Why Mental Health Education & Prevention is Harmful
The paradoxical effect of screening and prevention programs
BY DR. ROGER MCFILLIN | RADICALLY GENUINE | NOVEMBER 23, 2023
There is a concerted effort to drive a growing number of individuals, particularly the younger demographic, toward mental health screenings and interventions.
Schools across the United States are implementing mental health programs to tackle the ongoing mental health crisis. The underlying concept is well-intentioned, drawing parallels between mental health prevention and physical health education. This entails raising awareness of behaviors promoting mental well-being and encouraging active engagement in such behaviors.
However, what if the notion of “prioritizing mental health” is inadvertently causing harm? In a New York Times opinion essay titled “This is Not the Way to Help Depressed Teenagers,” Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Southern California, argued that certain programs aimed at addressing mental health issues in young people not only fell short in providing help but actually exacerbated their problems.
Enter WISE Teens, a school program focused on “social-emotional skills training,” spearheaded by clinical psychologists in training. This innovative initiative comprises eight weekly hour-long classroom sessions designed to equip students with tools and principles derived from both cognitive behavior therapy and Zen Buddhism. The goal? To empower students in managing their emotions effectively.
In a recent study published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy (read here), researchers examined the experiences of 1,071 Australian teenagers over the span of 2017 to 2018. The participants were divided into two groups: one engaged in the WISE Teens program, while the other followed a standard health-class curriculum. Surprisingly, the findings revealed that compared to those receiving standard education, students in WISE Teens reported higher levels of depression, increased anxiety, greater difficulty managing their emotions, and strained relationships with their parents. Astonishingly, one out of every eight participants in WISE Teens showed signs of clinical depression post-program, as opposed to one out of every 13 participants in the regular health classes.
This was an educational program and NOT Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), despite some academic enthusiasts wrongly claiming that DBT for Adolescents is ineffective. DBT for Adolescents is a comprehensive psychotherapy involving specialized individual therapy, skills coaching for both parents and children, and coaching consultations. It’s specifically designed to help teenagers facing severe emotion dysregulation, including issues like suicidality and self-injury. What we’re discussing here, however, is not that. It’s an attempt to build skills in a non-clinical population.
The question arises: should our school personnel be getting involved in mental health matters? How about pediatricians and primary care doctors? Could this be contributing to the problem rather than solving it?
The irony is hard to ignore: school decisions made during the pandemic played a direct role in the rise of mental health issues among children. It’s widely known that kids flourish through social interaction, in-person learning, and engaging activities that aid their development. Yet, what actually unfolded was the opposite – they were pulled out of schools, exposed to prolonged screen time, and had their extracurriculars taken away. Not surprisingly, the increase in screen time and social media usage went hand in hand with a decline in mental health. Indeed, there’s a paradox in expecting the same authorities to screen, oversee, and intervene in mental health problems. So what happens when these concepts are taught to impressionable kids?
Psychiatric Ideology is Harmful
When kids are doing well, they’re focused outward – active, engaged, and fully living life. But turning that focus inward and exposing them to psychiatric labels and ideas? That’s just plain foolish. Kids are at a stage where they’re figuring out who they are, and throwing around these labels is confusing. It’s risky business, especially when these labels start defining their inner world and capabilities.
When introducing concepts around mental health problems kids are prone to speaking about normal life struggles in terms of symptoms and diagnoses. This approach instills a sense of pathology or abnormality in children’s everyday struggles, potentially leading to heightened anxiety or self-stigmatization.
The psychiatric industry suggests that DSM diagnoses are legitimate disease constructs, akin to physical illnesses. However, they’re merely crude labels slapped onto a spectrum of emotional and behavioral manifestations. Major Depressive Disorder isn’t a tangible ailment like strep throat or a tumor. ADHD isn’t an innate disease. These labels lack explanatory value.
One’s struggle with depression may stem from valid reasons such as life setbacks, loss, loneliness, financial woes, or other health issues – not because you have Major Depressive Disorder. Kids often miss this nuance, making them susceptible to labeling themselves: “I can’t do this due to my anxiety,” or “My ADHD is hindering my homework.” Such labels, instead of clarifying, can breed a sense of hopelessness about the future.
Chemical Imbalance Lies have Harmed Generations
During the 1990s and 2000s, the pharmaceutical industry teamed up with academic psychiatry to brand mental health conditions as brain disorders. The government poured billions into hunting for some biological or genetic root, presenting psychiatry with the chance to solidify its standing as legitimate doctors. By attributing depression, anxiety, ADHD, and other “mood disorders” to a biological origin, they could conveniently fit them into the allopathic model—essentially, the solution became prescribing a drug. This alliance shaped not just the narrative around mental health but also the lucrative industry that emerged from it.
“I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.” – Thomas Insel, MD
Despite the lack of an identified biological basis for these conditions, the pharmaceutical industry and academic psychiatry propagated the myth of chemical imbalances, resulting in the emergence of a multi-billion dollar psychiatric drug industry. During this period, psychiatric diagnoses skyrocketed, with near 25% adults relying on at least one psychiatric drug. Astonishingly, all available statistics point to a deterioration in mental health. This should come as no surprise. When individuals are taught that their emotions are beyond their control and framed as symptoms of a physical illness, they are effectively conditioned to seek relief through medication rather than understanding their emotions in context and leveraging them to confront challenges and solve problems.
It’s important to notice that many teachers and school staff are exposed to the same ideologies that contribute to the issues affecting our culture. Schools can become breeding grounds for the perpetuation of concepts like chemical imbalances, victimization culture, and other fringe ideologies. The cycle continues as those who have been influenced by these ideas become the educators, passing on harmful ideas.
Public Schools are a Breeding Ground for Indoctrination
Teachers, school counselors, administrators, and school psychologists often lack the comprehensive knowledge, training, and expertise required to navigate the complexities of emotional and behavioral issues. Their roles were not originally designed to involve the identification or intervention of emotional problems, nor should they be.
Regrettably, public schools have become battlegrounds for fringe ideologies and cultural Marxism, transforming the educational system into an extension of an expanding nanny state that encroaches on the individual rights of families.
Initiatives such as social and emotional learning, gender ideology, and mental health screening have positioned school personnel as gatekeepers for broader societal movements. Non-experts in the field may incorrectly inform parents that their children have conditions like “ADHD” and discuss fringe ideas without scientific legitimacy, significantly influencing how parents perceive their children’s development.
In this climate, normal developmental challenges are pathologized within a culture fueled by fear. Teachers, conditioned to identify early signs of potential academic or emotional issues, become hyper-vigilant to any cues that might suggest a child is at risk of becoming a school shooter, facing suicide, or dropping out of high school.
Tragically, educators have been misled into thinking they can pinpoint these so-called “disorders,” often oversimplifying complex issues and resorting to problematic “early interventions”, at times pushing drugs. This unintended consequence creates a system where educators feel compelled to categorize and refer for medication. Paradoxically, assigning labels to children and administering mind & mood-altering drugs significantly heighten the risk of the very feared consequences they sought to prevent.
Don’t Accept “Depression Screening” Measures
Mental Health Screening* is based on the subjective and unscientific diagnostic system developed by mental health professionals, many with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has brazenly recommended an audacious strategy: subjecting adolescents aged 12 years and older to annual screenings for depression, using formal self-report tools on paper or electronically. These guidelines, undoubtedly, serve one sinister purpose: to inflate the number of children diagnosed with depression. It is a well-known fact that screening measures are notorious for producing false positives. This means that a substantial percentage of individuals identified through these screenings do not actually suffer from the supposed problem being screened.
According to psychologist Chuck Ruby, as stated in his book “Smoke and Mirrors,” with approximately 74 million children under the age of 18 residing in the United States, subjecting them all to an 80% accurate screening tool would result in millions being falsely labeled. These guidelines not only perpetuate a dangerous cycle of overdiagnosis but also push countless innocent young individuals into unnecessary treatment-psychiatric drugs.
Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University, the psychiatrist who invented one screening program, “TeenScreen,” admits it has a potential 84 percent chance of wrongly identifying teens to be at risk of suicide. He has long-term ties to drug companies and is a consultant for Hoffman La Roche, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline.
The ease with which normal developmental behaviors can be misdiagnosed as symptoms of clinical depression is a concerning issue. The primary screening measure utilized for assessing adolescent depression is the PHQ-9 for Adolescents, a self-report questionnaire comprising of nine questions that focus on supposed “depressive symptoms”. What is particularly noteworthy is the origin of this questionnaire—it was developed by none other than… Pfizer!
This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to a particular psychiatric disorder; it’s a pervasive issue across various mental health conditions. A widely recognized pharmaceutical marketing strategy involves expanding the diagnostic criteria for a disorder, essentially broadening the definition to encompass aspects within the spectrum of normal human experiences. By doing so, the pharmaceutical industry can effectively create a market for their products, as more individuals are diagnosed and deemed potential consumers.
Reclaiming our Communities
The key to effective mental health prevention lies in common sense. It begins with cultivating a nurturing and loving home environment that prioritizes the well-being of children. Provide structure and a sense of predictability. Reduce screen time, provide nutrient-dense meals, avoid processed and chemically laden junk, ensure adequate sleep, and embrace community and faith-based traditions. Throw in some exercise, extra-curricular activities, and social gatherings for good measure. While emphasizing the importance of academic achievement, fostering a love for learning, discipline, and resilience, it may be opportune to empower our school teachers to thrive in their specialties—math, science, English, and history—leaving the framework for mental well-being in the capable hands of families and those they trust.
*In a previous post I wrote about the dangers of screening measures in pediatrics and primary care (Read here)
Rational Policy Over Panic
An Awkward Problem
BY REPPARE | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 15, 2024
The world of international public health is in a precarious position. Current policy, resources, personal careers, and the very credibility of major organizations are aligned with the recent statement from the World Health Organization (WHO) that:
Epidemics and pandemics of infectious diseases are occurring more often, and spreading faster and further than ever, in many different regions of the world.
Focus has shifted from the highest burden diseases, and the community-based empowerment required to tackle them, to preventing, identifying, and mitigating diseases that are rare and/or of relatively low burden, or even hypothetical. Namely, a new focus on sudden outbreaks of infectious disease or, in their more spectacular rendering, ‘pandemics.’
The challenge with this approach is that a thorough review of the evidence base underpinning the WHO’s agenda, and that of partners including the World Bank and G20, demonstrates that the above statement is inconsistent with available data. The largest database on which these agencies rely, the GIDEON database, actually shows quite a contrary trajectory. The burden of outbreaks, and therefore risk, is shown to be reducing. By implication, the largest investments in the history of international public health appear to be based on misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and misrepresentation of key evidence.
Weighing Truth and Opportunity
Public health policy must always address threats in context. Every intervention involves a trade-off in terms of financial, social, and clinical risk. The WHO defines health in terms of physical, mental, and social well-being, and an intervention in one of these areas can impact all three. This is why public health agencies must consider all aspects of direct cost, opportunity cost, and risk when formulating policy. It is why communities and individuals must have adequate information to make decisions in their own cultural, social, and ecological context.
To make sure policy assumptions and evidence is sufficient, it is therefore imperative to include broad information from multiple sources. Reliance on epithets, dogma, deplatforming, and censorship are therefore intrinsically dangerous. This is all, of course, meant to be coded into the normative principles of decolonization, human rights, and equity on which the WHO’s constitution is based.
So, back to the precarious position in which the WHO and the international public health community find themselves. They have staked their reputation and political standing on being the center of a centralized approach to save the global populace from urgent, impending, and recurrent emergencies; an existential threat to humanity as the G20 tells us. An objective analysis reveals that these emergencies are rarely likely to reach a level that justifies the diversion of serious resources from endemic and chronic diseases that do actually maim and kill at scale (see chart below).
Admitting such a reality, after touting the inevitability of disaster so loudly, would risk career prospects, derision, and diminished ability to monetize the post-Covid moment. Yet, to ignore wider considerations in global public health and the evidence that informs those considerations would require abandonment of basic principles and ethics. A dilemma that calls for honesty, introspection, and strength.
Major causes of death by disease globally, in 2019. Global Burden of Disease data, presented at https://ourworldindata.org/.
What the Data Actually Shows
REPPARE’s analysis of the evidence behind the WHO, World Bank, and G20 documents promoting the pandemic preparedness agenda show that recorded outbreaks, both arising within human populations and as ‘spillover’ of pathogens from animals, have increased in the decades before the year 2000, with burden now declining (graphic below).
However, it is inevitable that reporting of such outbreaks will be influenced by changes in both the capacity and incentive to report. These include the development of, and increasing access to, major diagnostic platforms including PCR and point-of-care antigen and serology tests, as well as improvements in communication infrastructure. Fifty years ago, many pathogens now readily identifiable could simply not be detected, or the diseases they cause be distinguished from clinically similar conditions. It is remarkable that this would be overlooked or downplayed by major health agencies, but this is, unexpectedly, the case.
Extract from Fig. 2 of Morand and Walther (2020-23), showing marked recent reductions in outbreak and disease numbers in GIDEON database.
The development of improved diagnostic technologies not only impacts reporting rates but has obvious implications for understanding the term ‘emerging infectious disease’ (EID). This frequently used term suggests that new threats are constantly emerging, such as the Nipah virus outbreaks of the past 25 years. However, while some pathogens have newly entered human populations, such as new influenza variants, HIV and the SARS-1 virus, others such as Nipah virus were simply not detectable without recent technological advances as they cause non-specific illnesses. We are now better at finding them, which puts us immediately in a better, safer position.
Crucially, actual mortality from these acute outbreaks has remained low for a century in contrast to other current health burdens. The much-quoted analysis of Bernstein et al. (2022) suggesting millions of outbreak deaths per year includes pre-antibiotic era Spanish flu and the multi-decade HIV event, averaging it across today’s population size.
However, as their own dataset shows, nothing like the Spanish flu has occurred in terms of mortality in the past century. As most Spanish flu deaths were due to secondary infection, and we now have modern antibiotics, it also provides a poor model for future outbreaks. With HIV and influenza excluded, pre-Covid acute outbreak mortality underlying current pandemic messaging is under 30 thousand people, globally, over the past couple of decades. Tuberculosis alone kills over 3,500 per day.
Covid-19 has, of course, intervened. It fits with difficulty into the main pandemic narrative for a number of reasons. First, its origin remains controversial, but appears likely to involve non-natural influences. While laboratory escapes can and (inevitably) will occur, the surveillance and response being proposed here is targeted at outbreaks of natural origin. Second, Covid-19 mortality occurred mainly in the elderly with significant comorbidities, meaning actual impact on overall life expectancy was far less than the raw reported mortality figures suggest (this also complicates attribution). If considered of natural origin, it appears as an outlier rather than part of a trend in the datasets on which the WHO, the World Bank, and G20 rely.
Time to Pause, Think, and Employ Common Sense
The evidence, assessed objectively, paints a picture of an increasing ability to identify and report outbreaks up to the decade 2000 to 2010 (which explains increases in frequency), followed by a reduction in burden consistent with an increasing ability to successfully address these relatively low-burden events through current public health mechanisms (which explains a lowering trajectory in mortality). This fits well with what one would intuitively expect. Namely, modern technologies and improving health systems, medicines, and economies have improved pathogen detection and reduced illness. There is much to suggest that this trend will continue.
In this context, the analyses of the WHO, the World Bank, and the G20 are disappointing in terms of scholarship and balance. A critic could reasonably suggest that a desire to address a perceived threat is driving a particularly gloomy analysis, rather than analysis objectively aiming to determine the extent of the threat. Such an approach seems unlikely to address the needs of public health.
To be clear, disease outbreaks harm people and shorten lives and must be addressed. And there are of course improvements that should and could be made to address this risk appropriately. In common with most aspects of medicine and science, this is best achieved on the basis of well-compiled evidence and scholarly analysis rather than allowing predetermined assumptions to drive outcomes.
By making claims contrary to the data, international health agencies are misleading governments of Member States down an unevidenced path with correspondingly high estimated cost and diverted political capital. This currently stands at $31.1 billion annually not including One Health measures and surge funding and at least 5 new global instruments; or about 10 times the WHO’s current annual budget. The urgency involved in the pandemic preparedness agenda is either contrary to evidence or poorly supported by it.
In view of their influence, international health agencies have a particular responsibility to ensure their policies are well-grounded in data and objective analysis. Moreover, governments have a responsibility to take the time, and effort, to ensure that their populations are well-served. It is hoped that the evaluation in the REPPARE report Rational Policy Over Panic will contribute to this effort.
REPPARE
Garrett W. Brown
David Bell
US Militarizes Space While Using ‘Russia Threat’ as Smokescreen
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 15.02.2024
Mainstream media fuss over groundless accusations of Russia deploying nuclear weapons in space is gaining steam while diverting attention from Washington’s militarization of space, Dmitry Stefanovich, a research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Sputnik.
The mainstream US media claimed on February 14 that there is new intelligence that Russia has developed space-based nuclear weapon capabilities designed to undermine the US satellite network.
The intelligence was reportedly briefed to Congress and even key American allies with some lawmakers insisting that it was “very serious”.
Moscow has rejected the claims as yet another attempt by the US establishment to pass a $60 billion funding package for Ukraine, amid House unwillingness to send good money after bad to the corrupt Kiev regime.
Research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Dmitry Stefanovich, drew attention to the fact that the mainstream media’s comments are highly contradictory.
“Some say that something has already been deployed [in space], some say that something is planned to be deployed, some are talking about nuclear arms, and some are speculating about nuclear power equipment,” the researcher said, adding that the comments resemble nothing more than an exercise in smoke and mirrors.
On the other hand, one could hardly imagine that Moscow would resort to deploying nuclear arms in space given Moscow’s obligations as a signatory country and, moreover, as a depositary country of the Outer Space Treaty, the expert stressed.
The Outer Space Treaty outlines that “states shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner.” The Treaty was opened for signature by the three “depository governments” – the USSR (with Russia being its legal successor), the UK and the US – in January 1967. It entered into force in October 1967.
What’s more, the use of nuclear weapons in space would destroy spacecraft indiscriminately, knocking out American and Russian satellites alike, as well as those of third countries, Stefanovich pointed out.
“Starting to shoot down satellites all in a row is quite a serious escalation,” warned the researcher.
He likewise pointed out that in the event of a large-scale military confrontation, Moscow has conventional means to disrupt an adversary’s satellite constellations without needing to resort to nuclear arms.
“One can shoot down satellites with missiles,” Stefanovich said. “The S-500 missile defense system is capable of performing such tasks. There is no doubt that satellites in low orbit can be shot down from Earth. These tests were carried out by the Soviet Union, the US, China, and India. (…) One can jam or blind satellites. We know about the Peresvet complex, that it exists, and it presumably allows [Russia] to shield its [military positions] from observation.”
“Plus there are options with orbital interception. That is, there are so-called satellite inspectors that could provide tracking [of enemy spacecraft]; there are robotic arms that can theoretically grab satellites. (…) Plus, of course, returning to non-kinetic scenarios, these are different options using electronic warfare systems, as well as cyber impact systems,” the expert continued.
According to Stefanovich, Russia’s major aim is to prevent the militarization of space, whereas the US openly proclaims a goal of space dominance.
Thus, the US created the Space Force (USSF) in December 2019 – a new branch of the US Armed Forces. While announcing the establishment of the new Pentagon unit in June 2018, former US President Donald Trump specifically underlined the need to “have American dominance in space.”
Meanwhile, the US has itself shown it is willing and able to knock out satellites.
In early 2008, the Pentagon launched Operation Burnt Frost which used a navy-guided missile cruiser to launch an SM-3 missile into space which knocked down a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite and showcased its capabilities in shooting down satellites.
Days before the Pentagon’s strike, China and Russia introduced a draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) to the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world’s permanent multilateral disarmament treaty negotiating body. However, the US dismissed the proposal, dubbing it “a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.”
“The militarization of space began, in fact, simultaneously with the beginning of the space age,” Stefanovich said. “Space has always had a military dimension. Now the problem we are trying to solve is to prevent weapons from being placed in space. Russia’s position is that we need a legally binding document to prevent the placement of weapons in space. We need to stop the arms race in outer space.”
“When it comes to the American potential, they have created a space force and a huge satellite constellation. The main threat here is not yet in strike systems, but in surveillance systems, both systems that allow, in fact, reconnaissance activities and target designation on Earth. This is a really serious problem,” the researcher concluded.
The Climate-Industrial Complex
Foundations and journalists who channel public funds into “renewable energy”
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 14, 2024
Of all rackets, the so-called “renewable energy” racket may be the most fraudulent and nonsensical. What geologists call the “Last Glacial Period” occurred between c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. Pretty much ALL human development has occurred since the glaciers retreated. During the last Ice Age, glaciers advanced as far south as what is now the state of Missouri. They retreated at a time when human population is estimated to have numbered around 4 million.
The following chart is a visual representation of successive cooling and warming trends and the associated advance and retreat of glaciers.
The so-called greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone—comprise 0.04 percent of the earth’s atmosphere. Even scientists who pay lip service to the human induced global warming theory acknowledge that for most of the last 66 million years, CO2 levels in the earth’s atmosphere were much higher than they are today.
In the 1970s, climatologists were concerned that modern man would soon experience another cooling trend, resulting in yet another glacial advance that would bulldoze the cities of Canada and much of the United States. In the eighties, the theory of global warming—induced by human greenhouse gas emissions—became fashionable. What really ignited this intellectual, social, and political trend was the discovery that billions of public funds could be funneled into “renewable energy” industries through the mechanism of subsidies and tax credits.
This morning I stumbled across a notable investigative report titled Secret Partnership Fueling Climate Hawk Journalism. Note that many of the foundations that are key players in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex are also key players in the Climate-Industrial Complex.
US spies behind ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy – report
US President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan, December 14, 2012 in Washington, DC. © Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
RT | February 14, 2024
The US intelligence community inappropriately used foreign allies to target Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to set up the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy ahead of the 2016 election, according to a trio of investigative journalists.
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag – of ‘Twitter Files’ fame – published the first part of an investigation on Tuesday, in which they claim the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ were operationalized against Trump staffers, citing anonymous sources close to the House Intelligence Committee.
According to their report, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had sent America’s partners – the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – a list of 26 Trump associates to target with data collection, misinformation and manipulation.
The Russiagate conspiracy involved multiple failures across western media networks to critically assess US intelligence claims that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. A 2018 Pulitzer prize was awarded to Washington Post and New York Times journalists for their reporting on what was later to exposed as a false story.
“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” said a committee source. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up,” the journalists claim.
Officially, the FBI only started looking into the Trump campaign that summer, after an Australian diplomat reportedly overheard an aide mention Russia. If confirmed, these findings would demonstrate that the US intelligence community had worked for months before that to set up just such a pretext.
In a statement to the investigative journalists, the FBI said it had made “missteps” in the 2016 and 2017 investigation of the Trump campaign, but has since implemented reforms to prevent it from happening again.
“The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a spokesman for the British surveillance agency said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutentag said they had never asked the GCHQ about “wiretapping.”
According to Shellenberger, there is a “10-inch binder” containing previously unknown documents about the intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign. The 45th US president had ordered these documents declassified, but they went missing instead. In a Fox News appearance on Tuesday evening, Shellenberger suggested the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may have been related to the missing binder.
After the US intelligence community created a pretext for investigating Trump for ‘ties to Russia,’ they spied on his campaign – and then his presidency – using a falsely obtained FISA warrant. The warrant was based on the ‘Steele dossier,’ a file compiled by a British spy in the pay of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through several intermediaries. The FBI knew the dossier was false as early as January 2017, but continued using the FISA warrant for almost a year thereafter.
The FBI lawyer who altered evidence to obtain the warrant, Kevin Clinesmith, ended up sentenced to probation and his law license has since been restored.
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From the Archives
Jack Ruby: Israel’s Smoking Gun
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021
By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case. … continue
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