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Chinese energy major quits West – report

Samizdat | April 13, 2022

China’s state-owned oil and gas corporation China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is reportedly preparing to exit from the US, UK and Canada due to mounting concerns about sanctions, regulations and rising costs.

Relations between China and Western countries have soured over the past several years. Beijing’s ties with Washington were shattered after former US President Donald Trump launched a large-scale trade war, hitting a wide range of Chinese goods with import levies. Tensions have been mounting recently after China refused to condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

CNOOC, China’s top offshore oil and gas producer, is currently seeking to leave the West by selling “marginal and hard to manage” assets in the three nations, according to unnamed industry sources quoted by Reuters.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told the agency that the company’s top management found it “uncomfortable” to manage its Western assets because of regulations and high operating costs.

CNOOC, which entered the three countries by a $15 billion acquisition of Canadian energy major Nexen in 2013, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after Trump’s anti-China campaign was launched. Prior to that the company had been listed on the NYSE for two decades. Joe Biden’s administration removed the firm from the blacklist about a year ago.

In the US, the Chinese energy major owns onshore assets in the Eagle Ford and Niobrara shale basins and also has offshore stakes in the Stampede and Appomattox fields in the Gulf of Mexico. In Britain, the company operates three sites in northeast Scotland, and has oil sands and shale gas assets in Canada.

“Assets like Gulf of Mexico deepwater are technologically challenging and CNOOC really needed to work with partners to learn, but company executives were not even allowed to visit the US offices,” a senior industry source said, as quoted by media.

“It had been a pain all along these years and the Trump administration’s blacklisting of CNOOC made it worse,” he explained.

Moreover, the latest sanctions imposed by the US on Russia may hit CNOOC’s assets, the sources also said. The company, which is getting ready to list on the Shanghai stock exchange in April, is reportedly planning to purchase assets in Latin America and Africa.

CNOOC reportedly produced some 1.57 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2021, of which 62,000 were from sites in Canada and 80,000 were from sites elsewhere in North America. Altogether, its assets in the US, UK and Canada produce nearly 220,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, according to Reuters’ calculations.

April 13, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada Will Soon Be Offering Doctor-Assisted Death For People Who Are Mentally Ill

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 10, 2022

Canada is working to determine who, if anyone, should be offered doctor-assisted death as a result of mental illness. In other words, it’s doctor assisted suicide.

Doctor assisted death is mostly prominent in people who have terminal illnesses like cancer, The National Post reported last week. Moving into doctor assisted death for mental illness raises a whole new host of questions.

Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Sisco van Veen notes that with cancer, something inside the body can be seen, but “in psychiatry, really all you have is the patient’s story, and what you see with your eyes and what you hear and what the family tells you.”

Mental disorders lack “prognostic predictability”, which can make determining suffering near impossible.

As Canada moves closer to legalizing doctor-assisted deaths for people with mental illness whose psychological pain has become unbearable to them, “difficult conversations” are ahead, Veen told the National Post.

In March 2023, Canada will become one of just a few nations that allow medical aid in dying, or MAID, for mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD.

Dr. Grainne Neilson, past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and a Halifax forensic psychiatrist said: “I think there’s going to be lots of uncertainty about how to apply this in March 2023. My hope is that psychiatrists will move cautiously and carefully to make sure MAID is not being used as something instead of equitable access to good care.”

The argument developing over MAID for mental illness is robust. Many in the mental health field think that mental illness is never irremediable and there’s always hope for a cure. Others say “there still exists a profound lack of understanding about, and fear of, mental illness, and that the resistance reflects a long history of paternalism and unwillingness to accept that the suffering that can come from mental illness can be as equally tormenting as the suffering from physical pain.”

The Canadian Parliament has moved past whether MAID should be offered to those who are eligible, and is now studying how it should be assessed.

The National Post described how the idea has made its way through Parliament:

That decision formed the impetus for Canada’s MAID law, Bill C-14, which allowed for assisted dying in cases where natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.”

In 2019, a Quebec Superior Court justice ruled the reasonably foreseeable death restriction unconstitutional, and that people who were intolerably suffering but not imminently dying still had a constitutional right to be eligible for euthanasia.

In March 2021, Bill C-7 was passed that made changes to the eligibility criteria. Gone is the “reasonably foreseeable” criterion and, as of March 17, 2023, when a two-year sunset clause expires, MAID will be expanded to competent adults whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness.

April 12, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Canada’s internet censorship bill is a major threat to free speech online

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | March 30, 2022

The push to get Canada’s controversial Bill C-11 – otherwise known as “Internet Censorship Bill” – is entering its final stages, as MPs in the country’s parliament will now debate it.

Those opposed to the bill are calling on Canadians to contact their MPs and ask them to vote against this legislation, which, if passed, is likely to make radical changes to the way Canadians are allowed to express themselves online, and what content they will be permitted to access.

Like any other declaratively liberal democracy that finds itself dangerously close to undermining the very foundations of its own system, Canada’s government is assuring citizens that their freedoms will not be curtailed in any way.

However, while the politicians’ lips say one thing, the draft law itself and its wording speak another story, critics are warning. The bill wants to force social and other online platforms to artificially prioritize certain categories of content, such as those promoting diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities, etc.

The bill is the “brainchild” of Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault, who back in 2020 served as Minister of Canadian Heritage, when he said that once the bill becomes law, a new regulator will be appointed to make sure it is implemented, and “hate speech monitored.”

The main criticism the bill has faced from a flurry of free speech advocates of various ideological and political persuasions is that the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications (CRCT), a broadcasting and telecommunications regulatory agency, will now serve as a government tool to “regulate” the internet as well, and fairly explicitly, ending the era of the open internet in Canada (although that crucial quality has been steadily eroding across the globe for years.)

March 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

University of Waterloo fires 49 staff for refusing to show a vaccine passport

By Ben Squires | Reclaim The Net | March 30, 2022

While other universities are scrapping vaccine passport requirements, the Ontario-based University of Waterloo has fired 49 members of staff for not showing a vaccine passport.

As reported by CTV, this came as the province of Ontario announced it would be dropping all COVID-19 measures.

“We have an obligation under the Health and Safety Act to protect our employees, and the employees have the obligation to comply,” said Nick Manning, vice president of university relations.

“All of those who weren’t able to be compliant after progressive measures faced the ultimate result of termination.”

The university terminated the staff members, yet it had announced it would be dropping its vaccine mandate on May 1.

Other schools in the province, including the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ryerson University, and the University of Guelph, have announced that those who had been suspended over their vaccine status will resume work.

March 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Freedom Must Begin at Home

BY LAURA ROSEN COHEN | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | MARCH 20, 2022

The end of the Covid-19 pandemic is being declared by most countries in the world at almost the precise 2nd anniversary to the day of the entire world shutting down voluntarily for “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Mask and vaccine mandates, along with vaccination passports, are dropping all over the world.

But if you thought that the end of the pandemic meant a return to normal life, you would be wrong. In the blink of an eye, we have seamlessly transitioned our attention from a pandemic enemy to the new Tsarist enemy in our global village. But have no fear, Sheriff Zelenskyy and his elite, woke allies in the West are going to save us from Vladimir Putin. And if you’re not on Team Ukraine, then you know, like whatever. 

If this sounds kind of unbelievable to you, it’s because it is. It is astonishing to watch world leaders’ flourishing rhetoric on Ukraine, an unfathomable itch for war (see Nancy “I’d like to take out those tanks” Pelosi) and positioning the war between Russia and Ukraine as the barometer of our civilizational survival.

It has been particularly puzzling and stupefying over the past week to have seen that Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau is in Europe now, taking photos with armed Ukrainians and pontificating about freedom, democracy and tolerance. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed the Canadian Parliament to a full house not seen at any point during two years of coronavirus and Justin Trudeau marveled at his stance against authoritarianism.

All around the world, meaningless gestures of antipathy toward Russia are proliferating on social media. Russian vodka is poured out. The National Mustard Museum has banned Russian Mustard (there is a mustard museum, who knew??), Russian orchestra conductors are getting fired and medical clinics in Germany are denying care to Russians. And in the most Canadian rebuke ever, the alleged inventors of poutine in Quebec, Canada have renamed their creation so as not to give credit to Putin. 

Meanwhile, back at home, unvaccinated Canadians including my own severely disabled son are still not allowed to board a plane or train within Canada or to leave Canada. Truckers’ bank accounts and crypto wallets are still frozen, their trucks destroyed and persons targeted by the Canadian government for supporting the truckers will be ‘marked for life’ by Canadian banks. 

Provincial Covid passports and mask mandates have been rescinded from coast to coast across Canada, yet Trudeau still holds six million unvaccinated Canadians hostage in their own country. Similar to many places in America, Canadians’ freedom is still subject to capricious, mean-spirited, abusive and nonsensical regulations that have no public health justification or scientific evidence.

Should freedom not begin at home? For how much longer will this federal cognitive dissonance be sustainable?

Hopefully, the absurdity and punitive nature of the travel regulations will come to an end in Canada soon. If not, there are several court challenges being simultaneously mounted by civil rights groups and individuals challenging the legality and constitutionality of the restrictions. But that will be a slow process of winding through the courts.

American lawmakers also see this issue as a problem. A group of Republican lawmakers is proposing legislation that will open up the border completely to Canadians. If that happens, Trudeau will have no choice but to follow suit.

Peace talks, or at least ceasefire talks are underway between Russia and Ukraine. No such ideological ceasefire, talks or dialogue of any kind are occurring in Canada between political factions or between leaders and their psychologically, financially and emotionally wounded populace. The coronavirus measures enacted in Canada have created a highly divisive country, torn apart along public health lines.

The pandemic left a highly fractured, wounded populace in its wake in Canada, US, and most places in the world. We are desperately in need of displays of unity, kindness and healing among themselves and above all, from their leadership.

Unfortunately for now, Canadians will continue to be fed a steady diet of the importance of democracy and the dangers of authoritarianism from the Canadian Prime Minister who enacted the current iteration of Canada’s War Measures Act to dislodge peaceful protesters from their capital city. It is hard not to conclude that it may in fact take a change of government to redemocratize the Dominion of Canada.

Invocations of freedom and sanctifying democracy must begin at home.

March 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

PILOT CALLS ON CANADIANS TO HAVE COURAGE

The Scoop – February 16, 2022

Greg Hill, a pilot with 32 years experience in both regular and military contexts, calls on Canadians to ‘have courage’. Greg Hill uses a well airline disaster as an example to drive home his point.

March 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Canada School of Public Service panel proposes digital IDs tied to vaccine passports

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | March 26, 2022

A federal panel in Canada discussed the possibility of using digital IDs to track vaccination status. The panel also discussed making Canada a global leader in digital identification.

The Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) held an event on February 1st to discuss how digital IDs could be used to track vaccination status in future pandemics. The event, titled “The New Economy Series: Digital Identity as a New Policy Frontier, was moderated by the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Francis Bilodeau.

Bilodeau asked the panelists, “How could digital identity and a proper digital infrastructure help us deal with future situations or future pandemics?”

Joni Brennan, the President of the Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada replied: “I think that the identity is important for the pandemic – any time you would need to verify someone, anytime you would need to also do supply chain tracking and management about how do we even get the vaccine to people? How many people do we need to get it to? Have they had it yet or not? Are they due for their second dose?”

Brennan added that the scope of digital IDs should be expanded to include vaccination status.

“In terms of making this more real, perhaps, for some of the folks inside of government, I would say that we really need to close the chasm of what identity is and what identity does. When we’re talking about identifying someone in order to get them the vaccine and do that tracking that needs to be done to deliver the vaccine and know where and how to distribute it, that’s an identity issue. Knowing that the vaccine actually came from the company, that’s an identity issue.”

The discussion also touched on making Canada a global leader in digital identification.

“I think the time is perfect for us to do that, but it actually needs some teeth,” said the Chief Officer for Innovation Labs and New Ventures at Interac, Debbie Gamble. “It needs political will to pull the various players across the public and private sectors together. And together, I am confident that over a number of years we can actually start to become leaders in the marketplace.”

The Canadian Bankers Association is also pushing for the setting up of a federal digital identification system.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

TRUDEAU’S EMERGENCIES ACT REAPPRAISED

By Alex Story | RECOVERY | March 22, 2022

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” 

THAT QUESTION troubled many of our greatest philosophers over generations. Last month, however, the question was finally answered. The sturdy and tough Canadian Maple tree fell in plain sight. The fall barely making a sound.

Democracy ended overnight – with little to no fuss, and some encouragement from neighbours and friends.

To deal with an old fashioned, “grease under your fingernails” workingman’s protest, Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, invoked the Emergencies Act on the 14th of February.

Barely a week later, his party, with the support of the New Democratic Party, ganged-up to pass the measure by 185 votes to 151. The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois voted against the use of the sweeping enforcement measures, accusing the prime minister of overreach. The Canadian government granted itself powers it did not have before.

These included the power to impose restrictions on public assembly and travel, to mobilize federal support for local and provincial police, impose fines on violations of the act, whatever that might mean in practice.

The police were given the ability to arrest without warrant those who were directly or indirectly “assisting others” in what it considered “criminal activities” – no justifications required. Added to physical restrictions, the Emergencies Act allowed banks and financial institutions to freeze accounts, again without court order, of those suspected of supporting the blockades – that is to say, directly or indirectly.

What the passing of the Act meant in practice was summed up by Steve Bell, Ottowa’s interim Police Chief, during a press conference on February 20th 2022. After seemingly imploring people to “go home”, Steve Bell revealed the reality behind the Emergencies Act: “if you are involved in this protest we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges”.

Living in fear of the state

To make sure the message was understood, he clarified – anybody involved in this protest, will live in fear from the State “for months to come”. From losing access to personal bank accounts, to professional licences, to criminal charges and municipal breaches of court order, those who protested against the government’s narrow vaccine mandate and broader Covid policy, joined the new caste of the damned.

The Emergencies Act, as written by the Canadian Department of Justice, was rather specific. It stated that a national emergency “is an urgent, temporary and critical situation that seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada”.

Importantly, it added that it must be “a situation that cannot be effectively dealt with by the provinces and territories, or by any other law of Canada”.

Over its first four weeks, none of these prerequisites for the act even to have been considered were met. The Freedom Convoy seemed at worse an inconvenience; at best a carnival. To some it was incommodious; to others emancipating. As it was, the embarrassment for an administration that too quickly resorted to slander and opprobrium, seems to have been that the truckers and their followers were too well behaved and reassuringly civilised.

It was, by any measure, very peaceful.

Had there been acts of violence, looting or property destruction of any kind, the entire world would have been told with alacrity. Honest Constable Steve Bell would have delighted in telling us who the thugs were, had there been any. But, thugs there were none – or too few to mention.

He knew it, so when asked about them and about protestors allegedly in possession of firearms, he waffled and swiftly moved on to generalities and threats. The contrast between the celebratory mood on the ground and the paranoid, Bourbon-type, response from Trudeau and his administration is and will remain the greatest of all mysteries.

The Truckers demands were clear and simple: an end to Covid restrictions, in particular vaccine mandates for Truckers who work the cross-border route between the United States and Canada.

The usual vaxxer, anti-vaxxer dichotomy, was tried for a short while until, early on in the protest, the Canadian Trucking Alliance reminded the world that “around 90% of Canada’s 120,000 cross-border truckers are vaccinated, in line with the country’s adult population”.

Then, having tried vilification, Trudeau escaped in fear before the great unwashed – in an Opera-Bouffe replay of Louix XVI’s 1791 flight from Paris.

However, the Freedom Convoy, with simple demands and cheery smiles witnessed in a short few weeks the majority of the country’s 10 provinces – including Ontario and Quebec – lifting much of COVID’s egregious restrictions.

“The world is done with (the pandemic), so let’s just move forward,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday February 15th.

Not to be left behind, on February 23rd, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called Trudeau’s doubling down on repression and defamation “the biggest mistake of any modern Canadian Government”.

He added that the Emergencies Act was “introduced for no good reason”.

Trudeau panicked and overreacted “with this use of extreme powers”, Kenney continued. He ended his piece to camera by saying that “the chief enforcement officer of Canada has said that if he disagrees with your opinions”, he “might freeze and seize your bank account without going to court”.

Where lies Canada now?

How can Canada still be considered a democracy in such circumstances?

Protest, in particular when respectfully conducted, as the Freedom Convoy seems to have been, is the sine qua non of democratic governance – as are the twins of consent and compromise.

Trudeau never deigned to seek to understand the protesters. The ordinary world is too distant, quaint and old fashioned for him. To spend time trying to understand the yearning for normalcy and freedom would have required wasting it speaking to people, who are not included in the Progressive Programme.

Of note, and perhaps most worryingly of all though, is, when it happened, how silent the fall of Canada’s democracy was. No Western country bore witness to the euphemistically titled “overreach”. Perhaps, they were too distracted with troubles on the Ukraine-Russian border. Or perhaps not.

Be that as it may, the take-away is that in the UK, as in other Western countries, we really could well be just one election – or Act – away from a Trudeau-type coup against the people. And that should keep us up at nights.

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Trudeau gets called a Dictator in front of the entire EU

BY KEEAN BEXTE | THE COUNTER SIGNAL | MARCH 23, 2022

On March 23, PM Justin Trudeau was called a dictator in front of the entire European Union over his response to the Freedom Convoy.

Addressing both the European Parliament and Trudeau specifically, Member of the European Parliament Mislav Kolakusic proceeded to deliver Trudeau perhaps the most humiliating international thrashing of his political career.

“Freedom, the right to choose, the right to life, the right to health, the right to work for many of us are fundamental human rights for which millions of citizens of Europe and the world have laid down their lives,” Kolakusic began.

“…. Canada, once a symbol of the modern world, has become a symbol of civil rights violations under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months. We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes.”

“To you,” he continues, speaking to Trudeau, “these may be liberal methods; for many citizens of the world, it is a dictatorship of the worst kind. Rest assured that the citizens of the world, united, can stop any regime that wants to destroy the freedom of citizens, either by bombs or harmful pharmaceutical products.”

Kolakusic, having once lived under a Communist regime in Croatia, is more than likely only too familiar with authoritarian regimes, their consequences, and the grievances of everyday citizens. And like many who have survived Communist dictatorships, it is apparent that he shares the disdain over Trudeau’s use of Emergency Powers to target peaceful protesters who only wanted their rights back.

And indeed, Kolakusic isn’t the only MEP to suggest Trudeau is acting like a dictator.

“[Trudeau’s] exactly like a tyrant, like a dictator. He’s like Ceaușescu in Romania,” said Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes last month.

Terhes subsequently decided not to attend Trudeau’s speech today.

In England, too, the response has been no better. During his first trip to the UK following the Freedom Convoy, Trudeau was greeted by protesters brandishing “F*** Trudeau” flags in front of PM Boris Johnson’s office, forcing him to sneak in through the back.

While it appeared that Trudeau was headed back to the EU for more PR after his first successful glam tour, the global community is done with his façade. Trudeau is a joke on the international stage.

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Canada has ‘exhausted’ its stock of weapons

Samizdat | March 19, 2022

Canada has depleted its stock of weapons in its bid to support Ukraine amid Russia’s military operation in the country, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand has acknowledged.

“I believe that we have exhausted our inventory … to the extent that we are able to provide [more] weapons,” Anand said during a live appearance on CBC on Friday.

“There are capacity issues we need to make sure we are on top of for the purposes of ensuring the Canadian Armed Forces are well resourced,” she added.

Ottawa had been among Western capitals that have provided Kiev with so-called “lethal aid.” It has so far sent or is in the process of sending 4,500 rocket launchers, 7,500 hand grenades, 100 anti-tank launchers with 2,000 rounds, two C-130J tactical aircraft, and various other pieces of kit from Canada.

Russia sent its troops into Ukraine in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc.

Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

March 19, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Thailand Paid $45 Million in COVID Vaccine Injury Claims, While U.S. Has Paid $0

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 15, 2022

Thailand’s National Health Security Office (NHSO) as of March 8 has paid 1.509 billion baht (the equivalent of $45.65 million) to settle COVID-19 vaccine injury compensation claims.

The payouts were made to 12,714 people, including family members of some people who died as a result of the vaccine.

An additional 891 claims are pending. A total of 15,933 claims have been filed since the start of the compensation program on May 19, 2021. Of the 2,328 complaints that were rejected, 875 are being appealed.

The figures released on March 9 represent a continued increase in claims approved by Thailand’s NHSO. As of Dec. 26, 2021, only 8,470 claims had been approved for compensation.

The vaccines being administered in Thailand are primarily the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine, and the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine.

Thailand’s vaccine injury compensation program is an example of a “no-fault compensation program.”

As reported by The Defender in December 2021, “no-fault” refers to a measure put in place by public health authorities, private insurance companies, manufacturers and/or other stakeholders to compensate individuals harmed by vaccines.

Such programs allow a person who has sustained a vaccine injury to be compensated financially, without having to attribute fault or error to a specific manufacturer or individual.

No-fault compensation schemes are one of three options used by various countries to handle vaccine injury claims.

The other two options include allowing vaccine-injured people to sue private-sector actors, such as vaccine manufacturers or their insurers, or to place the full financial burden on the patient.

In the case of Thailand, the compensation scheme sets forth the following payout categories:

  • For cases of death or permanent disability, each family receives 400,000 baht ($11,928).
  • Those who sustained a disability that affects their livelihood or who lost a limb receive 240,000 baht ($7,157).
  • For other injuries or illnesses sustained as a result of COVID vaccination, a maximum of 100,000 baht ($2,982) is paid out.

For the third category of claims, the specific amount awarded is contingent on the level of damages found to have been caused by the vaccine, as well as the financial state of the patient.

When the compensation fund was set up in 2021, Dr. Jadej Thammatacharee, the NHSO’s secretary-general, stated the available funds would total 100 million baht ($2.98 million), but that initial budget already has been exceeded many times over.

Thailand’s “no-fault” system makes it easy to secure compensation, at least when compared to similar schemes in the U.S. and other western countries.

Claims can be submitted by the individuals in question, or their families, at the hospital where they were vaccinated, at provincial health offices, or at NHSO regional offices. Moreover, claims can be entered up to two years after the adverse effects first occur.

Any individual claiming injury or side effects can file a claim for initial financial aid to provide an unspecified amount to claimants prior to confirmation that the injuries resulted from the vaccine.

If it is later determined the adverse effects were not a result of the vaccine, the claimants are entitled to keep this initial financial payout.

The turnaround time on claims also appears to be quick, when compared to the U.S. and several other countries.

The Bangkok Post reported that 13 panels across Thailand meet on a weekly basis to consider compensation claims. Those that are approved are paid within five days. Rejected claims can be appealed directly to the NHSO secretary-general within 30 days.

Available figures from the Thai authorities do not break down the number awarded claims for deaths, serious injuries and disabilities, or other injuries and adverse effects.

However, according to information provided by Thailand’s Department of Disease Control (DDC), as of Oct. 24, 2021, three deaths were linked to COVID vaccination.

According to Chawetsan Namwat, the DDC’s director for emergency health hazard and disease control, two of these deaths were a result of thrombosis. The other death came after the onset of a severe allergic reaction and shock following the administration of the vaccine.

Of the 842 deaths that were investigated up until that date, 541 were found to be “coincidental events,” including cardiovascular disease, stroke, pulmonary embolism, blood infections, lung inflammation, lung cancer and breast cancer.

For an additional 66 deaths, it was inconclusive whether the vaccine led to the fatalities — with 47 of these individuals also having been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

A further 41 deaths were categorized as “unclassified,” as there was not enough information available to make a determination regarding whether the deaths were linked to the vaccines.

According to a Feb. 18 briefing from healthdata.org, COVID-19 was the 13th most common cause of death in the country for the preceding week, behind such causes as chronic kidney disease, liver cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes mellitus and road injuries.

Ischemic heart disease and stroke were recorded as the top two causes of death in Thailand during the same period.

U.S. remains ‘stuck’ at one approved vaccine injury claim since November 2021

As previously reported by The Defender, as of Nov. 1, 2021, only one COVID vaccine injury claim had been approved for compensation by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

As of today, the figure remains at one — a claim which has not yet been paid. No new claims were compensated in the interim.

As reported by the CICP:

“As of March 1, 2022, the CICP has not compensated any COVID-19 countermeasures claims.

“Six COVID-19 countermeasure claims have been denied compensation because the standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered injury was not sustained.

“One COVID-19 countermeasure claim, a COVID-19 vaccine claim due to an anaphylactic reaction, has been determined eligible for compensation and is pending a review of eligible expenses.”

Last week, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) introduced the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Amendment Act to help expedite claims by those injured by COVID vaccines.

The bill would amend the CICP to improve responsiveness, create a commission to examine the injuries directly caused as a result of COVID countermeasures and allow those whose claims have been previously rejected to resubmit claims for new consideration.

With only one claim approved for compensation and six claims denied, the CICP has a backlog of approximately 7,050 claims, with 4,097 claims alleging injuries or death from COVID vaccines, and an additional 2,959 claims alleging injuries or death from other COVID countermeasures.

Since 2010, a total of 7,547 compensation claims have been filed with the CICP. Only 41 were deemed eligible for compensation; still fewer (30) were actually compensated.

Notably, as of the March 4 release of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, a total of 1,168,894 adverse effects following COVID vaccination have been reported, including 25,158 deaths and 46,515 cases of permanent disability.

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

CICP was established under the aegis of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of 2005. The PREP act was developed to coordinate the response to a “public health emergency.”

The law is scheduled to remain in place until 2024.

CICP differs from another U.S. federal vaccine compensation program, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was established after the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

VICP, however, covers only those vaccines routinely administered to children and to pregnant women. To help fund the program, those vaccines are subject to a federal 75-cent excise tax.

To date, more than 8,400 VICP claims have been settled, out of more than 24,000 petitions, with a total of $4.6 billion issued in settlements.

The small number of approved compensation claims and the slow review process has recently led to calls for the modernization of vaccine compensation programs in the U.S.

Other western countries appear to have developed similarly cumbersome compensation procedures.

For instance, Australia’s newly established no-fault vaccine compensation system was described as “intentionally complex and narrowly targeted.”

Canada, which also only recently established a no-fault compensation program, as of Dec. 16, 2021, had approved fewer than five of 400 claims filed. More recent data from Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program is unavailable as of this writing.


Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

This doctor’s alarming observations are sufficient to halt the COVID vaccines in the US

By Steve Kirsch | March 9, 2022

Overview

On March 5, “A Midwestern Doctor” (who I will abbreviate as “AMD”) published a long Substack article that meticulously chronicled his/her observations of adverse events (AEs) associated with the COVID vaccine. This is very rare as most doctors are too busy to do such an analysis. Based on the observation of this one doctor alone, the critical event rates are high enough to justify that the vaccines should be immediately halted based on safety concerns.

Background

AMD has to hide his/her identity or he/she will be fired. That’s how the medical system is designed: if you speak against the system, you lose your job. Period.

So to make things easier, I’ll assume AMD is a man.

The AEs documented by AMD were partly from his own patients, but mostly related by people who AMD directly knows. So no more than one step removed: a direct friend of a direct friend.

The results of his analysis (from the Conclusion section of the article):

  1. Critical Injuries: 41
  2. Severe Injuries: 39
  3. Significant Reactions: 32

In AMD’s history, there were no critical injuries for all other vaccines combined. Zero.

But the important part was this statement:

Typically when a drug has between 10-100 critical injuries reported to the FDA, they strongly look at pulling it from the market or giving it a blackbox warning.  I thus feel these vaccines are not being held to the adverse reporting standard we expect.

In other words, based on just the data AMD directly collected, the vaccine exceeds the stopping condition.

The numerator and denominator

AMD used more than his own patients: he also used friends of his friends.

AMD’s cases were split: 60% reached out to him with stories and 40% was due to his outreach.

How confident is he that every single case was vaccine related? For half of these cases, there was an extremely strong time correlation or other factors, so he’s extremely confident of a causality link. For the other half of the cases, the causality is extremely likely.

Because his sample includes only the direct friends of his friends, he estimates that the “denominator” in his case is less than 100,000 to be conservative (the average person has around 150 to 250 friends so this is quite conservative). There will be fewer than this due to overlap, but again, we aren’t trying to get to an exact number, just a rough engineering estimate.

AMD’s extended friend pool consists of a mix of vaxxed and unvaxxed people in our calculation. Since he’s a doctor, his mix of vaxxed patients will be higher than others so this may skew our extrapolation to be on the high side, but we are just trying to do a ballpark estimate of what the national rates might look like.

Let’s extrapolate that out to a population of 200M people who are over 18 years old and vax eligible. We’d have to multiply his numbers by 2,000 to get a lower bound on the number of events expected. This isn’t strictly accurate since AMD’s friend base is older and the AEs in the older group would not occur at the same rate as the younger group. So again, not trying to get a a super precise estimate since it isn’t needed as we’ll soon see.

So we have 41*2000 = a minimum of 82,000 estimated critical events caused by the vaccine in our crude estimate.

This is within a factor of 2 of the minimum of 150,000 deaths I’ve previously estimated for the vaccine (using over a dozen different methods). So it appears we were right in that our estimate was conservative. And our crude extrapolation also is well within numbers previously determined so it serves as a crude sanity check that the numbers reported by AMD were “reasonable.”

Comparing with our 10 to 100 critical event stopping condition, we find:

82,000 >> 10 to 100

The stopping condition for the vaccine is met not only from AMD’s direct observations alone (even adjusting a factor of 2 for causality doubts), but also for our conservative (and very crude) estimate of the total number of critical events in the US. QED.

Finally, let’s be clear: I am not claiming that we can extrapolate a single anecdote to an entire population to get an accurate rate estimate. I am only claiming that AMD’s observations alone justify halting the vaccines and that any extrapolation of that number to the entire population based on any reasonable assumptions shows that the stopping condition is exceeded by a large margin.

What other doctors are seeing

AMD polled his colleagues to see if they were seeing the same thing.

  1. 30% confirmed they were
  2. 70% said they either saw nothing at all and/or didn’t want to talk about it

He attributes the 70% seeing nothing as them not being aware of the possibility that the vaccines could be unsafe so any adverse reactions are immediately discounted and discarded; they don’t register.

Therefore, even if we further discount our calculation of 82,000 by 70% in the belief that these rates seen by AMD are inflated, the number critically harmed (24,600) is still way over our stopping threshold and that’s really the only thing I wanted to show.

The Pfizer Phase 3 clinical trial

AMD noted that when the shots were administered, people quickly discovered a high rate of anaphylaxis.

He asked, “How could the clinical trial not have found that?”

Indeed. Anaphylaxis wasn’t mentioned at all in the Phase 3 trial report despite the fact that it is life threatening.

It wasn’t mentioned in the 6 month follow up study either. That study would have included reactions of the placebo cohort who got the vaccine.

Anaphylaxis occurs at 2.47 events per 10,000 doses so there should have been around 10 events observed for the full-vaccinated treatment group (44,000 doses) and a similar number of events when the placebo group was vaccinated.

So we should have seen 21 anaphylaxis events on average yet there were none reported. This is extremely unlikely to happen by chance.

How does Pfizer explain that? This is, of course, a rhetorical question as nobody is going to ask them that question and they don’t have to answer it. That’s just the way it works in medicine. You are not allowed to ask questions like this. It’s “science.” We are teaching our kids to believe whatever the drug companies tell them and not ask questions.

One other “highlight”

This comment at the very end of AMD’s article deserves special mention:

Or as another commenter here wrote: I was a Midwestern nurse last year after the gene therapy roll out. Was a case mgr did discharge planning. Saw 10-12 side effects Daily. Everything you shared and more. 2 cases of amnesia ( one was a healthy anesthesiologist). 1 girl in her twenties with blood in her tears. Had to leave that job.

A girl with blood in her tears?!?! When was the last time you saw that?

Notes

In his writeup, AMD made the case write ups deliberately vague in order to protect patient confidentiality.

Reader feedback

Check out this comment on what is happening in Melbourne, Australia mirrors what was described in this article. She explains “doctors are very worried about what they’re seeing from the jabs but keeping quiet to save their jobs.” Makes perfect sense. A doctor’s first duty is to his/her family. I see this all the time. This is why the doctors I talk to stay quiet. I don’t blame them.

Another reader wrote this:

 Steve,

I love your work. The physician in the Midwest is right. I am a practicing ophthalmologist in the southeast and have come across multiple catastrophic side effects from the shots. I have been sounding the alarm to my friends and colleagues for over a year. Most of these think I am crazy.

It started last year in roughly March when I walked into a patient’s preposition room to have a mom sign a consent. She apologises to me that she had trouble writing for she had just recently had a stroke. I told her I was glad she was here then asked if she knew what the cause was. “It was that shot” she said. She was in the hospital that night. I then went to the OR and told my CRNA the story. She proceeded to tell me her friends daughter died (39) died with a pulmonary embolus 1 month after getting one. I told this to one of my partners who said his friend was in the hospital with myocarditis after having a shot.

I also know of a physician in a nearby practice dropping dead at 52 with a heart attack. He had recently been vaccinated according to his front desk.

I also know of 3 breast cancer diagnosis after vaccinations as well as a transverse myelitis and a brain stem glioma. All of these had been vaccinated but I cannot say that these were caused by the shots.

One of my parent’s good friend’s son in law died suddenly from a heart attack at 39. He was also recently vaccinated.

In my own practice, I have 3 patients with side effects. 1 with increased intracranial pressure . Almost immediately after the second Pfizer dose the patient started experiencing headaches. I saw the child about a week after and she had swollen optic nerves.

A second had uveitis roughly 2 weeks after the first dose.

A third patient had a “spontaneous “ vitreous hemorrhage within 2 weeks of a dose.

There are some others I know of too…

If I mention these to most doctors, they just look at me with blank stares. I have been ridiculed, reprimanded and threatened for just telling physicians my observations.

These need to be stopped yesterday.

Summary

Based on the number of just this one physician’s observations, the vaccines should be immediately halted.

AMD is not an isolated data point. He discovered that 30% of his colleagues are seeing similar things.

I can also personally confirm that speaking confidentially with other physicians (who fear retribution such as loss of medical licenses if they speak out), that AMD is hardly alone. The doctors I know have never before needed to report an event to VAERS in the past and this year have had 20 and 1,000 case reports to make. They won’t talk to the FDA about what they see because they don’t want to have their licenses revoked.

As AMD’s case shows, the medical community makes it impossible for these doctors to speak freely and tell what they know. Doctors are forced to hide in the shadows to tell their story or simply remain silent.

The days of colleagues having open friendly discussions to resolve conflicts are gone. The medical community now uses fear and intimidation techniques to silence any scientific dissent. For example, in Canada, an entire university ganged up on Dr. Byram Bridle to discredit him for speaking out. Would any of the University of Guelph faculty debate him? Of course not! No chance. Some faculty members even signed the joint faculty letter denigrating him without even reading the document he wrote. In their mind, Professor Bridle was wrong and they didn’t even have to bother to take the time to understand his position.

In California today, the legislature is seeking to further empower the medical boards to remove the license of any physician who speaks out against the vaccines. It is a top down dictatorship with the Medical Boards holding all the cards. They are not accountable to anyone. They will not be questioned. In many cases, the doctors who are having their license revoked don’t even know who is examining them and are not allowed to question the authorities on the record. So the boards cannot be held accountable for their actions.

Even though the evidence is clear that these vaccines are harmful and should be stopped, we, as a society, are doing the opposite today with vaccine mandates requiring people to be boosted or be fired. We are requiring doctors like AMD to keep their mouths shut.

There is even a US government form now so you can turn in any doctor who challenges the official narrative. Basically, the government is asking us to be spies to help them eliminate people who disagree with the narrative.

Someone isn’t telling you the truth here, and it isn’t A Midwestern Doctor.

You should be upset. Very upset. This is unconscionable.

Unfortunately, no public health official in America wants to talk about it, and the mainstream press isn’t going to cover it either.

March 11, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment