One of the arguments that interventionists, including many U.S. military veterans, use to rationalize the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan is that U.S. forces were fighting to bring “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” to the country. In fact, the Pentagon even coined the term “Operation Enduring Freedom” as one of the ways to justify the invasion and occupation of the country. Even though the effort failed, the argument goes, interventionists, including veterans, should nonetheless feel good about their “service” to both America and Afghanistan.
There is a problem with this rationale and justification, however. The problem is that it is evil to the core.
In any invasion and occupation, there are inevitably going to be people killed, injured, and maimed. There is also going to be destruction of homes, business, and infrastructure. That certainly proved to be the case in Afghanistan.
Therefore, what interventionists were — and are — saying is that all those deaths, injuries, and property destruction were worth bringing freedom, democracy, and women’s rights to Afghanistan.
But who died and made these people the arbiters of that type of mathematical life-and-death calculation? After all, those who were killed in the process would never have experienced freedom, democracy, and women’s rights. That’s because they would be dead.
Now, it’s one thing for the citizens of a country to decide for themselves whether to revolt against the tyranny of their own government. Violent revolutions can be very costly in terms of life and property. That’s why people might decide to put up with a lot of tyranny before they revolt. They don’t want to lose their family members, friends, and countrymen by revolting, until the situation gets so bad that they feel that they have no choice but to do so. In the final analysis, the decision to revolt and when to revolt can be highly subjective.
But that’s a far cry from U.S. officials making that decision from afar. Their decision is a cavalier one because they don’t put the same value on Afghan life that the Afghan people do. In fact, interventionists put little or no value on Afghan life. That mindset is reflected by the fact that early in the invasion and occupation, the Pentagon, with the full support of Washington, D.C., officials, made the conscious decision to not even keep track of how many Afghans they were killing. Moreover, there was never an upward limit on the number of Afghan people who could be killed, injured or maimed in the effort to bring freedom, democracy, and women’s rights to the country. It just didn’t matter. Any number of Afghan people killed in the effort would be considered worth it by U.S. interventionists.
That’s why the purported concern that U.S. interventionists, including many U.S. military veterans, express for the Afghan people rings hollow, given that they were willing to kill or maim any number of Afghans to reach their political goal.
How many Afghan lives were worth the U.S. effort to bring “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” to Afghanistan? None! It was never morally or religiously justified for the U.S. government to kill even one single Afghan citizen for the sake of a political goal. Killing, injuring, or maiming even just one single Afghan, much less tens of thousands of Afghans, for the sake of “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” has always been the epitome of evil.
FINALLY, an MP has challenged the government on the horrific levels of Covid vaccine damage recorded under the Yellow Card Scheme run by our watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). It currently shows 1,632 deaths and 360,000 injuries since December 1, 2020, far more than any vaccine in the past.
Sir Christopher Chope, Conservative MP for Christchurch, has researched the reporting system set up in 1979 and its accompanying compensation programme and found them woefully inadequate; a fact anyone who has tried to claim for damage by a vaccine is painfully aware of. He has introduced the Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill to deal with the vaccine claims which are currently handled in what is best described as a hostile environment.
Chope told the Commons last Friday that he estimates that more than 10,000 people ‘have suffered real, serious damage as a result of doing the right thing’, and was shocked when the Labour MP for Cambridge, Daniel Zeichner, suggested there were more urgent priorities, asking: ‘I wonder why this issue should get preference over others?’
Chope was clear in his criticism: ‘Families should not be left hanging around for years wondering whether they will be eligible for any compensation. That is totally the wrong message. The government should be sending the message that, “if you do the right thing, you will be looked after by the government if something goes wrong”.’
He recognised that some of the injured had ‘taken one for the team’ and that their sacrifice should be recognised in a similar way to a soldier suffering severe injury. He said: ‘In a sense, that is what we do with the military covenant. People enter the armed forces of our country and, if something goes wrong, they expect the government to look after them, and we do.’
A petition to update the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) circulated in July but received only 17,000 signatures; 100,000 are needed to trigger a full debate in the House of Commons. Still, the government had to respond to signatories, which it did on August 5, but Chope was scathing. He told the House the response said: ‘The government has a robust system to monitor potential side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine and has added the vaccine to the VDPs. We will consider further action as more evidence becomes available.’
Chope was not impressed. He said: ‘We already have a lot of evidence that people have suffered damage, if not death, as a result of these vaccinations. The government are saying they are “looking at how it can improve the operational aspects of the VDPS to better meet the additional demand created by the inclusion of the Covid-19 vaccine and improve the customer experience. Once more is known about the possible links between the vaccine and potential side effects, it will be considered whether a wider review of the VDPS is needed.” My Bill answers that question by saying that we need such a review now.’
He told the House that until June 23, there had been 154 applications for compensation: ‘Obviously, there are many, many more now, but there are only four people in that department dealing with all vaccine damage applications, so no decisions have been made and there is no indication as to when any decisions will be forthcoming.’
Claimants will have a rough experience if history is anything to go by. It took Jackie Fletcher 18 years to win compensation for her son Robert, who was severely damaged by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as a toddler. The injured, in a time of great need, are likely to find they are gaslighted, that they must spend thousands on specialist lawyers and that the burden of proof to explain why they are vaccine-damaged will be on them rather than Big Pharma, who manufactured the shots.
Chope set out the scheme’s inadequacies. He said: ‘The Pearson commission [1979 reform of compensation for personal injury, including from vaccination] found that those injured as a result of vaccination should have access to financial support, however, the 1979 Act makes provision of a maximum payment of £120,000 together with a threshold of 60 per cent disablement. As a result, fewer than 2 per cent of applications are successful. My Bill calls for the Government to set up a judge-led inquiry into the issues raised.’
Like all MPs and leaders to date, Shaun Bailey, Conservative MP for West Bromwich West, was more concerned with upholding the integrity of the vaccine programme and protecting Big Pharma than the victims. Missing the point, he said: ‘How do we ensure that we do not create a culture of hesitancy where people do not uptake vaccines or, equally, do not produce vaccines because of the fear that they might cause mass severe side-effects?’
If Big Pharma have not worked out how to avoid mass severe side-effects after hundreds of years of vaccination, and government are approving vaccines with that knowledge, we really are in trouble.
Chope agreed and basically said the government had to take responsibility rather than hide serious vaccine damage as it consistently tries to do. ‘We cannot suppress reports of coroners saying that somebody has died as a result of vaccination. I know from personal experience people who were in really good health and then had their first vaccine. I know one person who had a stroke and then severe heart problems. These are not just anecdotes; these are facts known by people across the country. We need to say to people we will look after them 100 per cent without expecting them to get lawyers engaged which is agonising for families and loved ones.’
The AstraZeneca jab is incurring double the number of adverse event reports of Pfizer. There are rumblings that it will be discontinued under the guise of a mix ’n’ match programme.
MHRA Yellow Card reporting published September 9 2021, figures to September 1
Pfizer – 21.9million people – 40million doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 197 people impacted
AstraZeneca – 24.8m people – 48.9m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 107 impacted
Moderna – 1.4m people – 2.3m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 93 impacted
Overall, 1 in 134 people injected experienced a Yellow Card Adverse Event, which may be less than 10 per cent of actual figures, according to MHRA.
DOCTORS yesterday warned Euro MPs that they will be held personally responsible for harm and death caused by Covid vaccines.
Doctors for Covid Ethics, a group of doctors and scientists from 30 countries, sent letters to all European Parliament members giving notice of liability.
They sent the same letter to Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency.
Their action came as the parliament resumed business with a debate on health and prevention of disease, which will be voted on today.
The notice, served with supporting documentation, read: ‘The rush to vaccinate first and research later has left you in a position whereby Covid-19 vaccination policy is now entirely divorced from the relevant evidence-base.
‘As you consider your next steps in mandating a vaccine that is contra-indicated by science, we draw your attention to recently published Freedom of Information requests, which reveal gross negligence in the Covid vaccine authorisation process, including misleading the Commission on Human Medicines as to whether any independent verification of vaccine trial data had occurred.’
Its website says: ‘We have written three letters to the European Medicines Agency, urgently warning of short term and long term dangers from Covid-19 vaccines, including clotting, bleeding and platelet abnormalities. We first began warning of blood-related risks before media reports of clotting led to vaccine suspensions around the world.
‘In the absence of crucial safety data, we are demanding the immediate withdrawal of all experimental gene-based Covid-19 vaccines.
‘We oppose vaccine passports, which threaten public health and violate Nuremberg and other protections. We are warning that “health passes” place coercive pressure on citizens to submit to dangerous medical experimentation, in return for freedoms that once were human rights.’
There’s been an absolutely brutal campaign against Ivermectin in the public press. I thought it was time to deploy my background as a Toxicologist to review the known toxicity of Ivermectin. Fortunately, a world-class review paper on Ivermectin came out in 2021 by Jacques Descotes, a prominent toxicologist working at the behest of Medincell.
That comprehensive review of Ivermectin reveals that it is among the safest and most well-tolerated drugs ever introduced to the market.
In this episode I walk through the expert review of Ivermectin by Jacques Descotes MD, PharmD, PhD which was conducted in early 2021. We discuss the safety, toxicity, and known side effects and drug interactions, few and mild as they are. The conclusion is that “Ivermectin human toxicity cannot be claimed to be a serious cause for concern.”
Our healthcare system is broken, a fact nobody would have disputed in precovid days. Regulatory capture is a reality, and the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with examples. Yet we trusted private-public partnerships to find an optimal solution to a global pandemic, assuming a crisis would bring out the best in historically corrupt institutions.
Here is a brief list of less-than-savory behavior demonstrated by our titans of healthcare:
Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson plead guilty to “misbranding with the intent to defraud or mislead” and paying “kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe [their] drugs,” resulting in fines of $2.3 billion in 2009 and $2.2 billion in 2013, respectively.
Pfizer settled another lawsuit for “manipulating studies” and “suppressing negative findings” just a few years later.
Gilead Sciences paid $97 million in fines, because it “illegally used a non-profit foundation as a conduit to pay the Medicare co-pays for its own drug.”
In 2005, AstraZeneca’s drug Crestor was shown to be linked to a life-threatening muscle disease while the company withheld evidence of this and two dozen other effects from the public.
In 2012, GlaxoSmithKline paid $3 billion in fines, as it “failed to include certain safety data” relating to their drug, since labeled as connected to heart failure and attacks.
Thankfully, our public health guardians are in place to protect us from the greed and deceit of the private sector, right? Wrong. Enjoy another brief list:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) worked behind the scenes with company Biogen to alter previously conducted trials of their $56,000 per year Alzheimer’s treatment, and “by removing the subset of people for whom the drug didn’t work, they found a slight statistical effect in favor of the drug.” Even after doing this, an advisory committee voted 10–0 against approving the drug. The FDA approved the drug anyway, causing three committee members to resign.
In that case, the third-party advisors did the right thing. This is not always the case: a study by Science Magazine tracking 107 FDA advisors for four years found that 62 percent received money from related drug makers, with 25 percent receiving over $100,000 and 6 percent receiving over $1 million. It only takes a few corrupt advisors to fix a panel and feign medical consensus.
In 2017, it was revealed that the acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director for heart disease and stroke prevention had been secretly communicating with Coca-Cola, providing guidance on how “to influence world health authorities on sugar and beverage policy matters.”
The American healthcare system remains mired in good old-fashioned crony capitalism, fascism, corporatism, mercantilism, protectionism … fancy words for when private companies work with governments to subvert the forces of competition. The suppression of research into off-patent drugs is a nasty symptom of this problem.
While there are countless drugs to which this applies, we will discuss ivermectin. First, addressing the drug’s dismissal by its own manufacturer, Merck, let it be known that ivermectin is no longer under patent. Merck no longer owns exclusive rights to the drug’s production. The forces of competition have been bestowed upon the drug, thus making it far cheaper. Meanwhile, Merck is also currently rolling out an oral covid treatment, which the US government is providing $1.2 billion in funding to research. This would be under patent and may explain the company’s opposition to using ivermectin.
The usefulness of ivermectin remains debatable. However, it’s important to note that in early April 2020, a study at the University of Monash in Australia suggested it can be effective. Moreover, the drug is FDA approved, has existed for forty years, won a Nobel Prize, and is extremely safe when used at recommended levels. Given the crisis and ivermectin’s safety—safe even if not conferring big benefits for covid sufferers—the rush to condemn use of the drug appears suspect. Indeed, a week after the Australian study was published, the FDA advised against using ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment, forcing desperate people to the black market and to self-prescribe versions of the drug intended for animals.
The FDA noted subsequently that “additional testing is needed.” Yet, to date, there has not been a single completed government-funded study on the effectiveness of ivermectin against covid-19. Meanwhile, they have funneled billions toward research into vaccines and patented treatments. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded trials for remdesivir, still under patent with Gilead, despite it being less effective and having more severe side effects than ivermectin. The FDA approved remdesivir under emergency use authorization (EUA) despite published trials, later stating “remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.”
One would think that if “additional testing” is so important, the US government might be interested in funding research to examine the potential benefits of cheap, safe, and proven drugs that have shown some promise in treating covid. But that’s clearly not what going on. Funding is geared toward helping huge pharmaceutical companies develop new patented drugs. As long Big Pharma wants it, and if there’s a profit to be made, apparently our government will be there to provide funding.
Freddie Sayers, the host of UnHerd’s ‘Lockdown TV’, has written an interesting piece for The Telegraph. Commenting on the Government’s insistence that we must vaccinate 12–15 year olds – in defiance of its own expert panel – he notes that a “dangerous new wisdom is forming, which views action as always better than inaction”.
“In this view,” Sayers continues, “long-standing rules and institutions of liberal democracies have been demoted to fussy obstacles that prevent us from replicating the successes of the command-and-control governments of Asia.”
He then makes the important but often overlooked point that “action can be every bit as damaging as inaction”. If only politicians had taken this into account last year, the response to the pandemic might have looked very different.
When I asked Philippe Lemoine why lockdowns were implemented with so little regard for costs, he suggested that politicians didn’t want to “leave themselves open to the accusation of not having done anything to curb the epidemic”. They had to do something, even if that something ended up causing more harm than good.
This fallacy was popularised by the much-loved British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister. In the episode ‘Power to the People’, Sir Humphrey Appleby is talking to his predecessor Sir Arnold Robinson about the Prime Minister’s plans to reform local government.
Sir Arnold says, “He’s suffering from politician’s logic,” to which Sir Humphrey replies, “Something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do it.” In other words: ‘Something must be done; lockdown is something; therefore we must do it.’
The incentives that gave rise to ‘politician’s logic’ in this case are obvious. While the ‘benefits’ of lockdown are immediate and visible, the costs may take months or even years to materialise. (By ‘benefits’, I mean the reduction in social and economic activity that is believed to reduce viral transmission.)
Furthermore, even if lockdown’s impact on mortality turns out to be marginal, politicians can claim that things would have been far worse if not for their tough and far-sighted decisions.
After all, we can’t observe the counterfactual of what would have happened in the absence of lockdown. And the politicians themselves? They may well be out of office by the time the full costs of lockdown become apparent.
Incidentally, the fact that ‘politician’s logic’ is a fallacy obviously doesn’t imply we should never do anything. In the case of the pandemic, there was something else we could have done, namely focused protection.
Let’s hope that when the next pandemic arrives, there are a few people around who remember the lessons of Yes, Prime Minister. Just because this is something, doesn’t mean we have to do it.
Curcumin is the major biologically active polyphenolic compound of turmeric and gives the spice its yellow color. Recent research shows the biological activity of curcumin reduces the severity of COVID-19. The results rank curcumin in the top five substances of 25 tested when used early to reduce illness and death from COVID.1
Turmeric is a perennial plant in the ginger family and found native to southern India and Indonesia.2 Like ginger, it is the underground rhizome that is used in cooking and for medicinal purposes. Traditionally, it was used in Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine.3
The cosmetic and fabric industry has also found uses for turmeric, having been used to dye fabric for more than 2,000 years.4 According to Linus Pauling Institute,5 evidence continues to mount showing that curcumin can exert antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective activities.
Clinical trials are underway to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the compound as an adjuvant or as a treatment for patients with several types of cancer, including pancreatic, lung, prostate and colorectal cancers. The variety of positive health benefits found with curcumin may be a result of its highly pleiotropic capability, or ability of interacting with a variety of molecular targets.6
In the current environment, researchers have been studying anti-inflammatory compounds in an effort to reduce the severity of COVID-19. After multiple studies, curcumin outranks zinc, quercetin, melatonin and remdesivir, which ranked 24 out of the 25 substances.7
Current Curcumin Studies
The ranking was based on several studies performed in 2020 and 2021. In one study,8 researchers engaged 41 patients who met the inclusion criteria of mild to moderate COVID-19. There were 21 in the group who received nanocurcumin and 20 received a placebo.
The researchers monitored symptoms and laboratory data, finding that symptoms in the intervention group resolved significantly faster and patients’ oxygen saturation was higher after just two days of treatment. It remained higher than the control group through 14 days. Researchers also found it noteworthy that none of the patients who received the nanocurcumin deteriorated during the 14-day follow-up period, but 40% of the control group did.
A second study9 using nanocurcumin recruited 40 patients with COVID-19 to look at inflammatory cytokine expression. They were divided into 20 patients who received nanocurcumin and 20 who received a placebo. The researchers measured cytokine secretion of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1B), IL-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha and IL-18. They concluded that the data demonstrated nanocurcumin modulates:
“… the increased rate of inflammatory cytokines especially IL-1β and IL-6 mRNA expression and cytokine secretion in COVID-19 patients, which may cause an improvement in clinical manifestation and overall recovery.”
Another study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology10 in early 2021 measured the differences in mortality between a control group and intervention group, each of which included 70 patients. The control and intervention groups received conventional COVID-19 treatment.
In addition, those in the intervention group received curcumin with piperine twice a day and those in the control group received probiotics twice a day. The researchers found patients who had mild, moderate and severe symptoms in the intervention group showed early symptomatic recovery and less deterioration.
Overall, they had better clinical outcomes and a lower death rate than the control group. Based on their results the researchers also concluded that curcumin may be a therapeutic option to prevent post COVID thromboembolic events.
Curcumin’s Action Is Similar to Proxalutamide
The drug in the No. 1 position for early treatment of COVID-19 is proxalutamide. It is an androgen receptor antagonist that was in clinical trials for the treatment of prostate cancer and breast cancer.11 At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the company found the drug could limit the expression of transmembrane protein serine 2 (TMPRSS2) and ACE-2 receptors, both which play a critical role in severity of COVID-19.
Ability of the virus to enter pneumocytes depends on TMPRSS2 that is expressed on the surface of human cells in much the same way as ACE-2.12 Interestingly, TMPRSS2 is regulated by an androgen receptor, which means that the ability of the virus to infect the cells is directly dependent on androgenic status.
Past research indicated that men who had androgenetic alopecia hair loss had a greater risk of severe disease and men taking antiandrogenic drugs had a reduced risk of severe disease. This led to the hypothesis that proxalutamide would be beneficial, as it is an androgen receptor antagonist.
The hypothesis was supported in a study13 that engaged 236 men and women with COVID-19. By Day 7, the virus was not detected using a PCR test with a cycle threshold of greater than 40 in 82% of the subjects taking proxalutamide. The average time it took patients to show clinical remission in the treatment group was 4.2 days versus 21.8 days in the placebo group.
In one study14 evaluating the ability of three polyphenols to suppress SARS-CoV-2 viral penetration into human cells, researchers found that curcumin treatments decreased the TMPRSS2 activity by up to 50%. This is similar to the mechanism demonstrated by proxalutamide in the recent studies.
Curcumin Alone Has Poor Bioavailability
Turmeric and curcumin have been challenging to study since curcumin has a low bioavailability when taken orally, which researchers attribute to the body’s limited ability to absorb the compound, as well as rapid metabolism and elimination.15 However, researchers have found there are different compounds, that when taken with curcumin, can raise bioavailability and therefore enhance the multiple health benefits attributed to curcumin.
For example, piperine is an alkaloid found in black pepper, which is responsible for the distinct taste. On its own, it has several health benefits, including anti-inflammatory effects and insulin resistance properties.16 When scientists combine it with curcumin it can raise the bioavailability of curcumin by up to 2,000%17 by blocking the metabolic pathway,18 thus increasing the amount available in the body.
One study published in the journal Medicine19 in 2021 addressed the issues of bioavailability of curcumin as it relates to conflicting dosing strategies and the ability to compare research data. The writers described clinical trials in which purified curcumin was given in relatively large doses, up to 12 grams per day, without achieving measurable plasma levels.20
In addition to combining curcumin with piperine to raise bioavailability, the writers acknowledge manipulating curcumin in other ways can also enhance bioavailability, such as reduced particle size, emulsions, essential oil complexes or the addition of whey protein or surfactants.
At the completion of one study, 17 healthy men between 18 years and 45 years participated in the double-blind, randomized crossover study.23 People who were using any products or food with turmeric within the 14 days before the study started were excluded. The researchers used several serum measurements to determine bioavailability, including the bioactive metabolite, tetrahydrocurcumin.
They found individuals taking curcumin had 39 times higher the amount of free curcumin, 31 times higher the amount of tetrahydrocurcumin, 49.5 times the amount of total curcumin and 52.5 times the amount of total curcuminoids over the compared standard curcumin reference product.24
Curcumin May Reduce Pain in Those With Arthritis
A 2019 report from the Arthritis Foundation25 found that there were 54.4 million people in the U.S. between 2013 and 2015 that had been diagnosed by their physician with arthritis. Conservatively, they estimate this number will increase 49% to 78.4 million people by 2040.
This represents 25.9% of all adults. Additionally, the number whose activities are limited due to their arthritis are estimated to jump from 43.5% of all people with the condition in 2015 to 52% by 2040. The condition is painful, and people often turn to anti-inflammatory and pain medications to relieve the discomfort.
The Arthritis Foundation26 lists topical and oral nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid, hyaluronic acid, platelet rich plasma and stem cell injections as a means of reducing pain and thus potentially improving activity levels.
However, many of these treatments come with a list of side effects and are not always well tolerated. Since the safety and nontoxicity of curcumin, even at high doses, has been documented in human trials27 studies have evaluated whether the anti-inflammatory effects of curcumin could help those with osteoarthritis, which is the most common form of arthritis.28
One study29 engaged 139 people with knee osteoarthritis for a randomized, open-label, active controlled clinical study to receive either curcumin or diclofenac twice daily for 28 days. Baseline measurements were taken before the interventions began and then again at Days 7, 14 and 28.
The main outcome measure was pain. Researchers also had secondary outcome measures that included anti-ulcer effect, anti-flatulent effect, altered weight and a global assessment of therapy. By Days 14 and 28, there was no statistically significant difference between those taking curcumin and those taking diclofenac in pain measurements.
Those taking curcumin had fewer episodes of flatulence and by Day 28, had a statistically significant weight loss and anti-ulcer effect. No patient using curcumin required an H2 blocker, while 28% of those using diclofenac needed an H2 blocker to reduce excess stomach acid. Researchers found that curcumin had a similar effect in reducing pain to diclofenac but was better tolerated and had fewer side effects.
Additional Health Benefits for Curcumin
Natural plants have been used for medicinal purposes throughout history, and turmeric is not an exception. There is evidence it was used in human health as far back as 4,000 years ago and modern medicine has seen over 3,000 papers published on it within the last 25 years.30
In addition to pain relief, curcumin has also demonstrated the ability to make significant changes in cognitive function and mood in older adults who took the supplement for at least four weeks.31 Researchers found significant improvement in working memory, general fatigue and state of calmness. Additionally, it significantly reduced total and LDL cholesterol.
A second study32 performed at the University of California Los Angeles and published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry examined the effects of curcumin on individuals who had no history of dementia. The study’s first author, Dr. Gary Small, said in a press release:33
“Exactly how curcumin exerts its effects is not certain, but it may be due to its ability to reduce brain inflammation, which has been linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and major depression.”
The study followed 40 people between ages 50 and 90 who had mild memory complaints. Researchers found those who took the curcumin had significant improvements in memory and attention abilities, as well as mild improvement in mood and significantly fewer amyloid and tau signals in the amygdala and hypothalamus, areas of the brain that control some memory and emotional functions.34
One paper published in 201935 postulated that since chronic inflammation plays such a significant part in obesity, cardiovascular diseases and impaired glucose tolerance, increasing the bioavailability of curcumin may help modulate many of these lifestyle-related diseases.
A meta-analysis of three studies36 that included 326 patients, also found that curcumin has a beneficial effect on irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, and another analysis showed curcumin a being effective and well-tolerated agent for the treatment of some skin diseases.37
Researchers continue to evaluate the effects curcumin has on many conditions driven by chronic inflammation, including rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, cognitive decline, major depressive disorders and premenstrual syndrome.38
Although curcumin is generally recognized as safe (GRAS),39 it has been found to increase the risk of bleeding in people taking medications that affect platelet aggregation, such as Lovenox, heparin or warfarin. People who are on chemotherapy should consult with their physician before including curcumin as it has inhibited chemotherapy-induced apoptosis in the lab.40
Additionally, curcumin may interfere with the metabolism of some drugs used in the U.S. and piperine, sometimes included with curcumin to increase bioavailability, may also affect the elimination and bioavailability of certain drugs.
A US military contractor being sued for its involvement in the brutal torture of Iraqi inmates at the country’s Abu Ghraib prison during the US-led invasion of the nation has argued that recent Supreme Court cases make clear it cannot be held liable for misconduct that occurred overseas.
The Virginia-based military contractor CACI, which supplied interrogators at the notorious prison compound, sought on Friday to have the 13-year-old legal action dismissed, with the most recent legal debate centering on the extent to which American companies can be sued for their violations overseas, AP reported.
According to the report, the US Supreme Court has restricted corporations’ potential liability in recent years as the high court recently dismissed a civil suit against a subsidiary of American chocolate maker Nestle after it was accused of complicity in child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast.
CACI lawyer John O’Connor insisted during a hearing in the US District Court in Alexandria on Friday that the high court’s ruling in the Nestle case earlier this year compels the CACI lawsuit to be thrown out on similar grounds.
However, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema appeared unpersuaded from the outset, emphasizing, “I think you overread Nestle.”
While the judge did not immediately reject CACI’s motion, she did point out that she sees major differences in the allegations against Nestle and the allegations regarding CACI’s complicity in the brutal torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib.
In the CACI case, for instance, company personnel were assigned directly to Abu Ghraib under a government contract, an element that was not present in the Nestle case.
In fact, Iraq’s status at the time as an invaded nation governed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, a multinational entity dominated by the US military, calls into question whether Iraq and Abu Ghraib were truly foreign territory, lawyers for the Abu Ghraib victims argued.
Brinkema further pointed to an email from a CACI employee assigned to Abu Ghraib that she described as a potential “smoking gun.” The email was uncovered in the discovery process of the lawsuit, but it is filed under seal.
But as described in generic terms in court papers and by Brinkema, it was sent by a CACI employee to his boss outlining abuses he had personally witnessed. The employee apparently resigned in protest, Brinkema said as cited in the report, adding that she was “amazed” that no one at CACI seemed to follow up on the employee’s concerns.
CACI has strongly denied that any of its employees engaged in or sanctioned torture, the report adds, noting that the three inmates who filed the suit — with the assistance of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights — acknowledge that they were never directly assaulted or tortured by any CACI employees.
But the lawsuit alleges that CACI was complicit and aided and abetted the torture by setting up the conditions under which soldiers conducted the brutal treatment that shocked the world when photographs of the abuse were made public in 2004.
CACI’s legal arguments are just the most recent in a string of challenges to the lawsuit. On two prior occasions, a judge did in fact toss out the lawsuit, only to see it reinstated on appeal.
Most recently, CACI argued it had immunity from a lawsuit in the same way that the US government would enjoy immunity because it was working as a contractor at the behest of the government.
Brinkema, however, ruled that when it comes to fundamental violations of international norms like those depicted at Abu Ghraib, the government enjoys no immunity, and neither does a government contractor.
Chile’s September 11, in 1973, brought a brutal end to Salvador Allende’s socialist rule. In its wake, violence permeated Chilean society, through the U.S.-backed military coup which was to provide gruesome inspiration for the later regional systematic surveillance and elimination of socialists and communists known as Operation Condor, in which several Latin American countries were involved.
The mass arrests of Chileans loyal to Allende and socialist politics became a long purge in the country. The Caravan of Death – one of the earlier dictatorship operations aimed at instilling terror within the country – was carried out in the coup’s aftermath, between September 30 and October 22, 1973, after securing Santiago by means of brutal suppression, torture and killings. Dictator Augusto Pinochet’s purge was aimed at silencing dissent throughout the country, and also to ensure the military’s loyalty towards the dictatorship – any negligence or lenience exhibited by any individual would be punished by methods used against dissenting Chileans. The ultimate aim, according to retired Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Herrera Aracena, was “to bring an end to the remaining legal processes… In other words, finish with them once and for all.”
The Caravan of Death massacres are considered to be among the most brutal not only due to the extermination methods involved – at times the corpses were unrecognizable due to bludgeoning – but also because many Chileans willingly turned themselves in for interrogation.
Army officers travelled in Puma helicopters throughout Chile, inspecting detention centres and giving orders for execution, or carrying out the executions themselves. Testimony from La Serena indicates that 15 prisoners were executed by firing squad and their bodies buried in a mass grave. To prevent any possible dissemination of knowledge, at least in the immediate aftermath, the official version publicized by the dictatorship was that the prisoners had attempted an escape.
While at first the dictatorship seemed adamant on making its brutality known to quash any resistance, the more refined methods of disappearance and secret extermination sites hastened a culture of impunity and oblivion. The Calama massacres – the last stop in the Caravan of Death – was such an example. Relatives of the disappeared sought information about the whereabouts of their loved ones to no avail. It was the female relatives of the disappeared in Calama who took matters into their own hands and started physically searching for the bodies of their loved ones in the Atacama Desert. The dictatorship had forbidden any leaking of information due to the extent of mutilations the victims had been subjected to by the execution squads. As the women’s resilience increased, so did the dictatorship’s efforts to prevent any discovery of the bodies through exhumation and reburial of remains.
The Rettig Commission established that 75 Chileans were killed and their bodies disappeared throughout the operation, headed by Brigadier General Sergio Arellano Stark, and with the participation of agents Manuel Contreras, Marcelo Moren Brito, Sergio Arredondo Gonzalez, Armando Fernandez Larios and Pedro Espinoza Bravo – all of who played prominent roles in the torture and disappearances of dictatorship opponents throughout Pinochet’s rule. Contreras headed the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Brito oversaw torture at Villa Grimaldi, while Fernandez Larios was involved in the assassination of Chilean economist and diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, carried out by double agent for DINA and the CIA, Michael Townley.
Although indicted by Judge Juan Guzman Tapia on December 1, 2000 for ordering the Caravan of Death killings, dictator Pinochet escaped justice on account of purported health reasons. In relation to dictatorship memory and rupture, the Caravan of Death stands as a forewarning of what was to be unleashed in Chile throughout Pinochet’s rule and its aftermath. Particularly in Calama, the women’s resilience against the dictatorship can be seen as one of the earliest expressions against the nationwide oblivion through which Pinochet attempted to crush any questioning, let alone investigations, into dictatorship-era crimes.
Here is how I know the forced vaccination program is not intended to protect me and others from Covid but has some other, unspoken purpose(s):
1. People with pre-existing immunity are being required to get the vaccine, though it provides no additional benefit and only confers the risk of side effects. This is based on the totality of the evidence, not a few cherrypicked studies. Recovered people have stronger and longer-lasting immunity, which acts against many more epitopes than just spike protein.
2. People with pre-existing immunity are not being allowed to get an antibody test to use to show they are already immune, although such tests were approved by FDA for use by vaccine manufacturers to screen subjects in all their Covid vaccine clinical trials for immunity.
3. People with PCR evidence of prior infection cannot use this to avoid vaccination, even though CDC counts each one as a case. T cell tests cannot be used to demonstrate existing immunity and avoid a shot either.
4. The US government, the EU and some other countries have signed contracts for several doses per person plus the option to purchase 8 or 9 doses PER PERSON. How did they know, last winter-spring, they would need them? They didn’t. They don’t need them, because they barely work against current variants.
5. They must have contracted for them because they planned to use this many doses before they had any idea of the duration of effectiveness of current vaccines.
6. Antibody tests done in the UK suggested that over 90% of the population was already immune. Most likely we too have surprisingly high rates of immunity in the population.
7. Israel, with the highest population rate of vaccination and even highest rate of people who have received 3d doses, currently has the highest rate of active Covid cases in the world.
I hope this is crystal clear: you are not being vaccinated to give you immunity, but for one or more other purposes. The current plan is to revaccinate you every 5-8 months, either with the same or perhaps tweaked vaccines. In Israel, the vaccine passport now expires without the third dose.
Imagine implementing passports here, and in a few years your passport will expire without the 8th or 15th dose… and your ‘privileges’ like shopping or jogging disappear…
It is currently not possible to know exactly what is in the vial you receive. Different types of complex and expensive tests need to be done, but it is very difficult to get a vial and prove a chain of custody. Not all vials may be identical.
We do have laws on the books guaranteeing bodily autonomy, informed consent, the right to privacy, the right to practice your religion, and no forced treatment with experimental products.
Yes, these laws are being ignored. It is our job to make them known, to insist they are followed, and to resist illegal edicts.
A review of peer-reviewed studies suggests regular COVID 19 mask wearing increases risk of mental retardation. Studies affirm what independent medical doctors are increasingly saying – mask wearing mandates are not only unscientific, but contrary to good health and can be deadly!
Below, we show how the scientific literature finds that prolonged mask wearing impedes brain function.
Top medical doctor, Britain’s Dr Vernon Coleman, is Britain’s best-selling medical author for several decades and has repeatedly warned how dangerous mask wearing really is – it can even be deadly to some. He tells us:
“Masks cause hypoxia and hypercapnia – and affect the wearer’s attention and cognitive processes. They make an accident more likely. Anyone driving while wearing a mask should be arrested. Insurance companies should refuse to pay out on claims if a driver was wearing a mask.” [1]
Hypercapnia frequently occurs due to hypoventilation secondary to limited airway pressure and/or tidal volume.
So dangerous is hypoventilation it literally is a matter of life and death to many. Anyone familiar with sleep apnea knows this related condition is well-researched and may be informative in guiding our understanding about impeded breathing, such as from prolonged COVID19 mask wearing.
Dr Coleman, who has built a sterling reputation since the 1980’s as a prominent whistleblower on medical malfeasance, warns:
“Over a dozen scientific papers show clearly that masks are ineffective in preventing the movement of infective organisms. They also reduce oxygen levels and expose wearers to increased levels of carbon dioxide.” [2]
Hypercapnia is the term doctors use to refers to abnormally high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood.
As CO2 accumulates in the blood, you’ll see symptoms like difficulty thinking clearly, headaches, and sleepiness. More severe or longer lasting cases of hypercapnia may cause symptoms like dizziness, excessively fast breathing and heart rates, increase in blood pressure, twitching of the muscles, and skin flushing.
Hypoxia
Now keep in mind that when CO2 in the blood is up, as in hypercapnia, then oxygen (O2) must be down. A decrease or less than the normal amount of oxygen in the blood is known as hypoxemia. And if there isn’t enough oxygen in the blood, then there won’t be enough oxygen getting to the organs of the body, which is a condition termed hypoxia.
Hypoxia is, of course, a very serious condition for the body since every organ in the body needs oxygen in order to function. It doesn’t take very long for symptoms to occur as the organs of the body begin to suffer from the lack of necessary oxygen.
See: doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.01.025. Epub 2008 Mar 10.
Chronic hypoxia-hypercapnia influences cognitive function: a possible new model of cognitive dysfunction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
“… cognitive impairment is strongly related to combination of chronic hypoxia and hypercapnia, and chronic hypoxia-hypercapnia-induced animal models may mimic the cognitive dysfunction of COPD. “
The above study warned of the lack of science to support mask safety in regard to brain function:
“Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing prosper information for public health and decisions making.”
“Exercising with facemasks may reduce available Oxygen and increase air trapping preventing substantial carbon dioxide exchange. The hypercapnic hypoxia may potentially increase acidic environment, cardiac overload, anaerobic metabolism and renal overload, which may substantially aggravate the underlying pathology of established chronic diseases. Further contrary to the earlier thought, no evidence exists to claim the facemasks during exercise offer additional protection from the droplet transfer of the [COVID] virus.”
We then examined a recent PubMed study on the impacts of walking while wearing masks Jul-Aug 2021;34(4):798-801. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2021.04.200559.
Effects of Wearing Facemasks During Brisk Walks: A COVID-19 Dilemma
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of facemasks on inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide. Healthy adults were assessed at rest and during slow and brisk 5-minute walks, with and without masks. What the results showed was that:
“EtCO2 increased; the rise was significantly higher while wearing masks: slow walk, mean EtCO2 (mmHg) change +4.5 ± 2.4 versus +2.9 ± 2.3, P = .004; brisk walk EtCO2 change +8.4 ± 3.0 versus +6.2 ± 4.0, P = .009, with and without masks, respectively. Wearing masks was also associated with higher proportions of participant hypercarbia (EtCO2 range, 46-49 mmHg) compared with walking without masks” and “Sensations of difficulty breathing and shortness of breath were more common while walking with masks.”
Thus, real world studies conducted during the pandemic are signaling a warning that prolonged mask wearing causes a shortage of oxygen to the brain and unhealthy blockage of excretion of carbon dioxide waste from the body.
Both hypoxia and hypercapnia are known dangerous medical conditions, but if you have avidly followed the FAKE NEWS peddled by the mainstream media you will never have heard of such risks from masking up.
While it is proven that in severe cases death may result, the more insidious danger is the unseen, long term effects on our brains. Just spare a thought for the harm being inflicted on children ordered to wear these soiled rags all day in schools.
To clarify the dangers on a strictly objective scientific footing we looked to American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (Volume 186, Issue 12) and looked at The Effect of Hypoxia–Hypercapnia on Neuropsychological Function in Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome which detailed actual impacts of low oxygen (Hypoxia) on human subjects. https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/ajrccm.186.12.1307
The study especially addressed the impacts of low oxygen on subjects who already have poor health due to respiratory impairment (Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome).
A total of 27 patients were included for evaluation of psychiatric morbidities. The study found that:
“Given that the remaining half cohort consists largely of patients with a poor oxygenation index, the majority of the 27 patients should have a less optimal oxygenation index. As it turned out, up to 26 of the 27 additional patients presented with long-lasting psychiatric symptoms. In a way, this phenomenon implies that patients with a poor oxygenation index would end up with long-term psychiatric morbidities, verifying the authors’ inference that hypoxemia predicts long-term neuropsychological impairment among ARDS.”
In effect, this confirmed that anyone who already has compromised respiratory health will be most likely to suffer brain injury from regular mask wearing.
What about the impacts on learning and memory? We looked at ‘Effect of chronic hypoxia and hypercapnia on learning and memory function in mice and the expression of NT and CGRP in brain’ from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2058739218818956
The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of hypoxia and hypercapnia on learning and memory function of mice.
Airway blockage, such as impedance from prolonged mask wearing may lead to Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a frequently occurring disease of the respiratory system, with high morbidity and mortality rates. The authors affirming that the most important cause of COPD is hypoxia (low O2) and hypercapnia (elevated CO2). This was previously established by Liu CY, Parikh M, Bluemke DA et al. (2017) Pulmonary artery stiffness in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) COPD Study. Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 13(1): 1–2.
Disturbingly, the laboratory test results from mice were damning. It showed:
“Our study found that chronic hypoxia and hypercapnia impaired memory function, increased the quantity of brain tissue lipid oxidation products MDA and DNA oxidation products 8-OHdG, decreased SOD activity, destroyed the stability of hippocampal structure, and reduced the number of Nissl bodies and increased apoptotic cells in mice. These indicated that hypoxia and hypercapnia enhanced oxidative stress response, destroyed tissue structure, and increased neuronal apoptosis, thus affecting its neurological function and learning and memory ability.”
Brain cell damage shown under the microscope (above)
Pointedly, the authors observed that:
“Chronic hypoxia is usually accompanied by hypercapnia, so we speculate that hypoxia and hypercapnia may cooperate in this process and aggravate the damage caused by hypoxia alone.”
Thus, both these ailments, when triggered from mask wearing, may be inexplicably linked doubling the adverse impacts on brain function.
Personally, I have not worn one of these face diapers at any stage during the fake pandemic. It should be self-evident to anyone with a modicum of critical reasoning skills that exhalation is one of our body’s vital excretion systems, just like urination and defecation. To impede any such function is a recipe for long term ill health, including irreparable cognitive impairment.
At Principia Scientific International we are determined to share with our readers all such valuable science so that we can all make informed choices and not merely unthinkingly do what as we are told by misguided policymakers.
About John O’SullivanJohn is CEO and co-founder (with Dr Tim Ball) of Principia Scientific International (PSI). John is a seasoned science writer and legal analyst who assisted Dr Ball in defeating world leading climate expert, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann in the ‘science trial of the century‘. O’Sullivan is credited as the visionary who formed the original ‘Slayers’ group of scientists in 2010 who then collaborated in creating the world’s first full-volume debunk of the greenhouse gas theory plus their new follow-up book.
Dr Julie Ponesse, a professor of ethics at the University of Western Ontario and a member of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance on the current vaccine mandates and passports in the context of our existing informed consent laws and commitments to privacy and bioethics.
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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Brain cell damage shown under the microscope (above)
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