PHYSICIANS TRY TO HEAL THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP
Interview begins at 11 minutes:
CANCERS & DEATH ON THE RISE: IS THE COVID VAX TO BLAME?
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 8, 2023
FDA admits it has no records indicating covid-19 vaccine safety protocols were followed
By Aaron Siri | ICAN | June 9, 2023
From early in the pandemic, the government has been promising the public that it was taking COVID-19 vaccine safety “very seriously,” and that the vaccines had been subject to “the most intense safety monitoring program in U.S. history.” ICAN likes to confirm these claims for itself but when it tried to do just that, it uncovered that the FDA actually deviated from long-standing protocols concerning vaccine safety.
Since May 9, 2008, the FDA has had vaccine safety procedures in place detailed in a Standard Operating Procedures and Policies (SOPP) document. This document “describes the procedures that the [FDA] staff should routinely follow to coordinate rapid responses to complex vaccine safety issues,” and discusses a Vaccine Safety Team whose “key purpose” is to “coordinate [FDA] rapid responses to vaccine safety issues … and to serve as a resource [] to identify data and policy needs pertaining to vaccine safety.”
One office in the FDA is crucial to this goal and acts as the “official contact for VAERS and is responsible for processing and review of the reports,” as well as “for forwarding those reports to the appropriate contacts within CBER for further action and follow-up.” For example, its staff members identify VAERS adverse event reports that “need a rapid response and complex coordination,” after which they are supposed to “immediately” inform certain FDA management who then alert other sub-agencies.
Given the lofty talk by federal health agencies claiming that COVID vaccines were subject to “the most rigorous – and accurate – review processes globally,” one would think that the FDA, at a minimum, subjected them to at least these already ridiculously weak pre-existing standards for vaccine safety monitoring.
But, after ICAN’s attorneys submitted records requests to the FDA seeking documents on the FDA’s policies concerning the identification of VAERS reports requiring a “rapid response,” as well as documents showing that the FDA had actually followed up on the individual VAERS reports that required a “rapid response,” the FDA replied more than year later with an incredible response: “A search of our records did not locate any documents responsive to your request.”
In a nutshell, the FDA has essentially admitted that it is not following even its own set of already watered-down procedures for vaccine safety monitoring that were in place prior to COVID.
When the curtain is pulled back on the purported “thorough” and “intense” safety monitoring, there is yet again nothing to see. So much for the FDA’s promise to look out for the American people. ICAN will continue to monitor the FDA and share any important updates.
See below for more instances where ICAN uncovered instances where “health” agencies made unsupported claims to the public:
‘Medical Gaslighting’: Physicians Speak Out Against COVID Policies, Call for Reform
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 5, 2023
The Global Health Project last week released a video titled “The Oath,” in which physicians describe the effect on doctors, patients and the healthcare system of silencing dissent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The filmmakers also called on doctors to commit to making foundational changes so that what happened during the pandemic never happens again.
The film features six doctors — Elizabeth Lafay, D.O., Steven Klayman, D.C., Timothy Stonesifer, D.O., Molly Rutherford, M.D., MPH, Michael Turner, M.D., and Amy Offutt, M.D. — who said they are “saying what tens of thousands of silenced medical professionals from all over the world have not been able to say.”
Throughout the video, they respond to a series of questions.
Responding to the first question, “When did you begin to have doubts?” they described how they lost faith in institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Lancet and the pharmaceutical companies as they saw well-respected doctors silenced, articles retracted and corrupted clinical trials exposed.
It became clear the agencies were not acting in the public interest, Turner said, because “they’re captured, they’re paid off, they’re corrupt.“
In response to the second question, “How have people been harmed?” they discussed spiking levels of anxiety and depression that began with the fearmongering at the start of the pandemic.
Lafay described working in the ER during the early days of the pandemic when the hospitals emptied out and there were few COVID-19 patients — but many people arriving with “horrible, debilitating anxiety and depression.”
People stuck at home in front of the television absorbed the message “Stay home, don’t be with your family, don’t be with your friends. Isolate, hibernate,” Offutt said. “It’s really taken its toll.”
“People are fearful and I think that was the goal, to make people fearful and be forced into taking this vaccine,” Klayman added.
They said many people no longer trust the medical profession because doctors have been silent on what happened and that many doctors felt they could not speak out.
As the names of pharmaceutical giants such as Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others flashed across the screen, Lafay said:
“It’s really tough because we’re all owned at this point. It’s easier for me to come on camera maybe and say some things like this because I am an independent practitioner now. If you don’t have your [own] practice, then you really can’t help people.
“And I think that is where a lot of [practitioners’] fear comes from, the fear of not being employed.”
But there are larger moral issues at stake, too, Klayman said, adding: “Are you going to give in to what is wrong? Or are you going to fight for what is right?”
Offutt said she thought “fixing the broken system” begins with rebuilding the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors used to spend more time with patients, she said, but then, “It became a business, and I was just one of the employees.”
“There is uniformity and conformity that’s encouraged, and the decision-makers at the top usually are not physicians, and this is a big problem, right?” Turner asked. Instead, they are lawyers looking to minimize risk and accountants looking to maximize profits.
When doctors work for these corporations, Lafay said, insurance and pharmaceutical companies are calling the shots:
“We don’t really have a voice anymore. We’re not really making choices that are best for our patients. We’re checking boxes.
“Unless we fight for the doctor-patient relationship and work to maintain privacy and decision-making that is based on an individual patient scenario, then that will be lost. The art of medicine will be gone, and we may as well be replaced by artificial intelligence.”
The doctors said in order to heal, you should “own your health” — eat well, get sunshine, move around, connect in person and to other people.
“I think doctors who maybe did some things that they regret should come out and acknowledge what they did and assure patients that they’re going to learn from it and change,” Rutherford said. “And then I think we need the truth. We need to investigate, why did all of this happen and how can we keep this from ever happening again?”
Turner said people from across the political spectrum and all walks of life are starting to come together around principles such as “accountability, honesty, respect, self-determination, bodily autonomy, freedom.”
“There’s an awakening going on, so it’s exciting and we’re gonna come out the other side,” he said.
The video closes with the oath:
“I solemnly swear to listen to my patients, respect their wishes, and together make the best choices for that individual and to do no harm.”
Video marks launch of Global Health Project
The video release marked the launch of the Global Health Project, an organization hoping to raise awareness of the coercive power exerted on society by global health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic and to build a movement to create a better system.
The group began as a conversation among physicians and health researchers about what happened during the pandemic and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, Andrea Nazarenko, Ph.D., a spokesperson for the organization, told The Defender.
The group hopes the video will open the door for conversation, Katarina Lindley, D.O., family physician and another group spokesperson, said.
A doctor might hear the physicians’ stories and say, “That’s exactly how it happened to me,” she said. Or, patients can go to their doctors and raise these issues with them.
Lindley also said that statements by global leaders, the World Health Organization’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations, and other evidence point to the fact something like the COVID-19 pandemic can happen again, and if it does, the Global Health Project wants to build an informed and connected public. She continued:
“So our hope is that by sharing these stories, by empowering the public as well, we want them to question things … when new things come along. And if they feel in their gut something is wrong, they need to trust their gut, then they really become advocates for themselves, for their family, for their friends.
“And I’m hoping that physicians will remember why they took the Hippocratic oath … And there’s lots of things that we need to start questioning that maybe we didn’t question before.”
While the changes they are talking about are systemic, Lindley said it starts in the doctor-patient relationship.
When someone’s car breaks down, she said, they usually try to find a good mechanic by asking friends and shopping around.
“I think when it comes to medicine and healthcare, we kind of almost need to do the same thing. Shop around … interview your doctor. Even if you have insurance and you’re assigned to a doctor, you don’t have to accept the doctor.”
People can find doctors who are independent, who have “stepped away from the matrix, as I call it,” Lindley said, so they can build great relationships with patients.
Nazarenko added:
“Ultimately, what we experienced during the pandemic was traumatic. We are suffering from collective trauma at a societal level. Just like any other trauma, this trauma will not disappear by ‘moving on’ and ‘forgetting about it.’ Trauma must be processed.
“Unfortunately, what we are facing right now is the mainstream narrative telling us to ‘forget about it,’ to ‘just move on,’ and to ignore our feelings (‘just let it go’). This is medical gaslighting at a population level. In any other relationship, we would identify this as the behavior of an abuser.
“If we want to move on and create a world of togetherness, we need to talk about it. We don’t all need to agree on everything — but we need to have the conversation.
“Silence leaves us vulnerable to this happening again. They separated us for a reason. This video is about bringing people together again and engaging in authentic conversations.”
Watch here:
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.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
FDA’s ‘Rumor Control’ Hub Encourages Public to ‘Snitch’ on ‘Misinformation Spreaders’
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 6, 2023
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an updated “Rumor Control” hub aimed at enlisting the public to help stop the spread of “misinformation.”
The updated webpage, first launched in August 2022, includes a new video that defines misinformation as information that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading … spreading intentionally and unintentionally.”
The agency said its Rumor Control hub provides the public with tools to identify and report on “misinformation.”
“Some individuals and organizations promote opinions online disguised as fact,” the FDA site says, adding that misinformation spreads “six times faster than facts.”
The video warns that people may be misled by headlines or out-of-context statements, particularly when they are shared by a trusted person.
But, according to the video, people can determine whether something is actually true by getting the information from three types of “authoritative” sources that can be trusted to provide real facts: medical journals, a nonprofit “fact checker” or a government website.
“The FDA is concerned ‘health misinformation’ is negatively impacting the public’s health,” the agency said. The FDA tweeted the video to promote the hub.
The Rumor Control site includes links for reporting misinformation on all major social media sites. By following the links, users can find instructions to mark posts as “false news,” “false information” or “inappropriate content,” depending on the website.
“Bernie’s Tweets” on Twitter called the website the FDA’s “‘snitch’ page.”
https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1664917637455855617
“The federal government continues to try and fool the public into thinking misinformation is a dire problem and a crime,” Dr. Meryl Nass wrote on her Substack. “Misinformation is whatever the government does not want you to know.”
Nass added, “Clearly, the feds are getting nervous that their cons on the people are being recognized.”
The hub provides a poster that explains what misinformation is and how to address it “in language even a third grader can understand,” Nass wrote.
It explains that trusted authorities’ recommendations may change because science changes, but people should always “trust science.”
The site includes FDA-approved facts about COVID-19, sunscreen and supplements.
FDA’s project to ‘save lives’ by policing online content
Since FDA Commissioner Robert Califf began his second tenure as the agency’s head in February 2022, he has made combating “misinformation” one of his top priorities, arguing it is “a leading cause of preventable death in America now” — though “this cannot be proved,” he said.
In an Aug. 22, 2022, article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Califf wrote that “the global information environment has been contaminated by misinformation and disinformation.” He added:
“The FDA must be more proactive in preempting and countering misinformation [but there is a need for] collaboration across sectors to create an information environment in which decisions [by] consumers, patients, and clinicians are more likely to be informed by reliable information based on high-quality evidence from trustworthy sources.”
The Rumor Control initiative is one of several such initiatives launched during Califf’s tenure.
For example, the FDA also created a series of fact-checking YouTube videos — “Just a Minute” — that features Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, addressing COVID-19 “myths.”
The FDA also uses Twitter to tweet about misinformation, and Instagram to post memes encouraging vaccination.
Califf said that he believes “in the power of social media being used for good,” Fierce Pharma reported.
According to The Associated Press (AP), the FDA also can use a tactic known as “prebunking,” by which the agency defines something as “misinformation” before readers have an opportunity to encounter it elsewhere as possibly true.
The FDA has the ability to do this because Google “prioritizes credible websites” like the FDA’s in its searches.
Rumor Control works as a prebunking strategy that “debunks a long list of false claims about vaccines” and presents them first in people’s Google searches, according to the AP.
Califf previously worked at Verily, a life sciences company owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Fact-checking the FDA
The most current version of the FDA’s fact check on COVID-19, linked from the Rumor Control hub, assures readers, for example, that vaccination does not make people more susceptible to the latest variants of COVID-19 and that the vaccine is safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
But just last week, the Cleveland Clinic published a peer-reviewed study that found the more doses of COVID-19 vaccines a person receives, the higher the risk of getting the virus.
A number of recent studies revealed striking risks to pregnant women who get the COVID-19 vaccine and identified serious flaws in the methods government agencies used to conclude they are safe.
Government health officials knew about several of those studies, including Pfizer’s own clinical trial studies, before they recommended the shots for pregnant women.
The FDA also came under fire for granting Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12-15 despite having identified that “safety signals” existed for myocarditis in young males following COVID-19 jabs.
The FDA, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, withheld this information from the public.
In the last two years, the FDA also was widely criticized for granting approval to an unproven Alzheimer’s drug, for its delayed response to a contaminated baby formula plant and for approving the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine for pregnant women despite concerns about premature births identified in clinical trials, among many other issues.
Nass wrote that in 1992, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which allowed the FDA to charge manufacturers to regulate their products, compromising its integrity to such an extent that the FDA has become “a rogue agency for hire.”
Most funding the FDA uses to evaluate whether drugs are safe and effective comes from industry, she wrote, and most drugs seeking approval get fast-tracked and evaluated in just six months.
Manufacturers of drugs that are dangerous can often avoid liability by working with the FDA to write the label in such a way that meets disclosure requirements.
“So if you are looking to avoid misinformation, the FDA is the last place you might go to for truth, honesty, ethics and consideration of the public’s welfare,” Nass wrote.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Jacinda Ardern awarded “Damehood” for handling of the pandemic, as excess deaths mount amid media crackdown
2023 deaths are 25% above normal – but are hidden from the public
BY IGOR CHUDOV | JUNE 5, 2023
New Zealand’s government awarded “damehood” – the second-highest honor in the country – to its former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
The award was given for “leading the country through the Covid pandemic.”
Who gave Jacinda this highest honor? Her new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins. Mr. Hipkins was Jacinda’s Health Minister during the pandemic, so by giving her the highest honor for handling the pandemic, he also implicitly “honored” himself.
Jacinda did some very unusual things during the pandemic. Her government forbade New Zealand citizens from returning to their own country. She also supported a “two-tier society,” basically robbing unvaccinated New Zealanders of their constitutional rights and laughing about it:
How is New Zealand doing? Take a look at the Short-Term Mortality database. In 2023, New Zealanders are dying at excess rates of around 25% of normal.
https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/
A successful pandemic policy would not result in roughly 25% excess mortality in the fourth year of the pandemic. The officials insist that Covid is not responsible for most of these deaths, leaving the actual cause an unspoken mystery.
Most New Zealanders are unaware that their chances of dying increased by a quarter because their country’s press is silent on excess deaths. The silence and lack of public awareness are not accidental: the government is intensifying its crackdown on social networks and the media.
This June, the NZ government revealed its initiative for “Safer Online Services and Media Platforms.”
The government is proposing to create “A new industry regulator” armed with powers to punish “media platforms”:
The new regulator would make sure social media platforms follow codes to keep people safe. Media services like TV and radio broadcasters would also need to follow new codes tailored to their industry. The regulator would have the power to check information from platforms to make sure they follow the codes and could issue penalties for serious failures of compliance. This would ensure everyone is playing by the same rules and that consumer safety is prioritised.
While the proposal gives lip service to “protecting children,” it quickly advances to “hate speech,” the right of the government to remove and block content, and more:
Continuing to remove and block access to the most harmful content – government interventions to censor content and criminalise associated behaviour would remain at the extreme high end of harm. The new framework would continue criminal sanctions for dealing with ‘objectionable’ (illegal) material, including powers to issue takedown notices for this type of content.
There would still be a place for a censorship role, with powers to determine whether the most harmful content should be classified as illegal to create, possess, or share.
Failure to comply with the requirements could lead to authors, creators, and publishers being suspended, removed, or prevented from accessing the platforms’ services. They may also be blacklisted if they show repeated harmful behaviour.
Regulated Platforms would need to implement approved codes of practice that meet legislated core safety objectives and minimum expectations
NZ plans to use Artificial Intelligence to do censorship:
safeguards and barriers to deter the upload and creation of risky content – for example, time-lags or verification requirements for specific types of content
methods to identify harmful content and prevent how it is shared and amplified. This would include ways to remove this content, such as:
• through human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) moderation practices
• downgrading content visibility
• removing recidivist individuals and entities – such as identifying bots and troll accounts that routinely post unsafe content • using authenticity markers.
Anyway, I am not a citizen of New Zealand, so I cannot tell that country how to govern itself.
What I can say, however, is that I am very sorry for the fine citizens of that remote land, who lost their constitutional protections, are dying at excessive rates, are largely unaware of the danger they are in, and have a government more interested in hiding the truth from the population and awarding highest honors to its members.
Does Jacinda deserve her “damehood”? Or does she deserve something else?
Vaccinated Veterans MORE Likely to Die from COVID, VA Study Proves
It’s Even Worse to Be Boosted
BY IGOR CHUDOV | JUNE 2, 2023
The U.S. Veterans Administration oversees the medical care of the United States Armed Forces veterans. It has complete medical records of every veteran, including their hospitalizations, vaccinations, deaths, and more.
Therefore, studies of veterans that include sub-populations broken down by vaccination status provide accurate data about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines. I already reported on two such studies: one shows that COVID and flu vaccines are useless at preventing hospitalization due to COVID or flu, and another (posted on Feb 2022) proves that Covid vaccines cause myocarditis in veterans.
A new study was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and is worth a look.
The study is very straightforward: it looked at 1,459 veterans receiving Merck’s Molnupiravir and compared them with 63,281 veterans NOT receiving it. Its objective was to see if Molnupiravir was helpful (drumroll, it was not). The period covered was from Jan 1 to August 21, 2022.
The study has the breakdown of the Molnupiravir group and the standard-treatment group by vaccination status.
Such a breakdown allows us to check which veterans did better: the COVID-vaccinated or the unvaccinated.
Look at the “control group”: veterans who did NOT receive Molnupiravir and received standard care instead (circled above). Let’s make a nice table out of that:
Each category above contains only US veterans, mostly older males, so they are roughly the same age category. Therefore, age confounding can change the picture somewhat but should not change too much. They all have access to the same VA medical resources, so no medical disparities exist. The only difference between them is their vaccination status.
You would think that right in the midst of the deadly COVID pandemic, many lives of those older persons would be saved by safe, effective, science-backed COVID vaccines, right? Every TV program told us this last year, so it must be true! (note my sarcasm)
Guess what? It was the opposite! The category in the above table with the least hospitalizations and deaths is the veterans who refused COVID vaccines and remained unvaccinated. Those had only 15.86 veterans per 1,000 hospitalized or dead. The more vaccines the veterans received, the worse their outcome: double-dosed veterans had 24.90 hospitalizations/deaths per thousand and boosted veterans had 27 hospitalizations per thousand.
These ratios are derived from a population with precisely known vaccination status of each participant. They show that the Covid vaccine does not work – when vaccination statuses are known, and when outcomes are counted properly.
This finding is based on a plain reading of numbers provided (but not discussed) by the study authors. They only looked at the effectiveness of Molnupiravir. By the way, they found Monupiravir ineffective and harmful.
Had they looked, or were allowed to look at, the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, based on their own data, their findings would be much more explosive.
If I may guess, had they tried to bring our attention to the ineffectiveness of COVID vaccines, the article would not have been published to maintain “scientific consensus,” nicely described by El Gato Malo. Despite all that, I am thankful to the authors who gave us the numbers we can properly interpret ourselves.
So, to recap, the unvaccinated veterans had the LOWEST rate of hospitalizations and deaths.
The UK’s “Chilling” Secret Unit That Monitored Lockdown Dissent
More revelations about the secretive Counter Disinformation Unit
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023
A clandestine UK Government unit dubbed the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) has been implicated in a troubling endeavor to curb and control online discussions about the controversial Covid-19 lockdown policies. The covert operation allegedly involved the collaboration of social media companies in a strategic bid to quell supposed domestic “threats.”
According to revelations from Freedom of Information requests and data protection requests from The Telegraph, posts critical of Covid-19 restrictions, including those questioning mass vaccination of children, were systematically removed.
Social media companies are now under scrutiny following allegations that their technologies were deployed to thwart the wide circulation or promotion of posts tagged as potentially problematic by the CDU or its Cabinet Office equivalent.
The files revealed the surreptitious monitoring of critics of the Government’s Covid plans. Artificial intelligence firms were reportedly enlisted by the government to search social media platforms, flagging any discussions opposing vaccine passports.
In a startling revelation, the BBC was implicated in clandestine government policy discussions regarding this alleged misinformation.
The CDU, hosted by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), operated a “trusted flagger” system with major social media companies. This mechanism expedited requests for content removal. The CDU, still operational, was formed in 2019, initially focusing on the European elections, later shifting its attention to the pandemic.
Critics, including MPs and freedom of speech campaigners, have labeled the revelations as “truly chilling” and a strategy tantamount to “censoring British citizens” — a tactic likened to those of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Any attempt by governments to shut down legitimate debate is hugely concerning, but to discover that DCMS actively sought to censor the views of those who were speaking up for children’s welfare is truly chilling,” said Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP to The Telegraph.
A government spokesman refuted the allegations, stating that the unit was designed to track narratives and trends using publicly available information to safeguard public health and national security. The spokesman insisted that the unit never monitored individuals and had a strict policy against referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms.
Exposed: The UK Company Subjecting Your Social Media Posts To State Surveillance
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023
A UK government-funded artificial intelligence (AI) firm based in an unassuming industrial estate in Yorkshire, England, has been engaged in state surveillance, monitoring the social media posts of citizens, a recent revelation suggests.
Logically, the firm in question, has earned over £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) from government contracts to identify and analyze “disinformation” and “misinformation” spread across social media.
The AI company was started by Lyric Jain, a 27-year-old Cambridge engineering graduate, who launched the technology first during Indian elections. With one of the largest dedicated fact-checking teams globally, the company sifts through material from hundreds of thousands of media sources and all public posts on major social media platforms.
Logically has bagged lucrative deals, including a £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) contract with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and another worth up to £1.4 million (1.7 million uSD) with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile vaccine service individuals, The Telegraph reported. Its client list includes US federal agencies, the Indian electoral commission, TikTok, and Facebook.
While Logically asserts that it does not share evidence collected for the UK Government with Facebook, this partnership has ignited concerns among freedom of speech campaigners.
The company’s responsibilities grew over time, aiding in building a comprehensive picture of potentially harmful misinformation and disinformation. Documents revealed that it produced regular “Covid-19 Mis/Disinformation Platform Terms of Service Reports” for the Counter-disinformation Unit – a secretive operation within the DCMS.
A public document titled “Covid-19 Disinformation in the UK” disclosed Logically’s perspective, referring to “anti-lockdown” and “anti-Covid-19 vaccine sentiment”, along with hashtags “#sackvallance” and “#sackwhitty” as evidence of “a strong disdain for expert advice.”
Logically defended its actions, stating that it is possible for content not specifically mis- or disinformation to be included in a report if there is a potential for a narrative to be weaponized.
The firm denied limiting freedom of speech, stating: “We do not specifically monitor individuals and their behavior, nor do we make any recommendations that limit their right to free speech… We monitor content, including narratives and trends across public information environments online, to help tackle the proliferation of online harms, mis- and disinformation, and prevent real-world harms.”
The company’s practices have raised questions about freedom of speech and privacy rights. Critics argue that this case illuminates the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by the powerful convergence of artificial intelligence and big data.
The Ursula von der Leyen Affair
Free West Media | June 2, 2023
After a criminal complaint in Belgium against the President of the European Commission, the so-called SMS-case, now takes a new turn. The judge responsible for the investigation will likely gain access to the secret messages exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, at least if they haven’t been deleted.
The agreements on vaccines negotiated via SMS between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have caused much ink to flow, not least because many legally knowledgeable claim that the EU Commission, which is not elected, does not have the mandate to negotiate in these matters.
Due to this suspicion of negotiations “outside the framework” of the mega-contract for vaccine procurement signed, it would constitute a crime not to present these SMS messages, which are legally considered administrative documents and thus should be recorded. If they have been deleted, President Ursula von der Leyen, as the responsible head of a public authority, must answer in court. The case could reveal the existence of “a corruption pact,” according to French lawyer Diane Protat, but has received very little attention in mainstream media.
Several alternative media have written about the administrative contortions in the case when EU parliament members twice unsuccessfully invited Pfizer’s CEO to come and explain himself before the European Parliament. He accepted the first invitation, but canceled at the last minute and sent a subordinate, Janine Small, instead. When asked directly, she admitted that they had not tested whether the vaccine was effective against transmission but stubbornly refused to disclose any financial terms in the agreement.
Conflicts of interest? Corruption?
Since October 2022, an investigation has been ongoing within the European authorities. Then in December, the BonSens association initiated a procedure at the New York State Court to have the infamous text messages handed over, as they have serious suspicions against the President of the European Commission regarding conflicts of interest or even corruption.
The fact is that no official document precisely describes the official terms from the negotiations of the gigantic third contract for the purchase of Pfizer vaccines, covering 1.8 billion doses, for an amount of more than 70 billion euros.
Something else not reported to any significant extent by mainstream media is that the New York Times sued the European Commission, on the same grounds, to gain access to the text messages on January 25, 2023.
On April 5, 2023, lobbyist Frédéric Baldan filed a new complaint, this time as a criminal case in Belgium, to investigating judge Frenay in Liège. His complaint directly refers to the issue of the third contract for vaccine procurement and the fact that the negotiations were apparently conducted outside the usual framework to negotiate this type of contract, bypassing the steering committee responsible for evaluating the bids. Ursula von der Leyen, however, has no mandate giving her the right to intervene in this type of contract negotiation.
Belgian law has a peculiarity. A public authority operator who arbitrarily violates a constitutional law risks imprisonment (article 151 of the penal code). In this case, it is about the right to allow every citizen access to administrative documents, according to the principle of publicity.
The complaint is thus from a private individual and concerns civil liability for improper exercise of authority, exceeding powers, destruction of public records, illegal bias, and corruption. The complaint, therefore, aims to cover all eventualities.
This case is a real earthquake on the European political scene, which has already been hit by suspicions of corruption against the EU’s Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou and the QatarGate scandal.
Chaos
Even though the EU Commission did not want to let citizens, or even EU parliamentarians, shed light on the (expensive) economic conditions for the purchases of vaccines, a legal solution could be found at the state level and its jurisdiction, in this case, Belgium.
Moreover, a dozen European states, including Poland and Bulgaria, are now questioning the purchase price of vaccine doses and are concerned about the obligation to recommend products that, besides widespread doubt about their real effectiveness, are no longer useful since the Covid-19 epidemic phenomenon is over.
In France, 46 million doses remain in the health administration’s warehouse and will go to waste. There are more than 30 million doses in Italy and more than 10 million in Belgium. A real waste. How to support – or how it was possible to support – the idea that even more doses need to be purchased under threat of being sued for non-compliance with a commercial contract … that nobody gets to see?
This situation has handed all the cards to the pharmaceutical industry, primarily to Pfizer, which has grabbed more than three-quarters of the sales contracts. This prompts European Parliament Member Michèle Rivasi, from Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), to say:
“It seems as if it is the pharmaceutical companies that have been holding the pen at the EU Commission.”
She has discussed the case in several French media, such as the left-wing newspaper l’Humanité, which has presented the subject on its YouTube channel. The newspaper Valeurs Actuelles brought up the subject in a column by Patricia de Sagazan. The EU news website EURACTIV covered the subject. Sud-Radio also addressed this news thanks to André Bercoff, who left the word to Diane Protat and Frédéric Baldan.
A Catastrophic Silence for Democracy
The subject could quickly go from soap opera to a major legal and political scandal. The President of the EU Commission, who already has a turbulent past with the German justice system from when she was the country’s defense minister, has shown many signs of close friendship with Albert Bourla, not least through her husband, who works in the pharmaceutical field.
The exchanged text messages must be shown to the public to not further discredit the EU institutions, short-circuited by von der Leyen’s wish to handle this matter herself. EU institutions suffer from an apparent worrying structural weakness, namely, being overly exposed to the power behind industrial and financial lobbying groups.
Since the beginning of the “health crisis” in 2020, mainstream media has shown a clear inactivity on these issues. The ethical rules for journalists established in the Munich Declaration of 1971 aim to guarantee citizens objective and factual information about the dangers threatening public affairs and the common interest. Today’s corps of journalists often seems to have forgotten these rules.
This silence is serious for democracy and stability in the political sphere in Europe. While citizens’ mistrust of the media continues to grow in Europe, this situation also damages the image of the EU, and its member states that do not react to the deficiencies in the supranational institutions that now largely govern the countries.
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Book Review
Former Insiders Criticize Iran Policy as U.S. Hegemony
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
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