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The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth

Etymology – from Greek, etymos, true, real, actual (the study of roots)

By Edward J Curtin | June 2, 2021

Life is full of slips.

Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us. Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us. Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us. And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.

Slips are double-edged.

It is obvious that since September 11, 2001, and more so since the corona virus lockdowns and the World Economic Forum’s push for a Fourth Industrial Revolution that will lead to the marriage of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, digital technology, and biology, that the USA and other countries have been slipping into a new form of fascist control. Or at least it should be obvious, especially since this push has been accompanied by massive censorship by technology companies of dissenting voices and government crackdowns on what they term “domestic terrorists.” Dissent has become unpatriotic and worse – treasonous.

Unless people wake up and rebel in greater numbers, the gates of this electronic iron cage will quietly be shut.

In the name of teleological efficiency and reason, as Max Weber noted more than a century ago in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, capitalist elites, operating from within the shadows of bureaucratic castles such as The World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank (WBG), The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Google, Facebook, the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA, etc., – run by people whose faces are always well hidden – have been using digital technology to exert increasing control over the thoughts and actions of people worldwide.  They have been doing this not only by diktats but by manufacturing social habits – customary usages – through which they exert their social power over populations.  This linguistic and ideational propaganda is continually slipped into the daily “news” by their mainstream media partners in crime. They become social habits that occupy people’s minds and lead to certain forms of behavior.  Ideas have consequences but also histories because humans are etymological animals – that is, their ideas, beliefs, and behaviors have histories.  It is not just words that have etymologies.

When Weber said “a polar night of icy darkness” was coming in the future, he was referring to what is happening today. Fascism usually comes on slowly as history has shown.  It slips in when people are asleep.

John Berger, commenting on the ghostly life of our received ideas whose etymology is so often lost on us, aptly said:

Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology.

And the teleology in use today is digital technology controlled by wealthy elites and governments for social control. For years they have been creating certain dispositions in the general public, as Jacques Ellul has said, “by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination” that makes the public receptive to the digital life. This is accomplished slowly in increments, as permanent dispositions are established by slipping in regular reminders of how wonderful the new technology is and how its magical possibilities will make life so free and easy. Efficient. Happiness machines. A close study of the past twenty-five years would no doubt reveal the specifics of this campaign. In The Technological Society, Ellul writes:

… the use of certain propaganda techniques is not meant to entail immediate and definite adhesion to a given formula, but rather to bring about a long-range vacuity of the individual. The individual, his soul massaged, emptied of his natural tendencies, and thoroughly assimilated to the group, is ready for anything. Propaganda’s chief requirement is not so much to be rational, well-grounded, and powerful as it is to produce individuals especially open to suggestion who can easily be set into motion.

Once this softening up has made people “available,” the stage is set to get them to act impulsively. Ellul again:

It operates by simple pressure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass movements are sometimes necessary). Of course, this dissociation can be effective only after the propaganda technique has been fused with the popular mores and has become indispensable to the population. This stage may be reached quickly, as, for example, in Germany in 1942, after only ten years of psychic manipulation.

The end result, he argues, is the establishment of an abstract universe, in which reality is completely recreated in people’s minds. This fake reality is truer than reality as the news is faked and people are formed rather than informed.

In today’s computer driven world, one thing that people have been told for decades is to be vigilant that their computers do not become infected with viruses. This meme was slipped regularly into popular consciousness. To avoid infection, everyone was advised to make sure to have virus protection by downloading protection or using that provided by their operating systems, despite all the back doors built in which most have been unaware of.

Now that other incredible “machine” – the human body – can get virus “protection” by getting what the vaccine maker Moderna says is its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” that functions “like an operating system on a computer.” First people must be softened up and made available and then “set in motion” to accept the solution to the fearful problem built in from the start by the same people creating the problem. A slippery slope indeed.

But slipping is also good, especially when repetition and conventional thought rules people’s lives as it does today in a digital screen life world where algorithms often prevent creative breakthroughs, and the checking of hourly weather reports from cells is a commonplace fix to ease the anxiety of being trapped in a seemingly uncontrollable nightmare. It seems you now do need computer generated weather reports to know which way the wind blows.

In our culture of the copy, new thoughts are difficult and so the problems that plague society persist and get rehashed ad infinitum. I think most people realize at some level of feeling if not articulation that they are caught in a repetitive cycle of social stasis that is akin to addiction, one that has been imposed on them by elite forces they sense but don’t fully comprehend since they have bought into this circular trap that they love and hate simultaneously. The cell phone is its symbol and the world-wide lockdowns its reality. Even right now as the authorities grant a tactical reprieve from their cruel lockdowns if you obey and get experimentally shot with a non-vaccine vaccine, there is an anxious sense that another shoe will drop when we least expect it. And it will. But don’t say this out loud.

So repetition and constant change, seemingly opposites, suffuse society these days. The sagacious John Steppling captures this brilliantly in a recent article:

So ubiquitous are the metaphors and myths of AI, post humanism, transhumanism, et al. that they infuse daily discourse and pass barely noticed. And there is a quality of incoherence in a lot of this post humanist discourse, a kind of default setting for obfuscation…. The techno and cyber vocabulary now meets the language of World Banking. Bourgeois economics provides the structural underpinning for enormous amounts of political rhetoric, and increasingly of cultural expression…. This new incoherence is both intentional, and unintentional. The so called ‘Great Reset’ is operationally effective, and it is happening before our eyes, and yet it is also a testament to just how far basic logic has been eroded…. Advanced social atomization and a radical absence of social change. Today, I might argue, at least in the U.S. (and likely much of Europe) there is a profound sense of repetitiveness to daily life. No matter one’s occupation, and quite possibly no matter one’s class. Certainly the repetitiveness of the high-net-worth one percent is of a different quality than that of an Uber driver. And yet, the experience of life is an experience of repetition.

A kind of flaccid grimness accompanies this sensibility. Humor is absent, and the only kind of laughter allowed is the mocking kind that hides a nihilistic spirit of resignation – a sense of inevitability that mocks the spirit of rebellion. Everything is solipsistic and even jokes are taken as revelations of one’s personal life.

The other day I was going grocery shopping. My wife had written on the list: “heavy cream or whipping cream.” Not knowing if there were a difference, I asked her which she preferred. “I prefer whipping,” she said.

I replied, “But I don’t have a whip nor do they sell them at the supermarket.”

We both laughed, although I found it funnier than she. She slipped, and I found humor in that. Because it was an innocent slip of the tongue with no significance and she had done the slipping, there was also a slippage between our senses of humor.

But when I told this to a few people, they hesitated to laugh as if I might be revealing some sado-masochistic personal reality, and they didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

It’s harder to laugh at yourself because we get uptight and are afraid to say the “wrong” things. Many people come to the end of their lives hearing the tolling for their tongues that never spoke freely because of the pale cast of thought that has infected them. Not their own thoughts, but thoughts that have been placed into their minds by their controllers in the mass media.

Freud famously wrote about slips of the tongue and tried to pin them down. In this he was a bit similar to a lepidopterist who pins butterflies. We are left with the eponymous Freudian slips that sometimes do and sometimes don’t signify some revelation that the speaker does not consciously intend to utter.

It seems to me that in order to understand anything about ourselves and our present historical condition – which no doubt seems very confusing to many people as propagandists and liars spew out disinformation daily – we need to develop a way to cut through the enervating miasma of fear that grips so many. A fear created by elites to cower regular people into submission, as another doctor named Anthony Fauci has said: “Now is the time to just do what you are told.”

But obviously words do matter, but what they matter is open to interpretation and sometimes debate.  To be told to shut up and do what you’re told, to censor differences of opinion, to impose authoritarian restrictions on free speech as is happening now, speech that can involve slips of the tongue, is a slippery slope in an allegedly democratic society.  Jim Garrison of JFK fame said that we live in a doll’s house of propaganda where the population is treated as children and fantasies have replaced reality. He was right.

So how can we break out of this deeply imbedded impasse?

This is the hard part, for digital addiction has penetrated deep into our lives.

I believe we need to disrupt our routines, break free from our habits, in order to clearly see what is happening today.

We need to slip away for a while. Leave our cells. Let their doors clang shut behind. Abandon television. Close the computer. Step out without any mask, not just the paper kind but the ones used to hide from others. Disburden our minds of its old rubbish. Become another as you go walking away. Find a park or some natural enclave where the hum and buzz quiets down and you can breathe. Recall that in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the only place Winston Smith can escape the prying eyes and spies of Big Brother, the only place he can grasp the truth, was not in analyzing Doublethink or Crimestop, but “in a natural clearing, a tiny grass knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely” and bluebells bloomed and a thrush sang madly. Here he meets his lover and they affirm their humanity and feel free and alive for a brief respite. Here in the green wood, the green chaos, new thoughts have a chance to grow. It is an old story and old remedy, transitory of course, but as vital as breathing. In his profound meditation on this phenomenon, The Tree, John Fowles, another Englishman, writes:

It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same thing.

I am not proposing that such a retreat is a permanent answer to the propaganda that engulfs us. But without it we are lost. Without it, we cannot break free from received opinions and the constant mental noise the digital media have substituted for thought. Without it, we cannot distinguish our own thoughts from those slyly suggested to us to make us “available.” Without it, we will always feel ourselves lost, “shipwrecked upon things,” in the words of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset. If we are to take a stand against the endless lies and a world-wide war waged against regular people by the world’s elites, we must first take “a stand within the self, ensimismamiento,” by slipping away into contemplation. Only then, once we have clarified what we really believe and don’t believe, can we take meaningful action.

There’s an old saying about falling or slipping between the cracks. It’s meant to be a bad thing and to refer to a place where no one is taking care of you. The saying doesn’t make sense. For if you end up between the cracks, you are on the same ground where habits hold you in learned helplessness. Better to slip into the cracks where, as Leonard Cohen sings, “the light gets in.”

It may feel like you are slipping away, but you may be exploring your roots.

June 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Governor Cuomo’s Unconstitutional Vaccine Passport Program

By Jenin Younes | New Civil Liberties Alliance | May 28, 2021

At the end of March 2021, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he was launching the nation’s only Vaccine Passport Program. In order to gain entry to venues that host large-scale events, including sports stadiums and concert halls, people must scan proof that they have had a COVID-19 vaccine or recently tested negative for the virus. Medium-sized venues—for instance, those that host performing arts or catered events—can operate at increased capacity if they require patrons to submit such evidence. Although the Governor repeats the word “voluntary” ad nauseum when describing the program, New Yorkers should not be fooled. The Program is anything but voluntary: New Yorkers are deprived of their basic constitutional rights if they do not participate.

Initially, the Governor does not have the authority to instate the Vaccine Passport Program. Weeks before the program commenced, the New York legislature rescinded the emergency powers it had granted the Governor a year prior authorizing him to unilaterally issue directives to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Noting that the state had entered the “possibly waning days of the pandemic,” the Legislature explained that “it is time to restore the pre-pandemic balance of power of the governor and legislature.” But in typical Cuomo fashion, the Governor circumvented the constitutional separation of powers and imposed invasive directives on the people of New York with zero legislative oversight.

The Program would not pass constitutional muster even if the Governor had implemented it through the proper channels. Both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I § 9 of New York’s Constitution guarantee individuals the right to assemble. Cuomo reframes that right as a privilege, demonstrating an utter lack of regard for constitutional rights, which are not fair-weather privileges to be bestowed and confiscated at the Governor’s discretion.

Various statements make yet more evident that the Governor lacks basic knowledge of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. He has declared, for instance, “if you’re unvaccinated, that’s your choice, but you can’t go into the Radio City Music Hall with vaccinated people” and that “if you are vaccinated, there are more opportunities for you. You’re going to see venues opening up with vaccinated sections and unvaccinated sections. And you’re going to have more of a chance to participate in activities and resume life.” No matter how many times the Governor reiterates that the program is “voluntary,” these remarks constitute further evidence that the Vaccine Passport Program is the antithesis of what it purports to be.

Cuomo’s dystopian program also infringes upon New Yorkers’ rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment of the federal constitution and Article I § 12 of the state constitution. Numerous courts have recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their medical records, meaning that the Governor cannot compel them to divulge such information in order to participate in public life. And while the Governor has claimed that the Vaccine Passport Program “has nothing to do with government,” the state is obviously coercing businesses into implementing the program and using private actors to do what it cannot. That makes this state action, implicating the Fourth Amendment and state equivalent.

The Governor appears unaware of or unconcerned with the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been approved only pursuant to an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). In granting authorization for emergency use, the FDA concluded that the known benefits outweigh the known risks after a few months of clinical trials. The standard is much higher for medical products to receive full FDA approval. In order to obtain such approval, a vaccine must be rigorously tested and monitored for an extended time period. Crucially, the EUA statute mandates that potential recipients be informed of the risks and benefits and that they have the option to accept or refuse the treatment. The coercive nature of Cuomo’s Vaccine Passport Program unequivocally flies in the face of the language and spirit of the EUA statute. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution establishes that federal laws are “supreme” and preempt conflicting state laws. Since the Vaccine Passport Program contravenes the federal EUA statute, it does not withstand constitutional scrutiny.

Governor Cuomo’s authoritarian tendencies have been on full display for the past 15 months, and nothing exemplifies that reality more than his Vaccine Passport Program. The Governor is under the mistaken impression that he can control the lives and personal health decisions of millions of New Yorkers and that the best way to do so is coercing them into receiving a vaccine. In the long run, though, these measures are likely to backfire, as they almost certainly will manifest in a breakdown in trust between the public and authorities. But Cuomo is far too power-hungry to consider the implications of his actions—fostering opposition to public health efforts and expediting the derogation of our core civil liberties. So far, New Yorkers are letting him get away with it.

June 2, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Four People Dead After SDF Fighters Attack Demonstrators in Syria’s Manbij

Sputnik – 01.06.2021

DAMASCUS – Four people were killed and 13 more injured after militants from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) opened fire at demonstrators in Syria’s Manbij on Tuesday, a local source said.

“SDF fighters opened fire on demonstrators at the Jazeera circle in the centre of Manbij, four people were killed and 13 injured as a result,” the source said, adding that some of the injured are in critical condition.

According to the source, demonstrators against the SDF are ongoing for several days in Manbij as locals disagree with “forced conscription of the male population into the armed forces of the Kurdish formations.”

Kurdish militias imposed a curfew and fully blocked the city.

At the same time, another source said that locals in a settlement east of Manbij kicked Kurdish fighters out after they used force against residents.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Do SAGE Members Calling for Lockdown to be Extended Beyond June 21st Not Believe the Vaccines Work?

By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics •  June 1, 2021

So do the vaccines not work then? That’s certainly the impression you’d get from the way various members of SAGE are carrying on, warning of new waves and new variants and the need to delay the end of lockdown even further (completely ignoring the fact that half of America is now open without any problems so far).

As Sherelle Jacobs asks in the Telegraph, why is the debate continuing as though nothing has changed despite half the country – the most vulnerable half – being vaccinated?

Instead of discussing how quickly vaccines could spell the end of restrictions, the commentariat fixates on the risk of another wave as if absolutely nothing has changed. Somehow, despite low deaths, the Indian variant rather than the vaccine has become the game changer.

We have become wearily used to these media interventions from SAGE members in the build-up to key decisions around lockdowns, usually pushing some skewed version of the scientific evidence to frighten the public and pile pressure on the Government to tighten or maintain restrictions. This was bad enough in the autumn before the vaccines were on the scene, but now it leaves you wondering if they know something we don’t about how well the vaccines prevent death and serious disease.

The Government has been continually putting out new research showing how effective the vaccines are, including against the Indian variant, and while I have written on a number of occasions about the shortcomings of these studies, I had been assuming that the vaccines do work, or at least that the Government and its scientists believe they work. With all this talk of third waves and extending lockdown, you have to wonder.

The latest line to justify extending the lockdown is from NERVTAG member Professor Ravi Gupta, who argues for just a few more weeks to let more people get vaccinated, saying there are signs an “explosive” third wave is on the horizon.

Yet according to the latest figures, 51.3% of the adult population has now had one vaccine dose and 31.4% has had two. Over 90% of the over-70s are now fully vaccinated.

The vaccines are supposed to be up to 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection, including in the over-65s. They are also claimed to be a 90% effective at preventing hospitalisation or death (though presumably their efficacy is reduced somewhat in the frail elderly). This means any new “surge” will have something like one tenth of the infections of earlier waves, while hospitalisations and deaths should be up to a hundred times less – a non-event in infectious disease terms. While these are likely overestimates of vaccine effectiveness, especially among those most susceptible to the disease, there is also naturally acquired immunity and prior immunity that will help to bring the disease burden down.

However you look at it, if the vaccines are going to do their thing then they are already doing it and there’s no point postponing the unlocking. If they’re not working then there’s nothing we can do about it now anyway so we might as well get back to living fully. Either way, the SAGE prophets of doom should be roundly ignored.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

LET’S GET INTO THE WEEDS ON VACCINES

Scott Jensen | May 28, 2021

Where is the science? When the rules are always changing, how can we have trust in them? Lives of Minnesotans and Americans at large hang in the balance if “normal” is something that political leaders just get to make up.

No democrat press releases or attacks change the fact that good science or good governing requires questioning and legitimate inquiry. I stand by my convictions and my oath as a physician to do not harm – especially when it comes to the health and well-being of our children.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Canada: Conservatives’ attempts to protect platform users’ speech online is blocked

By Dan Frieth May | Reclaim the Net | May 31, 2021

Members of the Liberal Party, New Democratic Party (NDP), and Bloc Quebecois rejected a Bill C-10 amendment proposed by the Conservative Party of Canada that would have exempted user-generated content from the bill’s online speech suppression powers. The vote was cast during Monday’s Heritage Committee meeting.

Bloc and NDP legislators have expressed support for the bill, meaning the controversial internet censorship bill is highly likely to pass. Still, Conservative legislators are keen on ensuring the bill does not become law without an exception being created for user-generated content.

Legislators appear to be ignoring all the complaints and criticism of the bill from the public.

Former chairman of the CTRC, the regulator that will oversee online platforms once the bill passes, Peter Menzies has condemned the bill, warning it is “an assault on Canadian’s freedoms.”

Last week, a group of experts in the tech industry, wrote an open letter to Trudeau, urging him to “stop harming the Internet, and the freedoms and aspirations of every individual in this country, and our knowledge economy through overreaching regulatory policies that will have significant, yet unintended consequences for the free and open internet in Canada.”

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Illegitimate rules remove parental consent for Covid vaccines

The Rule of Law is being dismantled and our children are the prey

By Meryl Nass, MD | May 31, 2021

Continuing from the last post: the US had very high rates of Covid compared to many countries, and right now that seems to have been a good thing… since places like Australia and New Zealand seem to want to be able to impose lockdowns for the forseeable future as they pursue the impossible goal of zero Covid. Impossible because you are not going to get everyone on the planet to accept a shot, and then vaccinate the wild animals and pets who are also susceptible. We have basically reached herd immunity with a combination of vaccine and natural immunity. Since only 40% of the US population is fully vaccinated, according to the NYT, there has undoubtedly been a considerable amount of natural immunity that has accrued.

Why aren’t the media celebrating? Apparently the powers that be who have made so many disastrous decisions regarding pandemic management don’t want us to know this. Yet. Thus their huge hurry to vaccinate despite the law, despite the still experimental nature of the vaccine products:

* The colleges demanding vaccinations

* The employers firing the unvaccinated

* The authorization for 12-15 year olds

* The million dollar lotteries for vaccinees, and other excesses to coerce vaccinations

But now the ante has been upped even higher. While many laws have been disregarded during the pandemic emergency, under the rubric of an emergency, two things I learned today are the worst.

Children aged 12-15 are being invited to vaccine clinics without parental permission, in the cities of San Francisco and Philadelphia, and others, based on emergency edicts in local jurisdictions, coupled with a Declaration by Alex Azar in March 2020 broadening the liability waiver umbrella for “covered countermeasures” during a pandemic to virtually anyone who has anything to do with a vaccine program. This could be interpreted as covering anyone who chooses to mandate the vaccine, even while experimental. In other words, even though you are not permitted to mandate an experimental product, Alex Azar said he would not allow you to be punished if you did so.

There do exist real laws, which preceded the pandemic, that protect children as a special class from both being used as experimental subjects (which legally under EUA this is) and protect them by requiring parental consent for procedures, unless they are emancipated minors.

Unless these laws were revoked while I blinked, they still exist and as federal laws should supercede anything imposed by a lesser jurisdiction.

Let’s see what happens. This is “hot” news and I don’t have time to put in the links, but this is true.

Finally, the FDA has announced its vaccine advisory committee will meet on June 10 to advise (aka bless) FDA on authorization and/or licensure for pediatric Covid vaccines. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is possible the FDA will authorize Covid vaccines for younger children, or even license them, starting June 11.

Meanwhile, Israeli media have claimed that one in 3 to 6 thousand vaccinees (I think in the 15-30 age group) develops myocarditis. I am trying to get the official report on this.

It is likely the FDA is trying to forestall any more bad news, which is why it is moving so rapidly. Furthermore, the FDA has warned us that it may not be able to provide any background documents prior to the June 10 meeting. That means the public and the advisors may be entirely in the dark as the advisors vote to provide their approval for whatever the FDA has up its sleeve.

Meanwhile, the Indian Bar Association has served legal notice for suppression of ivermectin against the WHO Chief Scientist, who is a famous Indian who headed up the Indian Council of Medical Research before transferring to the WHO.

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

“I Don’t Know of a Bigger Story in the World” Right Now Than Ivermectin: NY Times Best-Selling Author

So why are journalists not covering it?

By Nick Corbishley | Naked Capitalism | May 25, 2021 

Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author, has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them.

Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use.

For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.

“I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments. But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.

That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor. It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.

As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”

Total News Blackout

On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin. A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.

A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.

Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.

Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.

In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.

“The Most Powerful Entity on Earth”

Malcom X once called the media “the most powerful entity on the earth.” They have, he said, “the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses”. Today, that power is now infused with the power of the world’s biggest tech and social media companies. Together social and traditional media have the power to make a medicine that has saved possibly millions of lives during the current pandemic disappear from the conversation. When it is covered, it’s almost always in a negative light. Some media organizations, including the NY Times, have even prefaced mention of the word “ivermectin” — a medicine that has done so much good over its 40-year lifespan that its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 — with the word “controversial.”

Undeterred, many front-line doctors have tried to persuade their respective health regulators of the unparalleled efficacy and safety of ivermectin as a covid treatment. They include Dr. Tess Lawrie, a prominent independent medical researcher who, as Capuzzo reports, evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs for the WHO and the National Health Service to set international clinical practice guidelines:

“[She] read all twenty-seven of the Ivermectin studies Kory cited. The resulting evidence is consistent and unequivocal,” she announced, and sent a rapid meta-analysis, an epidemiolocal statistical multi-study review considered the highest form of medical evidence, to the director of the NHS, members of parliament, and a video to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “the good news… that we now have solid evidence of an effective treatment for COVID-19…” and Ivermectin should immediately “be adopted globally and systematically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

Ignored by British leaders and media, Lawrie convened the day-long streaming BIRD conference—British Ivermectin Recommendation Development—with more than sixty researchers and doctors from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. They evaluated the drug using the full “evidence-to-decision framework” that is “the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines” used by the WHO, and reached the conclusion that Ivermectin should blanket the world.

“Most of all you can trust me because I am also a medical doctor, first and foremost,” Lawrie told the prime minster, “with a moral duty to help people, to do no harm, and to save lives. Please may we start saving lives now.” She heard nothing back.

Ivermectin’s benefits were also corroborated by Dr. Andrew Hill, a renowned University of Liverpool pharmacologist and independent medical researcher, and the senior World Health Organization/UNITAID investigator of potential treatments for COVID-19. Hill’s team of twenty-three researchers in twenty-three countries had reported that, after nine months of looking for a COVID-19 treatment and finding nothing but failures like Remdesivir— “we kissed a lot of frogs”— Ivermectin was the only thing that worked against COVID-19, and its safety and efficacy were astonishing—“blindingly positive,” Hill said, and “transformative.” Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 mortality by 81 percent.

Why All the Foot Dragging?

Yet most health regulators and governments continue to drag their feet. More evidence is needed, they say. All the while, doctors in most countries around the world have no early outpatient medicines to draw upon in their struggle against the worst pandemic in century. Drawing on his own experience, Capuzzo describes the absence of treatments for COVID-19 as a global crisis:

When my daughter Grace, a vice president at a New York advertising agency, came
down with COVID-19 recently, she was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” in Times Square with homeless people and quarantining travelers. The locks on her room door were removed. Nurses prowled the halls to keep her in her room and wake her up every night to check her
vitals—not to treat her, because there is no approved treatment for COVID-19; only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move her to the hospital, where there is only a single eective approved treatment for COVID-19, steroids that may keep the lungs from failing.

There are three possible explanations for health regulators’ refusal to allow the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:

  • As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.
  • Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin. They include ivermectin’s original manufacturer, Merck, which has an antiviral compound, molnupiravir, in Phase 3 clinical trials for COVID-19. That might explain the company’s recent statement claiming that there is “no scientific basis whatsoever for a potential therapeutic effect of ivermectin against COVID-19.
  • If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines. One of the basic conditions for the emergency use authorisation granted to the vaccines currently being used against covid is that there are no alternative treatments available for the disease. As such, if ivermectin or some other promising medicine such as fluvoxamine were approved as an effective early treatment for Covid-19, the vaccines could be stripped of authorisation.

This may explain why affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs are not repurposed for use against Covid despite the growing mountains of evidence supporting their efficacy.

Ivermectin has already been approved as a covid-19 treatment in more than 20 countries. They include Mexico where the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, recently said that the medicine had reduced hospitalisations by as much as 76%. As of last week, 135,000 of the city’s residents had been treated with the medicine. The government of India — the world’s second most populous country and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of medicines — has also recommended the use of ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment against covid-19, in direct contravention of WHO’s own advice.

Dr Vikas P. Sukhatme, the dean of Emory School of Medicine, recently wrote in a column for the Times of India that deploying drugs such as ivermectin and fluvoxamine in India is likely to “rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.”

Four weeks after the government included ivermectin and budesonide among its early treatment guidelines, the country has recorded its lowest case count in 40 days.

Imagen

In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.

One of the outliers of this trend is the state of Tamil Nadu, where cases are still rising steeply. This may have something to do with the fact that the state’s newly elected governor, MK Stalin, decided to exclude ivermectin from the region’s treatment protocol in favor of Remdesivir. The result? Soaring cases. Late last week, Stalin reversed course once again and readopted ivermectin.

For the moment deaths in India remain extremely high. And there are concerns that the numbers are being under-reported. Yet they may also begin to fall in the coming days. In all of the countries that have used ivermectin widely, fatalities are the last thing to fall, after case numbers and hospitalizations. Of course, there’s no way of definitively proving that these rapid falloffs are due to the use of ivermectin. Correlation, even as consistent as this, is not causation. Other factors such as strict lockdowns and travel restrictions no doubt also play a part.

But a clear pattern across nations and territories has formed that strongly supports ivermectin’s purported efficacy. And that efficacy has been amply demonstrated in three meta-analyses.

India’s decision to adopt ivermectin, including as a prophylaxis in some states, is already a potential game-changer. As I wrote three weeks ago, if case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities fall in India as precipitously as they have in other countries that have adopted ivermectin, it could even become a watershed moment. But for that to happen, the news must reach enough eyes and ears. And for that to happen, reporters must, as Capuzzo says, begin to do their job and report both sides of this vital story.

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli State Terror — Killing Palestinians with Impunity

By Stephen Lendman | May 31, 2021

Throughout Jewish state history, its ruling regimes treated Occupied Palestinians and Arab citizens ruthlessly.

Terrorizing them is longstanding Israeli policy, including daily arrests throughout the Occupied Territories, torture, beatings and other forms of abuse, targeted killings, and justice nearly always denied.

Last week, Al Jazeera reported about “grief and anger (in the al-Amari refugee camp) as women wept, young men chanted with raised fists, and masked gunmen fired into the air during” Ahmed Fahd’s funeral.

According to his family, he was extrajudicially arrested by Israeli undercover agents — then assassinated by multiple shots in the back and legs.

Mortally wounded and bleeding to death in public pre-dawn, he was left to die in Ramallah’s Um al-Shayaret neighborhood last Tuesday.

What happened to Fahd repeats time and again throughout the Occupied Territories, accountability virtually never forthcoming.

Weeping at her son’s funeral, Fahd’s mother mother said he “was shot without mercy.”

According to a Palestinian health ministry spokesman, he was shot multiple times at close range, adding:

“Doctors reported that one of the bullets that entered his back made a 2.5cm entry hole, but when it exited his stomach the hole was 7cm, proving that he’d been shot at close range.”

Israeli soldiers, security forces, and undercover agents use dumdum “butterfly bullets,” Palestinian doctors explained.

They explode on impact, cause severe internal injuries, and make large exit wounds.

Palestinian human rights group Al Haq’s general director Shawan Jabarin said Fahd’s state-sponsored murder was no accident, adding:

His “killing is part of a deliberate Israeli policy of assassinating Palestinians at close range by undercover units known as Musta’ribeen as well as regular troops.”

“The(se) (elements) come into Ramallah nearly every night after 2:00 AM to carry out arrests.”

“There have been a number of cases where Shin Bet intelligence officers phoned the families of Palestinians they killed after shooting them at close range and blocking ambulances from evacuating those critically wounded – young men whom they accused of armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers – saying that ‘the account had now been settled.’ ”

Al Haq documented numerous cases of Israeli state-sponsored assassinations of Palestinians for invented reasons.

Musta’ribeen are ruthless. Arabic speaking, they pose as Arabs to seek out, abduct, and assassinate targeted Palestinians.

According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), undercover Israelis “pos(e) as protesters and incit(e) the situation.”

They “attack civilians very violently and make severe threats, especially against minors.”

“There have been cases when undercover officers pulled people, including minors, off the street without identifying themselves, which made the arrests look like kidnappings.”

In May alone, Palestinians threatening no one were killed almost daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — with impunity.

B’Tselem explained that when Israeli security forces kill or otherwise harm Palestinians, “none of those responsible have faced charges.”

Most often, probes aren’t conducted. When initiated, whitewash nearly always follows.

The Israeli Yesh Din human rights group denounced targeted killings of Palestinians, saying:

“The combination of permissive rules of engagement, regarding firing at unarmed protesters and a law enforcement system that prevents genuine, effective investigation of protester deaths, is a lethal one,” adding:

“The result is the unfortunate, unnecessary loss of many lives, a lack of accountability for harming innocents, and the abandonment of (Palestinians) who remain defenseless against the specter of losing their lives.”

A Final Comment

Countless thousands Gazan children were terrorized, traumatized, and severely damaged emotionally from days of Israeli aggression in May.

During round-the-clock IDF terror-bombing and shelling, children endured nightmares.

When bombs detonated overnight, many woke up screaming.

The effects of what happened left permanent scars.

Parents tried to stay strong for their children, but devastation in much of the Strip took a toll on most all its residents.

According to Palestinian psychotherapist Ghada Redwan:

“There are a number of cases suffering from severe panic and intense fear.”

“There are also children whose psychological symptoms are showing up in strong emotions and vomiting.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) explained that Palestinian children who survived the trauma of war likely relive what they endured for some time after it ended.

For some, trauma never ends.

As a boy and adolescent in the 1940s, my next door neighbor was a WW II survivor around my own age.

I was too young at the time to understand why he was different from other neighborhood kids, largely keeping to himself, not playing with me and my other friends.

The trauma of war took its toll on countless numbers who survived the ordeal, developing young children likely affected most of all.

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

‘My youngest son has seen nothing but violence’ – Palestinian activist on life in West Bank village where Israelis killed a child

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | May 28, 2021

Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old boy, Islam Burnat, from the West Bank village of Bil’in earlier in May and have since “terrorized” local families by raiding their homes and arresting children.

“Two of my sons are now imprisoned and [the Israeli authorities] haven’t even explained why,” Iyad Burnat, a Palestinian non-violent resistance activist, told me in an interview about current events taking place in his village, Bil’in, 12km west of Ramallah.

Burnat, the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall, is a well-known activist who I met during my stays in the occupied Palestinian territories. I lived in his family home for two months in 2017 and have since visited him upon returning to the West Bank.

Iyad’s family, as I have personally witnessed on the ground, are routinely targeted by the Israeli forces, most likely due to his active participation in leading international delegations and touring them around Bil’in.

As Israeli-Palestinian tensions escalated earlier this month, large-scale protests took place throughout the West Bank, which triggered a mass campaign of arrests by the Israeli military. During the recent 11-day conflict, at least three Palestinian children were killed in the West Bank, as well as 66 in Gaza.

I asked Iyad how the protests in his village had taken shape and whether he was surprised by the Israeli response.

“In Bil’in, we have had ongoing demonstrations since 2005 – at first, it was everyday and after a while once per week – to protest against the wall and settlements. You know, everyone from Bil’in would join this non-violent demonstration, men, women, children and many internationals even attended,” he explained.

I have covered many of the demonstrations in Bil’in and although violence was regularly used by the Israelis to put down protests, this time it was different. “They were going crazy,” as Hamde Abu Rahma, a local photojournalist covering the protests, put it.

Following these protests, the early morning arrest campaigns began, of which Iyad’s family was one of the primary targets. Israeli forces stormed his home three times recently.

“The first time the Israelis came was on May 17, to arrest Abdul-Khaliq (Iyad’s 21-year-old son), but he wasn’t at home at the time. They came at 3am and destroyed everything in our house, they told me that if I didn’t give him to them they would shoot and kill him, then return to my home every single night,” said Iyad.

“They destroyed the chairs, they destroyed the televisions, they destroyed anything they put their hands on and were searching the entire house, they destroyed the kitchen, tables and threw our clothes everywhere. Later my son Abdul-Khaliq was forced to surrender himself to the Israeli military.

“On the same night my son Mohammed was home, the soldiers took him to a separate room and beat him everywhere on his body, the blood was streaming down his face after the beating,” Iyad added.

I asked him whether the Israeli military had told him what they were searching for, and he said that they gave no reply when he asked them.

“We’ve had many of these invasions of our home, all are similar and we are used to it,”  Iyad said.

The very next day, at a demonstration in the village, young Islam Burnat was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. Islam was a close relative of Iyad’s. I asked him about what he had witnessed that day.

“The demonstration was to stand with the people of Gaza and demand an end to the killing, to support Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah. Islam was one of the children who were peacefully protesting. Then, suddenly, one angry soldier came and started shooting live ammunition, the soldier took aim and shot him in his head,” Iyad said.

“We all knew Islam and my children grew up with him, I remember him as a baby and I remember him from very young going to the non-violent demonstrations,” he said, holding back tears.

The soldiers later returned twice to Iyad’s family home, again raiding it, arresting his 17-year-old son Mohammed during the early hours of May 18.

“Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed are now in al-Moskobiya prison in Jerusalem, we didn’t hear anything from him until now, the lawyer can’t even visit him and neither can our family,” he said.

Al-Moskobiya detention facility in West Jerusalem is infamous for its alleged underground holding cells and has a reputation for being the worst Israeli prison in terms of the level of torture allegedly used there during interrogations.

“After they took Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed, my wife and my daughter don’t sleep, the tears haven’t left my wife’s eyes,” says Iyad. “My youngest son Mohyaldeen is growing up seeing nothing but violence. He knows his eldest brother Majd was shot and almost died, his second-eldest brother Abdul-Khaliq was also shot many times and imprisoned when he was only 17-years-old for 13 months. He has seen nothing but violence and even though it’s normal for these things to happen now, he still gets scared, he’s just a little child.”

For both of his sons and three others who have been arrested in the village of Bil’in, Iyad said that the Israeli authorities are asking for a $1,500 fine each. However, even if this is paid in full, there is no way of telling how long they will be kept in administrative detention where they are being held without charge.

Israel’s military court system is well known to be comprised of kangaroo courts, as they have a near 100% conviction rate, meaning that whatever they charge a Palestinian with, they may be sent to jail regardless of whether they are truly guilty or not.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV.

May 30, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Remains of 215 Canadian indigenous children found at former residential school

Press TV – May 29, 2021

A mass grave containing the remains of 215 indigenous children has been found at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children in Canada, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau describing the discovery as heartbreaking.

The grim discovery took place at Kamloops Indian residential school near the town of Kamloops, British Columbia, on Friday.

The bodies belonged to the students, some as young as three years old, of the indigenous Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc group and the authorities said investigation into the cause and exact timing of their deaths was underway.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, in a statement. “At this time we have more questions than answers.”

In a statement, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee also called finding such gravesites “urgent work” that “refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia.”

The Kamloops Indian residential school was established in 1890 under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, and closed in 1978.

The educational facility was part of a cross-Canada network of residential schools created to forcibly assimilate indigenous children by removing them from their homes and communities, and forbidding them from speaking their native languages or performing cultural practices.

A 2015 investigation into Canada’s residential school system concluded that the system, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa, constituted “cultural genocide,” with reports documenting physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities against the school children.

The same investigation said that the students were exposed to outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis, influenza and other contagious diseases.

It also found that more than 4,000 of 15,000 children died while attending these schools.

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Ten Killed During Protests in Cali, Colombia Over Past Day

Sputnik – 29.05.2021

At least 10 people were killed and 23 others were hospitalised during a day of protests in the city of Cali in southwestern Colombia, Security Minister Carlos Alberto Rojas Cruz said on Saturday.

“Yesterday, 10 people were killed in Cali, and in some areas in the south of the city, confrontations turned into a real urban war”, Rojas said live on the Caracol radio station.

According to him, many demonstrators sustained injuries during the rallies, with at least 23 of them admitted to the city’s hospitals.

“However, we know that there are many more of them”, the minister noted.

Local media and social networks voiced dismay over the recent series of videos showing people wearing civilian clothes shooting at protesters, and moving together with police officers. Activists demanded that the authorities explain these incidents.

“The presence of armed civilians on the streets of the city is unacceptable, it turns it into a field of military operations… The revealed facts require a quick and thorough investigation involving all law enforcement agencies”, Rojas said.

The city of Cali has been the epicentre of protests against tax hikes, rocking Colombia since late April even after the authorities discarded the initiative. Labour and student organisations demand social and health care reforms, demilitarisation of cities, and dissolution of Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron forces.

Rallies in Cali involve violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement troops. In the wake of the poor security situation, local authorities announced a night curfew. In addition, on Friday Colombian President Ivan Duque arrived in the province of Valle del Cauca, of which Cali is the capital, to hold a security council session and discuss the unrest with the regional government. He pledged to deploy more military personnel to the area.

Protest leaders publicly reject all forms of violence and declare them as peaceful marches, but numerous radical activists join the marches, vandalise properties and attack the police.

The Ministry of Defence of Colombia blames armed rebel groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Army of National Liberation, for the violence during the demonstrations, claiming they seek to destabilise certain regions of the country for their purposes.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

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