By Dr. Joseph Mercola | April 7, 2022
As evidence of a potential bioweapons cover-up has started emerging, a company called Metabiota is gaining prominence. The links between Metabiota and several key players in the COVID pandemic and/or the Ukraine labs story are manifold, so there’s no really simple way to unravel it in a logical sequence. That said, let’s start with what Metabiota does and the connections of its founder, and expand from there.
Metabiota’s Mission
Metabiota’s mission is to make the world more resilient to epidemics by providing “data, analytics, advice and training to prepare for global health threats and mitigate their impacts.”1
Through data analysis, they help “decision makers across government and industry” to estimate and mitigate pandemic risks. But they also claim to support “sustainable development,” which seems to have little to do with pandemic risk management.
That term, “sustainable development,” is one promoted by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF). It’s part and parcel of Schwab’s plan for a global Great Reset and transhumanist revolution (aka, the Fourth Industrial Revolution).
It’s not surprising, then, to find out that the founder of Metabiota, Nathan Wolfe, not only has close ties to the WEF, but is also a rising star there. He’s a WEF Young Global Leader graduate and was awarded the WEF’s Technology Pioneer award in 2021.
Metabiota and the Search for Pandemic Viruses
Metabiota was a core partner of a United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Pandemic Threat Program called PREDICT, which sought to identify viruses with pandemic potential.
Contractors funded through this program have included the EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak. The PREDICT program, directed by Dennis Carroll, appears to have served as a proof of concept for the Global Virome Project that Carroll founded.
According to a recent investigation by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK),2 Carroll appears to have diverted government funds from the PREDICT program while he was still running it, to fund this personal side project, which was set up with the intention to collect, identify and catalogue 1 million viruses from wildlife in an effort to predict which ones might cause a human epidemic.
Metabiota’s Funding
Metabiota receives funding from several interconnected organizations and agencies, including:3
•Pilot Growth Management, cofounded by Neil Callahan. Callahan is also a cofounder of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, and he sits on Metabiota’s board of advisers
•The Global Virome Project, which reportedly paid (or was planning to pay) Metabiota $341,000 to conduct a cost-benefit analysis4
•In-Q-Tel, a CIA venture capital firm that specializes in high-tech investments that support or benefit the intelligence capacity of U.S. intelligence agencies
•The U.S. Department of Defense’s Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).5 Specifically, in 2014, DTRA awarded Metabiota $18.4 million in federal contracts for scientific and technical consulting services to the DTRA’s labs in Ukraine and Georgia6
By outsourcing work to private companies, DTRA is able to circumvent Congressional oversight. Russia is now accusing the U.S. of funding secret and illegal bioweapons research in these Ukraine labs, and claims this was the real reason behind its invasion
•Rosemont Seneca,7 an investment fund co-managed by Hunter Biden.8 If Russia’s accusations turn out to be true, this tie may prove deeply problematic for the White House, as this means the Biden family was more or less directly involved in the funding of that research
Wolfe has also received more than $20 million in research grants from Google, the NIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, just to name a few, and was a friend of now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein. In his 2012 book, “The Viral Storm,” Wolfe thanked friends for their support, including Epstein and Boris Nikolic. Nikolic, a biotech venture capitalist, was named “back-up executor” in Epstein’s will.9
Epstein, who besides being a convicted pedophile and accused child sex trafficker, had a robust interest in eugenics. It’s now well-known that he dreamed of creating a “superhuman” race of his own by impregnating dozens of women at a time at his New Mexico ranch.10 Epstein also managed to secure meetings with Bill Gates,11 whose family history is also marked by an interest in eugenics and population control.
Metabiota’s Founder Tied to Suspect in COVID Pandemic
In addition to having close ties to the WEF and its Great Reset agenda, Wolfe, the founder of Metabiota, has also served on the EcoHealth Alliance’s editorial board since 2004. In 2017, he even co-wrote a study on coronaviruses in bats together with EcoHealth Alliance president, Peter Daszak.
As you may recall, EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on pandemic prevention, worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, where SARS-CoV-2 is suspected of having originated.12
Daszak — who received funding for coronavirus research from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the U.S. State Department13 — subcontracted some of that work to Shi Zheng-li at the WIV. He was also the coauthor on research projects at the WIV.
Once rumors of SARS-CoV-2 being man-made first began, Daszak played a central role in the plot to obscure the lab origin by crafting a scientific statement condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.”14,15 This manufactured “consensus” was then relied on by the media to counter anyone presenting theories and evidence to the contrary.
This, despite the fact that he, in 2015, warned that a global pandemic might occur from a laboratory incident — and that “the risks were greater with the sort of virus manipulation research being carried out in Wuhan”!16
In 2021, two investigations into the origins of the COVID pandemic were opened, one by the World Health Organization17 and another by The Lancet,18 and Daszak somehow managed to end up on both of these committees, despite having openly and repeatedly dismissed the possibility of the pandemic being the result of a lab leak.19
Editor’s note: The WHO reference has been scrubbed from both the agency’s website and internet archives, but several news stories like this one from NPR,20 published after the investigation was launched, are still live and accessible.
Interestingly, one of EcoHealth Alliance’s policy advisers is a former Fort Detrick commander named David Franz. Fort Detrick is the principal U.S. government-run “biodefense” facility, although Franz himself has publicly admitted that “in biology … everything is dual use — the people, the facilities and the equipment.”21
Metabiota and the DTRA
In late May 2016, Metabiota hired Andrew C. Weber,22 a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to head up its Global Partnerships.23 Between 2009 and 2014, Weber served as assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense under then-president Obama.
Weber is credited with creating the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) — a combat support agency within the U.S. DoD, specializing in countering weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons24,25 — and as mentioned earlier, the DTRA has reportedly funded Metabiota to operate U.S.-funded biological research labs in Ukraine.
The DTRA has also issued a number of grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, totaling at least $37.5 million,26,27 including a 2017 grant for $6.5 million to “understand the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in Western Asia.”28
According to a December 2020 report by The Defender,29 EcoHealth Alliance had tried to hide most of the Pentagon funding that it had received between 2013 and 2020, most of which came from the DTRA.
Metabiota’s Bungled Ebola Response
In 2016, CBS News published a scathing critique of Metabiota’s response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.30 Metabiota had been hired by the WHO and the local government of Sierra Leone to monitor the spread of the epidemic, but according to an investigation by The Associated Press, “some of the company’s actions made an already chaotic situation worse.”
In a July 17, 2014, email obtained by AP, Dr. Eric Bertherat, medical officer at the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response, complained about misdiagnoses and “total confusion” at the small laboratory Metabiota shared with Tulane University in Kenema, Sierra Leone.
According to Bertherat, there was “no tracking of the samples” and “absolutely no control on what is being done.” “This is a situation that WHO can no longer endorse,” he wrote. Similarly, Sylvia Blyden, special executive assistant to the president of Sierra Leone, told AP Metabiota’s response was a disaster:31
“’They messed up the entire region,’ she said. She called Metabiota’s attempt to claim credit for its Ebola work ‘an insult for the memories of thousands of Africans who have died.’”
U.S. health official Austin Demby, who evaluated Metabiota’s and Tulane’s lab work at the request of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the government of Sierra Leone, was also critical.
In one email, Demby noted used needles were left out and there was no ultraviolet light for decontamination. The space was also too small to safely process blood samples. “The cross-contamination potential is huge and quite frankly unacceptable,” he wrote.
Anja Wolz, an emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, told AP she witnessed Metabiota workers entering homes of suspected Ebola patients without protective gear, and leaving high-risk areas without performing any kind of decontamination procedure. She also accused Metabiota of miscalculating the severity of the outbreak, while insisting that they had the situation under control when clearly, they didn’t.
Tulane microbiology professor Bob Garry was also critical of Metabiota’s choice to have Dr. Jean-Paul Gonzalez run the operation, as Gonzalez, in 1994, had accidentally gotten infected with a rare hemorrhagic fever while working in a Yale University lab.
He failed to notify anyone about the exposure for more than a week, a delay that put more than 100 other people at risk. Gonzalez was ordered to take a remedial safety course, but according to Garry, such carelessness was a red flag, and he didn’t think Gonzalez was the right man to teach Sierra Leoneans about Ebola.
“Do you really want the person who infected himself with hemorrhagic fever going around explaining to people how to be safe?” Garry asked in an email to a Metabiota media representative. Wolfe defended his company, saying there was no evidence they’d done anything wrong. Some of the problems he blamed on misunderstandings, and others on commercial rivalry.
Lab Accident ‘Most Likely,’ yet Least Probed Cause of COVID
In a March 28, 2022, report,32 U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) revealed the contents of a 2020 State Department memo33 obtained by the group. USRTK writes:34
“‘Origin of the outbreak: The Wuhan labs remained the most likely but least probed,’ reads the topline. The memo is written as a BLUF — ‘bottom line up front’ — a style of communication used in the military. The identity of the author or authors is unknown …
‘BLUF: There is no direct, smoking gun evidence to prove that a leak from Wuhan labs caused the pandemic, but there is circumstantial evidence to suggest such is the case,’ the memo reads. Apparently drafted in spring 2020, the memo details circumstantial evidence for the ‘lab leak’ theory — the idea that COVID-19 originated at one of the labs in Wuhan, China, the pandemic’s epicenter.
The memo raises concerns about the ‘massive amount’ of research on novel coronaviruses apparently conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control lab … The memo also flags biosafety lapses at both labs, calling the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s ‘management of deadly viruses and virus-carrying lab animals … appallingly poor and negligent.’
The memo provides an extraordinary window into behind-the-scenes concerns about a lab accident among U.S. foreign policy leaders, even as this line of inquiry was deemed a conspiracy theory by international virologists, some of whom had undisclosed conflicts of interest.
The memo also calls into question these virologists’ impartiality. Shi Zhengli, a Wuhan Institute of Virology coronavirus researcher nicknamed the ‘Bat Woman,’ has forged wide-reaching international collaborations, including with prestigious Western virologists, the memo notes.
‘Suspicion lingers that Shi holds an important and powerful position in the field in China and has extensive cooperation with many [international] virologists who might be doing her a favor,’ it reads …
The memo laments that ‘the most logical place to investigate the virus origin has been completely sealed off from inquiry by the [Chinese Communist Party]’ … The memo even suggests that other hypotheses may have served as a distraction from a probe of the city’s extensive research on novel coronaviruses. ‘All other theories are likely to be a decoy to prevent an inquiry [into] the WCDC and WIV,’ it states …
The memo cites a 2015 paper35 coauthored by Shi titled ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence’ that described creating a ‘chimera,’ or engineered virus, with the spike protein of a coronavirus from a Chinese horseshoe bat.
Editors at Nature Medicine added a note in March 2020 cautioning that the article was ‘being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered’ … But the memo shows that the State Department indeed considered the paper relevant to the pandemic’s origins.”
NIH Retracted Gene Sequence at WIV Researcher’s Request
While we’ve yet to obtain bulletproof evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was developed as a bioweapon, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction. Disturbingly, as time goes on, more and more of this circumstantial evidence seems to highlight the United States’ involvement. If one proverbial finger is pointing at China, four others are pointing back at us.
This is profoundly bad news, but it really ought to strengthen our resolve to get to the bottom of it. None of us are safe until the mad scientists responsible for this pandemic are brought to justice. It doesn’t matter who they are. In all likelihood, we’ll find that blame cannot be pinned on a single nation. At bare minimum, the U.S. and China appear to be covering for each other.
As just one example, there are the deletions of information that have occurred both at the National Institutes of Health and the WIV, either at the other’s request, or as what appears to be a favor.
As reported by Just the News,36 NIH deleted a genetic sequencing submission of SARS-CoV-2 from its Sequence Read Archive (SRA) at the request of a researcher at the WIV. Emails37 obtained via FOIA request to the NIH by Empower Oversight show a WIV researcher who had submitted two genetic sequences to the SRA, one in March 2020, and a second in June 2020, asked to have the last one retracted.
NIH initially stated that it would be better to edit or replace the submission rather than retracting it, but the researcher insisted it be removed, which they did. To be fair, the NIH also states it has retracted at least eight SRA submissions in total, most from American researchers, at their request. However, emails also show the NIH directed reporters on how to provide more favorable and less sensationalized coverage of the deletion of the Chinese sequence. Just the News writes:38
“[Empower Oversight] says one of the most disconcerting elements of the emails is evidence showing the NIH has refused to participate in a transparent process to examine data on the deleted sequences.
‘Most importantly, why has NIH refused to examine archival copies of deleted sequences in an open scientific process to determine whether any of that information might be able to shed light on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic?’ the group asked.
However, that argument was dismissed by NIH official Steve Sherry. Although sequences are never fully deleted, according to the agency, Sherry told a researcher who asked for transparency, ‘As you know, when data sets are withdrawn from the database, that status does not permit use for further analyses.’”
WIV Deleted Mentions of US Collaborators
The WIV has also deleted information in what appears to be an effort to shield the NIH. Shortly after Fauci testified in a Senate hearing in March 2021,39 the WIV quietly deleted all mentions of its collaboration with Fauci’s NIAID, the NIH and other American research partners from its website. As reported May 15, 2021, by The National Pulse :40
“March 21st, 2021, the lab’s website listed six U.S.-based research partners: University of Alabama, University of North Texas, EcoHealth Alliance, Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States, and the National Wildlife Federation.41
One day later, the page was revised to contain just two research partners — EcoHealth Alliance and the University of Alabama.42 By March 23rd, EcoHealth Alliance was the sole partner remaining.43
EcoHealth Alliance is run by long-standing Chinese Communist Party-partner Dr. Peter Daszak, who National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has repeatedly claimed will be the first ‘fall guy’ of the Wuhan lab debacle …
Beyond establishing a working relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now-deleted posts44 from the site also detail studies bearing the hallmarks of gain-of-function research conducted with the Wuhan-based lab.”
Indeed, a now-deleted WIV web page titled “Will SARS Come Back?” stated that:45
“Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with researchers from University of North Carolina, Harvard Medical School, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology … examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations.
Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, the scientists generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.
The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.
Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein.
On the basis of these findings, they synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo …”
The WIV’s deletions of American research partners from its website (with the exception of EcoHealth Alliance), and its deletion of the article discussing genetic research on the SARS virus only served to strengthen suspicions of a cover-up. At the time, the most surprising thing about it was that they were covering up American involvement and not just their own.
Are We the Bad Guys?
https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1496800671739174913
Alas, as noted by Maajid Nawaz,46 a former Islamist revolutionary who became an anti-extremism activist, if it turns out that the U.S. did in fact engage in illegal bioweapons development in Ukraine, it might just turn out that we’re the bad guys here. He writes, in part:47
“On the 24th February 2022, the very day of Russia’s invasion, some of us were already worried about the prospect of biological weapons laboratories existing in Ukraine …
The existence of bio-weapons labs on Ukraine’s border with Russia has since been confirmed by both Russia and the US (I say both because the Ukrainian government is essentially serving as a US proxy). The only remaining question is around what we were doing in those laboratories.
It is no longer in doubt that we funded bio-weapons research in the Wuhan lab in China, from where it is now believed that COVID most likely leaked from. So were we doing the same in Ukraine too? Russia has certainly made the allegation …
The official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov stated48 ‘In the course of a special military operation, the facts of an emergency cleansing by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program being implemented in Ukraine, funded by the US Department of Defense, were uncovered.’
With this, he released this document drop49 alleging … that these papers substantiated their case. If Russia’s allegations hold up, the US and her proxy Ukrainian regime would be in violation of the first article of the UN Convention on the Prohibition of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons.50
Russia’s announcement appears to have forced America’s hand to admit that such bio labs do indeed exist. US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland framed this admission by stating that these labs were for defensive research only.
Under Secretary Nuland however continued to make the case that such labs would be dangerous if they fell into Russian hands, without apparently noticing the contradiction inherent in her position that such labs are only dangerous because they can be weaponized …
Matching Russian precision strikes to a map of bio lab locations inside Ukraine certainly does suggest that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ appears to be targeting some of these dangerous labs.”
Indeed, Nawaz highlights a 2021 Ukrainian petition51,52 to president Zelensky, asking for a) the immediate closure of “American bio-laboratories in the territory of Ukraine,” b) an investigation into the activities of those labs, and c) an investigation into potential Ukrainian participation in the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
In other words, at least some Ukrainians, by 2021, were wondering whether the U.S. labs in their country might have been involved in the creation of this pandemic.
Denouncements Ring Hollow
Not surprisingly, the U.S. State Department took a hard line, denouncing all allegations with the statement that “The United States does not have chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine.”53 In another statement,54 the State Department “clarified” that the labs were for “biodefense,” not biological weapons, thus semantically cleansing their criminal activities.
The problem with that is that there’s no hard line between biodefense and bioweapons research. As admitted by EcoHealth Alliance’s policy advisor and former Fort Detrick commander David Franz, it’s all “dual use — the people, the facilities and the equipment.”55 Biodefense implies biowarfare, as it involves the creation of more dangerous pathogens for the alleged purpose of finding treatments against them.
Bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, has also pointed out that most BSL-4 labs are dual use: “They first develop the offensive biological warfare agent and then they develop the supposed vaccine.”56 And then, there’s the weapons proliferation agreement57 between the U.S. and Ukraine, signed at the end of August 2005.
Incidentally, former President Barrack Obama spearheaded the project to construct these Ukrainian labs back in 2005, when he was still a senator and, curiously, the online announcement of his involvement in this project has also been deleted from the web.58
According to this agreement, the U.S. Department of Defense will assist the Ministry of Health in Ukraine, at no cost, to prevent “proliferation of technology, pathogens and expertise” found in a number of Ukraine labs, that “could be used in the development of biological weapons.”
The Burning Question of Intent
So, the agreement itself clarifies that they’re working on pathogens that COULD be used as biological weapons, and Nuland’s stated concerns back this up. The only question remaining then is one of intention. What’s the intended use of these pathogens? Defense? Or offense? And is there really a difference?
As noted by Nawaz, the U.S. clinging to the defense of “biodefense” and anti-bioweapons proliferation is “the equivalent of denying that Einstein’s discovery of splitting the atom to generate energy is not also something that could be used to make nuclear weapons. After the COVID outbreak, the notion that bio labs can be weaponized should simply be presumed as a rule.”
Also, consider the network of players reviewed earlier. The Ukrainian-American collaboration to study pathogens capable of weaponization is run by the DTRA, which funds Metabiota, which is run by a WEF leader with close personal ties to the one person — Daszak — suspected of being a key player in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, a go-between of the NIH and the WIV, and a central force in the cover-up of the lab leak theory.
Interestingly, Metabiota is also financially backed by Hunter Biden’s investment company, and let’s not forget that young Biden also collected a six-figure salary from a Ukrainian gas company for doing literally nothing, other than supplying his “powerful name.”59
Circumstantial or not, it just doesn’t look good. And, by now, it should be crystal clear that any lab doing defensive work is equally capable of churning out offensive weapons. Debating that point is just silly, as it all boils down to semantics.
According to Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, Metabiota is a key player in the Ukrainian labs. David Horowitz, a political writer, has noted that Metabiota is “a company that tracks the trajectory of outbreaks and sells pandemic insurance, but also seems to have its hand in the actual labs that … might be the source of some of these outbreaks.”60
In other words, could it be that Metabiota has been producing biological agents under diplomatic cover and then selling pandemic insurance and pandemic trackers to “help countries get ahead of what they are putting out”?61
Nawaz asks, “was ensuring that a ‘next pandemic’ doesn’t occur by taking out these bio labs, what Putin had in mind by his phrase ‘special military operation’?”62 At this point, it seems a valid question.
Sources and References
By Todd Hayen PhD | OffGuardian | April 6, 2022
Stop the party, folks, it’s not over until the fat lady sings, and she is only taking a break.
I’ve written about this premature euphoria several times, warning that we really haven’t won a thing, not even one battle, until some heads roll. And there are no rolling heads to be seen. Not even a cursory fall guy having his career destroyed due to all the blame thrown his way.
I thought at first Fauci was going to get this honour with his mysterious disappearance as a precursor to his public fall from grace. But I was wrong. He is only off somewhere private to lick his wounds, assuming he even considers himself wounded, which I rather doubt.
No, we have won no battle, not even a skirmish. The enemy just backed off a bit. We woke up one morning and they were gone. The hill we were supposedly fighting for was ours.
Really? It doesn’t seem like both sides were fighting for the same hill.
So what happened? I know I am preaching to the choir here. I think most of us have a pretty good idea what happened. The Ukraine/Russia incident makes clear the conditioning that Covid has accomplished over the population of the world.
Suddenly all of the focus shifted, suddenly a new enemy was in sight, much like enemies of old—at least an enemy we could see. It was actually quite astounding how quickly all the profile photos on Facebook changed from “I Got Vaccinated!” to the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine.
As we stand on our deserted Covid hill, waving our own flag, and wanting the enemy to at least acknowledge how clever we were to see through their lies and subterfuge we wonder where everyone has gone. “Yea!!” we shout, “we’ve won!!”
No, we haven’t, and not only have we not won, we have lost—big time. Sorry to break it to you (and like I said, I think most readers of OG know this, maybe you can share this article with all those who don’t even know we were in a fight).
It is beyond the scope of this article to list all of the things they have won, and all of the things we have lost, but I will take a stab at the ones that stand out to me. First of all I think it is important to point out the things many of us think we have won—like the rescinding of mandated mask wearing as the first example.
Most states, provinces, and even whole countries have removed mask wearing in public as a “rule, law, or regulation” or whatever you want to call it. In Canada this is true as well. However, you still must wear a mask on public transit, in medical facilities, and quite a few other places. Why? That’s a “ha ha” question. There never has been a reason why, and there isn’t now. And even as this restriction has been “removed” many people are still wearing masks—everywhere.
I am not sure how it is in other parts of the world, but here in Canada there is quite a large percentage of people still wearing masks, even those walking outdoors, or riding alone in their cars. This is the first example of “what they got”—blind obedience to the cause, even when the cause has officially been announced as being no cause at all.
The fear was created; the high morality of “following the authority for the good of the people” has been established. A superstitious effect follows the fear—wear a mask the same way one wears a talisman to ward off evil spirits (although that is probably more effective). A blind obedient habit follows the bowing down to authority. Soon people won’t even know why they first started wearing them, it is just a thing you do, like shaking hands when you meet someone (which we no longer do).
Of course the normies will say “why not? Why is wearing a mask so difficult to do?” Need I explain why? When it is used as a form of compliance to authority, when wearing one obliterates one of the prime ways humans communicate and socialize, when it is actually medically dangerous to wear one, and when there is absolutely no reason to—then we should get rid of them as soon as we can and should never have worn them to begin with.
The powers that ought not to be have won a very effective form of blind compliance, ready to implement at full force again with a snap of a finger. Not only are people still wearing them, it will take no effort at all to get the majority of the world’s population to don them en masse again.
They have also won, and we have lost, a sense of unsubstantiated fear of our fellow humans.
Social distancing has forced us into an unconscious avoidance of other people. I have not seen much handshaking going on, or even hugging. People now avoid each other, and I doubt if most of these avoidances are even conscious. This has established a deep sense of fear and loss of trust, which again makes us all easily manipulated. It will only take small insertions in the culture through media to basically push us anywhere they want us pushed.
The breakdown of social psychology is clearly part of the agenda, and I believe they can indeed count that as a “win”—a big one. The implications of this sort of thing are unconscionable, and range from a general disconnect from human interaction to massive unrest, impatience, and lack of tolerance—more violence, road rage, disputes, and tribal dissonances, not to mention higher rates of depression, anxiety, drug use, and suicide.
If we think of Orwell’s 1984 as any sort of playbook for this agenda, we can see the foundations laid for many of the more atrocious aspects of Big Brother’s world. The idea of continuous war raging somewhere in the world is certainly in place along with the confusion of which side to be on at any given moment. The propaganda is relentless and leaves us all in a sticky syrupy mess. Hate is an all-powerful stimulator for extreme nationalism and compliance to a singular narrative.
During Covid we were trained to accept nothing but one clearly defined truth, different perspectives were not allowed, as anything with a different view was immediately labeled as “misinformation,” “fake,” and “dangerous.”
There are no “second opinions” anymore, either a source of information is in line with the mainstream, or it is simply degraded as insanity, moronic, or “anti science.” There is no grey—only black and white.
During Covid we learned, through a very conscious manipulation, that there was only one way to see truth, and that polarized thinking can apply to anything the narrative wishes to apply it to. First, “all about Covid and vaccines” now “all about Ukraine and Russia.” Two very different events in nearly every way, yet each with one mainstream view that we all must be in alignment with.
The ease of applying censorship to nearly any situation is a huge win for them. Any contrary opinion has been all but obliterated—if information is labeled “mis” by the mainstream it is blocked. Contrary ideas and opinions on social media are deleted, those who are brave enough to speak out lose their jobs and their reputations are ruined.
Once we start marching to this drum—that anything that challenges the main stream narrative is false, fake, misinformation, dangerous or “anti science”—we are quite literally walking into a totalitarian state. After Covid this sort of censorship will just be that much easier to implement, and it will be that much easier to just go along with it, or worse, advocate it.
In more subtle areas we see the foundation firmly set for other agenda items such as Central Bank Digital Currency and digital ID’s, obviously the way having been paved by the infamous “vaccine passport.” The ground they have acquired through the Covid manipulation is clear, and substantial.
Anything they wish for in the future has been normalized by the events of the past two years, any radical demand made in the future has had its path greased by these events such as travel restrictions, bank closures (as punishment for supporting any sort of protest against the main stream narrative), forced medical intervention with no substantial medical purpose or reason, restrictions on gathering, redefining words in order to fit the agenda, on and on and on.
Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go, the “powers that ought not to be” could possibly have accomplished the initial stages of ridding the world of millions of “useless eaters” through the wholesale injection of god knows what into billions of bodies.
We may be seeing only the tiny tip of the iceberg with the thousands of deaths and injuries undoubtedly caused by the “vaccines”—probably effects the makers of the injections see as a minor annoyance when the major event could very well be the deaths of millions spread out over generations (or much less!)
If true, that’s a BIG win for them!—and an equally big loss for us. There is no turning this one around, no stopping it, as it has already been done and all we can do is sit and await the results.
So we have really won nothing, and we have lost an awful lot. In many regards what they have won is really just the beginnings of the foundation of what is yet to come. No one builds a nice foundation to a house without the intention of building the rest of the house that sits upon it. Even though a concrete slab isn’t usually much to look it, it has all the preparations built into it that allow a very complex structure to sit on it. The detail of that structure is yet to be built.
I am afraid it is going to be a very big and complex house and with its eventual erection the beautiful view we used to enjoy will be blocked—a view of freedom and creativity.
These two ingredients have always been necessary to ensure a future that all humans have the right to pursue—a future of life, liberty and happiness, all things surely worth fighting for. Stay on that hill; the battle has only just begun.
Todd Hayen is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies.
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | April 4, 2022
From the lepers in the Old Testament to the Plague of Justinian in Ancient Rome to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, covid represents the first time ever in the history of managing pandemics that we quarantined healthy populations.
While the ancients did not understand the mechanisms of infectious disease—they knew nothing of viruses and bacteria—they nevertheless figured out many ways to mitigate the spread of contagion during epidemics. These time-tested measures ranged from quarantining the sick to deploying those with natural immunity, who had recovered from illness, to care for them.
Lockdowns were never part of conventional public health measures. In 1968, 1-4 million people died in the H2N3 influenza pandemic; businesses and schools never closed, and large events were not cancelled. One thing we never did until 2020 was lockdown entire populations. And we did not do this because it does not work. In 2020 we had no empirical evidence that it would work, only flawed mathematical models whose predications were not just slightly off, but wildly off by several orders of magnitude.
These devastating economic consequences were not the only major societal shifts ushered in by lockdowns. Our ruling class saw in Covid an opportunity to radically revolutionize society: recall how the phrase “the new normal” emerged almost immediately in the first weeks of the pandemic. In the first month Anthony Fauci made the absurd suggestion that perhaps never again would we go back to shaking hands. Never again?
What emerged during lockdowns was not just a novel and untested method of trying to control a pandemic by quarantining healthy people. If we view lockdowns outside of the immediate context in which they supposedly functioned in early 2020, their real meaning comes into focus.
Changes ushered during lockdowns were signs of a broader social and political experiment “in which a new paradigm of governance over people and things is at play,” as described by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. This new paradigm began to emerge in the wake of September 11, 2001.
The basic features were already sketched back in 2013 in a book by Patrick Zilberman, professor of the history of health in Paris, called “Microbial Storms,” (Tempêtes microbiennes, Gallimard 2013). Zilberman’s description was remarkably predictive of what emerged during the first year of the pandemic. He showed that biomedical security, which was previously a marginal part of political life and international relations, had assumed a central place in political strategies and calculations in recent years.
Already in 2005, for example, the WHO grossly over-predicted that the bird flu (avian influenza) would kill 2 to 50 million people. To prevent this impending disaster, WHO made recommendations that no nation prepared to accept at the time—including population-wide lockdowns. Based upon these trends, Zylberman predicted that “sanitary terror” would be used as an instrument of governance.
Even earlier, in 2001, Richard Hatchett, who served as a member of George W. Bush’s National Security Council, was already recommending obligatory confinement of the entire population. Dr. Hatchett now directs the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an influential entity coordinating global vaccine investment in close collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry. CEPI is a brainchild of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Like many others, Hatchett regards the fight against Covid-19 as a “war,” on the analogy to the war on terror. I confess that I took up the martial rhetoric early in the pandemic: in a March 2020 piece entitled, “Battlefield Promotions,” I issued a call to action encouraging medical students to stay involved in the covid fight after they had been sent home. While the piece had some merit, I now regret my deployment of this military metaphor, which was misguided.
A kind of overbearing medical terror was deemed necessary to deal with worst-case scenarios, whether for naturally occurring pandemics or biological weapons. Agamben summarizes the political characteristics of the emerging biosecurity paradigm:
1) measures were formulated based on possible risk in a hypothetical scenario, with data presented to promote behavior permitting management of an extreme situation; 2) “worst case” logic was adopted as a key element of political rationality; 3) a systematic organization of the entire body of citizens was required to reinforce adhesion to the institutions of government as much as possible. The intended result was a sort of super civic spirit, with imposed obligations presented as demonstrations of altruism. Under such control, citizens no longer have a right to health safety; instead, health is imposed on them as a legal obligation (biosecurity).
This is precisely the pandemic strategy we adopted in 2020. Lockdowns were formulated based on discredited worst-case-scenario modeling from the Imperial College London, which predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S.
As a consequence, the entire body of citizens, as a manifestation of civic spirit, gave up freedoms and rights that were not relinquished even by the citizens of London during the bombing of the city in World War II (London adopted curfews but never locked down). The imposition of health as a legal obligation was accepted with little resistance. Even now, for many citizens it seems not to matter that these impositions utterly failed to deliver the public health outcomes that were promised.
The full significance of what transpired over the last two years may have escaped our attention. Perhaps without realizing it, we just lived through the design and implementation of a new political paradigm—a system that was far more effective at controlling the population than anything previously done by Western nations.
Under this novel biomedical security model, “the total cessation of every form of political activity and social relationship [became] the ultimate act of civic participation.” Neither the pre-war Fascist government in Italy, nor the communist nations of the east, ever dreamed of implementing such restrictions.
Social distancing became not just a public health practice but a political model and the new paradigm for social interactions, “with a digital matrix replacing human interaction, which by definition from now on will be regarded as fundamentally suspicious and politically ‘contagious’,” in Agamben’s words.
For the sake of health and human flourishing, this new normal should never be normalized.
Thoughts about the significance and meaning of the Shanghai lockdown
eugyppius | April 5, 2022
Sooner or later, Zero Covid makes you crazy, and right now, it is making the Chinese crazy.
That is my theory about what is going on in Shanghai, which has descended into a mass panic over a relative handful of Omicron infections, imposing a harsh and destructive lockdown to stop a disease that is probably no more dangerous than influenza.
Let us rehearse some recent history:
Lockdowns and mass testing and contact tracing and masking are all Asian (primarily Chinese) policies, adopted en masse and with little forethought by western countries in Spring 2020. Our public health mandarins set aside their own planning and opted for Chinese mass containment instead, because they noticed the virus was not very deadly in Asia, and they assumed this was because whatever it was the Asians were doing was the thing to do. Mass containment is a worldwide delusional rain dance: Everyone hops about trying to coax water out of the heavens, copying whatever dance was current in the first place it started to rain.
Crucially, virology has a very primitive and inadequate understanding of how viruses actually circulate. Virological doctrine is that they ought to behave the same everywhere, but they don’t. Early wild-type SARS-2 strains spread far more slowly and were far less deadly in the Asia Pacific, and this had nothing to do with lockdowns or “SARS experience.” Japan started out by ignoring Corona more or less entirely, while South Korea set up mass testing and contact tracing operations straightaway, and both countries saw minimal mortality.
There are many theories about why SARS-2 hit Asia so softly. Probably, the Asian-Pacific populations enjoyed some kind of prior immune protection, which would explain why the later, immune-resistant variant strains of SARS-2 have coincided with higher mortality in the East.
But the main point is this: Countries which did well early in the pandemic got another kind of virus, the Zero-Covid kind. They adopted an eradicationist orientation; they believed their containment measures had succeeded, and the officials who had championed these measures ascended to new heights of prestige. This is what happened in China and throughout Asia, and it is what happened in Australia and New Zealand. To a lesser extent, it is even what happened in Germany. The next act of this play, is the return of SARS-2, the impending revelation that there was only ever the illusion of control, and a spiral of harsh suppression measures that everyone believes in because they seemed to work last time, even though they’re not working now.
We’ve spent many months speculating about Chinese reasons for locking down Hubei and then promoting lockdowns to the rest of us. While malicious ends shouldn’t be excluded, their behaviour in Shanghai points increasingly to official incompetence and stupidity. The Chinese government has almost surely spent two years sowing horror of Corona among its people, to defend its harsh actions in Wuhan and to collect accolades for its alleged Zero Covid success. Now they are going the route of other Zero Covid regimes. They will double down on worthless policies, until their failure becomes so overwhelmingly evident, that they give up.
Further considerations, developed mostly in the context of a recent conversation with a friend, who is sceptical of my thoughts here:
Is this not better understood as some sort of exercise in new authoritarian methods? I don’t think so, because the Chinese won’t be able to control Omicron, and whatever methods they deploy in their attempts to do so will just be discredited.
Did the Chinese then promote lockdowns to the West, simply out of good will and charity, because they sincerely believe in these policies? No. We may never fully understand their motives, but an important aspect, was probably the fear that the West would ignore Corona, nothing much would happen, and the Hubei lockdown would be discredited. These were policies that had been developed in the belief that China was facing a wider-scale version of the SARS virus from 2003. In early March 2020, it was clear that these fears were exaggerated. Evidently, this does not mean that the institutional (and perhaps also popular) momentum behind Zero-Covid policies vanished. In China, in Australia, everywhere, the lockdowners are empowered, as long as Corona appears to be under control. When Corona endangers this illusion, the lockdowners will fight powerfully to vindicate their policies, but sooner or later they’ll lose.
Doesn’t this destroy your prior hypothesis, that the Chinese escaped the mass containment dilemma entirely, by changing test criteria and perhaps taking other actions behind the scenes to ‘construct’ Corona out of existence? Maybe, but perhaps these aren’t mutually exclusive possibilities. As long as a given virus isn’t having any population-wide impact, it is possible to ignore it. Omicron spreads too fast to be ignored.
Do Chinese officials, with unique knowledge of SARS-2 origins, know something we don’t about the virus? Most of the SARS-2 genome has natural analogues, with a couple of odd tweaks, like the furin cleavage site. There’s not a lot of room for hidden functions in there, and mainland Chinese policies and science have never demonstrated special foreknowledge or awareness of SARS-2 features. If anything, the opposite is true: They overestimated the risk at first, and they seem to persist in this error now.
So you believe the West is stupid, and China is stupid, you just believe everyone is stupid but you I guess? I think institutions in mass society develop behaviours and even ideologies that are beyond the understanding of the individuals who participate in them. Our critical views of containment and mass vaccination are surely shared by many people throughout these institutions, who however find it in their best interests to promote quite different ideas, not reluctantly but even with enthusiasm.
Why is it always boring banal explanations from you? The extent to which Corona resists elaborate conspiratorial theories is a good sign that it is either an emergent phenomenon or epiphenomenal. The most compelling theories are those which cast Corona and containment as the unintended consequences of something else.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 4, 2022
Officials in the Netherlands on April 3 re-arrested Willem Engel, a prominent campaigner against COVID-19 restrictions, claiming Engel violated the terms of his bail by discussing his case on social media.
Engel is co-founder of the Dutch organization “Viruswaarheid” (“Virus Truth”), which is challenging the legality of COVID restrictions implemented in the Netherlands.
He first was arrested last month and detained for two weeks before being released on bail.
Engel is one of two well-known European activists arrested recently for speaking out against COVID mandates and lockdowns. The other, French attorney Virginie de Araujo-Recchia, serves on the international grand jury convened as part of the People’s Court of Public Opinion, co-founded by German attorney Reiner Fuellmich.
The People’s Court aims to reveal “crimes against humanity” committed in the name of public health and combating COVID.
Araujo-Recchia, in a press release, and Engel, in an interview with The Defender, said they will continue their efforts to fight COVID-related restrictions and vaccine mandates.
French lawyer detailed on suspicion of connections to ‘terrorism’
Araujo-Recchia was arrested by French police at her home in the early morning hours of March 22 and held until March 24 by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) in Paris.
Mainstream media reports said she was arrested, along with six other individuals, including a member of the French “Yellow Vests” movement, in connection with an ongoing “terrorism” investigation.
According to Libération :
“[T]he lawyer [Araujo-Recchia] is one of the seven people arrested yesterday ‘in a terrorist case linked to the figure of the conspiracy circles Rémy Daillet.’
“A judicial source confirmed … that seven police custody [sic] were in progress at the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) ‘for acts of association of terrorist criminals with a view to preparing crimes against persons.’ They are five men and two women, aged 36 to 62.
“Among those arrested would also include Sylvain B., a ‘yellow vest’ author of a ‘manual of peaceful insurrection’. AFP [Agence France Presse] specifies that searches were carried out during the arrests.”
French newspaper Libération described Daillet as a “neo-Nazi” and “a figure in conspiratorial circles already implicated and imprisoned” in a kidnapping case, who is also accused of being the mastermind of a group “planning violent actions … against 5G antennas, vaccination centers, but also against journalists and various personalities.”
In addition to serving with Fuellmich on the People’s Court grand jury, Araujo-Recchia is involved with similar issues domestically within France, working with three organizations that are attempting to levy criminal charges against politicians who, in 2021, voted for legislation strengthening COVID-related restrictions.
Working with three other lawyers, Araujo-Recchia filed a complaint on behalf of three associations: BonSens.org, AIMSIB [International Association for Independent and Benevolent Scientific Medicine] and the Collectif des Maires Résistants [Collective of Resistant Mayors], targeting French members of parliament who, on Aug. 5, 2021, voted for legislation implementing vaccine passports and requiring French workers to receive a COVID vaccine.
Araujo-Recchia and her legal team alleged these parliamentarians received favors in exchange for their vote and that the law itself violates French and international law. They presented a series of arguments against this legislation.
She also was said to be working on a new complaint, to be filed against French political parties and some of their members, at the time of her arrest.
In November 2020, Araujo-Recchia authored the Dictatorship Report 2020, published by France’s Genocide Observatory. This report was said to be intended to form part of a new set of criminal charges to be filed against members of the French government.
Following her arrest, Health Freedom Defense Fund posted an online petition calling for her release.
On March 30, Araujo-Recchia issued a press release describing her ordeal and time in detention. She clarified she is not facing any charges at this time, stating:
“[O]n 22nd March 2022 at forty minutes past six in the morning (06:40), twelve individuals including hooded commando officers, entered our residence on board six vehicles and pounded at the front door.
“The team was made up of various security-agency members, notably from the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI, more or less equivalent to MI5), a representative of the Paris Bar (Bâtonnier du Barreau de Paris), a Clerk of the Court and two investigation-magistrates. Without striking a blow, they entered our residence and searched each and every room including our children’s room, our vehicle and the garden.
“On suspicion of being an accomplice to terrorism, I was then removed to DGSI premises at Levallois-Perret.
“There, I was held for roughly sixty hours under conditions that can only be described as inhuman. For reasons of personal dignity I shall refrain from elaborating further.
“On being released from custody, I found that not a single charge would be raised against me, nor was I even a suspect (témoin assisté). In a word, I am no party to the matter.
“Apart from being amongst the lawyers instructed by an individual who has been charged, my involvement with the case is nil.
“Would it not have been simpler to call me in, rather than carrying me off in front of the children and detaining me under grotesque conditions – when at the end of the day, there being nothing to reproach me with, it proves to be but a fishing expedition?
“Innocent until proven guilty did you say?”
In the press release, Araujo-Recchia also claimed that during her interrogation, which lasted 10 hours, she was asked the following questions in an apparent attempt to smear her as a “conspiracy theorist” and racist, and to connect her to alleged “terrorist” activity:
Responding to this line of questioning and media reports about her connections to “terror” suspects, Araujo-Recchia wrote:
“Various press outlets have referred to a ‘terrorist file’, and to my name as a ‘lawyer representing individuals in conspiracy-theorist circles’ or ‘extremist cells,’ The libelous nature of that particular mixture being perfectly plain to all and sundry.
“Trust that I shall not let the business drop: we are dealing with outright libel and intent to harm. I shall moreover exercise my right to respond.
“The investigator asked me to set out my ‘ideology’ in broad strokes. I replied that it has nothing to do with an ideology, but rather with plain facts backed by evidence which I have been at pains to collect over the past two years.
“The International Court of Public Opinion and the Grand Jury, inter alia, have held hearings at which there testified acknowledged international specialists in science, medicine, psychology and psychopathology, economics, geostrategy, as well as victims past and present.
“For my part, I have taken testimony from victims, health-care workers, French firemen and present[ed] it to the Grand Jury.
“No ideology is being served up here, but rather expert opinion, professionals, witnesses and victims.
“Truth alone is the goal we seek.”
Araujo-Vecchia also noted that lawyers and doctors, as well as activists such as members of the Yellow Vests, “are subjected to similar forms of intimidation, as they attempt to raise the alarm over certain measures designed to manage the public-health ‘crisis’ or harm incurred through the experimental gene-therapy shots,” adding:
“[T]here are those of us who, having confronted the State and major financial interests such as the pharmaceutical-, finance- and MSM multis, find ourselves being in custody without cause.
“None of this will prevent my fighting for civil rights and liberties.”
France, beginning in 2020, enacted some of the most stringent COVID-related restrictions in Europe, including vaccine passports to enter most public and private venues.
In January, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for re-election, said he is continuing implementation of such passports because he wanted to “piss off” the unvaccinated.
Dutch activist detained for 14 days on charges of ‘incitement, sedition’
In an incident remarkably similar to Araujo-Vecchia’s arrest, Dutch activist Willem Engel, co-founder of the “Viruswaarheid” (“Virus Truth”) movement, on March 16 was arrested on charges of “incitement” and “sedition.”
Engel was outside a polling location immediately after he had voted in that country’s elections. His lawyer, Jeroen Pols, immediately confirmed the arrest in a tweet, while Engel’s girlfriend captured the arrest on video.
Mainstream media reports, which described Engel as a “COVID denier,” reported he is “suspected of posting seditionist coronavirus-related statements on social media over an extended period,” quoting statements from the Public Prosecution Service (OM) of the Netherlands.
The OM in January announced that Engel was being investigated following a petition, signed by nearly 23,000 individuals, calling for him to be charged with sedition, spreading medical misinformation, fraud and making threats.
The petition was launched by an “activist,” Norbert Dikkeboom, in 2021.
The initial investigation into his actions led to Engel’s arrest, the OM said in a statement.
The investigation identified seven social media postings, made by Engel between June 2020 and June 2021, which “were considered to be incitement,” and which, according to the OM, “led to other people committing criminal offenses or incited them to do so.”
The OM did not name the specific social media posts or the alleged criminal offenses that the posts allegedly incited.
As stated by the OM, while freedom of speech is a “fundamental right” that is enshrined under Dutch law, “there are limits to that freedom.”
In January, Engel characterized the investigation as a “smear campaign” against him and proclaimed his innocence. “I try to keep the debate sharp but never cross the line,” Engel said. “I’ve never threatened anyone.” He went on to accuse Dikkeboom, the activist who launched the petition against him, of stalking him.
Engel’s lawyer, Jeroen Pols, called Engel’s arrest “a frontal attack on critics and opponents” of the “Rutte regime,” referring to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He added in later statements that Engel’s arrest is part of an ongoing pattern of arresting individuals who “criticize the regime.”
“The Rutte regime is fully attacking critics and opposition,” Pols said. “Meanwhile, they have a big mouth about democracy in Russia.”
In turn, the group Viruswaarheid (Virus Truth) described the arrest as an instance when “the Dutch government crossed a new line in its war against unwanted opinions and expressions.” The group accused the OM of, along with Dutch police, actively assisting Dikkeboom in his petition against Engel.
Viruswaarheid claimed that, in the past year, more than 420 articles and media reports smeared Engel “with slanderous lies,” as a result of “[a]n unprecedented hate campaign from the entire written and spoken media” that contributed to the collection of the more than 22,000 signatures on the petition against Engel.
In a separate statement, Viruswaarheid wrote that Engel “had drawn attention to [the Dutch government’s] Corona policy with his ‘Virus Truth’ initiative and has successfully fought the government measures in court on several occasions.”
Viruswaarheid in April 2020 launched petitions and demonstrations against the Dutch government’s COVID restrictions.
The group also filed two successful lawsuits “against the illegal corona measures,” which led to the laws in question being amended, in an effort by the Dutch government to sidestep these legal defeats.
Following Engel’s arrest, a demonstration took place in Amsterdam on March 20 calling for his release.
Engel, who holds a master’s degree in biopharmacy and biotechnology and operates a dance school in Rotterdam, was released on March 30 after being detained for 14 days.
He faces two upcoming court cases. He spoke to The Defender about his experience and the charges he is now facing.
Engel told The Defender he was arrested “in front of the voting booth … right after I cast my vote, two thugs with masks handcuffed me and told me I am under arrest for sedition … this is in clear violation [of Dutch law] on so many angles.”
According to Engel, he was not informed about the specific social media posts that led to the charges against him. Instead, “they [the authorities] just named the offense.”
Engel described Dikkeboom, the organizer of the petition against him, as “a sad person that stalks me,” adding, “I have made multiple charges against him … as he is openly calling for violence against me.”
Engel said the OM “shared a lot of information” about his case with Dikkeboom, describing this as “crazy” in light of Dikkeboom’s alleged threats against him.
As a potential motive for his arrest, Engel points out that Viruswaarheid has filed “over 20 cases against the government and its institutions,” adding that “there is a spree of arrests, all [with] the same signature, people being accused of threatening violence or vandalism or sedition,” and who are facing “vague charges.”
According to Engel, “almost all of the arrests are against people who have a following and who vlog regularly about demonstrations and COVID.”
Engel said such arrests and crackdowns are “happening also in Germany and Canada and probably all western countries.” He described this as “clearly the next phase of oppression, trying to take out the resistance in preparation for the next COVID ‘wave’ set for September 2022.”
However, according to Engel, the authorities “got more than they bargained for” as a result of his arrest, pointing out that “lots of people were rallying … more than 10,000 physical postcards were sent to the prison [where he was held] … #Freewillem was trending on Twitter [on] multiple days.”
Engel said he now faces two separate court cases with the “same line of charges,” which he describes as “very vague.” Court hearings are scheduled on June 13 and June 20 in The Hague and Rotterdam, respectively.
Despite his ordeal, Engel said he is “in good health and the fight has just begun.”
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.
Swiss Policy Research | April 3, 2022
A Brazilian investigator may have identified the mechanism driving mRNA vaccine myocarditis. And the US CDC finally acknowledges the strongly increased risk in young males.
What is causing vaccine myocarditis?
What is causing post-vaccination myocarditis, and why does it affect primarily young adults, especially young males and athletes? It has been speculated that in young males, muscle blood flow may be higher, which may cause higher biodistribution of vaccine mRNA or spike protein. The mRNA or spike protein may then be absorbed by the heart muscle and cause inflammation.
But Brazilian investigator Flavio Cadegiani, who previously looked into the role of androgens (male sexual hormones) in covid, recently proposed a new and highly intriguing theory: Based on autopsy findings, Cadegiani noted that post-vaccination myocarditis appears to be very similar not to typical myocarditis (e.g. viral myocarditis), but rather to adrenergic myocarditis or catecholamine-mediated stress cardiomyopathy (i.e. heart muscle injury caused by catecholamines).
Catecholamines are a group of hormones that include, most notably, dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones drive the “fight-or-flight response”, and their concentration is highest in young adults, especially in young males and athletes. Cadegiani notes that the adrenal glands (located on top of the kidneys) are amongst the tissues with highest production of spike protein from mRNA covid vaccines, which can cause local inflammation and may lead to a “catecholamine storm”, which is known to have a toxic stress effect on heart muscle cells.
Prior to covid mRNA vaccinations, this type of heart injury was seen almost exclusively in patients with a rare tumor of the adrenal gland (called pheo-chromo-cytoma). Cadegiani suspects that mRNA vaccination is more likely to affect adrenal glands than a mild coronavirus infection, especially in young and healthy adults.
Cadegiani (February 2022): Catecholamines are the key trigger of mRNA SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis and sudden deaths. (ResearchGate)
New CDC study on myocarditis
In a newly published study covering data from 40 US health care systems and about 15 million people, the US CDC purports to show that “the risk for cardiac complications was significantly higher after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination for both males and females in all age groups”, which “supports the continued use of recommended mRNA COVID-19 vaccines among all eligible persons aged ≥5 years.”
But the actual data provided by the CDC tells a very different story.
First, the US CDC confirms that among males aged 12 to 17, the rate of diagnosed myocarditis or pericarditis after the second vaccine dose is 1 in 4,500 to 1 in 2,700, and in males aged 18 to 29, the rate is 1 in 15,000 to 1 in 6,600.
These values are significantly higher than anything previously acknowledged by the CDC, but they still only include cases diagnosed by a doctor or in a hospital. If undiagnosed and unrecognized (subclinical) cases of myocarditis and pericarditis are taken into acccount, the rate will likely reach about 1 in 1,000 in young males. Even an undiagnosed case of myocarditis can turn out to be fatal, as the many recent cases of athletes with sudden cardiac arrest have shown.
However, the CDC argues that the risk of diagnosed myocarditis and pericarditis is still higher after SARS-CoV-2 infection, viz. 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 1,500 in males aged 12 to 17, and 1 in 1,800 to 1 in 1,000 in males aged 18 to 29. But previous studies, both in the US and in Europe, have already shown that the incidence of myocarditis remained normal or even below average during major covid waves in 2020 and early 2021 and only increased during vaccination campaigns in 2021 (see chart below).
So what did the CDC get wrong? It’s a classic mistake (or trick): while the CDC speaks of “SARS-CoV-2 infections”, they in fact only captured positive tests and only within the health care system (i.e. at a doctor’s office or in a hospital). SARS-CoV-2 infections were not captured “if testing occurred in homes, schools, community sites, or pharmacies”, or, one may add, if no testing at all occurred. Thus, the CDC captured only a fraction of actual infections (perhaps 10% or even less), and they likely captured only the most severe infections (i.e. young adults who visited a doctor or a hospital).
(In a somewhat related development, the CDC recently reduced US child covid deaths by 25%, as these deaths, while testing positive, had nothing at all to do with covid.)
But the CDC made another basic mistake: not only is the risk of myocarditis/pericarditis after vaccination in young males higher than after infection (as already shown by several other studies), but vaccination doesn’t prevent infection, either, and there is still no evidence that vaccination reduces the risk of post-infection myocarditis in young adults. In other words, the risk after vaccination simply increases the already existing risk after infection.
To make matters even worse, the CDC study considered only the first two doses of covid vaccination, whereas some US colleges and universities have already mandated a third dose for their students, adding even more risk. In fact, a booster dose may well increase the total risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to more than 1 in 1,000 in otherwise perfectly healthy young males. And as a recently published cardiac MRI study has shown, heart abnormalities in adolescents with mRNA vaccine myopericarditis may persist for at least several months.
In conclusion, the forced covid vaccination of young and healthy adults and children may constitute the largest medical scandal, or medical crime, in modern history. Based on the currently available evidence, covid vaccination is only appropriate in people at significant risk of severe acute covid.
CDC (April 2022): Cardiac Complications After SARS-CoV-2 Infection and mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination (CDC/MMWR)
Figure: Myocarditis and Covid Vaccination in the Western US
eugyppius | April 4, 2022
On Tuesday, 29 March, virologist and foremost German Corona astrolger Christian Drosten went on indefinite hiatus from Coronavirus Update, his noxious state media podcast. The show was introduced on 26 February 2020, with Drosten as its centre. He starred in about 80 of its 113 episodes; from September 2020, he began alternating appearances with virologist Sandra Ciesek. Lest the oracular pronouncements of these luminaries be lost to history, Norddeutsche Rundfunk lovingly transcribed their utterances into a downloadable 1446-page document. There is every reason to fear that, one day, this monstrosity will be issued in print for the Scientific Faithful as a boxed set.
I confess that I’ve only listened to about 20 episodes of this bizarre exercise in propaganda. I can’t imagine how anybody could handle more than that. Probably never before in history, has there been a radio show so heavily promoted by the national media, that is simultaneously so devoid of content, and also so destructive to the cult of expertise, as something that can ever exist outside of politics or culture. For in all the ponderous hours that I listened, I never heard Drosten say anything that fashion-forward Twitter accounts, media pundits´and Tomas Pueyo hadn’t already said a little bit earlier.
Drosten was initially agnostic about the wisdom of closures, but after Merkel bought into containment, he preached the necessity of non-pharmaceutical interventions at every opportunity. In the earliest days, he didn’t think children and schools were all that important to infection dynamics; when school closures became policy, he developed a deep obsession with the virus spreading of children. No sooner had Germans elected a new, more containment-hesitant government in September 2021, than Drosten discovered a fresh interest in naturally acquired immunity, and suggested that infections in the vaccinated would be essential to building more robust immune protection.
Plainly, Drosten’s celebrity has been little more than a publicity exercise, arranged to provide scientific endorsement of whatever pandemic policies the German government alights upon. This what, in the end, all that following the science amounts to: Governments get to do whatever they want, so long as they first find some well-credentialed scientists to say that whatever they’re doing is what the science demands. This turns out to be a lot easier than securing popular or parliamentary support for policies.
Now, for follow-the-science government, not just any scientist will do. You need an especially authoritative Media Scientist, who meets public and journalistic preconceptions of how scientific authority is enacted and embodied. Thus, the German press has spared no effort in establishing Drosten in the minds of the regime faithful as one of the world’s most eminent scientists. A deceptively worded paragraph in Zeit, for example, gave rise to the pervasive myth that Drosten discovered the SARS virus in 2003:
Drosten completed his training at the Hamburg Tropical Institute, where he managed a scoop in spring 2003: In Frankfurt, a virologist friend gave him cell material from a doctor in Singapore who had contracted SARS. Drosten raced back to Hamburg in his old Opel Omega with the cell culture in a salt block and worked for 14 days, on hardly more than three hours of sleep per night, to identify the previously unknown coronavirus – thus making it possible to fight the deadly lung disease.
Drosten did not discover SARS. He thought the pathogen was a metapneumovirus; by the time he worked out he was wrong, American scientists at the CDC had published an electron micrograph of the coronavirus responsible. He was left to create primers for PCR tests to identify the new virus. Drosten mysteriously reprised his role as test developer in January 2020, when he developed the first PCR test for the novel Coronavirus responsible for viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan – precisely as China needed infection statistics that Westerners would find credible. This shady work laid the foundations for mass testing in the West, and remains his most significant contribution to science around the pandemic. He has also loudly resisted suggestions of a lab leak, going so far as to co-author an openly misleading paper about the likelihood that the furin cleavage site in SARS-2 originated naturally.
Like many people granted an artificial renown, Drosten has proved unworthy of it, and over the past two years he has given us many odd moments.
Very early, for example, he confessed to a strange fear of draft beer; to avoid viruses, he said, you should stick to bottles. More recently, he revealed a bizarre lack of metaphorical aptitude, claiming that anyone who believes he can train his immune system with infection, must necessarily also believe that he can train his digestive tract by eating steak.
In May 2020, he threw together a sloppy study arguing that children are just as infectious as adults. The purpose was to provide Merkel’s government with some “research” that would speak against reopening schools, but the paper was so bad, it drew critique from other virologists as well journalists at BILD, and couldn’t be formally published for a full year. As the controversy unfolded, Drosten avoided any open exchange with his critics and defended himself dishonestly on sympathetic media platforms.
Some months later, Drosten was invited to give the Schillerrede, a speech on the occasion of Friedrich Schiller’s birthday, where he embarrassed himself anew, claiming that Schiller would’ve been an avid mask wearer; and proposing, in an awkward allusion to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, a Pandemic Imperative, according to which everyone should live his life as if he had just tested positive for Corona and all his contacts are old and vulnerable.
While Drosten is a state media scientist who will say almost anything, on a few points he has been constant. Nothing has angered this small man more, than the Great Barrington Declaration, drafted by Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya. In the year and a half since its publication, he has resorted to various slurs, not always veiled, on the qualifications and abilities of its authors. His last tweet, posted on the day he recorded his final podcast episode, equates its publication with sabotage. Given the relative unimportance of the GBD, and its failure to end the catastrophic policies that Drosten and the other Corona astrologers have supported, his animus seems strange. I can only imagine that when you have been paid to lie, it is a humiliating experience, to find yourself confronted by more honourable colleagues, who can afford to speak the truth.
Now, Drosten will not podcast anymore. He says it is because he needs time for his research. I incline to the optimistic interpretation, that he is being deliberately retired from public view, lest he persist any longer as an eternal advocate of lockdowns and vaccination mania whenever the Corona news takes a turn for the worse. Whatever the case, it can be no accident that this happens precisely as most of the other restrictions Germans have endured for the past two years have come to an end. Masking, green passes, closures, and Drosten too – all of them were part of the same political program, the same system of social, cultural and intellectual strangulation, from which we have now been released.
EVEN IF THOSE MESSAGES CONTRADICT INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ON WHAT IS BEST FOR PATIENTS
By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | April 2, 2022
Australia’s march toward medical authoritarianism continues.
Doctors are now being told they could face discipline for saying anything that contradicts “public health messaging,” even if what they are saying is “evidence-based.”
They may even face investigations for “authoring papers” that health authorities do not like.
Unfortunately, I am not exaggerating.
Like all physicians, Australian doctors can face disciplinary investigations for medical errors or other problems. In Australia, those investigations are called “notifications,” a nicely Orwellian euphemism. Ahpra, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency, oversees them.
On Feb. 28, a big Australian medical insurer warned physicians that to avoid Aphra notifications, they needed to “be very careful” not to contradict “public health messaging” in social media comments.
But the warning – although first mentioning social media – went even further. It also warned against “authoring papers” that contradicted the authorities’ favored views.
Further, even “views… consistent with evidence-based material” could lead to problems if they contradicted “public health messaging.”
The warning came from the Medical Indemnity Protection Society, which provides professional insurance coverage for doctors. Although these insurers do not speak officially for government agencies, doctors effectively cannot practice without professional insurance, so their pronouncements are powerful.
In other words, only a very brave physician in Australia would consider offering advice that’s not “consistent with public health messaging” anytime soon.
No worries, though, the public health authorities know best!
A number of states have recently lifted mask mandates after months or years of forced masking – so what’s happened afterwards?
By Ian Miller | March 31, 2022
During the pandemic, an endlessly repeated phrase from experts, media members, politicians and social media pundits has been that it’s “too soon” to lift restrictions.
It’s important to deconstruct the intentions encapsulated in that phrase, because it’s remarkably pernicious.
The implication of the infuriating phrase, “it’s too soon to lift restrictions,” is that restrictions were proven to have had a demonstrable impact on the spread of COVID, which is entirely inaccurate. It also implies that restrictions should be considered necessary or valuable for a virus which will likely infect everyone on earth, possibly multiple times throughout their lifetime.
There’s also the unspoken assumption that restrictions are imposed at no cost; that masking kids in schools, for example, has little to no downside with significant benefits.
The “evidence” used by health officials to justify continued mask mandates has consistently been unbelievably flawed and thoroughly debunked.
We’ve seen the results of masking across the general population and in specific populations:
By pretending that mask mandates ever had any evidentiary basis, that the “benefits” will always outweigh the harms, while ignoring the inescapable reality that COVID will infect essentially everyone regardless of policy, the phrase that it’s “too soon” is profoundly ignorant and extremely disturbing.
Even now, as the Los Angeles City Council voted to end the vaccine requirement for many businesses, they have already set the stage for future mandates:
“I know it feels like we’re out of the woods. It feels like we’re all going back to normal. But there’s new variants and new strains all the time,” he said. “This BA.2 (variant) is spreading and we really don’t know what the variant a month from now or two months are.”
Martinez responded last week by saying, “I agree with you on that,” and noted that the City Council would have to revisit the vaccination mandates “as we learn to live with this pandemic unfortunately.”
Of course, Martinez ignores the unequivocal, inarguable fact that the vaccine mandates and passports in Los Angeles he’s advocated for had zero impact whatsoever on the rate of spread.
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Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
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. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
Aletho News 