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Some are horrified the Taliban seized biometric devices. The real scandal is the extent of US’ data collection.

US soldier scans an Afghan resident with an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission © AFP / TAUSEEF MUSTAFA
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | August 28, 2021

A huge amount of opprobrium was heaped on the Americans for allowing this sensitive data to fall ‘into the wrong hands’. However, surely a better question is why had they gathered all this deeply personal data in the first place?

It’s been reported that the Taliban has seized US military biometric devices in the wake of Washington’s flight from Afghanistan, which could put civilians who assisted coalition forces at significant risk.

The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information – while their primary stated purpose is to track insurgents, biometric data was also collected and stored on Afghans who assisted the US occupation forces.

The story sparked outcry, widely invoked by both opponents and advocates of the 20-year war as yet another deplorable example of Washington leaving its allies high and dry. While it seems clear there was no consideration given to what could happen if the technology fell into the ‘wrong’ hands, critics have nonetheless overwhelmingly failed to consider the terrifying ramifications of this data being in the right hands, and how the US came into possession of it in the first place.

When precisely the practice of collecting Afghans’ biometric data began isn’t certain, although at a 2010 conference in Kabul, US military officials laid out the terms of Afghan 1,000, a program which sought to collate information on 80% of the country’s population, around 25 million people. It was framed in extremely positive terms, not merely as a means to identify terrorists and criminals, but “enable progress in society” due to its “countless applications for the provision of services” to citizens.

It’s uncertain if that target was reached before Washington’s withdrawal, but the strategy remained in operation for over a decade. The next year, it was reported that Washington ultimately sought to gather biometric data on all living Afghans.

To achieve the lofty goal, a policy of mandatory data collection was imposed for every traveler entering the country via any means, and a dedicated Population Registration Department was created, with offices throughout the country. Even foreign journalists covering the war were fingerprinted, and their irises scanned. Moreover, occupation forces conducted innumerable “enrolment missions”, entering towns and villages and forcing locals to hand over their biometric data at literal gunpoint.

A US Army guide states emphatically that “all combat outposts and checkpoints throughout Afghanistan make it a priority to collect biometric data from as many local nationals as possible.” In the aftermath of a bombing or skirmish, soldiers are told to “enroll everyone”, including the dead, their DNA to be collected using buccal swabs to capture cells lining the mouth. The “payoff” for coalition forces was said to be so great, “commanders must be creative and persistent in their efforts to enroll as many Afghans as possible.”

In a section disturbingly titled “Population Management”, the guide recommends that everyone who lives within an operational area “should be identified and fully biometrically enrolled with facial photos, iris scans, and all ten fingerprints (if present).” Soldiers must also record “good contextual data” about individuals, such as “where they live, what they do, and to which tribe or clan they belong.” Citizens were to be told the collection protected them from potentially violent elements and troublemakers.

A lengthy article in the January 2014 edition of Military journal Joint Forces Quarterly offers a glowing appraisal of the “biometric-enabled intelligence” system rolled out in Kabul, declaring it to be a “key enabling factor” in US counterinsurgency efforts, and “an invaluable part of the campaign that has even greater potential in the future.” It documents how enrolment was often carried out using colorful trucks with jingling bells, in the manner of an ice cream van, in order to make the process “more culturally appealing” – particularly in respect of children, presumably.

Also included are several alleged “success stories”, such as one instance in which two Afghan police officers, neither of whom could read or write, spotted an individual on a “biometrically developed insurgent watch list” approaching their checkpoint.

One of the officers is said to have taken the man – identified as having been involved in “multiple IED events” – into custody “with a broad smile,” and the anecdote ends on an upbeat note, hailing how the officers’ illiteracy was no barrier to them removing a dangerous insurgent from the battlefield due to the miracle of biometric intelligence. Cheery stuff, although journalist Annie Jacobsen has exposed in chilling detail just how fallible biometric evidence can be.

In July 2012, US Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance ordered his platoon to shoot three unarmed motorcycle riders in Kandahar province. The next year, a court martial found him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder, wrongfully communicating a threat, reckless endangerment, soliciting a false statement, and obstructing justice, sentencing him to 20 years in prison. However, in November 2019, he received a pardon from Donald Trump.

The then-president released Lorance after he was shown fingerprints and DNA data that purportedly indicated the Afghan men killed were Taliban bomb makers, not civilians. However, after some determined digging, Jacobsen found that one set of fingerprints allegedly found on an exploded IED said to prove one of the dead men was a bomber actually belonged to a police officer, who was likely to have contaminated the evidence in the line of duty. The other set did indeed belong to a bomber – who was still alive.

Lorance isn’t an isolated example either. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is serving life for killing 16 Afghan villagers in cold blood in March 2012. While he pleaded guilty to the charges and admitted his tours of Afghanistan and Iraq had instilled a loathing of the local population within him, he’s now appealing his sentence. The case rests on data provided by a biometrics expert who also worked on the Lorance case, which he claims proves witnesses to Bales’ crimes were Taliban bomb makers who left their fingerprints on bomb components.

Evidently though, Afghanistan was just an experiment – and Washington was enamored with the results. The White House’s proposed Army budget for 2022 seeks over $11 million to purchase 95 new biometric collection devices, meaning the policy will almost inevitably be rolled out again in whichever country is next in the US crosshairs.

Where that will be is unknown, but there’s also the question of what implications the Afghan test run has for the Western world. Governments, police forces, security services and even big business are increasingly using cutting-edge technology to amass, store and analyze vast reams of sensitive personal data – much of it was similarly trialed during the War on Terror, and sold to home audiences on the basis of convenience and security, just as the military’s biometric data harvest was sold to Afghans. Now the troops are finally home, has the fight been brought back with them?

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. 

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

THE U.S. HAS SPENT $2.313 TRILLION ON WAR IN AFGHANISTAN SINCE 2001

Watson Institute | August 2021

Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.313 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note that this total does not include funds that the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war. This $2.313 trillion spent on Afghanistan is a portion of the total estimated cost of the post-9/11 wars.

The Costs of War Project also estimates that 241,000 people have died as a direct result of this war. These figures do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.

The figures for Afghanistan are part of the larger costs of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, which extend to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. The numbers are approximations based on the reporting of several data sources.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US COVID-19 Vaccines Proven To Do More Harm Than Good

scivisionpub | August 27, 2021

For decades, true scientists have warned that pivotal clinical trial designs for vaccines are dangerously flawed and outdated [1]. Vaccines have been promoted and widely utilized under the false claim they have been shown to improve health.

However, this claim is only a philosophical argument and not science based. In a true scientific fashion to show a health benefit one would need to show fewer overall deaths during an extended period in the vaccinated group compared to a control group.

Less stringent indicators of a health benefit would include fewer severe events of all kinds, fewer days hospitalized for any reason, lower heath care expenses of all types, fewer missed days from work for any health reason. No pivotal clinical trial for a vaccine preventing an infectious disease has ever demonstrated an improvement in health using these scientific measurements of health as a primary endpoint.

Instead, vaccine clinical trials have relied on misleading surrogate endpoints of health such as infection rates with a specific infectious agent. Manufactures and government agents have made the scientifically disproved and dangerous philosophical argument that these surrogate endpoints equate to a health benefit.

True medical scientists, outside the vaccine fields, have embraced the use of true health measurements as the proven proper scientific endpoint of clinical trials. Decades ago, a pharmaceutical manufacturer would only need to show that a chemotherapeutic agent shrank a tumor or reduces cancer deaths to obtain FDA approval. Manufacturers would market their products under the fraudulent philosophical argument that shrinking tumors or reducing cancer deaths equates to improved survival.

However, many of the toxic chemotherapeutic agents would destroy vital organs and actually reduce survival while decreasing cancer deaths at the same time. The FDA and comparable agencies around the world switched to “all cause mortality” as the primary endpoint for pivotal cancer drug trails. The gold standard for marketing approval is to show that those receiving a cancer drug actually live longer than those who do not.

Typically, new “miracle” anticancer drugs only prolong survival about 2 months but this added time may be spent severely ill suffering from adverse events caused by the chemotherapy. Application of true scientific principles often severely deflates the hype promoting pharmaceutical products.

All previous vaccine trials have suffered not only from lacking a proper primary clinical endpoint but also from insufficient perspective follow up of adverse events. The trials have failed to account for the well-established toxicity data and epidemiology data that vaccines are associated with chronic immune mediated disorders that may not develop for years after immunization.

These adverse events, for example type 1 diabetes, are quite common, develop 3 or more years after immunization, and can exceed the reduction in infectious complications induced by the vaccine as was shown with a hemophilus vaccine [1]. Pivotal trials for the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine prospectively recorded adverse events for about 7 days after immunization and newer vaccines typically prospectively follow patients 6 months for adverse events.

Method
Data from all three US COVID-19 vaccines was published in the New England Journal of Medicine [4-6]. Data from these three publications and the accompanying published appendixes provided the bulk of the information analyzed. On rare occasions supplemental data was found on the FDA’s website (https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/advisory-committee-calendar) in briefing documents pertaining to FDA advisory panel committees for COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen.

The scientific primary endpoint, “all severe events”, in the treatment group and controls was calculated by adding all severe or life threatening events reported in the clinical trials by the manufacturers. Severe events included both severe cases of COVID-19 and all other severe events in the treatment arm and control arm respectively.

A Chi square analysis using a 2×2 table was used to calculate statistical p values. An online statistical chi square calculator was used. Statistical calculations ignored small differences in total subject number between efficacy and adverse event populations. The randomized number, shown in Table 1, was used as the study population for statistical calculations.

In general, the population for adverse events was slightly higher than that for efficacy. Given the statistical significant p, values generated (see Table 1), these small differences do not appear to be material. The FDA document entitled Guidance for Industry Toxicity Grading Scale for Healthy Adult and Adolescent Volunteers Enrolled in Preventive Vaccine Clinical Trials, 2007, provided the following definitions for adverse events.

Grades 3, Severe: Prevents daily activity and requires medical intervention.

Grades 4, Potentially life threatening: ER visit or hospitalization.

Results

Moderna
The Moderna pivotal Phase III trial results and protocol are published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) [5]. The primary endpoint was COVID-19 illness starting 14 days after the second dose of vaccine however the trial had a secondary endpoint which was patients developing severe COVID-19 symptoms. This later endpoint allowed for a direct comparison to severe adverse events.

The study randomized 30,420 individuals, 15,210 were randomized to receive injections with Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine and 15,210 were randomized to receive injections with placebo. Two shots were administered 28 days apart. “Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” adverse events were reported up to 28 days after administration of each vaccine or approximately 56 days after the first dose according to protocol.

Because of dropouts, adverse events were recorded on 15,185 vaccinated patients and 15,166 placebo patients (reference 5, appendix table S8). The treatment group had 11 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infections and 0 cases severe COVID-19 infections (reference 5, appendix table S13). There were 234 cases of severe “unsolicited” adverse events in the treatment group (reference 5, appendix table S8), and an additional 3,751 “solicited” severe or life threatening (Grade 3 or Grade 4) adverse events (reference 5, appendix table S3 and S4).

By contrast, the control group had 185 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infections and 30 cases of severe COVID-19 infections. However, only one of these case of COVID-19 out of 15,166 controls required admission to an intensive care unit (see reference 5, appendix table S13). There were 202 cases of severe “unsolicited” adverse events in the placebo group and an additional 711 “solicited” severe or life threatening (Grade 3 or Grade 4) adverse events.

There were 3 deaths in the placebo group and 2 in the vaccinated group (reference 5, appendix table S8).

Pfizer-BioNTech
The Pfizer-BioNTech (Pfizer) pivotal Phase III trial results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine [6]. The Pfizer trial was classified as a Phase 1/2/3 trial. Two shots were administered 21 days apart. The primary endpoint was confirmed COVID-19 infections 7 days after the second dose. A post hoc analysis of severe COVID-19 infections was included in the appendix published by the NEJM. The study randomized 43,548 individuals of which 100 did not receive injections, 21,720 received injections with the vaccine and 21,728 received injections with placebo.

“Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” severe adverse events were reported up to 14 weeks after administration of the second dose. However, median safety follow up for “unsolicited” events was only approximately 2 months after the second dose at the time of publication in the NEJM. In the treatment arm there was 1 case of severe Covid-19 (reference 6, appendix table S5), 240 “unsolicited” severe adverse events and 21 “unsolicited” life threatening adverse events (reference 6, appendix table S3).

In the placebo arm, there were 9 cases of severe COVID-19, 139 “unsolicited” severe adverse events and 24 “unsolicited” life threatening adverse events. Pfizer used a safety subset of approximately 8,183 (both vaccinated and unvaccinated) to record “solicited” adverse events at 7 days. These data that are not shown in Table 1 in part because the data was depicted graphically in the NEJM manuscript.

Janssen
The Janssen pivotal Phase III trial design and trial results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine [4]. The primary endpoint was prevention of molecularly confirmed, moderate to severe–critical COVID-19 14 days post vaccination however a secondary endpoint was prevention of molecularly confirmed, severe–critical COVID-19 14 days post vaccination. This later endpoint allowed for a direct comparison to severe adverse events.

The study randomized 19,630 to receive a single injection with Janssen’s adenovirus COVID-19 vaccine and randomized 19,691 to receive a single injection with placebo. “Solicited” adverse events were collected 7 days after immunization and “unsolicited” adverse events were reported up to 28 days after administration of the single dose of vaccine. The treatment group had 21 cases of severe or critical COVID-19 infections while the placebo control group had 78 (reference 4, appendix table S9).

Further analysis shows that only 2 of 19,514 immunized patients needed medical intervention for COVID-19 infections starting 14 days after immunization, while only 8 of 19,544 controls needed medical intervention for COVID-19 infections starting 14 days after placebo injection where the COVID-19 infection was confirmed by a central lab (reference 4, appendix table S10).

There were 83 “unsolicited” and approximately 492 “solicited” serious adverse events in the vaccinated group compared to 96 “unsolicited” and approximately 157 “solicited” serious adverse events in the control group (reference 4, appendix table S7). There were 3 deaths in the treatment group and 16 in the control group (reference 4, appendix table S7).

Discussion

Scientific analysis of the data from pivotal clinical trials for US COVID-19 vaccines indicates the vaccines fail to show any health benefit and in fact, all the vaccines cause a decline in health in the immunized groups. Health is the sum of all medical events or lack there of. COVID-19 vaccines are promoted as improving health while in fact there is no evidence that these vaccines actual improve health in the individual or population as a whole.

The current analysis used the proper scientific endpoint of “all cause severe morbidity”, a true measure of health. By contrast, manufactures and government officials promote the vaccines using a surrogate measure of health, severe infections with COVID-19, and the disproved philosophical argument that this surrogate endpoint equates to health. This substitution of philosophy for science is extremely dangerous and is certainly leading to a catastrophic public health event.

Review of data from the three COVID-19 vaccines marketed in the US shows complete lack of a health benefit and even an increase in severe events among vaccine recipients. The proper scientific clinical trial endpoint, “all cause severe morbidity” was created by combing all severe and or life threatening events, both infectious and non-infectious, occurring in the vaccinated and placebo control groups respectively.

The data (Table 1) shows there are clearly more severe events in the vaccinated groups. The results are highly statistically significant. The use of a true scientific measure of health as an endpoint for a vaccine trial gives a contrasting result compared to the use of a non-scientific surrogate endpoint of heath, severe infections with COVID-19.

There is an old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. This saying can be applied to the COVID-19 mass immunization program. The US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated at US army is Fort Detrick, has demonstrated that there are people in the US government who desire to attack US citizens with bioweapons [10].

According to the chief FBI agent leading the investigation of the US anthrax attack, conspirators were likely not apprehended in part because the investigation was prematurely ended and prior to stopping the investigation, people at the top of the FBI deliberately tried to sabotage the investigation [11]. In the US anthrax attack of 2001, people high in the US government publicly anticipated the anthrax attack as early as 1999 [10].

Similarly with the COVID-19 attack, people high in government anticipated the COVID-19 attack [12,13] several years before the attack took place [10]. There is even data that an effort was made in 2018 to protect certain populations against COVID-19 by immunizing them with MMR vaccine [14].In such a hostile government environment, the citizens need to individually evaluate the science of immunization with COVID-19 vaccines and not rely on philosophical arguments propagated by government officials.

In this case there is no scientific evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines improve the health of the individual, much less of the population as a whole. Mass immunization with COVID-19 vaccines is certainly leading to a catastrophic public health event.

The Bottom Line

These Covid vaccines have been promoted and widely utilized under the false claim they have been shown to improve health, but the claim is only a philosophical argument and not science based, and in a mounting numnber of cases, these vaccines can be shown to be detrimental to your health.

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

DR. RYAN COLE INTERVIEWED BY THE HIGHWIRE WITH DEL BIGTREE

August 26, 2021

The Highwire with Del Bigtree: https://thehighwire.com

Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole Delivers Concerning Message About COVID Injections And Long Term Impacts (17:01)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/lAzw6bSzDSXj

Dr. Cole On COVID Shots: “This Is A Poisonous Attack On Our Population And It Needs To Stop Now!”
by Brian Shilhavy
https://vaccineimpact.com/2021/dr-cole-on-covid-shots-this-is-a-poisonous-attack-on-our-population-and-it-needs-to-stop-now/

CDC Caught Falsifying Data? by The Highwire with Del Bigtree (6:59)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/YhrngxFV7VQP

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Dorothy versus Hassan

By Taxi | Plato’s Guns | August 27, 2021

The US ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, thinks she’s smarter than Hassan Nasrallah.

Yet, evidence shows that since Trump appointed her as ambassador to Lebanon back in February 2020, every dastardly trap she has placed before Mr. Nasrallah and his Hezbollah resistance group has failed. 

Proof of this failure is that Hezbollah keeps growing stronger and stronger, untouched by all external or internal forces hellbent on destroying the Lebanese resistance group.  Failed simply because Dorothy is not as smart as she thinks she is.  Most certainly, she is not as intelligent as the nifty leader of Hezbollah.

Having spent some three years working as Deputy Principal Officer at the US Consulate General in Jerusalem immediately prior to her post in Beirut, Dorothy no doubt continues to have a direct hotline to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, if not to his direct cell phone; and no doubt, every morning, her first official word from Beirut is ‘shalom’.

Dorothy does not behave like a diplomat.  Instead, she behaves like an eye-patched leader of a sketchy militia: laying aside all diplomatic decorum and behaviorism and charging forth into every single aspect of Lebanese social, economic and political life, with the blatant intent of widening existing societal fissures in Lebanon, as well as adding new ones: aiming for a sectarian war that would cause the wholesale mass murder of innocents.  One could say that she behaves as the Jews do in DC.  A Puss in Boots, but utterly charmless and physically unattractive.  Puss in Boots with mouth bigger than boots.  So much so that last year, a Lebanese judge banned Lebanese media from interviewing Dorothy for her atrocious and blatant attempts at creating sectarian warfare in Lebanon.  Needless to say, Dorothy the ‘ambassador’ gave the proverbial middle finger to this native judge while hiding behind the skirts of her diplomatic immunity.  She continues to pollute Lebanese media and its political landscape with daily feces propelled out of all her orifices.  Yes, she literally defecates on Lebanon every day, while feigning love and affection for the Lebanese people.  Because the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, defeated Israel twice already on the battlefield, Dorothy’s instruction since taking the ambassadorship has been to starve the Lebanese population as punishment for these victories.  Tel Aviv must love her for her Zionist activism and zeal.  The Mossad must be sending her monthly boxes of Cuban cigars.

And I’ll remind American taxpayers here that their hard-earned taxes are being spent on starving populations in the middle east, when bombing them to smithereens is not feasible.  Starving millions of people who have done absolutely no harm to the American people.  I’ll remind taxpayers that they are paying Dorothy’s wages while she is spreading anti-Americanism with her bolshie, toxic behaviorism overseas.  I’ll remind them that since 2005, no less than $30 billion have been spent on destroying the Lebanon as a means of demoting Hezbollah – all for the benefit of Israel and Israel alone.  And although Lebanon’s society is currently teetering on total collapse due to Dorothy’s malicious and malignant schemes, yet Hezbollah itself appears untouched by this exuberant, negative expenditure.  And I will add here that Lebanon has suffered from corrupt governments for some thirty years, yet all this while, the Lebanese collective enjoyed a decent lifestyle and were never in need.  They became needy when Dorothy came to town.

Perhaps when she lived in Israel, Dorothy got everything she wanted.  But in Lebanon, what Dorothy wants, Dorothy doesn’t get.  Hassan has insured this.  Time and time again, he has outsmarted all her plans to create civil war in Lebanon.  All straight and curve-balls that Dorothy has daily thrown at Hassan have missed and landed either way off mark, or, unfortunately, on innocent, civilian bystanders.

Let us be clear here that the traditional role of an ambassador is to work the trade and Intel files, as well as to assist expats in a variety of bureaucratic and legal matters.  It is never the job of a diplomat to act politically or to make inciteful, political statements concerning the host nation.  Never!  It is abnormal behavior for a diplomat to be an in-your-face politico whose name and incendiary words are headlines in local media on a daily basis.  Yet, Dorothy Shea swans about the Lebanon like a privileged colonialist: doing exactly that and doing it with shameless gusto.

She is proud that she has turbo-charged the destruction of Lebanon.  But she is very angry that the Hezbollah remains untouched.  Livid that Hassan remains leagues ahead of her diabolical plans.  How dare Hassan challenge her, the mighty Queen Sheba herself?!  She Who Must Be Obeyed, must be obeyed or else!

Yet, she is not obeyed by Hassan.  Currently, the genocidal-minded Dorothy is reeling from the latest punch in the teeth that Hassan metaphorically gave her last week, when he defied US sanctions on Lebanon and announced that Iranian fuel ships are now headed to fuel-starved Lebanon: a miserable and existential shortage that Dorothy herself had engineered for the Lebanese people through her incessant, corrupt interference in absolutely all internal Lebanese affairs bar none.  (She has even interfered in local, district elections, personally rejecting and approving candidates!).  Her destructive meddling is compounded by the Caesar Act sanctions that her chowderhead boss, Trump, had imposed on the Lebanon at the behest of Tel Aviv.  Because Israelis dare not kill Lebanese people with their missiles for fear of an equal Hezbollah retaliation, starving the Lebanese people en mass was to be their path to mass murder of said Lebanese; and thus Dorothy has been assigned the task of insuring that all trade and energy doors were closed to the Lebanese, and all paths to a much-needed new government blocked and blocked some more, ad infinitum.  Dorothy has forbidden the Lebanon from trading with any country in the world, and simultaneously forbidden friendly nations from delivering any aid to Lebanon’s starving population.  She has appeared more than happy this past year and a half to just watch the very fabric of Lebanon disintegrate under her  ‘ambassadorship’ – doing absolutely nothing to help the long-suffering, collective Lebanese people whatsoever.  Au contraire, the more Lebanon’s system broke down, the more the people suffered, and the more Dorothy jumped with joy and stirred the sectarian embers further.

It appears that not only are Hezbollah and the Lebanese population as a whole a target for destruction by Dorothy, but so is the Lebanese government itself.  She does not even want a government for the Lebanon to exist.  She wants for Lebanon what Israel wants: wiping Lebanon and its flag right off the map and turning it into many-flagged, sectarian enclaves and warring Bantustans instead.  Simply, everyone and everything Lebanese is her target for destruction.

Of course, Dorothy gets much help from powerful Lebanese persons and political entities who are opposed to Hezbollah.  Fortunately for the Lebanon, these people do not represent the majority of the Lebanese.  Known Lebanese members of Dorothy’s team are handsomely paid in mega dollars to destroy their own country, just so that they can boost their Swiss bank accounts and augment their seats of power by getting rid of the most popular party in the Lebanon: the Hezbollah.  These unsavory, treasonous Lebanese are ideologically aligned with fascism and predatory globalism, and they are also known for being supporters of the Israeli enemy and its religio-colonialist project in the Levant.  Their names and professional titles are known all over the Lebanon, and they are as follows:

  • Riyad Salame is a Maronite Christian who heads the Lebanese Central Bank (Banque Du Liban).  He is the very man who colluded with Dorothy to collapse the local Lebanese currency in order to initiate the ‘starvation plan’ of his own people.  He is also behind the financial pyramid scheme that suddenly, and by his design, collapsed a year ago.  He is also behind the ‘Capital Control’ system that has been imposed on all bank account holders since the collapse of the Lebanese Lira.  This system limits monthly withdrawals of all account holders, be they rich or poor, to a pitiful $400 per month: thus consigning both rich and poor to the same poverty pot.  This system is currently holding hostage all of the people’s earnings and life-savings.  Salame continues to shamelessly collude with the haters of Lebanon, while hiding some twenty billion dollars that suddenly went missing out of the country a year and a half ago.  He claims no knowledge of where this vast amount went.  He has not been held accountable by Lebanese law, nor has he lost his highest banking office in the nation, all because he has Dorothy’s full political protection.
  • Samir Gaegae, is a Maronite Christian who is a convicted war criminal who colluded with Israel during its 18 years of occupation of Lebanon back in the ’80’s and 90’s, causing thus the torture, the disappearance, and the mass murder of tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. And Ironically, it was Hezbollah’s hands, after the eviction of Israeli forces from Lebanon, who worked for his clemency, thus sparing him an execution.  The ingrate Gaegae is now also best friends with both Saudi Arabia and Israel: tasked by them too to destroy Hezbollah, even at the cost of destroying Lebanon itself.
  • Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rah, who holds the highest seat in the Lebanese Maronite church, is also known for regularly inciting sectarianism during his speeches and sermons.  He became infamous for breaking a Lebanese law that forbids the cooperation or promotion of the Israeli enemy when he illegally visited Israel several years ago with the excuse of “I want to pray in Jerusalem.”  No doubt he dined at Jewish Masonic Lodges there too.  He adamantly refuses to separate ‘church from state’.  He is a regular visitor to the US embassy in Beirut and all his political statements read like memos issued by Tel Aviv.  He supports normalization with Israel that continues to occupy the Lebanese Shebaa Farms.  For a religious Christian leader, he appears to devote his time to spreading the message of the Synagogue of Satan instead of the message of Jesus.
  • NGO’s. The Lebanese population is some 4.6 million natives currently residing in Lebanon, yet Lebanon has over an astounding 10.000 NGO groups, with 92% of them being funded by foreign governments and other dubious Western and oil-Arab institutions.  These shady NGOs are tasked with ‘inflaming’ the masses and creating a Color Revolution in the Lebanon.  They have proved that they can successfully gather the protesting masses with matching banners and baseball hats, but they have failed to achieve their anarchic objective after several attempts.  They are well-paid agents of chaos who swarm the Lebanon like biblical locust: receiving all their instruction from Dorothy’s office at the American embassy in Beirut; and eating all that great, green leaf we call ‘dollars’ right off Dorothy’s hand.

One can clearly discern that the American embassy in Beirut is more of a war theater against the Lebanese themselves, than it is a peaceful salon of diplomacy and trade activity.

Dorothy also enjoys the occasional support from other powerful Lebanese who may not share her ideology, but assist her when called upon because they are beholden to the US via their investment projects in the US, and also via their children and grandchildren who reside and study in the US.  Yes, just like mafias threaten people with harm done to their businesses and families, so does Dorothy threaten her second tier of helpers, thus they always oblige.  Saad Hariri (a Sunni leader), Walid Jumblatt (a Druze leader), and Nabih Berri (a Shia leader) are examples of second-tier helpers of the US embassy in Beirut.

Here I would add that although Dorothy’s Lebanese inner circle leaders are all Christian Maronites, between them, they actually represent the minority of Maronites in Lebanon.  The majority of Maronites belong to the Maronite President Aoun’s party, who are allies and supporters of Hezbollah.  And it appears that the Maronites who are anti Hezbollah are fundamentally Islamophobic, all due to an aftertaste that the brutal, Sunni Ottoman Empire left in their mouths back in 1922, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and its soldiers finally exited Lebanon after some 500 years of miserable colonization.

Aside from creating the total collapse of the Lebanon, financially, socially and politically, it is germane here to give a summary of what the enemies of Hezbollah and Lebanon itself hoped to achieve with their treachery and sedition:

1-  IMF enslavement of Lebanon’s financial life.

2-  Disarming Hezbollah and the dismantlement of the Lebanese army, to be replaced with UN or NATO troops that answer to Tel Aviv and DC.

3-  Destroying the current governmental system and the insertion of a new, federalized political theater where only enemies of the Hezbollah are in positions of power.

4-  Naturalization into Lebanese citizenship of captive Sunni-Syrian refugees who are forbidden by the West to return to Syria, thus changing the voting demographic of Lebanon to favor Saudi-sponsored blocks (means Israeli-centric).   This plan even has the temerity to favor Syrian naturalization over Palestinian one, even though Palestinian refugees have been stuck in Lebanon since 1948.

5-  Allow Israel to annex gas field ‘Block 9’ that sits in the southern Lebanese maritime waters and is considered to be the richest field in the Lebanon waters.

6-  Allow Israel to annex the Lebanese Litani River that’s some 23.6 miles from the Israeli border.

7-  Through educational and cultural projects, unleashing insidious social-engineering programs such as ‘woke’, opioid and porn addiction, religious irreverence, cultural Marxism, and what I like to call the ‘gender bandito’ culture.  In other words, social-engineering programs that shred the very fabric of traditional Lebanese life and culture.  And sanity.

8-  The looting and destruction of Lebanon’s museums and ancient artifacts so as to wipe out the ancient identity of the Lebanon.

9-  Bantustaning and turning rural landscapes into militarized zones, and turning cities and towns into police states overseen by Israel-friendly UN or NATO forces.

10-  Normalization with Israel through forced trade with Tel Aviv – the only entity Lebanon would be allowed to trade with.

And last but not least:

11-  Empty Lebanon of its Christian population who are mainly concentrated in the Mount Lebanon area, but also scattered wide in villages and towns all over the Lebanon.

This is a project that analysts say has been handed to the current Lebanese Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros al-Rahi.  His consistent sectarian incitement is intended to promote a religious civil war that will find the majority of Lebanese Christians fleeing the Lebanon as political refugees to mainly Canada and France, where they already have immigration programs that are specifically preferential and lucrative to Lebanese Christian applicants.  Yes, France and Canada are partners with the US in the destruction of Lebanon.  In fact, all other Western nations and some Arab ones too are also conspirators and abettors  in this diabolical, mass-murderous plan.

The Patriarch’s other vital mission is to turn Maronite Aounist voters against President Aoun’s party – driving them to the arms of Saudi-sponsored Samir Gaegae, who is a Maronite himself too and an infamous friend of Israel – not forgetting here his close friendship with Dorothy the Destroyer.

Because Lebanon is the only Christian-Arab country, and Christian Lebanese are fundamental to Lebanese history, heritage and identity, removing them from the Lebanon facilitates the Jewish plan of turning Lebanon into a zombie without a national, rooted identity, all in preparation for future Judeofication of the Lebanon, as per the Yinon Plan.

Of course, Dorothy here is a mere soldier for Tel Aviv.  But still, all responsibility of Lebanon’s current destruction lays at her feet for her absolute devotion and willingness to participate and manage this grand and evil project for the Lebanon.  She is responsible for the current starvation and the misery of millions of Lebanese, Christian and Muslim alike,  because she is the most powerful mover and shaker in the Lebanon: moving and shaking it towards its mass grave.

Even though this ‘starvation plan’ has been well conceived and executed with the help of internal traitors, yet Hezbollah and its Lebanese allies continue to stand like firm walls in its path.  Hassan and his patriotism continue to outsmart Dorothy.  In fact, so much so that now Hezbollah has unexpectedly taken up the new mantle of ‘economic resistance’, as opposed to only a military one.  Only two weeks go, Dorothy’s breathless destruction literally forced the Hezbollah to actively enter the economic war against the Lebanon, after a year and a half of passivity.  They are economically-resisting now by defying the Caesar’s Act and all other members of Dorothy’s inner circle.  This defiance comes in the shape of organizing Iranian fuel ships to arrive to Lebanon as aid for the utterly desperate people of the Lebanon.

The first Iranian fuel ship is due to imminently arrive to Lebanese shores.  Many more Iranian ships are slated thereafter, carrying much needed life-saving medicine and food to the needy Lebanese.

Hassan has botched all nefarious plans and checkmated Dorothy with this move.  He has promised that any harm done to these Iranian aid ships will result in instant, open warfare against Israel.  The man always means what he says.  And he always delivers on his word.  The Israelis know this only too well.  They will be red-faced and watching through their north-pointing binoculars, a long stream of Iranian ships docking a mere hop away from Haifa port.  This was never part of their plan.  Their plan was to starve the Lebanon en mass so as to bring it to its knees and take from it what they want; as well as to get rid of Iran-friendly Hezbollah.  Instead, they’re ending up with a stronger Hezbollah bringing in Iranian aid ships that will feed the Lebanese people and provide them with desperately needed medicine and fuel.  Iranian ships that will be seen by most Lebanese as ‘savior ships’, while Hezbollah will be crowned as ‘savior of Lebanon’ for resisting and breaking the illegal, US economic siege on the Lebanon.

Begs the question here, therefore: will the Mossad continue to send Dorothy her boxes of Cuban cigars?

August 27, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kabul shows Americans how leaders openly lie about current events

Tales of the American Empire | August 19, 2021

Kabul fell just days ago, but that event is now history and shows Americans how leaders openly lie about current events.

Some newsmen compared the chaos at the Kabul airport with scenes of the rapid fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Pictures appeared in the media showing American helicopters involved in the mass evacuation in 1975 Saigon that looked like those involved in the mass evacuation of Kabul.

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Americans the two events were much different and that an orderly evacuation was underway.

________________________________________

Related Tale: “The American Retreat from Vietnam”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMqb…

Related Tale: “The Empire’s Fake War on Terror”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI1ks…

Best documentary about this war: “This Is What Winning Looks Like”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q7…

August 27, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

China Urges WHO to Scour US Military Biolab in Search for Covid’s Origins

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.08.2021

Washington and Beijing are in the midst of a heated back-and-forth campaign of claims accusing one another of responsibility for unleashing the coronavirus pandemic on the world. US officials allege that the virus may have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while Chinese officials claim it may have originated in a US military biolab.

Chen Xu, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations office in Geneva, has sent the World Health Organisation a formal request asking the global health authority to open a probe into Fort Detrick, the Maryland-based US Army laboratory once known as the centre of America’s biological weapons programme, and its possible role in the origins of the novel coronavirus.

In a letter addressed to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Chen reiterated Beijing’s position on SARS-CoV-2, which states that the Wuhan lab leak theory is an “extremely unlikely” scenario. The letter went on to ask the WHO to probe the lab at Fort Detrick, and to investigate research carried out by University of North Carolina professor Ralph Baric, suggesting that “if some parties are of the view that the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis remains open, it is the labs of Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina in the US that should be subject to transparent investigation with full access.”

Chen accompanied his letter with an online petition signed by over 25 million Chinese nationals demanding an investigation into Fort Detrick, as well as two documents, entitled “Doubtful Points About Fort Detrick” and “Coronavirus Research Conducted by Dr. Ralph Baric’s Team at the University of North Carolina”.

The latter document, published in full by Xinhua, calls into question US epidemiologist Dr. Ralph Baric’s work into coronaviruses, including gain-of-function research, and points to his team’s research into synthesizing and modifying SARS-related coronaviruses going back to at least 2003, including bat-related coronaviruses, since at least 2008.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, Fu Cong, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of arms control and disarmament, commented on Chen’s letter, suggesting that “the international community has long been seriously concerned about Fort Detrick,” and pointing to the facility’s “advanced capabilities to synthesise and modify SARS-related coronaviruses as early as 2003.”

Fu pointed to “multiple” alleged biological safety-related accidents taking place at the institute, including the mysterious July 2019 shutdown, after which “outbreaks of respiratory diseases sharing similar symptoms of COVID-19” began to be reported “in the communities near Fort Detrick.”

The diplomat further alleged that US biological research activities, including at Fort Detrick and an estimated 200+ US biological institutions abroad, were “not in line with the Biological Weapons Convention,” and “not known [about] by the international community.”

Earlier this month, China rejected a push by the WHO to continue its investigation into COVID-19’s origins at the Wuhan lab, citing their support for ‘scientific, not politicised’ theories on the virus’s roots. On 12 August, the world health authority called on Beijing to share raw data on the earliest cases of Covid.

US President Joe Biden, who spent the 2020 campaign dismissing then-president Donald Trump’s claims on Covid’s Wuhan potential man-made origins, reversed course and ordered a probe into how the virus may have spread to humans in May, giving intelligence agencies until the end of August to put a report on his desk. Chinese media have accused Washington of using “second-hand, unreliable evidence to compile a report that tries to smear China,” while officials in Beijing continue to support the original WHO-China joint study, which concluded that a leak from the Wuhan lab was “highly unlikely”.

In addition to the ‘China did it’/‘US did it’ theories being pushed by officials in both countries, some US lawmakers, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have hinted that both nations may be directly or indirectly responsible. In a recent Senate probe, Paul asked questions about the complex web of US government financing for potentially dangerous coronavirus gain-of-function research at Wuhan in the years leading up to the pandemic. In July, Paul grilled coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci, accusing him of backing such funding and lying to Congress about it. Fauci vocally denied the allegations and told Paul that he “did not know what [he was] talking about”.

August 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Regulators knew in 2020 that Covid-19 Vaccines would cause blood clots, heart damage, harm to children, and death

DAILY EXPOSE – AUGUST 22, 2021

Every serious adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccines that medicine regulators in both the USA and United Kingdom have been forced to admit is occurring was predicted by the very same medicine regulators to occur before the Covid-19 vaccines were even rolled out.

The following video was released by the US Food and Drug Administration in October 2020 and the person presenting the slides within the video skips past a slide entitled ‘Draft working list of possible adverse event outcomes’ as fast as he possibly can.

Skip to the 2 hour, 33 minute mark and see for yourself…

You’ll have noticed the slide read as follows –

“FDA Safety Surveillance of COVID-19 Vaccines: DRAFT Working list of possible adverse event outcomes ***Subject to change***

-Guillain-Barré syndrome
-Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
-Transverse myelitis
-Encephalitis /myelitis/encephalomyelitis/meningoencephalitis/meningitis/encephalopathy
-Convulsions/seizures
-Stroke
-Narcolepsy and cataplexy
-Anaphylaxis
-Acute myocardial infarction
-Myocarditis/pericarditis
-Autoimmune disease
-Deaths
-Preganacy and birth outcomes
-Other acute demyelinating diseases
-Non-anaphylactic allergic reactions
-Thrombocytopenia
-Disseminated intervascular coagulation
-Venous thromboembolism
-Arthritis and arthralgia/joint pain
-Kawasaki disease
-Multisymptom Inflammatory Syndrome in Children
-Vaccine enhanced disease”

All of the clotting and coagulation.  All of the heart damage.  All of the female reproductive issues. All of the people suffering heart attacks and strokes and people sadly dying. All of it was predicted by the medicine regulators before the jabs were even rolled out.

Even the multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome in children was predicted and it is a brand new disease where children have symptoms resembling toxic shock syndrome or Kawasaki disease, in which the coronary arteries enlarge or form aneurysms. Also common are heart inflammation with impaired heart function and low blood pressure, rash or red eyes, and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Which is why we can be certain that vaccine enhanced disease also known as antibody-dependent enhancement is occurring and will occur, because the health regulators have predicted it will do so. This is precisely why Public Health England data shows that the double vaccinated have at least a 338% higher chance of death if infected with Covid-19.

The latest PHE report shows that up to the 15th August 2021 the fully vaccinated population had suffered a total of 679 deaths. This equates to 0.9% of all confirmed infections among the fully vaccinated population. Whereas the unvaccinated population had suffered just 390 deaths equating to just 0.2% of all confirmed infections.

The medicine regulators knew precisely what would happen to people once the Covid-19 injections were rolled out yet they allowed it to happen anyway. We wonder if Bill Gates being the primary funder of the UK’s Medicine Regulator the MHRA has anything to do with it? He only has major shares in both Pfizer and BioNTech so perhaps not?

August 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

SCIENCE VS DOGMA

Sam Bailey, August 24, 2021

“The SCIENCE is settled!” But what is science?

I show how scientists can no longer question dogma and discuss my personal battles with censorship. Science vs Dogma.

Please support her channel ▶ https://www.subscribestar.com/DrSamBailey

Leave her a tip! ▶ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/drsambailey

Virus Mania Paperback:

Abe (lots of suppliers): https://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9783752629781/30869270194&cmsp=snippet–srp1-_-PLP1
US Independent Bookseller Powell’s Books: https://www.powells.com/book/virus-mania-9783752629781
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-COVID-19-Hepatitis-Billion-Dollar/dp/3752629789/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=virus+mania&qid=1612859505&sr=8-2

Virus Mania E-book:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-COVID-19-Hepatitis-Billion-Dollar-ebook/dp/B08YFBCH2F/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=virus+mania&qid=1617157466&sr=8-1

August 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Who Is ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’?

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. | Children’s Health Defense | August 25, 2021

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci is a household hero to half of America. Drug companies, government officials and the pharma-funded corporate media invoke his name to justify lockdowns, masks and experimental vaccines. The other half do not look on him favourably.

A recent editorial in a leading medical journal urged Congress to make it a felony to publicly criticize Dr. Fauci.

Encouraging his own deification, Dr. Fauci has declared that all those who questioned his pronouncements are “anti-science.”

But who is Dr. Fauci really?

In my new book, I show that Dr. Fauci has done little to earn the sobriquet  “America’s Doctor.”

Instead, he has survived 50 years as the J. Edgar Hoover of public health by consistently prioritizing Big Pharma profits over the welfare of his countrymen, and through mercenary homage to the chemical and agricultural industry, the military industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus and all the other pushers of pills, potions, powders, poisons, pricks and the police state.

During more than a year of painstaking and meticulous research, I unearthed a shocking story that obliterates the obsequious media’s spin on Dr. Fauci … and that will alarm every American — Democrat or Republican — who cares about democracy, our Constitution and the future of our children’s health.

In my book I reveal how Fauci:

  • has been the principal architect of “agency capture” — the subversion of democracy by a drug industry that manipulates regulators like sock puppets.
  • failed dismally over his 50-year career with the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to address the cause, to prevent or cure the exploding epidemics of allergies and chronic disease that Congress charged him with curtailing. The chronic disease pandemic is his enduring legacy. Those ailments now debilitate 54 percent of American children compared to 6 percent when he joined NIAD.
  • repeatedly used fraud, bullying, intimidation, dissembling and falsified science to win approval for worthless and deadly drugs and vaccines.
  • sabotaged safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS while promoting deadly chemotherapy drugs that almost certainly caused more deaths than HIV.
  • transformed NIAD from a public health regulator into an incubator for pharmaceutical drugs for which he and his trusted deputies often file patents and collect royalties. Dr. Fauci has claimed Moderna vaccine patent rights worth billions of dollars for NIAD and hand-picked at least four of his NIAD underlings to receive $150,000 annually from royalties.
  • exercises dictatorial control over the army of “knowledge-and-innovation” leaders who appear nightly on TV to parrot his orthodoxies and “debunk” his opponents who run his crooked clinical trials globally and who populate the “independent” federal panels that approve and mandate drugs and vaccines — including the committees that allowed the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines.
  • violated federal law to allow his pharma partners to sacrifice and kill hundreds of impoverished and dark-skinned children and orphans in the U.S and Africa as lab rats in deadly experiments with toxic AIDS and cancer chemotherapies.
  • repeatedly concocted and weaponized fraudulent pandemics, including bird flu (2005), swine flu (2009) and Zika (2015-2016), in order to sell novel vaccines.
  • partnered with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to conduct “gain-of-function” experiments to breed pandemic superbugs in poorly regulated labs in Wuhan, China  and elsewhere, under conditions that virtually guaranteed the escape of weaponized microbes like SARS-CoV-2.

That’s just the short list.

Dr. Fauci and his band of pharma and Silicon Valley profiteers — working with corrupted politicians, captured federal agencies and the bought and brain-dead mainstream media — have used the COVID pandemic to mint billions from vaccines and other profitable medicines.

His disastrous mismanagement ran up one of the biggest COVID death counts among all nations.

Dr. Fauci has led the crusade to suppress functional remedies like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine which could have avoided 80 percent of the deaths and hospitalizations from COVID and ended the pandemic overnight.

We need to stop Dr. Fauci and the coup d’état against the Constitution, human rights and liberal democracy globally.

Because this book threatens their trillion-dollar vaccine enterprise, Dr. Fauci and his allies in the medical cartel, the media and military will hurl fierce criticism and use censorship — to debunk and silence “The Real Anthony Fauci.”

With your help, this book can play a transformational role in exposing Dr. Fauci as a charlatan and quack and in showing the world that Dr. Fauci, far from being a healer, is one the most noteworthy mass murderers in human history. 

It is my hope that this book will motivate — and mobilize — millions more advocates for truth, health and democracy.

“The Real Anthony Fauci” publication date is Nov. 9. By pre-ordering your copy today, you’ll help push the book to bestseller status, diminishing the powers of the censors to silence me. Thank you.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Bizarre Refusal to Apply Cost-Benefit Analysis to COVID Debates

By Glenn Greenwald | August 25, 2021

In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit or crude terms, is foundational to public policy debates — except when it comes to COVID, where it has been bizarrely declared off-limits.

The quickest and most guaranteed way to save hundreds of thousands of lives with policy changes would be to ban the use of automobiles, or severely restrict their usage to those authorized by the state on the ground of essential need (e.g., ambulances or food-delivery vehicles), or at least lower the nationwide speed limit to 25 mph. Any of those policies would immediately prevent huge numbers of human beings from dying. Each year, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “1.35 million people are killed on roadways around the world,” while “crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54.” Even with seat belts and airbags, a tragic number of life-years are lost given how many young people die or are left permanently and severely disabled by car accidents. Studies over the course of decades have demonstrated that even small reductions in speed limits save many lives, while radical reductions — supported by almost nobody — would eliminate most if not all deaths from car crashes.

Given how many deaths and serious injuries would be prevented, why is nobody clamoring for a ban on cars, or at least severe restrictions on who can drive (essential purposes only) or how fast (25 mph)? Is it because most people are just sociopaths who do not care about the huge number of lives lost by the driving policies they support, and are perfectly happy to watch people die or be permanently maimed as long as their convenience is not impeded? Is it because they do not assign value to the lives of other people, and therefore knowingly support policies — allowing anyone above 15 years old to drive, at high speeds — that will kill many children along with adults?

That may explain the motivation scheme for a few people, but in general, the reason is much simpler and less sinister. It is because we employ a rational framework of cost-benefit analysis, whereby, when making public policy choices, we do not examine only one side of the ledger (number of people who will die if cars are permitted) but also consider the immense costs generated by policies that would prevent those deaths (massive limits on our ability to travel, vastly increased times to get from one place to another, restrictions on what we can experience in our lives, enormous financial costs from returning to the pre-automobile days). So foundational is the use of this cost-benefit analysis that it is embraced and touted by everyone from right-wing economists to the left-wing European environmental policy group CIVITAS, which defines it this way:

Social Cost Benefit Analysis [is] a decision support tool that measures and weighs various impacts of a project or policy. It compares project costs (capital and operating expenses) with a broad range of (social) impacts, e.g. travel time savings, travel costs, impacts on other modes, climate, safety, and the environment.

This framework, above all else, precludes an absolutist approach to rational policy-making. We never opt for a society-altering policy on the ground that “any lives saved make it imperative to embrace” precisely because such a primitive mindset ignores all the countervailing costs which this life-saving policy would generate (including, oftentimes, loss of life as well: banning planes, for instance, would save lives by preventing deaths from airplane crashes, but would also create its own new deaths by causing more people to drive cars).

While arguments are common about how this framework should be applied and which specific policies are ideal, the use of cost-benefit analysis as the primary formula we use is uncontroversial — at least it was until the COVID pandemic began. It is now extremely common in Western democracies for large factions of citizens to demand that any measures undertaken to prevent COVID deaths are vital, regardless of the costs imposed by those policies. Thus, this mentality insists, we must keep schools closed to avoid the contracting by children of COVID regardless of the horrific costs which eighteen months or two years of school closures impose on all children.

It is impossible to overstate the costs imposed on children of all ages from the sustained, enduring and severe disruptions to their lives justified in the name of COVID. Entire books could be written, and almost certainly will be, on the multiple levels of damage children are sustaining, some of which — particularly the longer-term ones — are unknowable (long-term harms from virtually every aspect of COVID policies — including COVID itself, the vaccines, and isolation measures, are, by definition, unknown). But what we know for certain is that the harms to children from anti-COVID measures are severe and multi-pronged. One of the best mainstream news accounts documenting those costs was a January, 2021 BBC article headlined “Covid: The devastating toll of the pandemic on children.”

The “devastating toll” referenced by the article is not the death count from COVID for children, which, even in the world of the Delta variant, remains vanishingly small. The latest CDC data reveals that the grand total of children under 18 who have died in the U.S. from COVID since the start of the pandemic sixteen months ago is 361 — in a country of 330 million people, including 74.2 million people under 18. Instead, the “devastating toll” refers to multi-layered harm to children from the various lockdowns, isolation measures, stay-at-home orders, school closures, economic suffering and various other harms that have come from policies enacted to prevent the spread of the virus:

From increasing rates of mental health problems to concerns about rising levels of abuse and neglect and the potential harm being done to the development of babies, the pandemic is threatening to have a devastating legacy on the nation’s young. . . .

The closure of schools is, of course, damaging to children’s education. But schools are not just a place for learning. They are places where kids socialize, develop emotionally and, for some, a refuge from troubled family life.

Prof Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, perhaps put it most clearly when he told MPs on the Education Select Committee earlier this month: “When we close schools we close their lives.”

The richer you are, the less likely you are to be affected by these harms from COVID restrictions. Wealth allows people to leave their homes, hire private tutors, temporarily live in the countryside or mountains, or enjoy outdoor space at home. It is the poor and the economically deprived who bear the worst of these deprivations, which — along with not having children at all — may be one reason they are assigned little to no weight in mainstream discourse.

“The stress the pandemic has put on families, with rising levels of unemployment and financial insecurity combined with the stay-at-home orders, has put strain on home life up and down the land,” the BBC notes. But even for adults and those who are middle-class and above, severe and sustained isolation from community and life is bound to produce serious mental health harms, as two mental health experts I interviewed all the way back in April, 2020, warned.

None of this is to say that these are easy calculations. How COVID deaths or hospitalizations are weighed against the grave harms from anti-COVID restrictions is a complex question, one that almost certainly yields different answers in different countries and cultures. It may even yield a different policy answer in the same country as the virus and the social conditions which COVID produces evolve. One can debate how the contagiousness of COVID compares to the huge number of people who lose their lives or ability to lead healthy lives every year (so often, this argument is met with the more or less accurate but irrelevant distinction that COVID is contagious while car accidents are not: how does that bear on one’s willingness to endorse road policies (such as allowing driving cars at high speeds) that will inevitably kill large numbers of people or one’s refusal to consider the countervailing costs of anti-COVID measures?).

Put another way, this is not an argument in favor of or against any particular policy undertaken in the name of fighting COVID. What it is, instead, is an attempt to highlight the pervasive and deeply misguided refusal to assign any costs to the harms caused by anti-COVID policies themselves.

Perhaps this irrational mindset is explainable by the fact that COVID hospitalizations and deaths are more dramatic than the more insidious, lurking harms from sustained life disruptions. Perhaps the rapidly declining rates of child-rearing in the West make it more difficult to observe or care about the damage all of this is doing to the developmental abilities and mental health of children. Perhaps other factors — from a psychological desire for parental protection in the form of authoritarian power or a warped sense of “safetyism” — is rendering any cost-benefit analysis morally unacceptable. None of those speculative theories, however, accounts for the virtually unanimous refusal to consider a ban on cars or a 25 mph nationwide speed limit; that willingness to sacrifice huge numbers of lives by opposing life-saving automobile policies seems driven by the inconvenience such policies would impose on particular groups of people.

Whatever is true about motives, what is unacceptable — sociopathic, really — is the insistence on assigning severe costs to just one side of the ledger (harms from COVID itself) while categorically refusing to recognize let alone value the costs on the other side of the ledger (from severe, enduring anti-COVID disruptions to and restrictions on life). Given the reflexive rage that is produced when one tries to make this argument — what immediately emerges are accusations that one is indifferent to COVID deaths — I wanted to walk through the evidence and rationale demonstrating why this approach is reckless, immoral and irrational. That is the argument I examine in both this article and in a 30-minute video I produced for Rumble.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Informed Consent – ‘It’s Your Right’

Canadian Covid Care Alliance | August 22, 2021

In Canada, informed consent to medical interventions – including vaccines – is the law. The Canadian Covid Care Alliance supports Informed Consent. References Contained in Video: Supreme Court of Canada Judgment – Cuthbertson vs Rasouli https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc…

“The patient’s consent must be given voluntarily and must be informed.” The Ontario Health Care Consent Act https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/9…

Elements of Consent CDC Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Age Group https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-…

The New England Journal of Medicine Pfizer Vaccine Phase 2 Trial Results https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056…

FDA – Communicating Risks and Benefits https://www.fda.gov/files/about%20fda…

Consent – A Guide for Canadian Physicians (Canadian Medical Protective Association) https://www.cmpa-acpm.ca/en/advice-pu…

“Further, even uncommon risks of great potential seriousness should be disclosed.” Reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in Canada (Government of Canada) https://health-infobase.canada.ca/cov…

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System https://vaers.hhs.gov

British Medical Journal Sixty seconds on… Vitamin D https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m…

CCCA Evaluation of Ivermectin as an Effective Prophylactic, and for Treatment in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance…

National Centre for Biotechnology Information Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…

Pfizer Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/down…

US National Library of Medicine Study to Describe the Safety, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/N…

Moderna Product Monograph, Including Patient Medication Information – COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna https://www.modernacovid19global.com/…

Court of Canada Judgment – Cuthbertson vs Rasouli https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc…

“The patient’s consent must be given voluntarily and must be informed.” The Ontario Health Care Consent Act https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/9…

Elements of Consent CDC Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Age Group https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-…

The New England Journal of Medicine Pfizer Vaccine Phase 2 Trial Results https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056…

FDA – Communicating Risks and Benefits https://www.fda.gov/files/about%20fda…

Consent – A Guide for Canadian Physicians (Canadian Medical Protective Association) https://www.cmpa-acpm.ca/en/advice-pu…

“Further, even uncommon risks of great potential seriousness should be disclosed.” Reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in Canada (Government of Canada) https://health-infobase.canada.ca/cov…

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System https://vaers.hhs.gov

British Medical Journal Sixty seconds on… Vitamin D https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m…

CCCA Evaluation of Ivermectin as an Effective Prophylactic, and for Treatment in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance…

National Centre for Biotechnology Information Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…

Pfizer Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/down…

US National Library of Medicine Study to Describe the Safety, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/N…

Moderna Product Monograph, Including Patient Medication Information – COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna https://www.modernacovid19global.com/…

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

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