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Businesses push back against Scotland’s vaccine passport

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 5, 2021

Resistance to the introduction of vaccine passes, based on various grounds and gaining momentum for different reasons – is not present only among the general population and customers. In Scotland, owners of businesses have joined those who are opposed to a mandated COVID passport system by announcing a weekend boycott of the program.

Their argument is that the scheme Scotland launched via an app is so technically flawed that it is causing chaos and harming their businesses, as it keeps customers and visitors to places like night clubs and football stadiums away by simply not working.

This seems to be yet another in UK’s botched schemes rolled out over the course of the pandemic, and besides being riddled with technical problems, another thing these have in common is that they cost a lot of taxpayers’ money – although the latest Scottish “omnishambles” as some are calling the app is “cheap” compared to some other UK COVID fiascos – it cost a “mere” £600,000 ($816,520) to develop, although that’s probably £600,000 too much, considering that it doesn’t appear to work.

The first to defiantly pull out of the scheme once it became apparent it was useless were football clubs, who have been hard-hit by COVID restrictions that kept fans out of stadiums and seriously undermined their revenues for months on end.

The app was officially put in practice last Friday morning, with the SNP-led government announcing people would need to show proof of vaccination to be let into this type of venue. But the very same day, realizing the app wasn’t working, Aberdeen FC simply abandoned this requirement for its fans to attend the game upcoming on Sunday.

“Nobody will be asked to show proof of vaccine,” the club announced on Friday, reacting to fans being unable to buy tickets because the app could not be used to prove their vaccination status. Other Scottish clubs, like Rangers and Hearts, soon followed suit, while owners of nightclubs and others in the hospitality industry did the same, saying the confusion was “farcical.”

What followed was Health Secretary Humza Yousaf having to reverse previous policy, saying that “nobody should be denied entry this weekend if they failed to show proof of vaccination, and admitted the widespread technical problems may take ‘days’ to fix,” the Telegraph reported.

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Twitter backtracks after censoring a mother’s obituary

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2021

Twitter’s fact-checkers appended a “misleading” alert to an obituary about a young woman who allegedly died after contracting a rare blood-clotting condition provoked by the COVID-19 vaccine.

After being accused of going so far with its censorship that it would resort to censoring an obituary, Twitter relented to the backlash and reversed the censorship.

The woman in question, Jessica Berg Wilson, a 37-year-old mother of two, died in the first week of September from Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, a rare blood disorder in which small clots grow throughout the body, damaging platelets and preventing blood from reaching key organs. According to her obituary, Wilson’s greatest life ambition was to “be the best mother possible” to her daughters Bridget and Clara.

“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat,” it read.

Kelly Bee, a Twitter user, posted Jessica Berg Wilson’s obituary with the statement, “an ‘exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,’ passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. She did not want to get vaccinated.”

However, Twitter flagged the post as “misleading” and blocked it from being replied to, shared, or liked.

The majority of critics were outraged that Twitter was censoring an obituary and they responded by urging their followers to help the tweet go viral in violation of the company’s warning. Twitter has since removed the “misleading” designation and revoked the shadowban.

Additionally, several bloggers, including Ben Domenech of The Federalist, retweeted the obituary. Ben’s tweet reads: Who @Twitter decided it was okay to say an OBITUARY is ‘misleading’ ?”

Another tweet said “Twitter is now censoring obituaries,” – posted by Sean Davis.

Furthermore, Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the Trump administration’s Department of Defense, tagged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a tweet asking what aspect of the obituary was incorrect or “misleading.”

“Hey @jack, Jessica was healthy and died. Why are you censoring that fact as ‘misleading??” he said.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy

But lockdowns will remain until 90% of population is vaxxed

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | October 4, 2021

New Zealand has announced it is dropping its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy after numerous critics pointed out that such an approach to eliminating the virus was impossible.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement earlier today during a press conference in which she acknowledged, “The return to zero has been extremely difficult.”

“What we have called a long tail has been more like a tentacle that has been difficult to shake,” she added, noting that the delta variant of the virus forced a change in policy.

Critics had repeatedly asked how the country expected to maintain a ‘zero COVID’ policy given the emergence of new variants of the virus and decreasing efficacy of the initial round of vaccinations.

However, with 48% of the population fully vaccinated, no return to normal is expected anytime soon given that Ardern has said 90% will need to be fully vaxxed before the lockdowns will end.

Kiwis have faced continuous lockdown measures almost as brutal as their Aussie neighbors since the beginning of the pandemic.

As we highlighted  in August, Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors,” after the country went into full lockdown as a result of just a single COVID case being detected.

Authorities also previously announced that they would put all coronavirus infectees and their close family members in “quarantine facilities” even if they refuse.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

“Natural Immunity” Is a Political Problem for the Regime

By Ryan McMaken – Mises Wire – 09/21/2021

Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one.

Both the Mayo Clinic website and the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example, insist that “research has not yet shown” that people who have recovered from covid have any sort of reliable protection. Moreover, the CDC page points to a single study from Kentucky claiming that people with natural immunity are more than twice as likely to contract covid again, compared to people who have been vaccinated.

This narrative is reflected in the fact that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are a one-size-fits-all policy insisting that virtually all adults, regardless of whether or not they’ve already had the disease, receive a covid vaccine. The official position is apparently this: nothing except the vaccine can provide any sort of resistance or immunity. So get a vaccine. No exceptions!

Health technocrats have repeatedly insisted that “the science” points unambiguously toward everyone receiving a vaccine, even to the point of pushing vaccines for children. All this in spite of the fact the risk to children from covid is far less than a dozen common daily risks, such as riding in an automobile.

The regime has attached itself closely to a vaccinate-everybody-no-matter-what policy, and a sudden u-turn would be politically problematic. So it’s no wonder there’s so little interest in the topic.

Indeed, in a September 10 interview, senior covid technocrat Anthony Fauci claimed that the matter of natural immunity was not even being discussed at government health agencies. Fauci’s response suggested that the facts of natural immunity warranted discussion at some point in the future. But the comment certainly fit the dominant regime narrative nonetheless: the facts of natural immunity don’t matter for now. Everyone should just get vaccinated:

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta asked if people who have already recovered from COVID-19 should still be required to get the vaccine.

“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” [Fauci] said Thursday on CNN. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”

Maybe someday they’ll get to talking about it.

But some physicians aren’t as obsessed with pushing vaccine mandates as Anthony Fauci, and the evidence in favor of natural immunity is becoming so undeniable that even mainstream publications are starting to admit it.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine argues that the medical profession has hurt its credibility in pretending that natural immunity is virtually irrelevant to the covid equation. Moreover, the dogmatic “get vaccinated” position constitutes a lack of honesty about the data. Rather, Makary concludes:

[W]e can encourage all Americans to get vaccinated while still being honest about the data. In my clinical experience, I have found patients to be extremely forgiving with evolving data if you are honest and transparent with them. Yet, when asked the common question, “I’ve recovered from covid, is it absolutely essential that I get vaccinated?” many public health officials have put aside the data and responded with a synchronized “yes,” even as studies have shown that reinfections are rare and often asymptomatic or mild when they do occur.

And what are these studies? Makary continues:

More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.

The policy bias in favor of vaccines ignores many other facts as well, such as the relative risks of vaccines, especially for the young:

The current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention position about vaccinating children also dismisses the benefits of natural immunity. The Los Angeles County School District recently mandated vaccines for students ages 12 and up who want to learn in person. But young people are less likely to suffer severe or long-lasting symptoms from covid-19 than adults, and have experienced rare heart complications from the vaccines. In Israel, heart inflammation has been observed in between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 6,000 males age 16 to 24; the CDC has confirmed 854 reports nationally in people age 30 and younger who got the vaccine.

A second dose of the two-shot mRNA vaccine like that produced by Pfizer and Moderna may not even be necessary in children who had covid. Since February, Israel’s Health Ministry has been recommending that anyone, adult or adolescent, who has recovered from covid-19 receive a only single mRNA vaccine dose, instead of two. Even though the risk of severe illness during a reinfection is exceedingly low, some data has demonstrated a slight benefit to one dose in this situation. Other countries use a similar approach. The United States could adopt this strategy now as a reasonable next step in transitioning from an overly rigid to a more flexible vaccine requirement policy. For comparison, the CDC has long recommended that kids do not get the chickenpox vaccine if they had chickenpox infection in the past.

The nonscientific, ideology-induced blind spot for natural immunity also prompted The BMJ  (the journal of the British Medical Association) to note that “[w]hen the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…. As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18–59.”

And yet, the authors note this fact doesn’t appear to be a part of any policy discussion at all:

The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.

This problem is reflected in the Biden administration’s drive for booster shots—announced in mid-August—even before there was any clinical research on booster shots at all. Even by mid-September, as one hospital’s chief medical officer put it, “the data is not compelling one way or another.”

But those sorts of details don’t trouble federal “public health” officials, and the Biden administration quickly moved toward pushing booster shots for everyone.

This Is Why There Should Be No Mandatory Medical Treatment

Of course, mandating vaccines—like mandating any medical treatment—would still be immoral even if we could list a dozen studies suggesting boosters are a boon and that natural immunity is no good.

What if there were twenty-five studies “proving” vaccines are better than natural immunity, but only twenty studies “proving” natural immunity is better? Would coercive vaccine mandates then suddenly be justified? Unfortunately, that’s exactly how many advocates for repressive covid policies think the world should work. For these people, policy is just a matter of adding up the number of studies “proving” their side is right, and then claiming this justifies forcing mandatory medications on millions of human beings.

(It never works in reverse, of course. The fact that there’s a lot of evidence—as Makary points out—against vaccines for those who have natural immunity, the dominant narrative is nonetheless that vaccines are “necessary” and “worth it” for everybody, always and everywhere.)

In the real world, however, many medications—including these new vaccines—come with risks that must be weighed against potential benefits. These decisions can only be made at the individual level, where patients must make their own decisions about what substances to put into their own bodies. In other words, blanket policies proclaiming “everyone must receive this medical treatment immediately, or else” contradicts the realities of the uncertainties and varying risk levels that affect individuals. The facts of uncertainty and informed consent were once considered a mainstay of medical ethics—and of any political ideology that actually respects self-determination and basic human rights. Unfortunately, the philosophy of “public health” appears to be uninterested in such trivialities.

At this point, it would be embarrassing for the regime to admit what actual scientific inquiry has shown: that natural immunity is generally superior to receiving the vaccine. The regime doesn’t like to be embarrassed, and neither do the countless doctors and nurses who have long toed the regime’s political line. So expect more of the same.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Covid in Sweden: Everything on the table

Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | October 2, 2021

A group of German celebrities have started the campaign “alles auf den tisch”, which literally means “everything on the table”. It’s a reaction to the shocking lack of indepence and critical oversight that has been exhibited by journalists ever since the pandemic began. The purpose of the campaign is to break through the blinkered media narrative that exists in relation to covid, and allow a wider range of thoughts and opinions to get out.

In order to accomplish this, the celebrities have interviewed a large number of doctors and scientists who have thus far been sidelined by the mainstream media, and put the interviews up on their site allesaufdentisch.tv. The campaign appears to have been pretty effective so far, since the site crashed on launch due to the massive amount of traffic it was getting. Luckily it’s up and running again now. As a part of the campaign, I was interviewed by violinist Linus Roth. We talked about happenings in Sweden, the covid death rate, and lockdowns. The interview is short but sweet, only around twenty minutes long.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Vaccine Effectiveness Hits as Low as Minus-66% in the Over 40s, New PHE Data Shows

By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 3, 2021

The new Public Health England (PHE) Vaccine Surveillance report was released on Thursday, allowing us to update our estimates of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness from real-world data.

Oddly, the report appeared on a new webpage this week, but the old page didn’t include a note to let you know, so it took me a while to discover it had appeared and where it was.

Following last week’s ‘fact check‘ from Full Fatuous – ostensibly of my piece but with some words of admonition for PHE as well, particularly over the accuracy of the population data – a new note appeared in the report: “Interpretation of the case rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated population is particularly susceptible to changes in denominators and should be interpreted with extra caution.” So there you go. All estimates in this post are based on the data PHE uses and are valid insofar as that data is accurate.

As before, the data is just for a four-week period, which, given that the early part of the Delta surge was dominated by the unvaccinated and the latter part has seen infections rise in the vaccinated, seems to me a mistake. A fairer view would cover the whole Delta surge (as with the estimates I make from the data in the Technical Briefings), but in any case the report gives a snapshot of current relative infection rates.

As Full Fatuous pointed out, PHE don’t recommend using this data to estimate vaccine effectiveness, saying it’s “not the most appropriate method” because it’s unadjusted for risk factors (and, inevitably, they don’t provide the data you’d need to adjust it). However, even if not recommended by PHE, it is certainly a valid method of calculating vaccine effectiveness, which is just a figure which states the relative risk reduction in the vaccinated group, as long as you bear in mind its limitations. All vaccine effectiveness estimates have limitations, and while adjusting for confounding factors is in principle important, it is helpful only if done well, and many studies do not do it well. Unadjusted estimates from raw data are a necessary starting point.

Perhaps the key confounder for the estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection given here is whether people have been previously infected, with a common assumption being that a higher proportion of the unvaccinated will be previously infected, due to it being a potential factor in people’s decision not to be vaccinated. This may well artificially lower the vaccine effectiveness estimates, but since no one has yet produced data showing how antibodies-from-infection split between vaccinated and unvaccinated it is hard to know how far this is the case.

Unvaccinated here means actually unvaccinated, not partially vaccinated or post-jab. Hospitalisation means “cases presenting to emergency care (within 28 days of a positive specimen) resulting in an overnight inpatient admission”.

As England’s drawn-out Delta outbreak drags on, the infection rates in the vaccinated continue to outpace those in the unvaccinated, reducing (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness further. For the 60s age group, infection rates are 63% higher in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated, up from 53% last week, giving an (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness of minus-63%. But that has been topped this week by the 40s age group, the vaccinated among whom now have an infection rate no less than 66% higher than the unvaccinated, up from 46% in last week’s report and 27% in the report for the month ending September 5th. Vaccine effectiveness has been heading downward in the 30s age group as well, now just 8%, though interestingly it has actually been increasing in the under 18s. On this data, vaccine protection against serious illness and death appears to be holding up. I have included the two previous tables below for comparison.

With infection rates now, on this data, much higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated, what remaining justification can there be for vaccine passports, vaccine mandates, and any other policy based on the assumption that vaccines protect other people? When will the Government face up to the reality that vaccines provide poor protection against infection, poor protection against transmission, and thus poor protection of others, and so there is no justification for continuing to build-up the infrastructure of a two-tier, discriminatory state?

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

This Week in the New Normal #7

OffGuardian | October 3, 2021

This Week in the New Normal  is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1.THE WORST ARTICLE I’VE EVER READ.

The demonisation campaign against those who decline to partake in the untested gene therapy is pervasive and seemingly limitless. Article’s pop up claiming unvaxxed people should be banned from flying, banned from healthcare, banned from state benefits, and even fired from their jobs.

But this article in The Mirror is the worst of the worst. Quite honestly the worst, most hate-filled and insidious article I have ever read, and it is literally my job to search out and read hate-filled and insidious articles.

It’s titled:

Anti-vaxxers want to kill your babies, stage a coup and cause another lockdown!”

… and you don’t really need any more information than that. Read at your own risk.

2. THE RETURN OF LAB-GROWN MEAT

… well, not “the return” exactly, because it never went away. I guess “resurgence” is the better word. There’s certainly a sudden bump in the coverage.

The Guardian “asks the expert” if lab-grown meat will replace the real thing. The “expert” in question makes and sells lab-grown meat and, rather unsurprisingly, they say “yes!”.

And then the Times, with a tone of reluctant surrender, tells us we “must embrace lab-grown meat” whether “we like it or not”.

At the same time, Sky hosts a “climate debate” on lab-grown meat. One of those fake “debates” which serves a pre-determined agenda by basing a staged disagreement on fundamental assumptions which neither side questions.

In this case, it’s just assumed that LGM is good for the planet, and that actual meat is bad for it. Neither of those things are proven to be true.

But good news everyone! Your genetically synthesised meat-like protein paste is one step closer…whether you like it not.

3. “TREAT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AS SERIOUSLY AS TERRORISM”

The result of the Sarah Everard trial in the UK has kicked off a wave of fear-based propaganda concerning just how much violence against women goes on, and what we need to do about it. Over and over again a list of very predictable names in very predictable publications talk up the idea that women are “still not safe”, or never “feel safe” (which is not the same thing).

Clearly, any murder is a tragedy for the victim and their family, but to present our country, or society, as inherently violent or dangerous is completely disengenuous.

Let’s just check the stats, for the sake of reality.

In the UK, and most of the Western world, violent crime has been generally on the decline for decades. In 2019, EU statistics found a 32% drop in homicides since 2008. In 2020, the UK suffered ~750 murders in a population of 68 million people, meaning a crude murder rate of 0.001% (or 1 per 100,000). Less than one-third of those killed were women, and only 20% of them were attacked on the street.

Our society is not perfect, but violent crime (against either gender) has literally never been less of a danger in the history of the country. In terms of violent crime, the streets are as safe for women as they have ever been. If they don’t feel safe, well that’s probably because the media keep telling them how much “danger” they’re in.

But why? Why the massive exaggeration of the danger? And why the clarion calls for “action” on violence against women?

Well, the same exact reasons behind the “pandemic” narrative. Because hysteria is always useful. Because the people in charge need us to be afraid all the time. Because they want to make sure different genders, races and orientations are constantly mistrustful of one another. And, obviously, because it can be manipulated into increased powers for the state.

Social media companies are already being pressured to “do more to protect women”. After Everard’s murder first in the news in March, people were suggesting male-only curfews so women feel safe on the streets. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that well-stoked public panic can be parlayed into exactly that kind of insane policy.

The title of this section is taken from a tweet by British Labour MP David Lammy:

It’s not clear what (if anything) David means by this. It’s entirely possible he’s just an idiot playing to the gallery, but anyone familiar with the real purpose, and disastrous societal fallout, of the “War on Terror” should probably be concerned about just how far those in charge could go to (allegedly) “make women feel safe.”

BONUS: THE TOTALLY-NOT-A-CULT OF THE WEEK

Just want to point out that the vaccine-pushers of the New Normal are totally not in a cult.

Whether it’s dressing up dancers like syringes to prance around with glassy-eyed soul-dead TV hosts:

Or literally citing God as the source of the vaccine:

This is all very normal behaviour, and if you perceive it as creepy or cultlike, it’s only because you are a heretic…sorry, I mean a science denier.

BONUS II: PROJECTION OF THE WEEK

For those of you who don’t know who Keith Olbermann is, well I envy you..and apologise for introducing you to his existence. He’s a petty, ill-informed, opinionated loudmouth who takes up irrational and bigoted positions on pretty much everything, and trumpets those views loudly to anyone who’ll listen.

And yesterday, he tweeted this…

It takes a serious lack of self-awareness to get your third untested vaccination against a disease you have a 99.5% chance of surviving, and then lambast everyone not worried about the disease for being scaredy cats.

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

The world of sport, especially American sports, is somewhat of a hotbed of “vaccine hesitancy”. This is down to several factors, most probably to do with many US athletes coming from working-class demographics with longstanding (and entirely justified) suspicions of both the media and big pharma.

By way of contrast with Olbermann’s spittle-spraying diatribe, we present the calm and rational position of NBA star Jonathan Isaac, speaking at a press conference on September 27th:

The NBA has already said they will dock the pay of unvaxxed players who refuse to comply with local mandates. And both the NBA and NFL have put in place massive restrictions on unvaccinated players to pressure them into getting the shot. The media, likewise, is piling on the pressure to conform.

All the players resisting in the face of such a powerful campaign deserve respect. And they serve as a reminder that Covid sceptics, or even just those people who want nothing to do with the vaccine, are not anything like the tiny minority the media tries to pretend we are. And our arguments are rational and informed, not based on the insults and mindless frothing outrage of those trying to pressure us into conforming.

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the “mysterious rise in heart attacks” or the UK’s entirely manufactured “fuel crisis”.

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Rep. Adam Schiff says YouTube’s ban of vaccine skepticism doesn’t go far enough

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 2, 2021

Rep. Adam Schiff praised YouTube’s decision to ban all vaccine skepticism but said it was not the “end of our fight against misinformation.”

On Wednesday afternoon, YouTube announced that it will ban all vaccine skepticism to stop the spread of what it says is misinformation. The ban not only applies to COVID vaccines but also any other vaccines that pharmaceutical companies produce.

While making the announcement, YouTube said: “Today’s policy update is an important step to address vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we’ll continue to invest across the board.”

YouTube’s decision was applauded by many, including Rep. Adam Schiff.

“YouTube’s curbing of anti-vaccine content is a strong first step,” the Democrat congressman wrote on Twitter. But this doesn’t mark the end of our fight against deadly misinformation. These policies must be enforced. And we must keep pushing for other companies to follow suit. What do you say, @Amazon and @Facebook?” hinting at his demands for more censorship.

October 2, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Rand Paul Blasts Biden Health Secretary; “This Is An Arrogance Coupled With An Authoritarianism That Is Unseemly And Un-American”

“You sir, are the one ignoring the science.”

By Steve Watson | Summit News | October 1, 2021

Senator Rand Paul berated Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra Thursday, accusing him of ignoring science and displaying authoritarianism by denying Americans the right to take their own medical decisions.

The Senator specifically addressed the government’s refusal to accept that natural immunity to COVID is as effective, and probably more effective, than current vaccines, as well as Becerra’s own description of those who have pointed out this fact as ‘flat earthers’.

Paul charged Becerra with “insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Johnathan Isaac who’ve had COVID and recovered.”

Referring to a recent Israeli study that found vaccinated people are up to seven times more likely to get COVID-19 than those who have natural immunity, Paul told Becerra that Americans should be allowed to take a “Look at a study with 2.5 million people and say ‘you know what? Looks like my immunity is as good as the vaccine’ or not.

“Maybe in a free country, I ought to be able to make that decision,” Paul urged.

“Instead, you’ve chosen to travel the country calling people like Johnathan Isaac, and others, myself included, flat-earthers,” the Senator continued, adding “We find that very insulting. It goes against the science.”

Paul then asked Becerra if he was a qualified medical doctor, knowing that he isn’t.

“So you’re not a medical doctor. Do you have a science degree?” Paul further questioned, knowing that Becerra doesn’t.

“You alone are on high and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree…this is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American,” Paul blasted.

“You sir, are the one ignoring the science. The vast preponderance of scientific studies, dozens and dozens, show robust, long-lasting immunity after infection,” the Senator further charged, demanding that Becerra should apologise for being dishonest.

Watch:

At the beginning of the video Paul warns that YouTube will likely pull it down and censor him again for daring to stray from the government narrative. The Senator noted that the footage is also up on Rumble, and will remain there.

October 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

The Ultimate Drug-War Crackdown

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 1, 2021

Throughout the long sordid history of America’s war on drugs, drug-war proponents have claimed that if only government officials would really crack down on drug use and drug distribution, the decades-old war on drugs could finally — finally! — be won.

But one big problem is that throughout the decades of drug warfare, there have been crackdowns — big crackdowns.

Many federal judges, for example, some of whom have considered themselves to be fierce drug warriors, have long imposed maximum jail sentences on drug-law violators.

Congress itself has gotten involved in drug-war crackdowns, for example by mandating that federal judges, some of whom weren’t proving tough enough, mete out “mandatory minimum sentences” for drug violators.

There is also the asset-forfeiture racket to consider, a program that entitles DEA officers and state and local cops to steal money from people who are suspected of violating drug laws.

There has been the extradition of Latin American drug lords to the United States, followed by long jail sentences in American prisons.

And of course, there has been the racist component to the drug war, by which cops have used drug laws to stop, search, frame, and harass blacks.

Obviously, those crackdowns didn’t end up winning the war on drugs. On the contrary, the war on drugs is as far away from being won as it’s ever been.

And then came Rodrigo Duterte, the elected dictator of the Philippines and an absolute favorite among American drug warriors. Having been elected in 2016, Duterte announced that he was going to win the war on drugs in the Philippines.

Today, five years later, Duterte is under investigation by the International Criminal Court, which is alleging that Philippine police have killed 6,100 suspects in drug trafficking raids.

Notice the operative word: “suspects.” None of these dead people ever had a trial. None of them were ever convicted. They were just killed.

Moreover, that 6,100 figure might be an extremely low estimate. According to an article in Laprensalatina.com, “Human rights groups speak of between 27,000 and 30,000 dead, mostly victims of alleged extrajudicial executions.” The article also points out that the “victims include 112 children, according to a report published in 2020 by the World Organization Against Torture.”

Duterte is claiming that he’s innocent, but if he isn’t, his system has to be considered the ultimate drug-war crackdown. Just think about it. No constitutional technicalities to follow. No reading of Miranda rights. No criminal defense attorneys. No due process of law. No jury trials.

Just imagine U.S. officials establishing a system in which the cops are empowered to kill anyone they suspect is violating the drug laws. What could be better than that, at least from the perspective of a drug-war proponent, right?

Well, except for one thing. They still haven’t won the drug war in the Philippines! They’re still fighting. And from the way things look, they will be fighting forever, just like American drug warriors!

If the killing spree in the Philippines hasn’t worked to win the war on drugs, isn’t that a good sign that no crackdown, no matter how vicious, can ever succeed in winning the war on drugs?

I suppose a drug-war proponent could say, “Jacob, bring in the military and have them fight the drug war as viciously as they fought the Taliban.” But at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the military lost its war against the Taliban. Moreover, when Mexico used its military to fight to the drug war, the results was tens of thousands of innocent people killed, with no end in sight to the drug war.

I’ve got a better idea, a libertarian idea: Let’s just end the drug war by legalizing all drugs. No more drug-war searches, arrests, harassment, incarceration, or killings. Just leave people free to ingest whatever they want. Leave drug rehabilitation to private groups, like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Legalizing drugs would immediately put all drug lords out of business because they couldn’t compete against legitimate pharmacies and other businesses. It would enable drug addicts to secure sound drugs rather than the polluted drugs that they are forced to buy on the black market and that often lead to their deaths. It would encourage people with drug problems to openly seek treatment. And it would put the entire drug-war enforcement bureaucracy out of business, which would save taxpayers a ton of money.

No crackdown, no matter how vicious, will ever end up winning the war on drugs. The drug war will continue to destroy our civil liberties and bring ever-increasing violence to our land.

More important though is a fundamental principle of liberty: People have the fundamental right to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful.

For those two reasons — the futility of winning the war on drugs and the freedom of the individual — there is no reason for Congress or the states to continue the drug war one day longer. To move toward a free, peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and harmonious society, they need to legalize drugs — all drugs — now.

October 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

UK: NOW COVID POLICE ARE TAKING YOUR KIDS – A MESSAGE TO ALL PARENTS

99 Percent | September 30, 2021

October 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Pfizer Says COVID Vaccine ‘Safe’ for Kids — But Pfizer Has Lied About Kids and Drugs Before

In 1996, Pfizer’s drug, Trovan, was still in the clinical stage of development when the drugmaker tested it, without parents’ consent, on about 200 children.

By Chelli Stanley | The Defender | September 30, 2021

Pfizer last week told the public and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) its new experimental COVID vaccine is safe for young children.

It’s a familiar story, similar to one the vaccine maker told in the past about another drug it tested on children — a story that had a terrible outcome.

Both stories began with this simple claim: “These drugs are safe for your children.”

In 1996, Pfizer, the transnational multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company, was working to bring a new drug — Trovan — to market. The drug was still in the clinical stage of development, when Pfizer made a decision that reportedly cost the lives of many children, and triggered an international firestorm.

Pfizer took its unlicensed Trovan to Kano, Nigeria, during a meningitis outbreak — though Trovan had never been tested in children or against meningitis.

According to Pfizer whistleblower, Dr. Juan Walterspiel, Pfizer sent unskilled doctors to Kano, who were unlicensed to practice medicine in Nigeria, and who had limited experience treating meningitis in children.

Walterspiel also reported the staff were so unskilled they could not place IV lines, and quickly resorted to orally administering the drug to children.

In the short two weeks Pfizer was in Kano, staff worked with 200 children, and gave 99 of the children unlicensed Trovan, despite the children’s desperate state. Pfizer did this even though Doctors Without Borders was operating in the same Kano hospital, treating children for free, with medicine proven to work well against bacterial meningitis.

Doctors Without Borders realized what Pfizer was doing and in a statement said they “were shocked Pfizer continued the so-called scientific work in the middle of hell.” They “communicated their concerns to both Pfizer and the local authorities.”

Pfizer gave the other 101 children ceftriaxone, which is proven effective for meningitis.  However, many children were “low-dosed,” with only one-third of the recommended amount. Because Pfizer didn’t have enough skilled medical personnel to administer ceftriaxone by IV, staff injected it directly into the children’s butts or thighs.

But “the shots were severely painful, leading to ‘great fear and sometimes dangerous struggles with children.’” So Pfizer lowered the dose significantly to ease the severe pain caused by the shots.

Pfizer said available data indicated the dose remained more than sufficient, but the drug’s manufacturer, Hoffmann-La Roche, said the reductions could have sapped the drug’s strength.

“A high dose is essential,” Mark Kunkel, Hoffmann-La Roche’s medical director, told the Washington Post. “Clinical failures … and perhaps deaths of children could have resulted from the low dosing.”

According to a lawsuit against Pfizer, “five of the children who received Trovan and six of the children who were ‘low-dosed’ with ceftriaxone died, and others treated by Pfizer suffered very serious injuries, including paralysis, deafness and blindness.”

Of the 200 children treated by Pfizer, 181 were gravely injured, and 11 died.

The Washington Post investigated Pfizer’s ethics, stating, “Some medical experts questioned why the company did not switch to the proven pills when it was clear the young patients were approaching death.”

“It could be considered murder,” said Evariste Lodi, the leading Doctors Without Borders physician in Kano, after reading a report that Pfizer kept a child solely on Trovan until the child died.

In a statement about the child’s death, a Pfizer spokeswoman said “researchers had no reason to suspect the experimental medicine was not working.” Pfizer also said Trovan was “at least as effective as the gold standard treatment,” despite it having never been used in children, or for meningitis.

Pfizer designed the clinical trial in Kano “in six weeks, though the risks and complications of such a trial would typically require a year to adequately assess,” The Atlantic reported.

The parents in Kano have maintained they were not notified of an experiment, and that Pfizer did not have their consent to use their children in a drug trial in the middle of a health crisis. They organized to sue the drugmaker, while caring for children injured during the experiment.

Pfizer maintains the Nigerian parents gave full consent for their critically ill children to be used in an experiment, though even Pfizer admits no parent ever signed a consent form.

The lawsuits dragged on for years, as Pfizer refused to admit to any wrongdoing. “We are fed up with this case,” said a father who lost his daughter. “Our children are dead and some are maimed.”

Pfizer said “the trial was conducted appropriately, ethically and with the best interests of patients in mind; and it helped save lives.”

However, even the approval letter Pfizer submitted to the FDA about the Kano trial was exposed by a Nigerian doctor, who “said that his office backdated an approval letter and this may have been written a year after the study had taken place.”

The community of Kano has been profoundly affected — “the experiment shaped public perception of Western drugs in the region. Parents told their children about it. Teachers lectured about Pfizer in classrooms. Pundits spoke of Western physicians seeking human guinea pigs.”

Pfizer acknowledged the severe nature of the meningitis outbreak to a Nigerian investigative committee, then said, “Pfizer’s intervention was therefore strictly a humanitarian gesture aimed at saving lives. It was totally devoid of any commercial undertones.” The company called it “the humanitarian trial.”

“If I had the power, I would take away their medical licenses,” said Lodi.

Pfizer’s Trovan history gets worse

In the initial development of Trovan, Walterspiel reported that Pfizer tried another study and:

“ … the study failed and several patients developed severe post-operative infections and one woman had her uterus removed. Pfizer dispatched risk managers and asked affected patients and relatives to fill out checks for whatever amount they felt right against their signature to keep the payments confidential.”

Pfizer made no such offer in Kano. The families of Kano had to sue Pfizer repeatedly, and received no compensation until nearly 15 years after the incident occurred.

Pfizer did not let these mere setbacks of death, maiming and international scandals deter the company. Within a few short years, the drugmaker brought Trovan to market in both the United States and Europe.

Expecting to reap financial windfalls, Pfizer aggressively marketed Trovan — until it discovered the public in both the EU and U.S. was reeling from liver damage, liver failure and death as a result of taking Trovan.

Reports of adverse reactions grew until Europe took Trovan off the market completely, and the FDA severely restricted the public’s access in the U.S.

A New York Times article detailed how Trovan’s serious side effects became known only after it was given to the public. “The case showed how a new drug, marketed by an expert like Pfizer, could be swiftly prescribed to thousands of patients before all the side effects were known. Pfizer said its tests of Trovan had not revealed any serious problems.”

In 2000, William C. Steere Jr., then chairman of Pfizer, acknowledged some side effects only become known after a drug is approved, saying, ”You put the drug in the general population, and then everyone is taking it. We just hold our breath and wait to see if there is something unique with the drug.”

‘If I had an enemy, I would not let him take their drugs’

Pfizer was repeatedly sued in Nigeria and the U.S. for its actions in Kano. In 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay $75 million, despite initially being sued for $8.5 billion.

The company got involved in several more scandals that exploded when Wikileaks published several U.S. Embassy cables detailing Pfizer’s communications.

A Pfizer lawyer described in the cables that “Pfizer has worked closely with former Nigerian Head of State Yakubu Gowon. Gowan spoke with Kano State Governor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, who directed the Kano AG to reduce the settlement demand from $150 million to $75 million.”

In another cable, a top Pfizer representative in Nigeria said:

“Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to Federal Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. Pfizer’s investigators were passing this information to local media. A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa’s ‘alleged’ corruption ties were published in February and March.”

A cable showed a Pfizer representative commenting that “Doctors Without Borders administered Trovan to other children during the 1996 meningitis epidemic, and the Nigerian government has taken no action.”

The accusation prompted Doctors Without Borders to publish a strongly worded press release stating that they did not give anyone Trovan, and were in fact the first to speak out about Pfizer’s unethical actions.

Finally, the cables showed that “Pfizer was not happy settling the case, but had come to the conclusion that the $75 million figure was reasonable because the suits had been ongoing for many years, costing Pfizer more than $15 million a year in legal and investigative fees.”

The original lawsuit also sought prison terms for Pfizer officials.

Scandals continued even after the case was settled, when Pfizer demanded that anyone collecting the money give a sample of their DNA. Several people refused, distrusting what Pfizer may do with their DNA. They were not allowed to get compensation as a result.

Pfizer said it “always acted in the best interest of the children involved, using the best medical knowledge available.”

Najib Ibrahim of Kano said of Pfizer, “If I had an enemy, I would not let him take their drugs.”  Abdul Murtala said, “Pfizer reminds me of recklessness with human lives.”

The pattern continues, with 12-year-old injured during Pfizer COVID trial

Maddie de Garay was 12 when she voluntarily participated in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial for 12- to 15-year-olds in Ohio. After she took the second dose on January 20, 2021, her life changed.

Her mother, Stephanie de Garay, spoke at press conference in June, held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), during which she described the maiming of her child and Pfizer’s disregard towards Maddie and the family — despite Maddie being part of the trial in order to determine whether Pfizer’s covid vaccine is safe for children.

Stephanie said:

“All we want is for Maddie to be seen, heard, and believed, because she hasn’t been.  And we want her to get the care that she desperately needs so that she can go back to normal. She was totally fine before this. They’re not helping her.”

Stephanie said within 24 hours of the second dose, Maddie “developed severe abdominal and chest pain. She had painful electrical shocks down her neck and spine that forced her to walk hunched over. She had extreme pain in her fingers and toes.”

Maddie went to the ER immediately, as instructed by Pfizer’s vaccine trial administrator. After doctors ran few tests, she was sent home with a diagnosis: “Adverse effect of vaccine initial encounter.”

In the first five months after getting her second dose, Maddie would return to the ER eight more times.

According to Stephanie:

“Over the next 2.5 months, her abdominal, muscle and nerve pain became unbearable.  She developed additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure and heart rate, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, and then seizures.

“She developed verbal and motor tics, she had loss of feeling from the waist down and muscle weakness, drastic changes in her vision, urinary retention and loss of bladder control, severely irregular and heavy menstrual cycles, and eventually she had to have an NG tube put in to get nutrition. All of these symptoms are still here today. Some days are worse than others.”

Maddie’s doctors began to suggest she had “functional neurological disorder due to anxiety” and even tried to admit her to a mental hospital. Her family fought it.

It took five months for Maddie to get an MRI of her brain and appropriate blood tests, which she got when her family went elsewhere for medical advice after talking to others who were adversely affected by the COVID vaccines.

Stephanie said:

“What I want to ask is: Maddie volunteered for the Pfizer trial. Why aren’t they researching her to figure out why this happened so other people don’t have to go through this? Instead, they’re just saying it’s ‘mental.’”

The de Garay family has joined with emerging grassroots advocacy groups whose members’ lives suddenly changed after they got a COVID vaccine. They are asking the CDC and FDA to recognize their injuries, the medical community to believe and help them, the media to share their stories, for the public to know about these injuries as part of informed consent, and for their injuries to be studied so that solutions can be found.

Since being injured by new vaccines still in phase 3 trials, they have been subjected to stonewalling, cover-ups, bullying, refusal to collect the data and blanket denials.

Pfizer has not commented publicly on Maddie’s case.

At the September FDA advisory meeting on Pfizer COVID boosters in the U.S., Steve Kirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, said Pfizer did not record Maddie’s extensive injuries in its clinical trial results. Kirsch also noted Pfizer marked the entirety of Maddie’s injuries as “abdominal pain.”

Kirsch reported Pfizer’s fraud to FDA acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, but no investigation has been launched into Pfizer for allegedly erasing Maddie’s extensive injuries from its trial data for children.

© 2021 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.

September 30, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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