pfizer tapes in the very near future. To receive updates straight into your email inbox, click here.

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Why Is Info on COVID and Vitamin D Deficiency Suppressed?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 4, 2021

Many years of research have demonstrated the multiple benefits of vitamin D to your health. These benefits include helping to build healthy bones and teeth,1,2 supporting lung3,4 and cardiovascular function,5,6 influencing genetic expression,7,8 supporting brain and nervous system health9,10 and regulating insulin levels.11

During 2020, scientists also discovered that the benefits of vitamin D for upper respiratory infections also include protection against COVID-19.12,13 In 2021, two new studies14,15 confirmed what many researchers had already determined: There is an association between vitamin D deficiency and “the risk of being infected with COVID-19, severity of the disease and risk of dying from it.”16

However, despite a known and safe side effect profile, benefits to patients with COVID-19 and the relative ease of acquiring the low-cost supplement, health “experts” have continued to suppress information that could very well save many lives. To achieve vitamin D toxicity, a person must take more than 40,000 international units (IU) each day and have a serum level above 500 to 600 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml).17

In addition to this they must also be taking excessive amounts of calcium to experience vitamin D toxicity. In other words, it’s more difficult to overdose on vitamin D than it is to overdose on acetaminophen (Tylenol). Taking more than 3,000 milligrams (mg) of acetaminophen in one day18 can lead to symptoms of an overdose. Signs of toxicity can begin in as little as 30 minutes after ingestion.19

Additionally, it is not difficult to overdose on acetaminophen since it is an ingredient in many over-the-counter cold preparations. Many people who take the drug each week are unaware it is found in combined products.20 The drug is responsible for 500 deaths, 56,000 visits to the emergency room and 2,600 hospitalizations each year.

According to experts, 50% of these injuries are from unintentional overdoses. By contrast, research has found that vitamin D toxicity is rare21 and usually caused by formulation errors, inappropriate prescribing, accidental dispensing or inappropriate administration.22

However, toxicity is not defined consistently across studies. One Irish study found a prevalence of 4.8%, but they considered an elevated result anything above 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L),23 which is within the normal range of 40 ng/ml to 60 ng/ml.24 Another comparison is that, while studies have shown that the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency25 is 41.6% in the overall population and as high as 82.1% in people with dark skin, there is no known deficiency for acetaminophen.

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked With COVID-19 Severity

One of the newer studies was published in June 2021.26 The researchers sought to determine the role that vitamin D may play in mitigating the impact that SARS-CoV-2 has on morbidity and mortality. They recognized that the production of vitamin D through sensible sun exposure is often limited by geographical location.

Clothing, sunblock and skin pigmentation also limit vitamin D production in the skin. Serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D have been found suboptimal in adults from many countries and are not limited to specific risk groups. The study used an ecological design to find an association and looked at complications and mortality in 46 countries.

They used data from public sources to look for and find evidence of a vitamin D deficiency, which they defined as serum levels less than 20 ng/ml. Although lower than optimal levels for vitamin D, this has been a deficiency level consistently used by researchers.

The researchers gathered data from Worldometer on the number of cases, tests and deaths in a population. They found a statistically significant correlation between deficiency and infection and fatality.

Data analyses were not limited to a specific area of the world or population group but instead included data from 46 countries. The data from this study supported a review of evidence published in Nutrients in 2020 that demonstrated vitamin D levels were associated with:27

  • A lower number of cases in the Southern Hemisphere
  • An association with deficiency and the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome
  • An increase in mortality rates in older adults and patients with chronic diseases that are associated with vitamin D deficiency
  • Outbreaks during the winter months when serum levels of vitamin D are lowest

They concluded the data suggest28 “that vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and mortality across a wide range of countries.”

Second Study Has Similar Results

A second study was published in September 2021 from Trinity College and the University of Edinburgh.29 These researchers also looked at the association between COVID-19 and vitamin D levels. What they found was that the level of ambient ultraviolet B light at a person’s home in the weeks before infection “was strongly protective against severe disease and death.”30

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.31 The researchers identified the association from data pulled from 417,342 records stored in the U.K. Biobank. This is a large-scale database that contains in-depth information on genetics and health from a half-million participants.32

From this cohort there were 1,746 cases and 399 deaths registered from March 2020 to June 2020. Unfortunately, on average, vitamin D levels were measured approximately 11 years before the pandemic. Therefore, the researchers looked at ambient UVB light that they found was strongly and inversely associated with hospitalization and death.33

These studies support and confirm earlier research published in 2020 and 2021 that demonstrate a strong association between vitamin D status and infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Early papers published in May 2020,34 offered ample evidence that “vitamin D deficiency to address COVID-19 warrant aggressive pursuit and study.”35

By October 2020,36 research had revealed that people with vitamin D deficiency are at higher risk during the global pandemic and that supplements should be used to maintain circulating 25 hydroxyvitamin D at optimal levels. Retrospective data demonstrated that a deficiency was also associated with an increased risk of COVID1-19 infection.37

In a group of frail elderly nursing home residents with COVID-19 in France,38 researchers found that providing a bolus of vitamin D3 during illness or in the month prior had a significant impact on the severity of the illness and improved survival rates.

Further studies found similar results demonstrating that vitamin D deficiency was associated with increased severity and mortality39 and that supplementation may increase immunity and decrease susceptibility to the infection.40

Information Suppressed Despite Mounting Evidence

Despite mounting evidence that a simple and effective strategy was available to help reduce illness and mortality, health agencies sought to suppress the information. In the early months, many questioned the organized effort to create a situation in which more people were dying.

And yet, as the year wore on, it became more evident that U.S. health officials were intent on ensuring the highest number of people possible would take a genetic therapy experiment to protect themselves against a virus for which treatment protocols and preventive measures had been identified. The aim of some agencies was to put an end to Mercola.com. In the summer of 2020, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) launched a social media campaign to that end.41

It’s important to note that this self-proclaimed consumer advocacy group is partnered with Bill Gates’ agrichemical PR group, the Cornell Alliance for Science,42 and is bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, Public Welfare Foundation, Tides Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.43

The CSPI released a press release July 21, 2020,44 in which they falsely accused me of profiteering from the pandemic by selling “at least 22 vitamins, supplements and other products” to “prevent, treat or cure COVID-19 infection.”

However, in their own Appendix of Illegal Claims, it clearly shows that there are no COVID-19 related claims that exist on any of the products themselves. Rather, the links that CSPI uses go to Mercola articles and interviews — none of which are used to sell anything.45

NOTE: It is wise not to click on CSPI’s shortened links in the “website links” column as they do not currently point to Mercola.com product pages.

Three weeks later, CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie46 sent an email August 12, 2020, to CSPI’s newsletter subscribers in which he repeated the spurious claim that I “profit from the COVID-19 pandemic” through “anti-vaccine fearmongering” and reporting of science-based nutrition shown to impact your disease risk.

CSPI Takes Public Credit for FDA Action

Interestingly, Lurie is a former FDA associate commissioner.47 It’s disheartening, but not surprising, that the FDA followed up with a warning letter in February 2021,48 for “Unapproved and Misbranded Products Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019.”

Lurie has publicly taken credit for this action,49 and thereby establishes the potential that CSPI is pulling the strings under the new administration through relationships they did not have in July 2020 when they first launched their assault on my free speech.

According to the letter, the FDA lists liposomal vitamin C, liposomal vitamin D3 and quercetin products for the treatment of COVID-19 as50 “unapproved new drugs sold in violation of section 505(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), 2pt1 U.S.C. § 355(a).”

It’s ironic that Lurie offhandedly dismisses peer-reviewed published science51 that demonstrates your immune function is dependent on certain nutrients and they help to lower your risk of severe infection, whether it’s from COVID-19, the seasonal flu, the common cold or anything else.

Instead, he calls for mask-wearing52 that has no published scientific evidence to back universal use, as one of the most important prevention strategies against COVID-19. In a blog post, published May 18, 2021, he says, “… while mask relaxation may make sense for most of the vaccinated most of the time, it has the potential to destroy the social norm of mask wearing.”

CSPI Would Like to Censor Free Speech

I have been writing about the importance of vitamin D for your overall health for over a decade. Yet, the CSPI has chosen 2020 to censor my efforts to educate people on the importance of maintaining adequate vitamin D levels. In 2020, I co-wrote a paper with William Grant, Ph.D.,53 and Dr. Carol Wagner,54 both of whom are on the GrassrootsHealth vitamin D expert panel.55

The paper demonstrated the clear link that exists between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19. You can find the paper in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nutrients where it was published in October 2020.56

The FDA’s warning letter has highlighted statements in articles published on my website that are fully referenced, cited and supported by published science. I am committed to providing truthful information, for free, to anyone who wants it. I support having a rigorous scientific debate but cannot support unauthenticated and counterfeit accusations that fly in the face of published, peer-reviewed science.

It should never be a crime to report the findings of scientists and researchers. When censorship becomes the foundational method of influencing public opinion and health strategies, it is sure to lead down a disastrous road.

For the record, we have fully addressed the warning letter from the FDA. It is simply against the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for the FDA to stop free speech that the CSPI does not like.

CSPI Has Repeatedly Violated Its Mission Statement

This is not the first time that recommendations from the CSPI have endangered public health. In the past, CSPI described trans fats as “a great boon to American arteries”57 after heartily endorsing them years earlier by saying, “there is little good evidence that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats.”58

In the real world, this highly successful trans-fat campaign that began in 1986 resulted in an epidemic of heart disease. When the organization began reversing its decision on synthetic trans fats, it never admitted the error and simply switched the blame, erasing the previous pro-trans fat articles from its website and then posting a timeline59 on artificial trans fats that simply skips what they previously promoted.

The timeline begins in 1993 when CSPI “suddenly” decided to urge the FDA to label trans fats, and works up to 2003 when CSPI proudly says it took out a full-page ad in The New York Times “slamming McDonald’s for ‘Broken McPromise’ on trans fat.” This, despite the fact that in 198660 they criticized McDonald’s for not switching to trans fats sooner, like other fast-food restaurants already had.

While CSPI would prefer you to believe they’ve always been against trans fats, some people still remember what they and their officers said in the past, and comments their officers and members made when they switched their position have been preserved on others’ websites.

For example, Weston A. Price61 details how CSPI’s director of nutrition Bonnie Liebman changed her organization’s tune in December 1992, when she totally ignored CSPI’s support for trans fats only a few years earlier and blamed the margarine industry for promoting trans fats, writing:

“We’ve been crying ‘foul’ for some time now, as the margarine industry has tried to convince people that eating margarine was as good for their hearts as aerobic exercise … And we warned folks several years ago that trans fatty acids could be a problem.”

Continuing in their historical footsteps, the CSPI continues to recommend eating unsaturated fats like oil and canola oil,62 while avoiding butter and other healthy saturated fats, saying that “changing fats doesn’t lower the risk of dying.”63

Trans fats aren’t the only foods that CSPI made an about-face on something they’d promoted as healthy for years, however. It wasn’t until 2013 that CSPI downgraded the artificial sweetener Splenda from the “safe” category to “caution.”64 It took another three years to downgrade it again from “caution” to “avoid.”65

Yet, the organization continues to promote diet sodas as a safer alternative to regular soda, saying it “does not promote diabetes, weight gain or heart disease in the way that full calorie sodas do”66 — even though numerous peer-reviewed studies say otherwise.67,68,69

The CSPI’s support of suspected, and in some cases well verified, health hazards of trans fats, and artificial sweeteners, along with soy, GMOs, low-fat diets and fake meat, reveals that the intent of the organization to protect and advance public health is questionable to say the least.

The CSPI appears more interested in protecting profitable industries and their effort to destroy companies selling vitamins and supplements with natural antiviral effects is just more evidence of that.

Sources and References

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

China, Wall Street and the New Global Economy with James Corbett

UNLIMITED HANGOUT | OCTOBER 3, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Whitney is joined by James Corbett of the Corbett Report to discuss the overlap between the oligarchs of China and the United States and how the rise of China is intimately tied to Wall Street and Globalism. Published on 09/28/21.

This is the audio only version of the video interview available here.

Links from James Corbett

Episode 297 – China and the New World Order

American Financier Stephen A. Schwarzman Endows International Scholarship Program in China

The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

Heirs of Mao’s Comrades Rise as New Capitalist Nobility

Mapping China’s Red Nobility

Bloomberg News Killed Investigation, Fired Reporter, Then Sought To Silence His Wife

How to Play 3D Chess

‘Decoupling’ the U.S. from China would backfire

China’s Suspiciously American Arsenal: A Closer Look

Guess who Israel’s second largest trading partner is — China

2013 Report: Israel Passes U.S. Military Technology to China

2004: US ‘anger’ at Israel weapons sale

ATimes : US up in arms over Sino-Israel ties

1996: U.S. Military Technology Sold by Israel To China Upsets Asian Power Balance

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

436 Randomly Generated ‘Peer Reviewed’ Papers Published by Springer Nature

By Mike Hearn  • The Daily Sceptic • October 3, 2021

The publisher Springer Nature has released an “expression of concern” for more than four hundred papers they published in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences. All these papers supposedly passed through both peer review and editorial control, yet no expertise in geoscience is required to notice the problem:

The paper can’t decide if it’s about organic pollutants or the beauty of Latin dancing, and switches instantly from one to the other half way through the abstract.

The publisher claims this went through about two months of review, during which time the editors proved their value by assigning it helpful keywords:

If you’re intrigued by this fusion of environmental science and fun hobbies, you’ll be overjoyed to learn that the full article will only cost you about £30 and there are many more available if that one doesn’t take your fancy, e.g.

Background

Peer-reviewed science is the type of evidence policymakers respect most. Nonetheless, a frequent topic on this site is scientific reports containing errors so basic that any layman can spot them immediately, leading to the question of whether anyone actually read the papers before publication. An example is the recent article by Imperial College London, published in Nature Scientific Reports, in which the first sentence was a factually false claim about public statistics.

Evidence is now accruing that it’s indeed possible for “peer reviewed” scientific papers to be published which have not only never been reviewed by anybody at all, but might not have even been written by anybody, and that these papers can be published by well known firms like Springer Nature and Elsevier. In August we wrote about the phenomenon of nonsensical “tortured phrases” that indicate the usage of thesaurus-driven paper rewriting programs, probably the work of professional science forging operations called “paper mills”. Thousands of papers have been spotted using this technique; the true extent of the problem is unknown. In July, I reported on the prevalence of Photoshopped images and Chinese paper-forging efforts in the medical literature. Papers are often found that are entirely unintelligible, for example this paper, or this one whose abstract ends by saying, “Clean the information for the preparation set for finding valuable highlights to speak to the information by relying upon the objective of the undertaking.” – a random stream of words that means nothing.

Where does this kind of text come from?

The most plausible explanation is that these papers are being auto-generated using something called a context-free grammar. The goal is probably to create the appearance of interest in the authors they cite. In academia promotions are linked to publications and citations, creating a financial incentive to engage in this sort of metric gaming. The signs are all there: inexplicable topic switches half way through sentences or paragraphs, rampant grammatical errors, the repetitive title structure, citations of real papers and so on. Another sign is the explanation the journal supplied for how it occurred: the editor claims that his email address was hacked.

In this case, something probably went wrong during the production process that caused different databases of pre-canned phrases to be mixed together incorrectly. The people generating these papers are doing it on an industrial scale, so they didn’t notice because they don’t bother reading their own output. The buyers didn’t notice – perhaps they can’t actually read English, or don’t exist. Then the journal didn’t notice because, apparently, it’s enough for just one person to get “hacked” for the journal to publish entire editions filled with nonsense. And finally none of the journal’s readers noticed either, leading to the suspicion that maybe there aren’t any.

The volunteers spotting these papers are uncovering an entire science-laundering ecosystem, hiding in plain sight.

We know randomly generated papers can get published because it’s happened hundreds of times before. Perhaps the most famous example is SCIgen, “a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations” using context-free grammars. It was created in 2005 by MIT grad students as a joke, with the aim to “maximize amusement, rather than coherence“. SCIgen papers are buzzword salads that might be convincing to someone unfamiliar with computer science, albeit only if they aren’t paying attention.

Despite this origin, in 2014 over 120 SCIgen papers were withdrawn by leading publishers like the IEEE after outsiders noticed them. In 2020 two professors of computer science observed that the problem was still occurring and wrote an automatic SCIgen detector. Although it’s only about 80% reliable, it nonetheless spotted hundreds more. Their detector is now being run across a subset of new publications and finds new papers on a regular basis.

Root cause analysis

On its face, this phenomenon is extraordinary. Why can’t journals stop themselves publishing machine-generated gibberish? It’s impossible to imagine any normal newspaper or magazine publishing thousands of pages of literally random text and then blaming IT problems for it, yet this is happening repeatedly in the world of academic publishing.

The surface level problem is that many scientific journals appear to be almost or entirely automated, including journals that have been around for decades. Once papers are submitted, the reviewing, editorial and publishing process becomes handled by computers. If the system stops working properly editors can seem oblivious – they routinely discover they published nonsense only because people who don’t even subscribe to their journal complained about it.

Strong evidence for this comes from the “fixes” journals present when put under pressure. As an explanation for why the 436 “expressions of concern” wouldn’t be repeated the publisher said:

The dedicated Research Integrity team at Springer Nature is constantly searching for any irregularities in the publication process, supported by a range of tools, including an in-house-developed detection tool.

The same firm also proudly trumpeted in a press release that:

Springer announces the release of SciDetect, a new software program that automatically checks for fake scientific papers. The open source software discovers text that has been generated with the SCIgen computer program and other fake-paper generators like Mathgen and Physgen. Springer uses the software in its production workflow to provide additional, fail-safe checking.

A different journal proposed an even more ridiculous solution: ban people from submitting papers from webmail accounts. The more obvious solution of paying people to read the articles before they get published is apparently unthinkable – the problem of fake auto-generated papers is so prevalent, and the scientific peer review process so useless, that they are resorting to these feeble attempts to automate the editing process.

Diving below the surface, the problem may be that journals face functional irrelevance in the era of search engines. Clearly nobody can be reading the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, including its own editors, yet according to an interesting essay by Prof Igor Pak “publisher’s contracts with [university] libraries require them to deliver a certain number of pages each year“. What’s in those pages? The editors don’t care because the libraries pay regardless. The librarians don’t care because the universities pay. The universities don’t care because the students and granting bodies pay. The students and granting bodies don’t care because the government pays. The government doesn’t care because the citizens pay, and the citizens DO care – when they find out about this stuff – but generally can’t do anything about it because they’re forced to pay through taxes, student loan laws and a (socially engineered) culture in which people are told they must have a degree or else they won’t be able to get a professional job.

This seems to be zombie-fying scientific publishing. Non-top tier journals live on as third party proof that some work was done, which in a centrally planned economy has value for justifying funding requests to committees. But in any sort of actual market-based economy many of them would have disappeared a long time ago.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

“My name is Bill Gates, King of Kings”

Source: The next outbreak? We’re not ready | Bill Gates | INTIDOMAIN 
By Richard Hugus | October 4, 2021

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

The evidence is in. Gene-manipulating injections advertised as a “vaccine for covid 19” have killed and injured many thousands of people. Instead of providing immunity to an alleged virus, the shots actually harm the immune system and turn it against us. The spike proteins created by the shots spread out to attack major organs in the body, leading to a thousand and one different health problems, including heart attacks, myocarditis, pericarditis, strokes, blood clots, spontaneous abortions, neurological disorders, depression, and death. Yet the medical establishment is urging everyone, including pregnant women and children, to get the jab. The ghost standing in as US President recently decreed that if people refuse the shot they will lose their job. This is coercion to accept a medical intervention known to be a danger to human health — a crime against humanity. Half the population of the country is now facing this coercion.

This only makes sense if we reason that the authorities want to harm us, or that there is something so important in the injection that they don’t mind harming us, as long as we get the injection. Bill Gates said early in 2020 that everyone on the planet should be “vaccinated.” Perhaps his dream was that when that is accomplished there will be no one left who will not be genetically modified (to Gates’s secret specifications) and thus no one left to hold him to account.

One of the most insidious arguments put forward by the authorities is that we are facing a health crisis so serious that individual freedom must be sacrificed for the common good, and therefore no one has a moral right to refuse the Frankenshot. This argument quickly comes down to whether human beings have inalienable rights — rights given to us by God, which the state does not have the power to take away or overrule. To accept or reject any substance being given to us is obviously such a right. And after this we can discuss the details — that the purpose of the “vaccine” is unclear, that its contents are unknown, that it has proven harmful to thousands of people, that we were not informed of adverse effects, that natural immunity should be recognized, that tests establishing the alleged disease were fraudulent, that there is no emergency, that there are safe alternative treatments, et cetera. But if we understand that the state is a lesser power, then we understand that it does not have the authority to order substances injected into our bodies.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-U.S. Declaration of Independence

The cabal behind the medical tyranny we are facing doesn’t believe we have God-given rights because they don’t believe there’s a God in the first place. They apparently think that since they are billionaires, and billionaires have a lot of weight to throw around, that they can be gods. They also seem to believe there is nothing they are forbidden to do to other people because other people do not have souls — they are just biological entities evolved through random nature which the rich, by virtue of their power, are free to manipulate and improve upon. To technocrats, nothing is sacred. So it makes sense to them to risk injuring pregnant women and children and even experiment on the whole human race (beside their chosen few). Those who resist are now being segregated and punished, like Palestinians in their own land. Perhaps occupied Palestine is the oligarchs’ model for our future.

The ultimate goal may be the power that previous master-slave relationships were not able to achieve — a “read/write” capability in which the master has full surveillance power over the slaves and gives the orders for them to follow. Subtracted from the slave population, of course, will be those few billion dissidents and “useless eaters” who don’t fit in with the plan. They will be terminated. From this point of view it also follows that the genetic makeup of any living thing is just software which today’s sophisticated scientists can splice, delete, modify, or re-create as the masters see fit. From this point of view humans are no different than GM corn, soy, or cotton. GM humans can be used to bring in a nice profit as well because the masters will own their patents. Perhaps Monsanto agribusiness is another model for our future.

Taken to its logical extreme, reality itself is in the hands of our would-be masters. With proper control of the media, people can be made to believe anything, like that an illness similar to the flu is a “pandemic,” or that someone who has no symptoms of illness is actually sick, or that the unvaccinated are selfishly threatening everyone else with death, or that anyone who strays from the narrative is spreading “misinformation,” or that if someone goes into convulsions directly after getting jabbed it is not due to the poison that was just injected into them, or that a serum that injures and kills is “safe and effective.” In this world, the truth is what the powerful say it is, regardless of the facts. The powerful are a locomotive big enough to just run past any anomalies and contradictions, leaving us bewildered.

However, the ambitiousness of this insane program foretells its failure. History is full of great tyrants with grand plans who came in with spectacular fame but suddenly fell in disgrace, erased by time. The oligarchs’ main weakness is their lack of any sense of limits. Gaining some power, they then want it all. They reach too far, too soon, and expose themselves in the process. And then common humanity — always patient to a fault — finally decides to stand up and become a locomotive itself, running back over the entire plan and returning us to sanity.

If the world is going to see a great reset, it will not be the one Klaus Schwab and his Davos gangsters had in mind.

We should take heart. So much has been revealed! It’s as if the world’s worst criminals burst into the courtroom and offered up a horrendous public confession.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

From Glorious Millennia to Death and Destruction: Zionists Rewrite Palestine’s Story

By Miko Peled | MintPress News | September 20, 2021

One of the great tragedies of Palestine is that almost every day there is a commemoration of one massacre or another, the death of a child or destruction of a home or village, leading one to think that the Palestinian narrative is one of death and destruction, which is what Israel wants people to think. But the truth is that this is not the case. The Palestinian narrative is one of a glorious history with periods of great sadness and tragedy. It is the Zionist story that is full of killing, stealing and destruction and not, as they try to sell it, one of creation and growth.

September 16, 2021, marked 39 years since the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. As people remember and mourn the thousands of unarmed civilians who were butchered and the countless who survived suffering terrible injuries and emotional scars, we must also remember the man that stood behind this bloodbath.

This was a man whose complicity even the Israeli authorities could not ignore, the former general and renowned war criminal Ariel Sharon. And although he was momentarily penalized and banished from politics, he very quickly returned, and for a quarter of a century, he was the most powerful and influential man in Israeli politics.

Narratives

At the end of the day, it is all about the narrative, and we know all too well that Israel has done an outstanding job of erasing the Palestinian narrative and injecting its own mythical, false narrative in its place. In the media, in movies, in literature, in public education, and in politics the false Zionist narrative rules supreme and we who oppose racism and violence are faced with an enormous task as we engage in the work of reversing the narrative – a task without which it is hard to imagine Palestine ever becoming free.

Over the last 100 years, the Zionist movement managed to take the truly incredible history of Palestine and turn it into a historical footnote, replacing it with a mythical story that relies heavily on a Protestant-Zionist, literal reading of the Old Testament, which allowed them to create what is known as “return history.” In other words, the Zionist version of the history of Palestine creates the impression that the Jews returned to their ancient homeland after 2,000 years, making it an unprecedented historical event that overshadows anything else that occurred in Palestine over that bimillennial span.

The Zionist narrative is designed to turn the ancient history of Palestine into a small, unimportant story that cannot be compared with the grandeur of the narrative that is presented by the Old Testament. This is highlighted when Israeli politicians like the current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, refer to the Bible as the source of legitimacy for Israel.

A four thousand-year history

Thanks to the historian Nur Masalha, we now know that the name Palestine goes back close to 4,000 years. We know that the name Palestine was used in Egyptian sources going back to the Bronze Age, more than 1,000 BCE. Later, the name was used by the Assyrians in inscriptions from that era. The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BCE and who is considered to be the father of history as we know it, visited the country and referred to it as Palestine. The Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle also refers to Palestine by name in his writings.

The cities of Lyd, Ramle, and Yaffa all had remarkable histories, as did the cities of Akka, Haifa, and, of course, Nablus, Gaza, and Al-Quds-Jerusalem. Throughout the Muslim rule of Palestine, cities grew, cultures flourished, economic conditions and trade with Europe allowed people to prosper. Dhaher Al-Umar, who ruled over large parts of Palestine during the 18th century, is seen as the founding father of Palestinian modernity and, according to Nur Maslaha, he was the most influential figure in the modern orientation of Palestine towards the Mediterranean. During his reign in Palestine, there were agricultural and technical innovations introduced that “benefited the majority of Palestinian peasantry.” Thanks to Dhaher Al-Umar, there was considerable growth in the export of cotton, olive oil, wheat and soap.

Other, lesser-known parts of Palestine also flourished throughout history, such as the Palestinian town of Khalasa, which was founded by the Nabatean Arabs in the fourth century and then depopulated by the Zionist militia in 1948. It was known to be on what is called the “Arab incense route” and, according to Nur Masalha, under Arab-Islamic rule, the town, which sits just southwest of the city of Bi’r Al-Saba, was a major urban center.

According to Mansur Nasasra, the Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab had a very profitable export of barley to England for the production of beer. Aerial photos from the early British occupation of Palestine also show large tracts of cultivated land in the Naqab. These lands are now mostly depopulated and the Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab are prohibited from cultivating their ancestral lands. All of this stands in the face of Zionist claims that they came to a barren land and made it bloom.

The Zionist narrative is arguably responsible for the welcoming and forgiving attitude the entire world has towards the horrendous, unforgivable crimes committed by Israel since its founding in 1948. In order to prevent the next massacre by Israel, a state that seems to have an insatiable thirst for Palestinian blood, we have to reverse the narrative and delegitimize Zionism.

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Treachery by US Army Generals in World War II

Tales of the American Empire | September 30, 2021

The performance of some US Army Generals in the Philippines at the beginning of World War II was atrocious. The conquest of the Philippines by Japan was the worst major military defeat in United States history. After just four months of fighting, over 23,000 American military personnel were killed or captured, while embedded Filipino soldiers killed or captured totaled over 100,000. The soldiers fought well, but the overall defense plan was horribly incompetent resulting in a rapid defeat by a smaller Japanese force. Three important incidents demonstrated treachery by US Army Generals: 1) General MacArthur sacrificed his aircraft. 2) Fort Wint was abandoned. 3) General Sharp committed treason.

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Related Tale: “The American Empire’s Disastrous Defeat in 1942”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1yL…

“The Fall of the Philippines”; Louis Morton; US Army History Center; 1953; https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/5…

“Subic Bay and Fort Wint”; Charles Bogart; Corregidor.org; https://corregidor.org/chs_bogart/bog…

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

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