Whenever some foreign regime that is independent of the U.S. Empire goes after dissenters, U.S. officials trot out the First Amendment to show how different the United States is. Here, people are free to criticize government officials without fear of being put in jail or otherwise punished for exercising their free speech rights, they proudly point out.
However, what goes unexplained in such pious proclamations is why so many leading executives in big American companies remain silent when it comes to America’s foreign wars, foreign interventions, coups, alliances with dictators, torture, mass secret surveillance, indefinite detention, denial of due process, Gitmo, state-sponsored assassinations, and other dark-side activities of the U.S. national-security establishment.
The reason is that every one of those executives knows that federal officials are able to retaliate against them in indirect ways for criticizing their policies and operations. Such indirect methods of retaliation can consist of IRS audits, regulatory harassment, denial of applications for mergers and acquisitions, non-renewal of radio and television licenses, and even the threat of disclosure of personal secrets acquired through secret surveillance of emails and telephone records.
A good example of free speech nullification involved President Lyndon Johnson, soon after he became president after the assassination of President Kennedy. Johnson’s indirect nullification of the First Amendment is set forth in Robert Caro’s book The Passage of Power.
Prior to the assassination, a Dallas reporter named Margaret Mayer had begun investigating Johnson’s radio and television stations in Austin. On the evening of Saturday, January 4, 1964, Johnson telephoned her paper’s managing editor and spoke directly about what he was prepared to do if the paper didn’t stop Mayer’s investigation.
Johnson mentioned by name the paper’s publisher and board owner, its president, and the president of radio and television stations owned by the paper. He then made it clear that he was prepared to use all the powers at his disposal against them if they didn’t stop Mayer’s investigation, including IRS audits, both personal and business, as well as non-renewal of FCC licenses for the radio and television stations.
Johnson demanded a response by the next morning. The next morning — Sunday morning —the editor telephoned the president and said, “We’ll take care of the thing tomorrow” and assured Johnson that his role would be kept secret. Mayer’s investigation was shut down.
Caro provides another example, one involving not just a reporter but rather an entire newspaper, which had been critical of Johnson before the assassination. Johnson set out to stop the criticism.
The paper’s president also served as president of a local bank that was trying to merge with another Texas bank. Such mergers require federal approval. Both the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department opposed the merger. Using presidential aide Jack Valenti as an intermediary, Johnson told the paper that if it wanted the merger to go through, it would have to cease criticizing him. According to Caro, the paper became a supporter of Johnson, even endorsing him in the 1964 race. Johnson overruled the Fed and Justice and ordered the approval of the merger.
Caro provides another example of this phenomenon, one involving a Washington, D.C., correspondent for a Texas newspaper. The reporter had been critical of Johnson. Johnson telephoned the paper’s owner and mentioned Fort Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base as well as the recent decision to close the Fort Worth Army Depot. He also mentioned a project to make the Trinity River navigable for barges from the Gulf of Mexico to Fort Worth.
The paper squeezed out the reporter. Carswell remained in operation and ended up playing a big role in Johnson’s war in Vietnam. Johnson also made sure that one billion dollars in federal money went to the Trinity River project, although the project was never finished.
Today, it is hard to believe that a president, the Pentagon, the CIA, or the NSA would make these types of direct threats to any U.S. company or its executives. But they don’t have to. Everyone knows what can happen to them if they decide to publicly criticize the sordid, dark-side activities of the national-security establishment. Discretion is the better part of valor, which has to be one big reason why most executives choose to remain silent.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.
For years, the anti-corruption probe Lava Jato was hailed as the dawn of a new Brazil, in which democracy and the rule of law reigned supreme. Now, it’s clear it was a shameful set-up – with the US involved every step of the way.
On June 7, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers wrote to US Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting answers about the role of the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato in Portuguese), the grand Brazilian anti-corruption investigation launched in 2014 that ignominiously collapsed in February this year.
Noting it to be a “matter of public record” that DoJ representatives supported Brazilian prosecutors involved in the operation, they stated that an agreement was “evidently” reached between Brazilian and US authorities providing for a “substantial share” of the fines rendered from prosecuting Brazilian companies under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to be given to the very prosecutors and judges involved in Lava Jato, and to fund the creation of a “private foundation in Brazil totally administered and controlled by the same Brazilian prosecutors.”
The lawmakers concluded, “We are particularly concerned that the income produced from the enforcement of important US legislation dedicated to fighting corruption, could have ended up going to ends not entirely consistent with democracy, rule of law, equal justice under the law, and due process – not to mention Brazilian legal and constitutional requirements.”
That Washington was involved in Lava Jato, which saw more than 1,000 warrants issued, 429 people indicted and 159 convicted, and numerous high-profile business leaders and politicians – most notoriously Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president between 2003 and 2010 – jailed, had been clear since 2016, when US federal courts levied record fines against state energy company Petrobras.
However, this suspect element of the probe was completely ignored by Western news outlets, as were clear indications from its inception that prosecutions were being pursued on dubious, if not non-existent, grounds.
For instance, Lula’s July 2017 conviction for money laundering and corruption charges was based entirely on the coerced testimony of a sole individual – and in his sentencing, presiding judge Sergio Moro failed to define a specific crime of which the former president was guilty, basing the verdict purely on his own “conviction” that Lula had done “something.”
As a result, Lula was precluded from running for the presidency in 2018, paving the way for the election of Jair Bolsonaro, who subsequently appointed Moro as minister of justice and public security. It was a move enthusiastically received both within and without Brazil, for his crusading efforts had made him something of a media sensation – in 2016, he was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential people,” despite local news outlets that same year having exposed his illegal wiretapping of Lula’s defense team.
It was not until June 2019 that the judge’s mainstream fortunes finally took a turn for the worse, when journalist Glenn Greenwald began publishing a series of articles based on leaked Telegram conversations between individuals involved in Lava Jato.
The communications showed that Moro had provided insider information to prosecutors, helped direct their legal actions, briefed them on their media strategy, and requested that operations be launched against relatives of witnesses, to ensure convictions were secured. In November that year, Lula was finally released from prison after 580 days.
More recent leaks have revealed that the Lava Jato team conducted scores of secret, illegal meetings with FBI operatives throughout the seven-year probe. However, Moro’s ties to US state agencies have been a matter of public record since 2010, when WikiLeaks published a State Department telegram related to a week-long US Embassy-sponsored course laid on for judges, police, and prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro.
The document notes that many attendees expressed an interest in receiving further training from the DoJ on prosecuting money laundering cases, and were keen to collaborate with Washington in this field, contrary to Brasilia’s official position, under the auspices of the “fight against terrorism.”
Moro wasn’t a passive presence at the event, leading a talk on the “15 most common issues” he encountered in Brazilian money laundering cases. The telegram goes on to outline a dedicated program, “Projeto Pontes” (Bridges Project), to “bring together US and Brazilian law enforcement in different venues” and “build on our relationships and exchange best practices.”
The following month, Brasil Wirerecords that he and prosecutor Karine Moreno-Taxman – who was then based in the US Embassy in Brazil, and helped select participants for the week-long training course – were both present at the Brazilian Federal Police Agents Association’s fourth congress in the north-eastern city of Fortaleza. Moro was lead speaker in a panel discussion on corruption and organized crime arguing for changes in the law and more judicial autonomy in investigating crimes against public administration.
Moreno-Taxman then led a panel of her own, which viewed from a present-day perspective gives every appearance of setting out a clear blueprint for the subsequent Operation Lava Jato. For one, she proposed that Brazilian authorities maintain an informal system of collaboration with their US counterparts, circumventing formal cooperation structures as set out in international treaties.
Another key suggestion was manipulating public opinion in prosecutions of high-profile figures to engender loathing of those under investigation. “Society needs to feel that that person really abused the job and demand that he be convicted,” Moreno-Taxman is reported to have said, a message she’d been propounding across Brazil at a variety of US-sponsored events for two years by that point. It seems likely these lobbying efforts formed part of “Projeto Pontes.”
When Lava Jato collapsed earlier this year, further leaked Telegram conversations exposed how prosecutors cheered Moro’s decision to incarcerate Lula on April 5, 2018, as it prevented a Supreme Court vote that would have allowed defendants to be spared jail pending appeal. The operation’s chief, Deltan Dallagnol, dubbed the news “a gift” from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Had that motion been successful, Lula would have been free to run for president that year – and victory seemed assured, for he was polling 20 points ahead of Bolsonaro.
Today, polling for the 2022 general election places him in much the same position – perhaps unsurprisingly, given that during his initial seven-year spell in office, Brazil’s economy became the world’s eighth-largest, more than 20 million were raised out of acute poverty, and annual economic growth reached up to seven percent. As Lava Jato is estimated to have damaged foreign investment to the tune of $33 billion and wiped out 4.4 million jobs, a great many Brazilians will be hoping Lula makes a triumphant return to the Palacio da Alvorada.
Seemingly undeterred by the operation’s unceremonious unravelling, at a June 3 White House press conference a nameless “senior administration official” revealed that “components of the intelligence community,” includingthe director of national intelligence and CIA, would be fundamental in “establishing the fight against corruption as a core US national security interest.”
“We’re just going to be looking at all of the tools in our disposal to make sure that we identify corruption where it’s happening and take appropriate policy responses,” the official said.
It’s unclear whether an “appropriate policy response” will entail the covert selection and grooming of a fresh anti-corruption taskforce in another foreign country, although legal apparatchiks overseas would do well to think twice before accepting clandestine offers of fame and fortune in return for fitting up troublesome political figures for crimes they didn’t commit. The once-celebrated Moro is now utterly disgraced, and under investigation for seven separate counts of felony judicial bias. Still, the mainstream media seems oblivious, and that’s the main thing.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
We write this brief clarion call to the FDA of the United States and the citizenry, in the hopes that we could call for a time-out as to the drive for an EUA of COVID-19 vaccines in children (up to 11 years old). We think this is a catastrophic mistake that will endanger the lives of our children particularly given that the proper safety data would not have been yet collected to determine the safety (short and long-term effects). We call for a hard stop in the process to grant this EUA given the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving fast to consider an EUA in this age group of children. There are reports that the meeting could consider ages as low as 2 years old. But the data is not developed or complete enough and especially lacking as to safety, with regards to these vaccines.
We do agree that the underlying body of evidence is not sufficiently mature enough to allow for an optimal adjudication of the benefits versus harms of this vaccine in children. We see absolutely no benefit of these vaccines (no COVID vaccine in children), even if there was data, because there is no risk to children. It is that simple a risk-management decision for parents. Why put a foreign substance into your child (a newly developed platform) that confers no benefit to them, none, and has possible severe harms? The threshold for granting an EUA has not been met in these children. This is not an ‘emergency’ for these children and with such low risk of bad outcomes, they can be allowed to develop much more-broad based and robust long-lasting ‘natural exposure’ immunity. It would be an abuse of the EUA process by the FDA to grant this.
We call for natural exposure immunity in children and they would be effectively immune potentially life-long and it is not a case of ‘would’ their immunity be lasting, when we have evidence that immunity from natural exposure to respiratory virus is so durable and long-lasting that it can last for 100 years. “These studies reveal that survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic possess highly functional, virus-neutralizing antibodies to this uniquely virulent virus, and that humans can sustain circulating B memory cells to viruses for many decades after exposure – well into the tenth decade of life”. So why risk a foreign substance that we do not know how it behaves safety wise and long-term? Why? You trust the government agencies to advise you? After what has transpired for COVID the last 1.5 years? Where they were flat wrong on every aspect of COVID from lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, social distancing, and masking in general.
We thus petition the FDA openly here to stop this move to EUA (and pull it if they move prematurely) for we think it is very hasty and rash given the vanishingly small risk to children of severe sequela or death from COVID-19, and the alarming reports of harms of the COVID vaccines in adults and teens (see CDC’s VAERS vaccine adverse reporting system). These reports range from mild adverse effects to anaphylaxis, blood clotting, bleeding disorders, and up to death. We are not calling for a pause, we are calling for a hard stop. There is absolutely no sound justification to rush to grant an EUA for this age-group. No good reason.
The health and well-being of our children remain our priority always. COVID has thankfully spared our children and has not been damaging as we see yearly with seasonal influenza. We know based on settled global data, that children are at exceedingly low risk (near zero and we will say statistical zero) of acquiring the SAR-CoV-2 infection in the first place (less expression of ACE 2 receptors in nasal epithelia and possible cross-protection from prior common cold coronaviruses), spreading it to other children, spreading it to adults, taking it home, of getting severely ill, or of dying from COVID disease.
We thus find that the aggressive push by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH, and the CDC as well as television medical experts to vaccinate our children is very reckless, dangerous, and without the required exclusion of harm. We as parents and scientists find it reprehensible and very unsafe. They have failed to prosecute their case as to why children are to be offered this vaccination. We are for vaccination once properly developed, but there is no benefit with these vaccines and only the potential for downsides. There is even concern over recent statements by the CDC about rising teen hospitalizations among unvaccinated teens whereby the CDC apparently used duplicitous data and graphs that are contrary to its own data. Thus, CDC is using misleading statements to drive fear in parents to vaccinate their teens, when such young persons carry extremely low risks of COVID illness.
Furthermore, the existing vaccines are under EUA and this indicates that they are investigational and experimental, and as such have not met the stringent regulatory assessment (proper methods, appropriate duration of follow-up to allow safety assessment) that a vaccine must go through to attain full BLA regulatory approval. They have not undergone the appropriate animal testing and safety testing that is needed so as to exclude harm. We have looked for this data and cannot find any. We find this very concerning and to subject children to this type of risky vaccine is unacceptable and grossly reckless and irresponsible by all involved.
They have no liability as are indemnified and this is very unfair to the vaccinee (children) and parents for there is no risk by the vaccine developers and FDA etc. We have called on them to accept risk and to remove liability exemption from the table. They have thus far refused but we feel they must be held accountable and accept risk, people like Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins of the NIH, Dr. Walensky of the CDC, the FDA, the CDC, and all of the vaccine development companies who subject children to these vaccines. If any children are harmed or die due to the vaccine, these people must have liability, seeing that if they say to vaccinate our children, then the vaccine must be safe. We question the benefits versus risks as well as all of the research methods questions that are worrisome and outstanding. Why not wait to 2022/2023 when data is supposed to be complete? At least two years of full data (not partial or interim) on safety. They talk about safety yet provide no safety results, and are rushing to vaccinate children. This makes no sense and is very dangerous should there be risks.
We have also learnt that COVID-19 is as much a vascular illness as it is a respiratory illness and we are seeing that many of the catastrophic symptoms have one thing in common, this being an impairment and damage to blood circulation. Researchers discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels. There is damage to the glycocalyx and endothelial layer and this is potentially dangerous. “The concept that’s emerging is that this is not a respiratory illness alone, this is a respiratory illness to start with, but it is actually a vascular illness that kills people through its involvement of the vasculature”. It has been shown that SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect engineered human blood vessel organoids in vitro (in the laboratory).
We are witnessing thousands of cases of adverse effects e.g. bleeding disorders, blood clotting, and deaths, that are occurring near immediately post vaccination and this close temporal relationship has led us to believe that the vaccine’s content is precipitating this. The adverse effects are being logged into the CDC’s VAERS database as well as the European adverse event database, as mentioned, and we have learnt that the reporting which is voluntary, captures roughly 1% of the events, at least in the VAERS database. This suggests elevated under-reporting.
We are calling for a stop in the administration of these vaccines in children (as part of a study or any EUA) until the safety issues are clarified yet we see no reason to vaccinate children. We are calling for a full moratorium against vaccinating them. There is no safety data nor evidence of support in the need to vaccinate children. Our main concern remains that the safety analysis for these vaccines have not been done and the required time to follow-up for this vaccine to ascertain its safety was limited to a median of 2 months in the initial trials. This is public knowledge and this is very concerning.
In December 2020, Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist, warned the FDA that mRNA vaccines could cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in ways NOT assessed in safety trials. Whelan stated: “Is it possible the spike protein itself causes the tissue damage associated with Covid-19? Nuovo et al (in press) have shown that in 13/13 brains from patients with fatal COVID-19, pseudovirions (spike, envelope, and membrane proteins) without viral RNA are present in the endothelia of cerebral micro-vessels.
Whelan further reports that “ACE-2 receptor expression is highest in the microvasculature of the brain and subcutaneous fat, and to a lesser degree in the liver, kidney, and heart. They have further demonstrated that the coronavirus replicates almost exclusively in the septal capillary endothelial cells of the lungs and the nasopharynx, and that viral lysis and immune destruction of those cells releases viral capsid proteins (or pseudo-virions) that travel through the circulation and bind to ACE- 2 receptors in these other parts of the body leading to mannan-binding lectin complement pathway activation that not only damages the microvascular endothelium but also induces the production of many pro-inflammatory cytokines. Meinhardt et al. (Nature Neuroscience 2020, in press) show that the spike protein in brain endothelial cells is associated with formation of microthrombi (clots), and like Magro et al. do not find viral RNA in brain endothelium. In other words, viral proteins appear to cause tissue damage without actively replicating virus”. This implies that the spike, on its very own, could act like a pathogen, causing devastating morbidity and fatality.
Dr. Bryam Bridle, a world-renowned virologist stated, “we made a big mistake, we did not realize it until now, we thought the spike protein was a great target antigen, but we never knew the spike protein itself was a potential toxin. By vaccinating people, we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin.” “It was a grave mistake to believe the spike protein would not escape into the blood circulation, according to Bridle. “Now, we have clear-cut evidence that the vaccines that make the cells in our deltoid muscles manufacture this protein — that the vaccine itself, plus the protein — gets into blood circulation,” he said. Bridle said the scientific community para “has discovered the spike protein, on its own, is almost entirely responsible for the damage to the cardiovascular system, if it gets into circulation”.
Recent FOIA animal data from Japan shows that it (lipid nanoparticles/mRNA/spike) accumulates in various organs in very elevated concentrations. As mentioned, if the protein gets into the blood stream, it can potentially circulate in the blood systemically and potentially accumulate in tissues such as the spleen, bone marrow, liver, adrenal glands, and ovaries. What we speculated on is now borne out by this biodistribution data. The biodistribution data alarmingly shows that and suggests potentially then that the spike proteins in humans does not (and will not) stay in the injection site and can travel throughout the body. This is a major development. This requires urgent acute examination for clarification. Is the FDA cognizant of this data as they push to vaccinate our children? We urgently need Moderna, Pfzier, J & J, and AstraZeneca to provide the biodistribution data and study of the sequela when mRNA undergoes translation in distant cells and tissues. The case has indeed been built that the lipid nanoparticles and thus the constituent mRNA and resulting spike that is translated, is likely ending up in distant tissue it usually would not end up in. With possible catastrophic outcomes of clotting, bleeding, and immune system attack (NK lymphocytes etc.).
This additional piece to the puzzle as to explaining why we are seeing these problematic adverse events and deaths post-vaccination, in terms of whether the spike protein moves from the injection site, is also backed up by a very recent publication that reported on 13 young healthcare workers (in CID/Ogata et al.) who received the Moderna vaccine. Researchers found detectable levels of SARS-CoV-2 protein in 11 of the 13 participants one day after the first vaccination. “Spike protein was detectable in three of 13 participants an average of 15 days after the first injection… for one individual (Participant #8), a spike was detected at day 29”, circulating in the blood. While nascent, this warrants urgent clarification.
With this emerging knowledge that no doubt needs clarification, if any of it is true, then we have a potential disaster in the making for our children. Why? Why has the FDA disregarded the emerging evidence of the spike being potentially deleterious especially to the endothelium of the vasculature?
We raise a hypothesis that children have limited ACE 2receptors in their nasal epithelia and this confers protection from serious illness and we have seen that they are largely immune from COVID sequelae. But by vaccinating into the deltoid muscle (shoulder), and knowing now that the spike and vaccine (lipid nanoparticles) are finding their way to distant parts of the systemic circulation including crossing the blood-brain barrier, then the implications could be very serious in terms of blood clots and bleeding, etc. We would be essentially causing disease at levels seen in adults and not normally seen in children, to now emerge in children due to the vaccination push. We would be bypassing a natural protective barrier (limited ACE 2 in nasal epithelia) with potentially severe life-threatening consequences, if this bares out. This makes no sense and is highly dangerous.
Doctors have begun to raise concerns for they see across the world, a sort of recklessness and derangement with regards to the vaccination of children. How come Dr. Fauci does not know this about the spike protein? Or the troubling biodistribution data? Or has not considered this risk? Why not? Is something other than science at play here? Where is the safety data that the FDA is considering? Is there any collection of safety data by the vaccine manufacturers? We are raising very troubling questions. As such, given all that we have raised, we call for a hard stop and no issuance of an EUA by the FDA for children up to 11 years old. They must not be subjected to these vaccines. There are just too many unknowns and their baseline risk is low and the possible vaccine harms are potentially very high.
I end by calling on POTUS Trump to stand up now and say NO to vaccinating our children. I call on POTUS Biden to do the same. I call on the Prime Minister of Canada, UK, Australia, India, France, Italy etc. and all global leaders to do the same. I call on Caribbean governments, South American, African, European, and Asian governments to do the same. All global governments to not subject our children to these potentially harmful vaccines. There is no justification to vaccinating our children with these vaccines. There is no benefit and only possible downsides that could leave them with 70 to 80 years of disability or even death. COVID has spared them, say thank God and leave them alone!
Contact
Paul E. Alexander, PhD … email: elias98_99@yahoo.com
Howard Tenenbaum, DDS, PhD … email: hctkbt822@gmail.com
The Pentagon gave $39 million to a charity that funded controversial coronavirus research at a Chinese lab accused of being the source for Covid-19, federal data reveals. The news comes as the charity’s chief, British-born scientist Dr. Peter Daszak, was exposed in an alleged conflict of interest and back-room campaign to discredit lab leak theories.
The charity, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), has come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that it had been using federal grants to fund research into coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The U.S. nonprofit, set up to research new diseases, has also partly funded deeply controversial ‘gain of function‘ experiments, where dangerous viruses are made more infectious to study their effect on human cells.
A political storm broke when former president Donald Trump canceled a $3.7 million grant to the charity last year amid claims that Covid-19 was created in, or leaked from, the Wuhan lab funded by EHA.
But federal grant data assembled by independent researchers shows that the charity has received more than $123 million from the government – from 2017 to 2020 – and that one of its biggest funders is the Department of Defense, funneling almost $39 million to the organization since 2013.
Exactly how much of that money went toward research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is unknown.
Federal grant data assembled by independent researchers shows that the charity has received more than $123 million from the government – and that one of its biggest funders is the Department of Defense, funneling almost $39million to the organization since 2013.
Grants from the Pentagon included $6,491,025 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) from 2017 to 2020 with the description: ‘Understanding the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in Western Asia.‘
The grant was categorized as ‘scientific research – combating weapons of mass destruction.‘
The majority of the DoD funding came from the DTRA, a military branch with a mission to ‘counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.’
EHA also received $64.7 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), $13 million from Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control, $2.3 million from the Department of Homeland Security, and $2.6 million from the National Science Foundation.
A government funding figure of $3.4 million was widely reported, after White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci was questioned in a Senate hearing on how much money the National Institutes of Health sent to the Wuhan lab via its grants to EcoHealth Alliance in 2019.
But the total grant figures including Pentagon funding dwarf that number.
Researchers James Baratta and Mariamne Everett assembled grant filings from US government agencies to EHA, which were published on popular science site Independent Science News in December.
The site found EHA’s declaration of its vast military funding is nestled deep in the ‘Privacy Policy’ section of its website, under the title ‘EcoHealth Alliance Policy Regarding Conflict of Interest in Research’.
In the disclosure EHA says it is ‘the recipient of various grant awards from federal agencies including the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense.‘
It does not disclose the size of its DoD funding.
In 2014 the Obama administration outlawed gain of function research, such as the experiments funded by EHA, after concerns were raised among scientists that it could lead to a global pandemic from a genetically enhanced virus escaping a lab.
But EHA reportedly continued to legally fund the practice, using a loophole that allowed for the research in cases ‘urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.‘
One notable EHA ‘policy advisor’ is David Franz, a former commander at the principal US government biowarfare and biodefense facility Fort Detrick.
Franz was an official in the United Nations Special Commission which inspected for bioweapons in Iraq.
The charity’s head, Daszak, has been accused of orchestrating a behind-the-scenes ‘bullying’ campaign to ensure the blame for covid-19 did not fall on the Wuhan lab he funded.
The 55-year-old worked closely with the lab’s so-called ‘bat woman,’ Shi Zhengli, in their studies of coronaviruses.
In February 2020 Daszak persuaded more than two dozen other scientists to sign off on a letter he had written to highly respected medical journal The Lancet, that was seen as so influential that it cowed most experts into refusing even to consider that the virus could have been man-made and escaped from the Wuhan institute.
Former high-level Clinton administration staffer Jamie Metzl, who now sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing, told DailyMail.com that the Lancet letter ‘was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation.‘
Freedom of Information Act disclosures revealed Daszak tried to distance his charity from the letter to make it appear it was coming from ‘a community supporting our colleagues.‘
The charity chief told his fellow signatories in an email that the letter would not be sent under the EcoHealth logo ‘and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person.‘
The joint letter, published in the journal on February 19 last year, praised the Chinese ‘who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the Covid-19 outbreak‘ and added ‘We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.‘
Despite his close connections to the Chinese lab, Daszak was also picked by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be part of its 13-member team that was tasked with finding the cause of the pandemic which began in Wuhan, a city of some 11 million people in Central China.
Metzl told DailyMail.com the appointment was a ‘massive and outrageous conflict of interest,‘ allowing a man who had significant financial and reputational stakes in discrediting lab leak theories to investigate those theories.
Prominent scientists have criticized the WHO probe, which dismissed lab leak theories, as lackluster and incomplete.
In a Freedom of Information disclosure of Fauci’s emails obtained by Buzzfeed last month, Daszak thanked the White House doctor for pushing back on the theory that covid-19 was man made.
‘I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,‘ Daszak wrote in April 2020.
Fauci says the emails have been taken out of context.
EHA’s most recent financial statements filed with the IRS say that around 90 per cent of its funding comes from government sources.
The 2019 report says Daszak was paid a total $410,801 for the year, including $311,815 base pay, $42,250 bonus, $24,500 deferred compensation and $32,236 nontaxable benefits.
ACROSS the globe, official public health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic has been underpinned by the concern that people without disease symptoms may transmit the virus. This has led to recommendations such as universal mask-wearing, social distancing, mass testing, stay at home orders and school and business closures.
The concern that SARS-CoV-2 could be spread by people without symptoms originally came from a single case report. It was alleged that an asymptomatic woman from China had spread the virus to 16 other contacts in Germany. Later reports showed that, at the time of contact, this woman was taking medication for flu-like symptoms, invalidating the evidence provided for the theory of asymptomatic transmission. As with other common respiratory viruses, SARS-CoV-2 spreads by being exhaled, coughed or sneezed into the air. The largest droplets fall quickly and settle on the ground whilst the most lightweight particles, known as aerosols, may remain suspended in the air for days. Once the virus is present in the environment, it spreads by finding its way into the respiratory tract of new hosts in a large enough quantity (known as the ‘viral load’ or ‘infectious dose’) to infect them. The theory of fomite transmission (touching contaminated surfaces and then touching the face) is not supported by scientific evidence.
The most significant risk factor for Covid-19 disease is advanced age and the presence of underlying health issues such as cardiovascular disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Both factors contribute to a frail immune system. In addition to the health status of the exposed person, the environment in which exposure occurs also affects the probability of that person falling ill. Infectious aerosols remain suspended for longer in cold, dry air. Hence respiratory viruses transmit most efficiently during colder seasons. People spend more time indoors during cold weather, where poor ventilation leads to higher concentrations of infectious aerosols remaining in the air. Spending time in crowded indoor spaces also increases the risk of transmission. Furthermore, lack of exposure to the sun in colder weather results in lower Vitamin D levels, and greater susceptibility to illness if infected.
Infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes some individuals to become ill with Covid-19. Many people have had previous exposure to other related coronaviruses. These individuals develop mild or no symptoms following infection with SARS-CoV2, most likely due to protection conferred by this exposure. Cross-immunity has been demonstrated in multiple studies.
People presenting with symptoms of Covid-19 are almost exclusively responsible for transmitting SARS-CoV-2. Serious infection usually results from frequent exposure to high doses of SARS-CoV-2, such as health care workers caring for sick Covid-19 patients in hospitals or nursing homes and people living in the same household.
A person showing no symptoms of Covid-19 may test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR test, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are infectious. There are four ways in which this can happen:
● The test may give a false positive result due to several faults in the testing process or in the test itself (the person is not infected);
● The person may have recovered from Covid-19 in the last three months (the person is not currently infected but dead debris of the virus are being picked up by the test);
● The person may be pre-symptomatic, i.e, the person is infected but still in the early stages of the disease and has not yet developed symptoms;
● The person may be asymptomatic, i.e. the person is infected but has pre-existing immunity and will never develop symptoms.
In asymptomatic individuals, the viral load is typically very low and the infectious period is also short in duration. They may still exhale virus particles, which another person may encounter. However, the overall likelihood of transmitting the disease to others is negligible. Thus asymptomatic cases are not the major drivers of epidemics. As Dr Anthony Fauci of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stated in March 2020: ‘In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.’
A recent study shows the minimal effect of asymptomatic transmission within the same household. One thousand asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals led to seven new infections, while 1000 symptomatic individuals led to 180 new infections. The real impact of asymptomatic transmission is likely to be even smaller than this figure because the study combines asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals. The risk of asymptomatic spread outdoors would be even more insignificant.
The recently debunked theory of asymptomatic transmission as an important driver of outbreaks has been responsible for healthy people being considered to be walking biohazards. The testing, quarantining and masking of healthy people is not supported by scientific evidence and is therefore unethical. Masks, for example, do not protect anyone from contracting the virus. The size of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is 1/10,000 mm and can easily pass through medical or cloth masks with each inhalation and exhalation. According to a review of the literature published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, ‘We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.’ Empirical evidence from (otherwise similar) masked vs unmasked states, regions and countries has also failed to demonstrate any beneficial effect.
A sensible recommendation is to ask sick individuals to stay at home until they are recovered, which may last for about eight days. This age-old commonsense practice would have saved the world incredible collateral damage. Instead of wasting resources by focusing on the healthy, it’s time to shift our attention to the vulnerable to improve their prognosis and survival. This strategy involves three key components: prevention (Vitamin D supplementation, healthy lifestyle, avoiding crowded indoor places during the peak of outbreaks and safe and efficacious vaccination), early treatment of symptoms in the high-risk group and effective treatment protocols in the event of hospitalisation.
This article was written for and first published by PANDA, pandata.orga group of multi-disciplinary professionals which promotes open science and rational debate, replacing flawed science with good science and aims at retrieving liberty and prosperity from the clutches of a dystopian ‘new normal’. It is republished by kind permission.
Scientific propaganda about vaccines has reached dizzying heights, as officials point the uninformed public toward the Day of Liberation, when a COVID shot, otherwise known as God, will rescue Earth.
Here, from a chapter in my 1988 book, AIDS INC., is an excerpt exposing some of the infamous moments in vaccination history—hidden by the press, or simply forgotten.
For those denialists who cling to the notion that vaccines are remarkably safe and effective, this article is a pill you can swallow, bitter to be sure, but immunizing against the effects of bald lies from the bent medical establishment.
Understand: this is only a partial history of disasters and revelations, and it stops at 1988.
“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977
“In a recent British outbreak of whooping cough, for example, even fully immunized children contracted the disease in fairly large numbers; and the rates of serious complications and death were reduced only slightly. In another recent outbreak of pertussis, 46 of the 85 fully immunized children studied eventually contracted the disease.”
“In 1977, 34 new cases of measles were reported on the campus of UCLA, in a population that was supposedly 91% immune, according to careful serological testing. Another 20 cases of measles were reported in the Pecos, New Mexico, area within a period of a few months in 1981, and 75% of them had been fully immunized, some of them quite recently. A survey of sixth-graders in a well-immunized urban community revealed that about 15% of this age group are still susceptible to rubella, a figure essentially identical with that of the pre-vaccine era.”
“Finally, although the overall incidence of typical acute measles in the U.S. has dropped sharply from about 400,000 cases annually in the early 1960s to about 30,000 cases by 1974-76, the death rate remained exactly the same; and, with the peak incidence now occurring in adolescents and young adults, the risk of pneumonia and demonstrable liver abnormalities has actually increased substantially, according to one recent study, to well over 3% and 2%, respectively.” Richard Moskowitz, MD, The Case Against Immunizations, 1983, American Institute of Homeopathy.
“Of all reported whooping cough cases between 1979 and 1984 in children over 7 months of age – that is, old enough to have received the primary course of the DPT shots (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) – 41% occurred in children who had received three or more shots and 22% in children who had one or two immunizations.”
“Among children under 7 months of age who had whooping cough, 34% had been immunized between one and three times…”
“… Based on the only U.S. findings on adverse DPT reactions, an FDA-financed study at the University of California, Los Angeles, one out of every 350 children will have a convulsion; one in 180 children will experience high-pitched screaming [can indicate brain damage]; and one in 66 will have a fever of 105 degrees or more.” Jennifer Hyman, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, special supplement on DPT, dated April, 1987.
“A study undertaken in 1979 at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the sponsorship of the Food and Drug Administration, and which has been confirmed by other studies, indicates that in the U.S.A. approximately 1,000 infants die annually as a direct result of DPT vaccinations, and these are classified as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths. These represent about 10 to 15% of the total number of SIDS deaths occurring annually in the U.S.A. (between 8,000 and 10,000 depending on which statistics are used).” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, CW Daniel Company Limited, Saffron Walden, Essex, England, 1987.
“Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr., MD, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, rounded… figures off to 9,000 cases of convulsions, 9,000 cases of collapse, and 17,000 cases of high-pitched screaming for a total of 35,000 acute neurological reactions occurring within forty-eight hours of a DPT shot among America’s children every year.” DPT: A Shot in the Dark, by Harris L. Coulter and Barbara Loe Fischer, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
“While 70-80% of British children were immunized against pertussis in 1970-71, the rate is now 39%. The committee predicts that the next pertussis epidemic will probably turn out to be more severe than the one in 1974/75. However, they do not explain why, in 1970/71, there were more than 33,000 cases of pertussis with 41 fatal cases among the very well immunized British child population; whereas in 1974/75, with a declining rate of vaccination, a pertussis epidemic caused only 25,000 cases with 25 fatalities.” Wolfgang Ehrengut, Lancet, Feb. 18, 1978, p. 370.
“… Barker and Pichichero, in a prospective study of 1232 children in Denver, Colorado, found after DTP that only 7% of those vaccinated were free from untoward reactions, which included pyrexia (53%), acute behavioral changes (82%), prolonged screaming (13%), and listlessness, anorexia and vomiting. 71% of those receiving second injections of DTP experienced two or more of the reactions monitored.” Lancet, May 28, 1983, p. 1217
“Publications by the World Health Organization show that diphtheria is steadily declining in most European countries, including those in which there has been no immunization. The decline began long before vaccination was developed. There is certainly no guarantee that vaccination will protect a child against the disease; in fact, over 30,000 cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United Kingdom in fully immunized children.” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 58.
“Pertussis (whooping cough) immunization is controversial, as the side effects have received a great deal of publicity. The counter claim is that the effectiveness and protection offered by the procedure far outweigh the possible ill effects… annual deaths, per million children, from this disease over the period from 1900 to the mid-nineteen seventies, shows that from a high point of just under 900 deaths per million children (under age 15) in 1905, the decline has been consistent and dramatic. There had been a lowering of mortality rates of approximately 80% by the time immunization was introduced on a mass scale, in the mid-nineteen fifties. The decline has continued, albeit at a slower rate, ever since. No credit can be given to vaccination for the major part of the decline since it was not in use.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 63.
“… the swine-flu vaccination program was one of its (CDC) greatest blunders. It all began in 1976 when CDC scientists saw that a virus involved in a flu attack outbreak at Fort Dix, N.J., was similar to the swine-flu virus that killed 500,000 Americans in 1918. Health officials immediately launched a 100-million dollar program to immunize every American. But the expected epidemic never materialized, and the vaccine led to partial paralysis in 532 people. There were 32 deaths.” U.S. News and World Report, Joseph Carey, October 14, 1985, p. 70, “How Medical Sleuths Track Killer Diseases.”
“Despite (cases) in which (smallpox) vaccination plainly failed to protect the population, and despite the rampant side-effects of the methods, the proponents of vaccination continued their attempts to justify the methods by claims that the disease had declined in Europe as a whole during the period of its compulsory use. If the decline could be correlated with the use of the vaccination, then all else could be set aside, and the advantage between its current low incidence could be shown to outweigh the periodic failures of the method, and to favour the continued use of vaccination. However, the credit for the decline in the incidence of smallpox could not be given to vaccination. The fact is that its incidence declined in all parts of Europe, whether or not vaccination was employed.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, pp. 6-7.
“Smallpox, like typhus, has been dying out (in England) since 1780. Vaccination in this country has largely fallen into disuse since people began to realize how its value was discredited by the great smallpox epidemic of 1871-2 (which occurred after extensive vaccination).” W. Scott Webb, A Century of Vaccination, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898.
“In this incident (Kyoto, Japan, 1948) – the most serious of its kind – a toxic batch of alum-precipitated toxoid (APT) was responsible for illness in over 600 infants and for no fewer than 68 deaths.”
“On 20 and 22 October, 1948, a large number of babies and children in the city of Kyoto received their first injection of APT. On the 4th and 5th of November, 15,561 babies and children aged some months to 13 years received their second dose. One to two days later, 606 of those who had been injected fell ill. Of these, 9 died of acute diphtheritic paralysis in seven to fourteen days, and 59 of late paralysis mainly in four to seven weeks.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization, Athone Press, University of London, 1967.
“Accidents may, however, follow the use of this so-called killed (rabies) vaccine owing to inadequate processing. A very serious occurrence of this sort occurred at Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, in 1960. No fewer than 18 out of 66 persons vaccinated with Fermi’s carbolized (rabies ) vaccine suffered from encephalomyelitis and every one of the eighteen died.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.
“At a press conference in Washington on 24 July, 1942, the Secretary of War reported that 28,585 cases of jaundice had been observed in the (American) Army between 1 January and 4 July after yellow fever vaccination, and of these 62 proved fatal.” Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.
“The world’s biggest trial (conducted in south India) to assess the value of BCG tuberculosis vaccine has made the startling revelation that the vaccine ‘does not give any protection against bacillary forms of tuberculosis.’ The study said to be ‘most exhaustive and meticulous,’ was launched in 1968 by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.”
“The incidence of new cases among the BCG vaccinated group was slightly (but statistically insignificantly) higher than in the control group, a finding that led to the conclusion that BCG’s protective effect ‘was zero.’” New Scientist, November 15, 1979, as quoted by Hans Ruesch in Naked Empress, Civis Publishers, Switzerland, 1982.
“Between 10 December 1929 and 30 April 1930, 251 of 412 infants born in Lubeck received three doses of BCG vaccine by the mouth during the first ten days of life. Of these 251, 72 died of tuberculosis, most of them in two to five months and all but one before the end of the first year. In addition, 135 suffered from clinical tuberculosis but eventually recovered; and 44 became tuberculin-positive but remained well. None of the 161 unvaccinated infants born at the time was affected in this way and none of these died of tuberculosis within the following three years.” Hazards of Immunization, Wilson.
“We conducted a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial to test the efficacy of the 14-valent pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide vaccine in 2295 high-risk patients… Seventy-one episodes of proved or probable pneumococcal pneumonia or bronchitis occurred among 63 of the patients (27 placebo recipients and 36 vaccine recipients)… We were unable to demonstrate any efficacy of the pneumococcal vaccine in preventing pneumonia or bronchitis in this population.” New England Journal of Medicine, November 20, 1986, p. 1318, Michael Simberkoff et al.
In the spring of 1955, Cutter Labs started selling their standard polio vaccine. The vaccine was infective, and 200 cases of polio resulted among recipients. Of these, there were eleven deaths. About 100 cases of paralysis resulted. JR
“But already before Salk developed his vaccine, polio had been constantly regressing; the 39 cases out of every 100,000 inhabitants registered in 1942 had gradually diminished from year to year until they were reduced to only 15 cases in 1952… according to M. Beddow Baylay, the English surgeon and medical historian.” Slaughter of the Innocent, Hans Reusch, Civitas Publish ers, Switzerland, and Swain, New York, 1983.
“Many published stories and reports have stated, implied and otherwise led professional people and the public to believe that the sharp reduction of cases (and of deaths) from poliomyelitis in 1955 as compared to 1954 is attributable to the Salk vaccine… That it is a misconception follows from these considerations. The number of children inoculated has been too small to account for the decrease. The sharp decrease was apparent before the inoculations began or could take effect and was of the same order as the decrease following the immediate post-inoculation period.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, vol. 20, no. 1, 1987.
“So far it is hardly possible to gain insight into the extent of the immunization catastrophe of 1955 in the United States. It may be considered certain that the officially ascertained 200 cases (of polio) which were caused directly or indirectly by the (polio) vaccination constitute minimum figures… It can hardly be estimated how many of the 1359 (polio) cases among vaccinated persons must be regarded as failures of the vaccine and how many of them were infected by the vaccine. A careful study of the epidemiologic course of polio in the United States yields indications of grave significance. In numerous states of the U.S.A., typical early epidemics developed with the immunizations in the spring of 1955… The vaccination incidents of the year 1955 cannot be exclusively traced back to the failure of one manufacturing firm.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980, vol. 19, no. 4, “Story of the Salk Vaccine (Part 2).”
“Suffice it to say that most of the large (polio) epidemics that have occurred in this country since the introduction of the Salk vaccine have followed the wide-scale use of the vaccine and have been characterized by an uncommon early seasonal onset. To name a few, there is the Massachusetts epidemic of 1955; the Chicago epidemic of 1956; and the Des Moines epidemic of 1959.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980 vol. 19, no. 4.
“The live (Sabin) poliovirus vaccine has been the predominant cause of domestically arising cases of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States since 1972. To avoid the occurrence of such cases, it would be necessary to discontinue the routine use of live poliovirus vaccine.” Jonas Salk, Science, March 4, 1977, p. 845.
“By the (U.S.) government’s own admission, there has been a 41% failure rate in persons who were previously vaccinated against the (measles) virus.” Dr. Anthony Morris, John Chriss, BG Young, “Occurrence of Measles in Previously Vaccinated Individuals,” 1979; presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology at Fort Detrick, Maryland, April 27, 1979.
“Prior to the time doctors began giving rubella vaccinations, an estimated 85% of adults were naturally immune to the disease (for life). Because of immunization, the vast majority of women never acquire natural immunity (or lifetime protection).” Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, Let’s Live, December 1983, as quoted by Carolyn Reuben in the LA WEEKLY, June 28, 1985.
“Adminstration of KMV (killed measles vaccine) apparently set in motion an aberrant immunologic response that not only failed to protect children against natural measles, but resulted in heightened susceptibility.” JAMA Aug. 22, 1980, vol. 244, p. 804, Vincent Fulginiti and Ray Helfer. The authors indicate that such falsely protected children can come down with “an often severe, atypical form of measles. Atypical measles is characterized by fever, headache… and a diverse rash (which)… may consist of a mixture of macules, papules, vesicles, and pustules… ”
The above quotes reflect only a mere fraction of an available literature.
It is criminally deceiving to say, “Vaccines are simple; they stimulate the immune system and confer immunity against specific germ agents.”
Official reports on vaccine reactions are often at odds with unofficial estimates because of the method of analysis used. If adverse vaccine-reaction is defined as a small set of possible effects experienced within 72 hours of an inoculation, then figures will be smaller. But doctors like G.T. Stewart, of the University of Glasgow, have found through meticulous investigation, including visits to hospitals and interviews with parents of children vaccinated, that reactions as severe as brain-damage (e.g., from the DPT vaccine) can be overlooked, go unreported and can be assumed to have come from other causes.
— Well, that was my finding, in 1988, when I looked beneath the surface of the vaccine question.
Now we are in very deep waters. COVID-19 hysteria has been tuned up to the NEED for a vaccine.
WE need to slough off this promoted bad dream and stand firm against the little gods who traffic their vials in every doctor’s office, hospital, school, drug store, and tented parking lot—making them into shooting galleries.
We already have natural immune systems. They work.
One of the most striking characteristics of ‘lockdownism’ – though one which, seen in the cold light of day, is hardly surprising – is that support for it has been generated through confluences of interests. The most obvious example of this is the way in which the aims of public health bodies (preventing excess deaths) have aligned so closely with those of certain big, incumbent market actors, such as supermarkets, social media giants, and online marketplaces (that is, profit). Lockdowns appear to suit those with self-consciously virtuous motives; they also very often suit those who want to make money. When people stay at home, they stop the virus spreading – but they also spend more time online, buy more from online stores, and rely on big ‘essential’ supermarkets rather than small, independent ‘mom and pop’ nonessential retail.
In light of this, are we at all surprised that it is very often the big social media firms, streaming services and the like that have been most strongly in favor of restrictions? There is nothing conspiratorial about this, nor probably even anything intentional. It is just the straightforward application of one of the most fundamental lessons of classical economics: incentives matter, and the incentives of these actors just tend to point in the same direction. It’s not that these businesses consciously support lockdowns due to a naked profit motive, in other words; it’s simply that their incentives to reject lockdownism are not strong, or are lacking entirely, because their interests are not in conflict with it.
One of the most important, helpful, but least well-systematized concepts in the study of regulation is the ‘bootleggers and Baptists’ phenomenon, coined by Bruce Yandle. Yandle observed that political activism in favour of the prohibition of alcohol sales and Sunday closing laws in the US was often a combination of high and low motives. Baptists are in favor of restricting the selling of alcohol because it is ‘good for society.’ Bootleggers are in favor of it because, for their purposes, the less alcohol that is lawfully available the better. The two groups do not conspire with one another, openly or otherwise. But the alignment of their interests is a kind of pincer movement which regulators find difficult to resist.
Bootleggers’ and Baptists’ coalitions, then, are circumstantial alignments between virtue and the profit motive. And they are everywhere in public life. To pick just one example, the Scottish and UK governments increasingly regulate the consumption of alcohol and sugar, through a variety of price floors, mandatory packaging requirements, and surcharges. These measures satisfy public health advocates, whose motives are pure (if probably misguided). But they also satisfy big incumbents, who can usually swallow increased costs much more readily than smaller operators, and who are adept at finding ways to sell smaller portions of familiar brands for the same price. Is there a conspiracy taking place? No: it’s just that incumbents are not strongly incentivized to lobby against the measures in question, because those measures are not actually very harmful to them.
The alignment of interests between public health advocates and certain market actors during the Covid period is, then, readily conceptualized in bootlegger-and-Baptist terms. It isn’t that there is any conniving or ‘backstairs intrigue’ going on. It’s simply that public health advice has gone strongly in one direction, and there has been no real incentive for certain sections of the corporate world to push back against it – rather the opposite.
This is not an entirely novel observation, and will have been evident to many observers. What has been less well-noticed is that there is something of a psychological bootlegger-and-Baptist phenomenon taking place within individuals’ minds as well – and that this has been particularly important in building support for lockdowns among the professional classes.
This was brought home to me early on in the pandemic, when an acquaintance sent me an email proclaiming how important the stay-at-home message was, but also saying that he regretted the fact that, having recently bought a new house, he was (I quote directly) ‘too busy to enjoy lockdown.’ This person’s rather blithe allusion that lockdown was something one should be enjoying was strikingly indicative, I thought, of the general mood among professional people that I knew. And indeed this was hardly the only person who, accidentally or openly, admitted to me that they rather liked the prospect of being shut at home. (I am sure that most readers of this post will have noticed the same phenomenon.) Many people seem to have relished the opportunity to get lots more work done. Others have found the release from stressful commuting or other commitments blissful. Being able to work from home, and often having quite nice homes, a lot of professional people have felt that lockdown gave them a better work-life balance. In other words, lockdown simply wasn’t a great hardship for a certain chunk of the population – and in fact came as something of a blessing.
This is not to suggest for a moment that support for lockdowns has been selfish, of course. Far from it. Rather, it is simply to observe that there has, again, been a strong confluence of interests – except here it is within the individual mind. I do not doubt that people have generally felt that all the restrictions they have been subjected to have been morally right (the ‘Baptist’ motive). But it is also true that they have had self-interested reasons for finding that the measures have not been all that bad of an idea, as well (the inner ‘bootlegger’).
It is the combination of the bootleggers and the Baptists working in tandem that is so effective, in Yandle’s sketch, and the same is true within us, as well. Our internal respective bootlegger, and Baptist, impulses are strong in their own right, and if they had been at odds during the pandemic, they would have tended to cancel each other out and there may have been more of a pushback against the restrictions. But because they have been working together, they are very powerful. This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of white collar professionals during the pandemic: they have been acting out of a genuine sense of virtue, but they have also done rather well out of doing so, at least in the short term. It’s not one or the other, and high and low motives are not mutually exclusive – it’s both in combination that does the trick.
David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. Before entering academia, he lived and worked in Japan for the best part of a decade. His research focuses on human rights law and the law of contract, in respect of both of which he tends to adopt a classical liberal perspective.
Eight drone strikes have targeted King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait since the start of the holy month (of Ramadan). Since the beginning of the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen, drone operations – in addition to other air operations – have been striking the (King Khalid) Air Base as a main target.
The series of intensive attacks against the most important military base in the southern region of the Kingdom (of Saudi Arabia) has shown the inability of modern US defense systems to intercept or destroy these drones. This turn of events has complicated the process of dealing with this type of weapon which is low-cost, but great in effect.
The impact that the (Yemeni) drone operations have had on the workflow of the largest air base in the south of the Kingdom can be clearly seen in the disruption each air operation brings about at most airports in the south of the Kingdom, especially since the operation of defense systems throughout the southern region requires stopping air traffic in order for the defense radars to efficiently monitor the airspace.
Riyadh realizes that the military capabilities that Sana’a possesses have greatly influenced the course of the battle. It also realizes that its military spending on additional weapons did not put an end to its military retreat, especially as US reports acknowledge the difficulty of dealing with this new generation of drones.
The (US-Saudi) aggression coalition’s reliance on its air and military superiority is dwindling in the face of the effectiveness of the Yemeni (military) capabilities, which the (Yemeni) armed forces assert are meant for deterrence and responding to the continuing aggression and siege.
“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age.
All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.
As of 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It’s estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe.
It’s a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family.
The possibilities are endless.
You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the sibling of a serial killer.
Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.
Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.
Indeed, police have begun using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades. Who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right? At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases.
A few states have started introducing legislation to restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning.
Certainly, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with genealogical services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.
All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.
Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.
What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.
The ramifications of these DNA databases are far-reaching.
At a minimum, they will do away with any semblance of privacy or anonymity. The lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial entities looking to profit off one’s biological record are endless.
If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.
Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.
No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.
Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.
Suspect Society, meet the American police state.
Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.
None of these technologies are foolproof.
Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.
Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.
What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.
As history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”
With technology, the courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring to invade our privacy on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.
The Australian Government recently prioritized a vaccine for community use against a new strain of influenza. This preventative action is notable as there has been little evidence in the community that suggests this influenza strain is more virulent than other new strains which occur regularly.
In fact, the World Health Organization (2009) states the majority of people who contract this disease experience the milder form of influenza and recover without requiring treatment (1).
An examination of evidence provided by the Western Australian Health Department regarding deaths to swine influenza Type A H1N1 prompts us to ask if it is possible that a change in the surveillance of influenza in 2009 has resulted in the creation of hysteria over a new strain of influenza?
Influenza is a disease that is caused by many strains of virus. These viruses spread easily and new strains develop regularly (2). A vaccine against influenza will only protect against one to three strains depending on the type of vaccine used (3). For example, the current seasonal influenza vaccine protects against Type A (H1N1), Type A (H3N2) and Type B (3). Influenza Type A H1N1 is a strain that has been covered in influenza vaccines for many years.
The new strain of ‘swine’ flu is stated to be a recombination of genetic material from human Type A H1N1, a strain of bird flu and 2 strains of pig flu (1). The WHO states ‘there are no known instances of humans getting this strain of influenza from pigs and other animals’. It is also stated that this strain is not known to be endemic in pigs (1). Yet this flu has been promoted to the public as ‘swine flu’ even though it is a strain that has never been found in pigs.
The public has been misinformed about this strain of influenza. The term ‘swine flu’ creates anxiety and fear of a disease that has come from pigs when the official medical term for this new strain is ‘Influenza Type A, H1N1, human strain’ (1).
The World Health Organisation states that influenza A (H1N1) is a new virus and one to which most people have no or little immunity (1). In a study conducted by the CDC it was shown that individuals between the ages of 18-64 had antibodies present that reacted to the swine flu virus (4). Whilst this doesn’t indicate clinical protection it does suggest that some individuals may have immunity from previous exposure to H1N1 (4). There is no reason to assume that the population will have no immunity to this new strain as it may be immunologically similar to previous H1N1 viruses (5).
H1N1 is a strain of influenza that has been covered for many years in the seasonal influenza vaccine. Therefore you would expect that the Australian Health Department would have mortality data for seasonal H1N1 from previous years. This is not the case. The Health Department has stated ‘this data has not been collected in previous years or for this year’ – even though Type A H1N1 has been one of the most virulent and prevalent strains and regularly covered in the influenza vaccine(3).
In 2009 the Australian Health Department changed the surveillance of influenza in the community (6). The Department of Health suggests the reason there is good data on the mortality associated with influenza H1N1 2009 is because of enhanced surveillance systems that were put in place specifically to monitor the pandemic (6). Prior to 2009 influenza that was notified by GP’s and laboratories was not systematically followed up or linked to hospitalization/death data to determine outcomes (6) In addition, post-mortem victims were not routinely tested for sub-types of influenza (6).
In previous years deaths were listed as ‘influenza’ and were not routinely sub-typed for the strain (6). The Australian Health Department also states ‘hospitals were less likely to routinely test admitted patients with respiratory viruses, including pneumonia, for influenza, so (in previous years) many cases remained undiagnosed or were assumed to be primary bacterial infections (6).
This year most cases of influenza notified by labs or GP’s were followed up to see if the cases were hospitalized or resulted in death.
The Australian Health Department was also systematically testing hospitalizations /deaths for H1N1. As a result, the health department is claiming that 90-95% of laboratory proven influenza cases are due to ‘swine’ H1N1 (6).
It is known that incidence figures for a disease can be inflated by monitoring a disease in a more systematic manner. A more sensitive or systematic test will identify cases that would previously have gone unidentified. However, a greater incidence of a disease does not always indicate greater severity to the population (7). This is the case with a disease such as influenza which has a high incidence in the community but epidemics are known to be mild for the majority of people (8).
How can the public be sure that the number of deaths attributed to this new strain of ‘swine’ H1N1 is different to the number of deaths associated with seasonal H1N1 in previous years if this testing was not being done? These changes in surveillance mean that even though influenza Type A H1N1 has been prevalent in previous years there is no data on the number of deaths associated with this strain in previous years because it hasn’t been monitored.
The Health Department also admits that it is unclear to what extent ‘Swine’ H1N1 infection may have contributed to the deaths it is linked with this year because there are usually several infections present and in most cases underlying medical conditions (6). It is well known that disease diagnosis and cause of death is an inexact science and it is up to the medical practitioner to state the primary cause of death (9).
The Health Department has not produced statistics that show the overall death rate for influenza to be significantly worse this year than in previous years (3).
The Therapeutic Goods Association states “the experience in Australia of the disease is mild in most cases’ (10). The evidence presented above illustrates how different surveillance methods can enhance the incidence of disease in the community. This leaves the cause of the increase in incidence open to interpretation. For this reason the government should be required to publicize any changes to surveillance practices whenever there is an increase in incidence reporting of a disease.
This will ensure that the information the public receives can be interpreted in an open and transparent fashion that will lead to less fear and panic.
In addition, the government admits that the public has been misinformed by calling this strain ‘swine flu’ but they have stated “they are unable to control how the media reports on the Influenza A (H1N1) virus to the community” (10). Why did the government not correct this information in the media by stating it is not a swine flu and informing the public of its medical name?
This is of significant concern when it is observed that fear is used to encourage the public to accept a medical intervention (vaccination) in healthy individuals.
It is extremely important that we have an accurate knowledge of the harm being caused by the use of multiple vaccines in individuals and until this science is complete we need to assess carefully how many vaccines are necessary. A change in surveillance has a significant impact on the incidence of disease in the community and the Public, as the main stakeholder in the use of vaccines, cannot make a proper assessment of the need for a vaccine without this information.
2) Jefferson T, Rivetti D, Di Pietrantonj C, Rivetti A, Demicheli V, 2008, Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 2. Art. No: CD001269
3) Government of Western Australia, Department of Health, Communicable Diseases Control Directorate, Influenza fact sheet, 2009
4) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 58, p. 521 – 524
5) Schuchat A, 2009, as cited in CDC, MMWR 58, p.521-524
6) Government of Western Australia, Department of Health, Communicable Diseases Control Directorate
7) Burnet, M., 1952, “The Pattern of Disease in Childhood”, Australasian Annals of Medicine , Vol.1, No. 2: p. 93.
8) Heikkinen T, Booy R, Campins M, Finn A, Olcen P, Peltola H, Rodrigo C, Schmitt H, Schumacher F, Teo S, Weil-Olivier C, 2006, Should healthy children be vaccinated against influenza?
European Journal of Pediatrics, 165: 223-228, DOI 10.1007/s00431-005-0040-9
9) McIntyre P, 2009, Australian Government, Department of Health and Ageing, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS).
10) Australian Government, Department of Health and Ageing, 2009, Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) 5
DOCTORS and scientists can behave at times like religious zealots, despite the noble aims of their professions. Heretics are not burned at the stake these days, but professionals marginalise and deride those who challenge their beliefs when these become a matter of faith (and self-interest) rather than science.
An apparent persistent attempt, at the highest level, to hide the Covid virus’s genetically engineered laboratory origins, and to persuade us that it simply jumped from an animal host into humans, is a case in point.
Vaccines are another. Taxpayers provide billions for products which in some cases have done wonders, such as eliminating smallpox, but whose value, in the opinion of some experts, became grossly over-estimated when their introduction coincided with social, political and economic advances in wellbeing.
Just as we tend to react strongly to criticism when living a lie as individuals, vaccines have become such a holy cow that critical studies have little chance of being accepted in the mainstream journals.
All this is by way of introducing the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research, founded last year ‘to enable independent theoreticians, practitioners and researchers’ to publish ‘critical uncensored peer-reviewed theory and research about every aspect of vaccines’.
As with findings described here at TCWyesterday, it makes worrying reading. Most of the long-term hazards described are speculative, but the paper argues that the evidence cited makes it vital for regulators to do much more to track adverse events in people who have received the experimental Covid vaccines.
The main author is Dr Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Dr Greg Nigh, a naturopath pioneering alternative approaches to cancer.
Seneff has spent much of her career developing human-computer communication through spoken language. She has a degree in biology as well as degrees in engineering and computer science, and since 2010 has shifted her research focus toward the effects of drugs, toxic chemicals, and diet on human health and disease.
The study claims that many aspects of the widespread use of RNA vaccines merit safety concerns, some of which ‘might not be evident for years or even transgenerationally’.
A toxin known as the spike protein makes the Covid virus uniquely dangerous compared with its predecessors in the coronavirus family. The vaccines, including those produced by Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford AstraZeneca, deliver a genetic code into our body cells instructing them to manufacture this protein, to train the immune system to minimise the impact of exposure to the actual virus.
‘While the promises of this technology have been widely heralded, the objectively assessed risks and safety concerns have received far less detailed attention,’ the study authors say.
Reviewing the various components of the new vaccines, they conclude that there is potential for ‘a wide range of both acute and long-term induced pathologies, such as blood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases’.
Lack of standard trials of the vaccines means many questions about safety and effectiveness can be answered only through data gathered from the mass public rollout, ‘and this is only possible if there is free access to unbiased reporting of outcomes – something that seems unlikely given the widespread censorship of vaccine-related information because of the perceived need to declare success at all cost’.
Regulators internationally continue to maintain that the vaccines bring more benefits than dangers, but there have been many claims of sudden clusters of deaths immediately in the wake of vaccination drives.
Seneff and Nigh argue that we may not be realising the complexity of the body’s potential for reactions to foreign mRNA, and to other ingredients in the vaccines ‘that go far beyond the simple goal of tricking the body into producing antibodies to the spike protein’. The ‘tricks’ include a modification in the RNA code aimed at synthesising abundant copies of the protein.
Yet the protein alone has been shown to be enough to cause damage to blood vessel linings and blood clotting processes. There is also a risk that antibodies to the protein arising either from vaccination, or previous exposure to the virus, may ‘prime’ the immune system in such a way as to provoke chronic autoimmune and inflammatory reactions on subsequent exposure, a particular concern with the booster shots of the vaccine.
Studies indicate that the protein is able to gain access to cells in the testicles, and may disrupt male reproduction.
Furthermore, the genetic code the virus carries contains inserts that make it ‘extremely plausible’ that the protein could misfold into a prion (such as held responsible for mad cow disease in the 1980s), causing widespread damage to brain cells and increasing the risk of conditions including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
The researchers even discuss the possibility of vaccinated people causing disease in the unvaccinated, through vaccine ‘shedding’. There is a plausible process, they say, by which exosomes (particles which transport DNA and RNA between cells) carrying the spike protein instructions could be released from the lungs and inhaled by someone nearby.
They express concern that continued infection of patients with poor immunity will generate resistant strains of the virus, leading to arguments for repeated rounds of vaccines every few months, ‘with increasing numbers of viral variants coded into the vaccines. This is an arms race that we will probably lose’.
The jabs have the potential to incorporate the genetic code for the Covid virus’s spike protein into our DNA, they say, where it ‘could instruct the synthesis of large numbers of copies of proteinaceous infectious particles, with potentially tragic and even catastrophic unforeseen consequences.’
To rule out or minimise these risks, the paper recommends a well-funded effort to collect detailed data on adverse events associated with the RNA vaccines, ‘tracked well beyond the first couple of weeks after vaccination’.
There should be repeated testing of vaccine recipients to check for signs of autoimmune disease; studies to understand better the toxicity of the spike protein to the brain, heart, testicles and other organs; and to determine whether vaccination just before conception can result in offspring carrying mechanisms for producing the spike protein, possibly integrated into their genome.
Finally, ‘as an obvious but tragically ignored suggestion’, governments should encourage people to take safe and affordable steps to boost their immune systems naturally, such as getting out in the sunlight to raise vitamin D levels, and eating mainly organic whole foods rather than chemical-laden processed foods.
‘We have rushed into vaccine experiments on a world-wide scale. At the very least, we should take advantage of the data that are available from these experiments to learn more about this new and untested technology,’ the paper concludes.
Reiner Fuellmich and the Corona Investigative Committee interview James Corbett about his investigation into the corona crisis and the future of humanity.
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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