The United States regime has picked sides in the Israel-Hamas war and has committed to funding Israel’s ongoing bombing of non-combatant men, women, and children in the Gaza strip. Northern Gaza’s infrastructure is now all but destroyed, with millions of Gazans displaced and homeless. Nearly ten times more Gazans than Israelis have now died in the conflict. Many Gazans have fled to the southern portion of Gaza, but homelessness and abject poverty awaits them there.
By employing what is essentially the carpet-bombing approach, Tel Aviv has made the choice of adopting a policy that is sure to produce hundreds of thousands of refugees—or perhaps even more than a million. Indeed, many in the Israeli regime are motivated to maximize refugees, and push Gazans out of the country altogether using the Orwellian phrase “voluntary migration.”
On a military, tactical level, the Israeli state will have no problem accomplishing this. Tel Aviv has an air force, a deep reservoir of American-funded weapons, and a nuclear arsenal. The Israeli military can easily reduce all of Gaza to rubble. But what is sure to result from this is a humanitarian disaster accompanied by a global debate over which foreign country will host the refugees.
Israeli mouthpieces are already at work pushing the cost onto foreign taxpayers, including American ones. This week, two Israeli politicians—one from the militarist Likud party, and one from the center-left Yesh Atid party—took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to demand that “countries around the world should offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation.” According to these politicians, “[t]he international community” — i.e., not Israel — “has a moral imperative” to resettle Gazans somewhere outside Israel at not-Israel’s expense.
It is significant these claims appeared in an American publication. Tel Aviv is the latest welfare-queen regime—in the tradition of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky—repeatedly haranguing the American public with demands for free money. It’s no coincidence that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is now seemingly ubiquitous on American prime-time news programs. His primary job right now is to demand money and favors from Washington and from other Western regimes.
It will probably work. Americans should get ready for plane-loads of Gaza refugees arriving in their cities, funded by the American taxpayers who can now barely afford to keep up with the price of groceries. This will be sold as a “humanitarian” effort, but anyone who sees through the propaganda will see that it’s really all a cynical effort to please pro-Israel interest groups and Israeli politicians.
A Pattern of War and Refugees
This was all predictable from the minute the war started last month.
The US and its allies have settled into a predictable pattern in foreign policy over the past thirty years: force the taxpayers to pay for the regime’s wars which involve bombing various poor foreign countries “back into the stone age.” Then, once the refugees start pouring out—and the Americans have lost the war, of course—Western regimes then tell the taxpayers back home to cough up even more money to pay for resettlement of all those refugees whose countries were needlessly destroyed by the bombs dropped by Washington and its allies.
This is no small phenomenon. A 2020 report from Brown University estimated that 37 million people have been made refugees by the US-led “War on Terrorism.” By 2016, 5.2 million of them reached Europe. In 2022 alone, more than 159,000 refugees arrived by sea in Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, and Malta. Thousands more arrive at the land borders of the EU every year.
Thanks to the distance from western Asia and North Africa, refugees totals have been smaller in the United States. Nonetheless, the total number of refugees has ranged from 50,000 to 90,000 per year in most years since the US began its war in Afghanistan. This has transformed a number of communities in the United States, however, since refugees often tend to concentrate in specific places along ethnic or religious lines. In the decades of the US’s endless on-again, off-again military meddling in Somalia, tens of thousands of Somali refugees have been relocated to Minnesota at taxpayers’ expense. Since 2018, Minnesota has hosted more than 40,000 Somalia-born migrants (many classified as refugees). Most of the refugees, of course, are concentrated within Minneapolis’ metro population of only 3.5 million. In democracies, this has political consequences.
It is also important to remember that migrants who enjoy the legal status of refugees are not normal immigrants. Ordinary immigrants arrive at the United States at their own expense. The vast majority must find work on their own if they wish to have an income. They are eligible for few social benefits. Those seeking legal residency, of course, must go through a lengthy administrative process. For example, Mexicans who obtain a work visa in the United States have to work. They don’t show up and receive “free” help from government-funded refugee agencies in finding jobs, apartments, and other government freebies.
In contrast, all of that is fast-tracked for people labeled “refugee” by the federal government, and most of these refugees are immediately eligible for a wide array of taxpayer funded benefits. In total, this all costs the taxpayers nearly two billion dollars per year, or $80,000 per refugee per year in the form of federal and state programs including food stamps, child care, and public housing.
It’s not enough that you pay for the bombs that create the refugees, dear American taxpayer. You’ll also have to pay to resettle those refugees in your town.
Days ago, a Floridian jury ruled in favour of the surviving family members of a wife and mother who took her own life after her daughter, Maya, was “medically kidnapped” for nearly 90 days.
The six-person jury in Sarasota County unanimously determined Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg was liable for the incidents leading up to the January 2017 death of Beata Kowalski, 43.
They also ruled that the hospital should pay the Kowalski family well over $210 million for the losses they endured, which included punitive damages.
The Kowalski’s story is one of torment, heartache, and anguish.
In fact, it is the sort of story that would make the most limp-wristed of us metamorphose into an angry cage fighter that looks like they’ve snorted a cubic tonne of cocaine before stepping into the octagon. You want blood after hearing it.
Netflix made a near two-hour documentary on their case, ‘Taking Care of Maya’, which I highly recommend watching.
To recap the bare bones, in 2015, 10-year-Maya began experiencing some nasty symptoms. These included breathing problems, headaches, blurred vision, skin lesions, lower limb dystonia, and debilitating chronic pain. And they would come on arbitrarily. So her parents, Jack and Beata, naturally sought medical advice.
But it was to no avail. They saw dozens of medical experts and they still didn’t know what was wrong with their daughter. That was until they visited one Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick in September 2015, who diagnosed Maya with advanced complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).
CRPS is a form of amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome in which pain from a physical interaction outlasts the expected recovery time. For example, a gentle touch can mimic a slap – a flick, a punch.
Fortunately for Jack and Beata, Dr Kirkpatrick encountered the syndrome before in past patients. He had a treatment protocol in mind using ketamine, but – and herein lies the beginning of the problem – it was not conventional or well-known. Nor was the prescribed treatment available in Florida, where the Kowalski family lived.
Low doses of ketamine kept proving ineffective and so the family travelled to Mexico so Maya could undergo a ketamine coma, fearing her symptoms would worsen and become fatal. Thankfully, the procedure was successful. Her symptoms dissipated.
Except, one random night in October 2016, they returned – with vengeance. Her father rushes her to the local hospital, Johns Hopkins All Children’s, admits her, and tries to explain the rare syndrome to the staff. But they were mystified. They hadn’t come across the condition and even became suspicious of its existence. Beata told the hospital staff what treatment was required, but as soon as they learnt of the amount of Ketamine she had been taking, it was too late.
The next thing they know, a child abuse paediatrician, Dr Sally Smith, turns up unidentified to Maya’s bedside for an assessment. Within ten minutes, Smith concludes Beata has been abusing Maya, and that CRPS is not present. A nurse then informs Jack that his daughter is now in state custody and orders him to leave. Maya has been diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the fancy phrase for “medical child abuse”.
Sally Smith
What transpires over the next 3 months is nothing short of parental hell. Maya was still separated from her family. Her father was allowed to see her now and again because he adopted the role of pacifier, but her mother, Beata, who’d actively argued with hospital staff, was not.
Beata descended into a pit of depression. During rare scheduled calls with Maya, she discovered her symptoms were deteriorating and that the hospital had changed her treatment without her consent. Allegations also surfaced that a contracted social worker had stripped her daughter down to a sports bra against her will in order to take pictures of her body. This, again, occurred without Beata and Jack’s consent.
The same social worker, Catherine Bedy, Maya accused of telling her she was “going to go into a foster home”, her mother “was in a mental institution”, and she was “going to end up adopting” her.
Catherine Bedy
On January 8, 2017, after 87 days without her daughter, believing she is the primary reason for Maya’s separation, Beata commits suicide. She hangs herself in the garage at home while Jack and her son Kyle attend a party. Jack didn’t discover her body until her brother had read Beata’s suicide note and rushed over to the home. When Jack woke up to Beata’s brother’s piercing screams, he knew his wife had taken her own life.
10-year-old Maya with her mother, Beata
In the fallout of Maya’s medical kidnapping, the Kowalski’s lawyer, Debra Salisbury, discovered Dr Smith works for the Suncoast Center, which provides child welfare services to Pinellas County. Salisbury also finds out that children in Pinellas County, where the hospital is based, are almost two and a half times as likely to be removed from their families when compared to the Florida average. Suspicions arise Suncoast has incentivised its employees to misdiagnose children so their customer base could increase.
Retrospective analysis of Maya’s diagnosis would support this theory. After Beata’s suicide, Dr Kirkpatrick, the doctor who initially prescribed the Ketamine, testifies that he informed Dr Smith of Maya’s rare condition and offered to send her all the documented evidence to support his prescription when she contacted him to file her original report. The only thing is, she didn’t include any details of their discussion in that report. The medical expertise of the doctor who’d provided the most materially effective treatment was totally excluded.
Weeks later, local investigative reporter Daphne Chen hears of Beata’s passing. Like any good journalist seeking truth, she refuses to accept the “official story” – “official narrative” connotations intended – and digs in. In January 2019, when her fingertip presses publish on a write up about the Kowlaski’s, something unexpected occurs. Calls start flying in.
Chen becomes inundated with calls and emails from local parents, alleging the misdiagnosis of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Instances where parents called 911 because their child was experiencing a life-threatening emergency – seizures, breathing difficulty, excess vomiting – were resulting in the same outcome. After their child underwent a series of tests and scans, hospital staff would question parents over the injuries and symptoms and issue a case review. And curiously, the one thing they all had in common – you guessed it – was an assessment from Dr. Smith. Post-Smith assessment, these parents found themselves legally segregated from their child, with some being arrested. They did what the system told them to do, sought help, but were instead, punished.
Upon further investigation, Salisbury, the Kowalski’s lawyer, found that the root cause was less to do with a rogue clinician than it was a deep fault in the system. In the 1970s, child protective services in the U.S. diagnosed child abuse via excess corporeal punishment. We’re talking overt physical abuse – beatings, cigarette burns, etc. But overtime, they redefined the criteria. Fast forward to the 2020s, parents with children suffering from rare conditions that consult with over 3 or 4 doctors can find themselves accused of “doctor-shopping”, exposing a child to unnecessary medical procedures and thus, being guilty of medical child abuse.
In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, investigative journalist Stellar Paul explained how similar circumstances led to the mistreatment of hospitalised Covid patients. Like Maya, these patients were attacked by a system that continually found itself departing from traditional medical ethics and toward a form of blanket-style healthcare. In turn, personalised treatment and attention were subverted. The medical complex treated them en masse, rather than as individuals with unique health needs.
Take the story of Ray Lamar, who, when hospitalised with Covid, specifically requested he not receive certain treatments. He even wrote on his inner forearm, “no vent. (ventilator) no Remdesivir”. So what did his “carers” do? They gave him Remdesivir, without informing him of dangers, without receiving his consent. He later died.
Then, there is Christine Johnson. Christine’s daughter was a nurse, so she was aware of Remdesivir’s questionable benefit-to-risk ratio and the detrimental impact it could have on her kidneys. She also said she didn’t want the drug. So hospital staff gave it to her while she slept. She also died.
These stories go on and on.
Why did hospitals treat patients in this way? Well, again, as Stellar explains, it is because, whether by policy or practice, external forces adulterated the structure of the system. For Ray and Christine, it was the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedeness Act (PREP). One financially incentivised the use of dangerous treatments while the other legally shielded hospitals that administered them. For Maya, it was the empowerment of Dr Sally Smith and the dilution of the definition of “child abuse”.
The court proceedings for the Kowalski’s were not straightforward. There were various lengthy delays, and they wondered if they would ever see justice. To give you an idea of how vicious the hospital’s lawyers were, when Maya missed just one hearing, they combed through her social media and presented photos to the jury of her attending her homecoming. This, they argued, was proof that Maya could live a “normal teenager’s life”. Talk about vipers.
However, thanks to Beata’s meticulous note-taking of events without which the family’s lawyer said prosecution would have not been possible, the Kowlaski family successfully sued the hospital on multiple claims of false imprisonment, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, medical negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent training of doctors and healthcare providers, and fraud.
There are numerous parallels we could draw from Maya’s story and 2020 Covid treatment victims but if there is one overarching precedent set, it is how the mutated structure of the medical complex has facilitated anti-healthcare. And it is one that could help dozens upon dozens of Covid treatment victims currently fighting their battles in court as well as other victims of the misdiagnosis of medical child abuse.
Perhaps the saddest realisation after researching this case is that had Beata not taken her own life, it is unlikely we would have heard about Maya’s ordeal. May she rest in peace.
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book.
Ganser takes us on a tour of meticulously documented historical events that would be shocking to anyone committed to fairness and basic human decency. His intention is to strengthen the peace movement, which encompasses people all over the world — including in the US — who reject war as well as the lies and propaganda used to initiate and perpetuate wars. Throughout the book, he emphasizes three key pillars to the peace movement: the United Nations ban on any kind of violence or aggression, mindfulness (allowing one to recognize and see through war propaganda and lies), and viewing all people as members of the human family.
Before delving into history, Ganser sets the stage in Chapter 1, “The USA Poses the Greatest Threat to World Peace.” He backs up this assertion with a dizzying array of figures about how many countries the US has bombed since 1945 (at least 23), how many military bases it has in foreign countries (more than 700), the US world record on military spending (now approaching $1 trillion annually), the number of US troops abroad (over 200,000), and the US status as the only country to have deployed nuclear weapons. He shares results of a Gallup poll of 67,000 people in 65 countries that asked, “Which country poses the greatest threat to world peace today?” to which 24% named the US, while between 5% and 9% named one of six other countries and less than 5% named one of twelve other countries.
Chapter 2, “The USA Is an Oligarchy,” spotlights an ominous manifestation of empire: the astronomical disparities in wealth and income (540 billionaires vs. over 100 million living in poverty, not to mention impacts around the world) resulting from an oligarchy of super-rich running the empire and manipulating information flows with little meaningful influence by voters.
Chapters 3 and 4 describe key precursors to empire both before and after the new US republic established its independence from Britain in the late 18th century — namely, the mass murder and displacement of Native Americans and the importation and exploitation of slave labor from Africa in much of the new nation.
Chapter 5 covers the overt launch of imperial actions in the mid and late 19th century, when the US initiated wars based on lies and often false flag incidents to annex half of Mexico and conquer former Spanish colonies either as outright possessions (Puerto Rico and Guam) or with nominal autonomy but under tight US control (Cuba and the Philippines). The Kingdom of Hawaii was captured and annexed under threat of violence.
Chapter 6, devoted to World War I, elaborates on how, even prior to the US entering combat in 1917, US-based war profiteers flourished. J.P. Morgan & Co. was financing England and France, and US corporations sold arms to Europe. Hence, vested US interests in intentionally prolonging the war cost millions of avoidable deaths. War propaganda thrived, with Germans — who had done nothing to the US — being severely vilified. Hamburgers became “Liberty Steak” and sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage.” (Remember how in 2003, when France hesitated to join in the war on Iraq, the US Senate cafeteria sold “Freedom Fries”?) The Espionage Act was passed to prosecute pacifists (including Eugene Debs) and deny free speech — and is still being used today to persecute Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes in Iraq.
Chapter 7 scrutinizes the US role in World War II, unravelling its carefully cultivated image of fighting honorably on the side of righteousness, and exposes both belligerent proclivities and mixed loyalties. Ganser reminds us that US companies were allowed to sell oil to Nazi Germany both before and well into the war. Without that fuel supply, the Nazi threat may have dissipated prior to some of the worst atrocities being committed. Again, the war was unnecessarily prolonged.
Though officially allies of the Soviet Union, the US and Great Britain were pleased to see Hitler taking action against communist Russia, and they avoided opening a western front until mid-1944, when it looked like the Soviet Union (which lost 27 million citizens in World War II) would be the sole victor over the Nazis. Ganser unearthed this remarkable June 1941 quote by then-US Senator and later President Harry Truman: “If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany. And that way let them kill as many as possible, although I certainly don’t want Hitler to win in the end.” Divide et impera — divide and conquer.
Truman, as US president, ordered the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in history so far, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and terrorizing many more at a time when Japan was already prepared to surrender. Ganser documents how, in order to gain popular support for the US entering the war, it intentionally goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, providing the desired casus belli. The infamous December 7, 1941, attack was no surprise to President Franklin Roosevelt, who let it happen, sacrificing thousands of US servicemembers. As will become relevant to Chapter 12 on the September 11 attacks, Ganser notes that a Hollywood movie, “Pearl Harbor,” parroting the surprise attack myth, was released in May 2001, priming the public subliminally for what was to follow a few months later on September 11.
Chapter 8, “Covert Warfare,” tells us how the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council were born in the post-war years. It includes a laundry list of how the US used them to perpetrate multiple coups d’état (Iran, Guatemala, Chile), assassinations (Lumumba in Congo, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Diem in Vietnam, Che Guevarra in Bolivia), assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, and the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961. President Kennedy ultimately became so outraged by these illegal operations that he fired CIA director Allan Dulles.
Note that Ganser devoted an entire previous book, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, to numerous additional covert operations involving the US, via NATO and the CIA, that are not covered in the present volume. These include false flag assassinations, bombing of civilians (blamed on communists), and fixing elections in much of Western Europe throughout the Cold War.
Chapter 9 focuses on the Kennedy assassination, summarizing evidence exonerating Lee Harvey Oswald and implicating Allan Dulles in a conspiracy to commit this heinous murder. After District Attorney Jim Garrison of New Orleans brought much of the evidence to light in 1967, questioning the validity of the Warren Commission Report (authored by Dulles), the CIA created and widely publicized the notion of “conspiracy theorist” as a derogatory term for anyone who challenged the official narrative. Interestingly, Ganser notes that in 1979 the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations “saw a high probability that two men had shot Kennedy. . . . The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.” This report was conveniently obscured by the media, and few are aware of it today.
Chapter 10, on the Vietnam War — which rapidly escalated after Kennedy’s murder — is a painful reminder to those readers who lived through it of the needless suffering inflicted on millions of Vietnamese and on tens of thousands of US soldiers and the peripheral damage to neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The latter two countries were bombed by the US without provocation, inciting the brutality of Khmer Rouge communists, whom the US could demonize to deflect from its own role in the bloodshed. Ganser reminds us of the false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that was used to provoke a dramatic escalation of the war in Vietnam. While we were repeatedly warned of the propagandistic “domino theory,” there was in fact no chain reaction of neighboring countries turning communist after Vietnam prevailed and defeated the US in 1975 — hence all that death and destruction was in vain, other than benefitting war profiteers.
In Chapter 11 on the Iran-Contra Affair, Ganser elucidates another example of the US pitting two of its adversaries against each other when it supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran while simultaneously and covertly selling weapons to Iran and secretly using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, who supported the dictatorial Somoza regime. Ganser further shows how the CIA hypocritically engaged secretly in the cocaine trade to finance its covert operations. How many people’s lives have been upended by those operations abroad and in drug-infested US cities?
In Chapters 12 and 13 on 9/11 and the War on Terror, respectively, the US empire ushers in the 21st century with an overwhelming display of shock and awe. The first sub-heading is prescient: “A New Pearl Harbor” refers to a prophetic statement in the year 2000 by the neocon Project for a New American Century, noting that it would be difficult to get the US population to accept massive military spending and upgrades for fighting multiple wars simultaneously “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Ganser offers three ways of evaluating the events of September 11, 2001: (1) Surprise attack catching everyone in the US, including top leadership and intelligence services, completely off guard; (2) LIHOP (let it happen on purpose), implying foreknowledge by key players of what was going to happen but intentionally failing to stop it; and (3) MIHOP (made it happen on purpose), involving direct complicity of certain players within the US military-intelligence apparatus and their agents. He disproves (1) and points to (2) and (3) as much more plausible, leaning toward (3).
Abundant research has been conducted debunking the official 9/11 story that 19 Muslim hijackers and a few men in a cave in Afghanistan were solely responsible for the death and destruction that day, and Ganser includes references to much of it in his footnotes. Bringing us to the present day, the author of this review refers readers to the International Center for 9/11 Justice for an up-to-date collection of relevant 9/11 research.
In this volume, Ganser touches on a handful of key anomalies: obvious fallacies of the official 9/11 Commission report authored by Philip Zelikow, a Bush administration insider; the utter failure of the multi-billion dollar US defense system to prevent an attack, including on its own heavily fortified headquarters; the millions in profits made by unnamed individuals who invested heavily in put options in the days before September 11, 2001 (betting that United and American airlines stocks would soon plummet), indicating specific foreknowledge; the clear evidence that World Trade Center Building 7 was destroyed later that day by controlled demolition and the refusal of US authorities or media to even entertain that possibility; and the evidence for the use of explosives in the destruction of the Twin Towers.
With the fall of the Soviet Union ten years before, the US empire had been searching for a new major enemy, and the crimes of 9/11 offered an “ideal” replacement: the never-ending and amorphous “War on Terror,” which could be and has been used to justify numerous military incursions and the proliferation of US bases anywhere “terrorists” are deemed to be lurking. Ganser details the US role in illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq (initiated by spreading lies about alleged weapons of mass destruction), and Syria, all of which left millions dead in their wake, not to mention the horrendous abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
On a note of optimism, Ganser points out how the blatant injustice of the wars in the Middle East — like the injustice of the Vietnam War before them — energized the peace movement in the US, prompting massive demonstrations and civil disobedience in opposition, indicating vast numbers who denounce war and empire and seek peaceful coexistence with all peoples. Beyond famous peace movement leaders like Jeannette Rankin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, he highlights the role of everyday citizens affirming their commitment to all people as members of the human family and rejecting attempts by the elites to divide and conquer. He also points out how the rise of alternative media has played a role in allowing for dissemination of information that counters the mainstream lies and war propaganda. The explosion of the internet and social media can be a two-edged sword, however, as Ganser points out in Chapter 14, “The Digital Empire,” with consolidation and monopolization of technology and information flows by such digital giants as Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia.
The 15th and final chapter, called “The Fight for Eurasia,” details the US role in the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine — which was a catalyst for ensuing violence that has now escalated exponentially — as well as the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, contrary to US assurances in 1991 that this would not happen, which is another key causative factor in the havoc being wreaked there today. The original German edition was written two years prior to Russia’s 2022 “special military operation” in Ukraine. This new English edition does add a few paragraphs condemning Russia’s invasion as a violation of the UN Charter, while noting the provocations by NATO and Ukraine that fueled this proxy war between the US and Russia.
The book likewise does not include the up-to-the-minute status of the US relationship with China, but does note in the last chapter that China’s humiliation by the British Empire during the 19th century Opium Wars has prompted caution in its current relations with the West. We learn about China’s 2013 announcement of the “New Silk Road” in the form of a massive transcontinental infrastructure project also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, now well underway, designed not as an imperial land and resource grab but rather to mutually benefit all participating nations, allowing them to respect each other’s sovereignty and reducing tensions among them.
In his conclusion, Ganser notes that “the peace movement must trust that a world without war is possible.” He is “convinced that a fundamental exit from the spiral of violence is possible. The decisive factor is whether we really want inner and outer peace. If this will is strong enough, we can orient ourselves according to the following three principles: the human family, the UN ban on violence, and mindfulness.” These three principles, he notes, can be applied to overcome polarization, profiteering, and propaganda. A key tool of empire is dividing people into those who are favored and those who are demonized, pitting them against each other while enabling elites to generate profits for the few from the fighting of the many. Mindfulness can help people “wake up and quicky realize that war and lies always go hand in hand.” Those who practice mindfulness can no longer be so easily deceived by psychological operations.
In the words of President John F. Kennedy, invoked by Ganser in the introduction to the book, “Our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by men.”
One of the most troubling occurrences during Covid-19 was the collusion of formal religion with the supranational military-industrial-banking complex to induce our compliance with unlawful, unscientific and downright harmful Covid-19 policies.
Not only was religion used as a tool to manipulate people to comply with political decrees, it was also used to propagate fear.
The speed at which church doors were shut whilst big business continued its trading was anathema to most people. When places of worship did open, people had the fear of (science) God put into them by the corporate media, politicians and their trusted religious leaders alike. Sanitising rituals were demanded upon entry, social distancing within churches was enforced with tape and stickers, and various religious practices were modified or curtailed.
One of several images shared on social media of priests using toy guns to interact with people such as, in this instance, to conduct baptism rituals
Even singing in church was deemed dangerous. As such, it had to be done through face masks or was prohibited entirely. People not complying with these religio-political directives were often vilified, prevented from attending services and risked being cast out of their congregation. Fear of the latter kept many reluctantly acquiescent. Even my elderly parents regularly remarked how ridiculous, uncomfortable and de-humanising it was; how it was hard to breathe, let alone sing, through the mask – and how going to church just wasn’t the same.
Why was joy, love, compassion and trust so readily sent packing when Covid came along?
Why was the joy and community of regular Christian services systematically undermined? Why did religious leaders urge us to transfer our trust in ourselves and our spiritual relationships to conflicted scientists and politicians? Why were we encouraged to fear, instead of love and feel compassion for one another? And why was our faith abruptly deemed insufficient by religious leaders who fell quickly in step with directives from the New World Order planners?
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, may well know the answer to these questions. Welby has been the leader of the worldwide body of Anglican Christian churches since 2013. On the Anglican Communion website it states that, in the UK, ‘He is regarded as the nation’s senior Christian and spiritual voice,’ and is the ecclesiastical lead over 13,000 parishes. In addition, church leaders and millions of Christians across 165 countries are likely to be guided by his leadership.
Given his reach and responsibility, Archbishop Welby in my opinion may be responsible for the most profound betrayal of Humanity in two thousand years.
When, in December 2021, the UK’s Daily Mail ran an article quoting Welby as suggesting that Jesus would get the [Covid-19] vaccine, I could barely believe it. At the time, there were well over two million reports of associated adverse Covid-19 vaccine reactions, including thousands of deaths, reported to the World Health Organisation’s Vigiaccess database; on the UK’s Yellow Card scheme, there were about 400,000 individual reports with around 2,000 fatalities.
The World Council for Health (WCH), which had been established in September 2021 to provide trustworthy guidance in the face of the harmful official Covid policies, had already commenced it’s ‘Cease and Desist Campaign’ to urgently raise awareness of these very concerning vaccine safety data and to advise vaccinators and others to stop vaccinating and promoting these novel injections. WCH had also published the Covid-19 vaccine spike protein detoxification guide.
The video accompanying the Daily Mail article on the 22nd December 2021 chilled me to the bone.
Urging people to get Covid-19 vaccinated, Welbyemphasises in the Daily Mail video:
“It’s not about me and my rights. Now, obviously there are some people who for health reasons can’t go vaccinating – [that’s a] different question. But it’s not about me and my rights to choose, it’s about how I love my neighbour. To love one another as Jesus said: Get vaccinated. Get boosted.”
This announcement by the Archbishop, a figure of worldwide Christian authority, leveraging Jesus’ goodwill and our love for him against us to convince us to take Covid-19 injections should be a matter of great concern for all.
The Jesus I know would never have said that we should take as many vaccines as the military-industrial-banking complex tells us to.
He would never have promoted unsafe medical interventions that harm men, women, and children whilst lining the pockets of the rich; neither would he advocate for the derogation of individual sovereignty to state or supranational entities.
This is the antithesis of what Jesus stood for. Jesus healed with his hands and our faith. He stood for truth, justice, freedom and peace. Jesus was fighting the same corrupt system that exploits us today and targets our children from the shadows.
I’m not going to start unpicking all that I feel is so very evil about what Welby said. The way Welby used Jesus’ words to promote the agenda of the military-industrial-banking complex, which seemingly will stop at nothing to materialise its 2030 Great Reset agenda, is disgusting and disgraceful in my opinion. However, it is not up to me to forgive or to judge the Archbishop. Ultimately, Welby will have his Judgement Day, as will we all, and I’m very glad not to be in his shoes.
A Better World is on the Way
The Roman Empire that crucified Jesus is finally crumbling as its latter-day representatives reveal themselves to be, indeed, wearing the Emperors’ clothes. Thankfully, two thousand years later, all that has been hidden from us is being revealed. Evil will no longer be facilitated or tolerated in the world we are creating afresh together. It will no longer lurk in the shadows when we are done shining our lights on it.
A Better World for us, our children, and all creatures on this beautiful planet is being born. All that is required is that, in remembering who we are as human beings – courageous, firm and loving, following Jesus’ very human example – we take care of one another, draw on our collective power, breathe and push.
Israeli forces ordered doctors, patients and displaced people at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital to evacuate the medical compound, giving them an hour to do so and forcing some to leave by gunpoint, Al-Jazeerareported on 18 November.
Israeli forces issued the demand to evacuate in “one hour” at around 9 am local time, but it was “impossible” to evacuate everyone, a doctor in Al-Shifa told Al-Jazeera.
Medical sources inside the facility said there are more than 7,000 people sheltering from Israeli bombing in the Al-Shifa complex, including 300 patients in critical condition.
It also includes “at least 35 premature babies who already for eight days now have been out of their incubators because of the lack of oxygen and the lack of electricity,” Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said. Four babies died late on Friday and five are severely ill now, the correspondent added.
“There is no transportation means in Gaza City and the northern parts because of a lack of fuel. So people are expected to evacuate on foot. And doctors are telling us it’s impossible to evacuate with this many people on foot.” She added that doctors also did not want to abandon their patients.
“We were told to leave through al-Wehda road. Dozens of dead bodies are scattered on the road,” Omar Zaqout, the hospital’s supervisor, said. “Many homeless people who cannot walk are left out in the open.”
“Many of the patients were put on wheelchairs or rolling beds. Family members were forced to carry their wounded children or parents themselves … These are horrible, unprecedented scenes,” explained Munir al-Barsh, a doctor at the hospital.
The hospital has also been without food, water, electricity and oxygen for at least a week, while Israeli troops and tanks raided the facility over the last couple of days. Some 37 patients have died as the hospital’s ability to operate has collapsed.
Israel claimed Hamas has a command center underneath the hospital and released video footage claiming to show weapons its troops found in various rooms. It also released footage claiming to show its troops unloading boxes full of medical supplies.
However, a BBC analysis of the footage clearly showed Israeli forces themselves brought the weapons into the hospital in the boxes of medical supplies in an effort to fabricate claims that Hamas was active there.
Before raiding the hospital, Israel also claimed that captives taken by Hamas on 7 October were being held there, and that a major Hamas “command center” was present below the hospital. But Israel could provide no evidence for either claim after taking control of the hospital.
The Palestinian Authority, released a statement in response to the evacuations saying, “The evacuation of al-Shifa deepens the humanitarian and environmental catastrophe Gaza faces.” Israel’s actions represent “another hideous facet of the crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by the occupation forces against Palestinians,” the statement said.
United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Pedro Arrojo-Agudo on Friday called on the occupying state to stop using water as a weapon of war against the Palestinians and called on it to provide clean water and fuel to the besieged Gaza Strip.
The UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation issued a statement in the context of the water crisis in the Gaza Strip due to the strip being subjected to an Israeli siege and intense attacks.
“Israel must stop using water as a weapon of war and allow clean water and fuel into Gaza to activate the water supply network before it is too late,” Arrojo-Agudo urged.
Arrojo-Agudo pointed out: “Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water.”
He stressed: “I want to remind Israel that consciously preventing supplies needed for safe water from entering the Gaza Strip violates both international humanitarian and human rights law,” adding that the impact on public health and hygiene will be “unimaginable.”
The UN rapporteur pointed out that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had previously announced that 70 per cent of Gaza’s population drinks salty and dirty water.
For the 42nd consecutive day, the Israeli occupation army continues to launch devastating attacks on Gaza. Its planes target buildings and residential homes, destroying them above the heads of their residents and depriving the Gaza Strip of water, food and fuel. This has led to the deaths of more than 11,630 Palestinians, including 4,710 children and 3,165 women, as well as more than 31,800 wounded people, 70 per cent of whom are children and women, according to official Palestinian sources.
GAZA – The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it received referrals from five states seeking an investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan disclosed that South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti submitted the referrals.
Khan confirmed in a statement that the ICC is already investigating the situation in Gaza.
“In accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a State Party may refer to the Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court appear to have been committed requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes,” he said.
Khan mentioned the establishment of a specialized team upon assuming his term in June 2021, aimed at advancing the investigation in Palestine.
The prosecutor emphasized that the team will probe crimes suspected to be committed during the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
South Africa declared that it had submitted the referral request with “other countries that share the same concerns”, demanding that the International Criminal Court would urgently pay “attention to the seriousness of the current situation.”
The South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed in a statement that Pretoria “urges other signatory states to the Rome Statute to join this referral request, or to submit their referral requests independently.”
The ICC opened an investigation in 2021 into war crimes suspected to be committed by the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine.
Since October 7, Israel has been waging a bloody aggression on the Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyrdom of more than 12,000 Palestinian civilians, most of whom are children and women.
There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations. In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide – and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party – then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide”.
These are the relevant articles of the genocide convention:
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Article IX
Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.
Note that here “parties to the dispute” means the states disputing the facts of genocide, not the parties to the genocide/conflict. Any single state party is able to invoke the Convention.
There is no doubt that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. Numerous international law experts have said so and genocidal intent has been directly expressed by numerous Israeli ministers, generals and public officials.
This is the definition of genocide in international law, from the Genocide Convention:
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
I can see no room to doubt whatsoever that Israel’s current campaign of bombing of civilians and of the deprivation of food, water and other necessities of life to Palestinians amounts to genocide under articles II a), b) and c).
It is also worth considering Articles III and IV:
Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Article IV
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
There is, at the very least, a strong prima facie case that the actions of the United States and United Kingdom and others, in openly providing direct military support to be used in genocide, are complicity in genocide. The point of Article IV is that individuals are responsible, not just states. So Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak bear individual responsibility. So, indeed, do all those who have been calling for the destruction of the Palestinians.
It is very definitely worth activating the Genocide Convention. A judgement of the International Court of Justice that Israel is guilty of genocide would have an extraordinary diplomatic effect and would cause domestic difficulties in the UK and even in the US in continuing to subsidise and arm Israel. The International Court of Justice is the most respected of international institutions; while the United States has repudiated its compulsory jurisdiction, the United Kingdom has not and the EU positively accepts it.
If the International Court of Justice makes a determination of genocide, then the International Criminal Court does not have to determine that genocide has happened. This is important because unlike the august and independent ICJ, the ICC is very much a western government puppet institution which will wiggle out of action if it can. But a determination of the ICJ of genocide and of complicity in genocide would reduce the ICC’s task to determining which individuals bear the responsibility. That is a prospect which can indeed alter the calculations of politicians.
It is also the fact that a reference for genocide would force the western media to address the issue and use the term, rather than just pump out propaganda about Hamas fighting bases in hospitals. Furthermore a judgement from the ICJ would automatically trigger a reference to the United Nations General Assembly – crucially not to the western-vetoed Security Council.
All this begs the question of why no state has yet invoked the Genocide Convention. This is especially remarkable as Palestine is one of the 149 states party to the Genocide Convention, and for this purpose would have standing before both the UN and the ICJ.
I am afraid the question of why Palestine has not invoked the Genocide Convention takes us somewhere very dark. Anyone who, like George Galloway and myself, cut their political teeth in left-wing politics of Dundee of the 1970s has (long story) their experience and contacts with Fatah, and my sympathies have always very much lain with Fatah rather than Hamas. They still do, with the aspiration for a democratic, secular Palestine. It is Fatah who occupy the Palestinian seat at the United Nations, and the decision for Palestine to call into play the Genocide Convention lies with Mahmoud Abbas.
It is more and more difficult daily to support Abbas. He seems extraordinarily passive, and the suspicion that he is more concerned with refighting the Palestinian civil war than with resisting the genocide is impossible to shake. By invoking the Genocide Convention he could put himself and Fatah back at the centre of the narrative. But he does nothing. I do not want to believe that corruption and a Blinken promise of inheriting Gaza are Mahmoud’s motivators. But at the moment, I cannot grab on to any other explanation to believe in.
Any one of the 139 states party could invoke the Genocide Convention against Israel and its co-conspirators. Those states include Iran, Russia, Libya, Malaysia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Afghanistan, Cuba, Ireland, Iceland, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and Qatar. But not one of these states has called out the genocide. Why?
It is not because the Genocide Convention is a dead letter. It is not. It was invoked against Serbia by Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ICJ ruled against Serbia with regard to the massacre at Srebrenica. This fed directly through to ICC prosecutions.
Some states may simply not have thought of it. For Arab states in particular, the fact that Palestine itself has not invoked the Genocide Convention may provide an excuse. EU states can hide behind bloc unanimity.
But I am afraid that the truth is that no state cares sufficiently about the thousands of Palestinian children already killed and thousands more who will shortly be killed, to introduce another factor of hostility in their relationship with the United States. Just as at this weekend’s summit in Saudi Arabia, where Islamic countries could not agree an oil and gas boycott of Israel, the truth is that those in power really do not care about a genocide in Gaza. They care about their own interests.
It just needs one state to invoke the Genocide Convention and change the narrative and the international dynamic. That will only happen through the power of the people in pressing the idea on their governments. This is where everybody can do a little something to add to the pressure. Please do what you can.
Hat tip to the indefatigable Sam Husseini who has been pressing the Genocide Convention on the White House.
The CDC has recently announced that exemptions to vaccinations have hit record highs in the United States. We take a look at the reasons why parents are choosing to forgo vaccinations for their young children.
Founder and Executive Director OF Texans for Medical Freedom, Jackie Shlegel, joins Del to share the monumental legal win this week in Texas and how she played an integral part in helping get SB7 passed, which protects private employees from being mandated to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Jackie details how she worked closely with Texas Governor Greg Abbott to pass this historic legislation.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may increase the prevalence and distribution of some HPV virus strains not targeted by the vaccine — including some strains that are linked to cancer — resulting in unknown and potentially concerning consequences, according to a study published last week in Cell Host & Microbe.
The study was not designed to show that the HPV vaccine prevents cancer or that HPV or cervical cancer screenings need to change, though the authors did include a brief, speculative mention of the potential implications of their findings for future screening.
Yet STATNews, reporting on the study, said the findings showed that the HPV vaccine is so effective at preventing cancers — particularly when both boys and girls are vaccinated — that cancer-screening protocols may need to change.
“The STATNews headline — misguidedly suggesting even less frequent screening — is deeply troubling. Statistics in the U.S. and elsewhere suggest that cervical cancer is on the rise in younger age cohorts where we least expect to see cervical cancer, while continuing to decline in the older populations where cervical cancer historically is diagnosed.
“We know from prior studies that the HPV vaccines already have led to decreased cervical intraepithelial neoplasia/cervical cancer screening at appropriate intervals for young women around the world.
‘Imminent risk of viral evolutionary responses’ may ‘introduce problems’
The study included approximately 11,000 — not 60,000 as STAT reported — young women born in 1992, 1993 and 1994 from 33 Finnish communities. The researchers divided them into three groups based on their community’s vaccination strategy: gender-neutral HPV vaccination, girls-only vaccination and no vaccination.
Four years after the groups were first offered vaccination (and eight years after for a smaller subset of around 3,600 subjects), the researchers tested for 16 types of genital HPV viruses considered oncogenic (linked to tumor formation) because they are associated with cervical or other cancers. The presence of oncogenic HPV is not the only risk factor for cervical cancer.
There are over 200 strains of the HPV virus, a subset of which are deemed high-risk. Depending on the vaccine, HPV vaccines target only two (Cervavix targets strains 16 and 18), four (Gardasil 4 targets strains 6, 11, 16 and 18) or nine (Gardasil 9, which adds strains 31, 33, 45, 52, 58) of those high-risk strains.
The researchers investigated how different community-level HPV vaccination strategies might change the prevalence of different HPV strains.
They found that in both vaccination groups, four and eight years following vaccination, there was a significant depletion of the high-risk HPV types targeted by the vaccine relative to the non-vaccinated group. The depletion was stronger in the gender-neutral group — when boys had also been vaccinated.
But they also found a higher prevalence of other, lower-risk oncogenic HPV strains than previously existed, particularly in the gender-neutral group. As the vaccine suppressed the targeted strains, the authors explained, other strains moved into the “niche” they formerly occupied.
That means that rather than reducing the incidence of the HPV virus altogether, vaccination changed the distribution of HPV strains, they wrote. Those oncogenic strains not targeted by the vaccine that grew in prevalence are also linked to cancer but at lower rates.
The authors noted that “the imminent risk of viral evolutionary responses” would diminish the impact of HPV vaccination.
“It is tempting to suggest that an increase of [other oncogenic strains] or the like with increased virulence might cause a risk of HPV-related cancers in the future,” they said.
In other words, new strains that occupy the niche vacated by the vaccine-targeted strains could become more virulent and potentially cancer-causing.
The authors concluded that to control oncogenic HPVs and related cancers, more research on how long-term vaccine use could change the disease evolution is imperative. They said this may have implications for future screening protocols, but did not elaborate.
Rosenberg said the implications are that more rigorous screening protocols may be necessary. She said:
“In ‘HPV Vaccine on Trial,’ my co-authors and I discussed type replacement, a phenomenon found with HPV vaccines and other vaccines.
“The study discussed in the STATNews article actually raises again the specter of type replacement — which should support more rigorous screening protocols, not a lackadaisical, unsupported reduction in screening placing the health of untold numbers of young women at risk.”
Why would ‘type replacement’ matter?
The study authors hypothesized that this strain-type replacement occurs because vaccine-induced immunity reduces the number of people susceptible to the targeted strains and leads to a biased immune response favoring infection by other strains.
Type replacement could also lead to the selection for immune escape variants — new variants that result from the selective pressure on the virus from imperfect vaccination.
Vaccine-favored variants have developed after vaccination for a number of diseases, including hepatitis B, pertussis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Marek’s disease, malaria and diphtheria.
In some cases, like Marek’s disease and malaria, research shows vaccination led to an increased prevalence of variants with increased virulence. In others, like pertussis, this evolution was linked to the paradoxical reemergence of the disease in highly vaccinated populations.
In other cases, such as Haemophilus influenzae type b, evidence suggested that vaccination caused a milder strain to become more virulent.
One possible biological explanation in these cases could be original antigenic sin, a phenomenon wherein the molecular immune memory to a previous antigen hampers the ability of the immune system to properly recognize a structurally similar target, J. Jay Couey, CHD staff scientist, told The Defender.
Another related but separate mechanism — antibody-dependent enhancement — occurs when antibodies aimed at previous antigens (from infection or vaccination) have the paradoxical effect of increasing the severity of disease in subsequent infections, Couey said.
“Neither of these biological possibilities are discussed in either the STAT or Cell Microbe articles in general or in relation to the questions regarding the ‘ecology’ of HPV,” Couey added.
In the study, the authors emphasized that particularly among the gender-neutral vaccine groups, the targeted strains were suppressed. However, between four and eight years post-vaccination, the levels of HPV diversity were similar to those of the non-vaccinated control group.
The researchers found that after vaccination, non-targeted cancer-linked HPV types increased in prevalence and diversity. This suggests that even with vaccination, different cancer-linked HPV types are still evolving in complex ways.
This raises questions about the long-term effects of the HPV vaccination on the antigenic variation and possible virulence shifts of the remaining oncogenic HPVs, the authors noted.
Cervical cancer ‘eradication’ by vaccinating boys?
In the authors’ press release on the study — also reported in Medical Xpress — they claimed definitively, “The most effective way to prevent cervical cancer is to give HPV vaccines to both boys and girls.”
This claim was based on their finding that in the communities where boys and girls were vaccinated, they saw a decline in four types of oncogenic HPV (16, 18, 31 and 45) and in the communities where only girls were vaccinated, they saw a decline in only three types of oncogenic HPV (16, 18 and 31).
“This shows that you get stronger herd immunity if you vaccinate both boys and girls,” said lead author Ville N. Pimenoff, Ph.D. “According to our calculations, it would take 20 years of vaccinating girls to achieve the same effect that can be achieved in eight years with a relatively moderate vaccination coverage rate of gender-neutral vaccination.”
However, they concede this herd immunity would not eliminate the risk of HPV-linked cancer, given the type replacement they identified.
Couey said these claims about the efficacy of gender-neutral vaccination are based on a questionable methodology, using a “dubiously blurred” combination of data sets.
Couey told The Defender :
“Their ‘observations’ are made without any data from HPV prevalence in these populations before vaccination and using a general linear model, or GLM, to interpret their data set. There are no quantitative differences for the authors to draw from in their data without mathematically extending it to a synthetically generated data set using a mathematical fitting technique the authors termed a graphical independence network, or GIN, model.
“The distinction between conclusions drawn from real-world observations in experiments versus conclusions drawn from mathematical modeling inference is dubiously blurred in this article and the follow-up coverage of it.
“Their conclusions are not based on disproving a null hypothesis using an experiment. Their conclusions are at best inferences drawn from the interpretation of mathematical models applied to limited real-world data.”
This analysis builds on previous analyses of these same cohorts the authors did with colleagues from Merck, GSK and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
That research also claimed that HPV vaccination with moderate coverage “eradicates” oncogenic HPV if a gender-neutral strategy is used. It also asserted in 2018 that there was no evidence of type replacement — findings this current study upends.
Those Big Pharma corporations have been dedicated over the last several years to expanding HPV vaccination throughout the world to girls, but also more recently to boys and to young and middle-aged adults.
Various agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services have spent at least tens of millions of dollars on behavioral research to increase vaccine uptake in the U.S.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance —- primarily funded by the Gates Foundation —- recently announced WHO-supported plans to vaccinate 86 million girls in low- and middle-income countries against HPV by 2025 as part of the global plan to eradicate cervical cancer.
Merck’s Gardasil was first licensed in 2006 for use in girls and women ages 9-26 to prevent four high-risk strains of HPV.
The FDA in 2009 expanded the license for use in males ages 9-26 for the prevention of genital warts and in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended it for routine use in boys.
In 2014, the FDA approved Gardasil 9, designed to protect against nine HPV strains, for use in the prevention of HPV-related cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in females and HPV-related anogenital lesions and anal cancers in males and females.
The FDA in 2018 also expanded the age range of potential HPV vaccines to males and females between the ages of 9 and 45.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Attacks on free speech are advancing globally, not just in the United States. This declaration puts a stake in the ground for a new global free speech movement.
The Westminster Declaration
We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.
Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.
This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.
Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.
Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’
This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.
But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.
As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities.
Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.[10] If end-to-end encryption is broken, we will have no remaining avenues for authentic private conversations in the digital sphere.
Although foreign disinformation between states is a real issue, agencies designed to combat these threats, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States, are increasingly being turned inward against the public. Under the guise of preventing harm and protecting truth, speech is being treated as a permitted activity rather than an inalienable right.
We recognize that words can sometimes cause offence, but we reject the idea that hurt feelings and discomfort, even if acute, are grounds for censorship. Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny.
Speech protections are not just for views we agree with; we must strenuously protect speech for the views that we most strongly oppose. Only in the public square can these views be heard and properly challenged.
What’s more, time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labelling certain political or scientific positions as ‘misinformation’ or ‘malinformation,’ our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge. Free speech is our best defence against disinformation.
The attack on speech is not just about distorted rules and regulations – it is a crisis of humanity itself. Every equality and justice campaign in history has relied on an open forum to voice dissent. In countless examples, including the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, social progress has depended on freedom of expression.
We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds. We want them to grow up in a world where their ideas can be expressed, explored and debated openly – a world that the founders of our democracies envisioned when they enshrined free speech into our laws and constitutions.
The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. One need not agree with the U.S. on every issue to acknowledge that this is a vital ‘first liberty’ from which all other liberties follow. It is only through free speech that we can denounce violations of our rights and fight for new freedoms.
There also exists a clear and robust international protection for free speech. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[11] was drafted in 1948 in response to atrocities committed during World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states, ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ While there may be a need for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as age limits, these regulations should never infringe on the human right to freedom of expression.
As is made clear by Article 19, the corollary of the right to free speech is the right to information. In a democracy, no one has a monopoly over what is considered to be true. Rather, truth must be discovered through dialogue and debate – and we cannot discover truth without allowing for the possibility of error.
Censorship in the name of ‘preserving democracy’ inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process.
In the course of human history, attacks on free speech have been a precursor to attacks on all other liberties. Regimes that eroded free speech have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same fashion, the elites that push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed though, is the broad scale and technological tools through which censorship can be enacted.
We believe that free speech is essential for ensuring our safety from state abuses of power – abuses that have historically posed a far greater threat than the words of lone individuals or even organised groups. For the sake of human welfare and flourishing, we make the following 3 calls to action.
We call on governments and international organisations to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and to uphold Article 19 of the UDHR.
We call on tech corporations to undertake to protect the digital public square as defined in Article 19 of the UDHR and refrain from politically motivated censorship, the censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinion.
And finally, we call on the general public to join us in the fight to preserve the people’s democratic rights. Legislative changes are not enough. We must also build an atmosphere of free speech from the ground up by rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and that creates unnecessary personal strife for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must embrace inquiry and debate.
We stand for your right to ask questions. Heated arguments, even those that may cause distress, are far better than no arguments at all.
Censorship robs us of the richness of life itself. Free speech is the foundation for creating a life of meaning and a thriving humanity – through art, poetry, drama, story, philosophy, song, and more.
This declaration was the result of an initial meeting of free speech champions from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023. As signatories of this statement, we have fundamental political and ideological disagreements. However, it is only by coming together that we will defeat the encroaching forces of censorship so that we can maintain our ability to openly debate and challenge one another. It is in the spirit of difference and debate that we sign the Westminster Declaration.
Signatories
Matt Taibbi, Journalist, USA
Michael Shellenberger, Public, USA
Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, USA
John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, USA
Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, USA
Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia
Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, USA
Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, USA
Glenn Loury, Economist, USA
Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK
John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK
Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US
Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, USA
Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, USA
Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA
Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK
Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, USA
Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada
America’s local epidemiologist is a lady named Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, who publishes the most popular and lucrative “Science” newsletter on Substack. The Substack is called Your Local Epidemiologist.
Since she is my local epidemiologist and has more than 211,000 subscribers (more than 20,000 paid), I sometimes read Dr. Jetelina’s dispatches to see what I shouldn’t think.
Her latest dispatch informed me our local epidemiologist is extremely concerned about the rise in vaccine hesitancy. But what really frightens her is the continued prevalence of misinformation and disinformation and the fact fewer people seem to be trusting our trusted public institutions and experts like herself.
A few excerpts from recent newsletters should give readers a sense of why this particular influencer is terrified for her own safety and the safety of all the other scientists she argues are being “harassed” for speaking “the truth.” As I’m prone to do, I’ll offer a few of my own editorial comments on her editorial comments.
***
In her most recent article, the headline expresses Dr. Jetelina’s concern.
Drop in routine vaccinations
Driven by an increase in vaccine exemptions and misinformation.
The lede paragraph (emphasis added):
“CDC released the latest vaccine exemptions and routine vaccination rates data for last school year. This, coupled with new data on growing acceptance of vaccine misinformation, showsa slow, painful bleed.”
Re-stated: Despite 46 months of highly-coordinated, non-stop, ultra-expensive efforts to defeat vaccine hesitancy, it turns out too many members of the the public still have a “growing acceptance of vaccine misinformation.” If this was not the case, Our Local Epidemiologist (OLE) wouldn’t be so alarmed and wouldn’t have written all these stories.
OLE asks, “What is indirectly causing a decline in vaccinations?” and then answers her own question:
“Misinformation is increasing. Our information landscape has dramatically changed—false news spreads 6 times faster than the truth on social media, and 70% of Americans get health news on social media. Public health has not kept up.”
One might ask who gets to determine “the truth?” The answer, of course, would be: People like Our Local Epidemiologist.
By far, the most massive “social media” platform is Facebook … so I guess Facebook is letting vaccine “false information” spread to its one billion users.
This strikes me as a giant fib as I personally know Facebook has suspended my account at least a half dozen times and, when my account wasn’t suspended, any post I made about a Covid topic was “flagged” or seen by zero people brave enough to hit my post with a “like.”
It would be interesting information to learn how many millions of people have been temporarily or permanently banned or shadow-banned by Facebook’s algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and the company’s more than 15,000 “content moderators.”
Whatever this number, it’s not nearly large enough for America’s terrified and frustrated local epidemiologist.
Get Vaccinated or Else …
More specifically, OLE says the lack of sufficient censorship is “is directly impacting behaviors like getting vaccinated.”
I now know the answer to just about every public health issue for OLE is more vaccines and more people getting more of these vaccines.
Like the devil, OLE mixes the truth with lies. The first five words of this sentence convey an obvious truth:
“Loss of trust in institutions also drives misinformation and behaviors,” she writes, adding, “This … will surely have dire consequences to communities.”
So what really bothers OLE is that more people have “lost trust in institutions.”
In the thousands of words she’s written about the plagues of misinformation and disinformation, she doesn’t tell us why so many people might have lost faith in their now non-trusted institutions …. except, the only possible answer (for her) … the public has been getting “disinformation” from social media.
It took Our Local Epidemiologist years to get her credentials to become OLE, but one could condense the operative curriculum message to one sentence: “Everyone get your dad-blasted vaccines!”
I think I’ve got it. Not enough censorship = too much disinformation, which leads to too much “vaccine hesitancy” which = “dire consequences” – which means everyone is going to die … from Covid, the flu, RSV and the measles.
***
In a linked article from June 27, 2023, OLE agues that not only are communities going to be in dire straits due to vaccine hesitancy, the nation’s narrative-spouting scientists are also increasingly coming under attack.
The headline gives us OLE’s “truth” …
‘Harassment is out of control’
In this article, OLE reports that she feels increasingly threatened and gives us the example of another scientist, Peter Hotez, who “experienced pile-ons, stalking, and bullying after events unfolded on Twitter. So much so that law enforcement got involved. A complete nightmare.”
Some readers will remember Hotez as the pediatrician/scientist who was afraid to debate Robert Kennedy, Jr. on Joe Rogan’s podcast show.
As far as I can tell, nobody has physically attacked Hotez and his family members are still alive. This ensured that the “survival rate” (from mob violence) of narrative-spouting epidemiologists remains 100 percent.
Whatever happened to the Hotez family … “… He’s not alone. These nightmares are now a common occurrence for scientists andphysicians in public health. Both online and offline. For vaccines. For gun violence. For reproductive health. And apparently for wildfires now, too.”
“It’s gotten out of control, which becomes an individual risk as well as a risk to the communities we serve.”
According to this sub headline ….
This is a huge problem
Vaccine deaths, injuries and lockdowns that caused suicides and millions of people to lose their jobs was NOT even an itty-bitty problem … but all these nightmarish non-attacks on well-paid, heroic scientists and doctors are a “huge problem.”
I didn’t know any of this, but I do now.
In her article on terrorized scientists, OLE doesn’t mention whether any “pro-vaxxers” have threatened the life of, say, Robert Kennedy, Jr.. Or if any of the hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors and nurses who questioned the necessity of Covid vaccines have perhaps suffered some measure of unpleasantness due to their views.
Per Our Local Epidemiologist, it’s only “anti-vaxxers” who bully, smear and attack others.
A political scientist might also ask who actually possesses the power to fire large numbers of people or who has the power to discriminate against unpopular minorities who should not be allowed to use a water fountain … attend a play or travel outside of the country.
OLE informs us with another sub-headline:
‘Women scientists are particularly at risk’
OLE even published an anonymous note someone left her.
I hate to suggest I might be tougher than Our Local Epidemiologist, but if someone left me a note like this I don’t think I’dbe traumatized the rest of my life … or even for two seconds.
Speaking for all the terrorized scientists, OLE writes:
“… too often scientists assume the consequences alone. This takes a significant personal toll.”
Which makes me wonder what terrible consequences people like her have been forced bear alone or what this “significant toll” really was or is.
In the case of OLE, before Covid, she was an obscure epidemiologist nobody had heard of. Today, she is a millionaire Substack author who also works for the CDC and the White House.
As she informed us in another article, Dr. Jetelina has been asked to speak at “quite a few” conferences:
“Last week I was invited to the Nobel Prize Summit on information integrity at the National Academy of Science. I’ve attended quite a few of these types of events lately—discussions on mis- and disinformation’s impact on truth, trust, and hope.”
So one toll on her is that she’s been invited to participate at the “Nobel Prize Summit on information integrity at the National Academy of Science” plus a lot of other swanky Disinformation Galas.
I’m sure she was heckled relentlessly by her colleagues and was constantly looking over her shoulder in case some bellboy slipped her a note saying he’s not impressed by her brand of epidemiology.
I include this excerpt to illustrate it’s not just OLE who’s worried about mis- and disinformation – it’s everyone who’s attending all these summits.
My main take-away from the whining of OLE is that her colleagues (millions of them) mean business about stopping this mis- and disinformation.
If you haven’t picked up on her views yet, here they are in another sub-headline:
Mis/disinformation is a major problem.
This sentence must be what really irks our local epidemiologist:
“Truth is now debatable.”
Here, I can only assume that her debating point is that the truth should NOT be “debatable.”
However, I bet she’d get a debate on this point from Socrates, a man who was put to death for asking politically-incorrect questions.
“No questioning allowed” equals no debate, which actually equals no Scientific Method – which is what Our Local Epidemiologist really espouses.
These sentences dropped my jaw:
“The major challenge in scientific communication is that the truth is now networked by peers. Because of this, disinformation and misinformation are eroding public trust in science, becoming a threat to the planet, and costing lives.”
(Aside: The same day I read several articles by OLE, I listened to this classic rift from the late great George Carlin, who told us years ago our planet was one tough sucker and was going to be just fine – even if too many people used plastic or drive in gas-powered cars.)
MORE worry-mongering from OLE …
“But it goes beyond a pandemic—climate change, routine vaccinations, gun violence, reproductive health. Everyone—the private sector, government, researchers, and communities nationally and internationally—is rightfully worried.”
FWIW, this is brazen misinformation. Everyone is NOT “worried.” For example, I’m not. In fact, for hundreds of millions of people, the things that worry Our Local Epidemiologist have never caused us to lose one wink of sleep.
This, in fact, is what really worries OLE and her colleagues at the Disinformation Junkets. Not enough people are worried about the things she says we should be worried about.
Not only do we no longer trust our institutions – which have of been spectacularly wrong on everything Covid-related – we don’t trust people like her either.
In fact, what worries us is that people like her have so much power and influence over our lives.
Not only this, she wants more control and power. And since she is our local epidemiologist and consults with the CDC and White House, she’s probably going to get what she wants.
Let me close with a headline that gives us OLE’s professional diagnosis. When it comes to the plague of disinformation and misinformation, What the world has is …
Too much talk. Too little action.
Writes OLE:
“I’m getting increasingly frustrated with inaction.”
“Institutions are needed for the long-term solution:
Governments. Congressional courage is needed. In the U.S., other government entities have a role, too: the National Institute of Health (train scientists to communicate and translate; prioritize funding more research in this space), the FDA and CDC … Department of Defense (create a robust, well-funded surveillance systemto understand where, how, and what health misinformation is circulating in real-time) …. State governments have a role with medical boards and local action, too.
Private industry needs to get their act together: Is this truly the future we want? The lowest hanging fruit is transparency: content moderation, algorithm impacts, data processing, and integrity policies …”
OLE is not subtle; I get her point …
It’s not like Our Local Epidemiologist is camouflaging what she wants. What OLE really wants is for Big Brother to quit pussy-footing around and scare the hell out of many more people, create a lot more “surveillance systems” and use our state medical boards to repeal the licenses of more “science deniers.”
In conclusion, Our Local Epidemiologist is a menace; she’s the worst nightmare for anyone who still values free speech, scientific debate and prefers a “public health” system that’s not killing and maiming so many members of the public.
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