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We Must Save Ourselves from the Public Health Professionals

By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | December 12, 2023

Like other aspects of medicine, public health is about dealing with life and death. In the international sphere, this involves big numbers. If, as a group, a few million dollars is allocated here, it may save thousands of lives. Actual people living rather than dying, or grieving. If it’s allocated there, it may even promote death – diverting other resources from a more useful approach or causing direct harm.

Dealing with such issues affects people’s egos. Humans are prone to think themselves important if they seem to have power over the lives of others. With international public health staff this is reinforced by people they meet, and the media glorifying their work. The public hears little of the high, often tax-free salaries or the travels and 5-star hotels that boost these egos still further, but instead are fed pictures of (usually brown) children lining up to be saved by people in (usually blue) vests with nice logos. It all feels good.

The result, inevitably, is an international public health workforce that has a very high opinion of itself. Possessing values that it considers superior to those of others, it feels justified in imposing its beliefs and values on the populations who are the target of its work. As their role seems to them more important than bringing up kids in some random village or working at an airport check-in counter, they can feel virtuous when seeking to impose their superior opinions on others. The WHO’s insistence that countries globally embrace certain Western cultural values supporting abortion on request until time of delivery are a powerful example, irrespective of what one considers its ‘rightness.’ More so as the WHO also claims to support ‘decolonization.’

Things get tricky when the ultimate source of funding has its own commercial or geopolitical priorities. As an example, expenditure of the World Health Organization (WHO) is now over 75% specified by the funder, including those who stand to gain financially from such work. Large organizations that helped the WHO run its Covid-19 response, such as Gavi (vaccines) and CEPI (vaccines for pandemics), were jointly set up by private and corporate interests who are now represented on their boards and directing them.

The interface between these self-interested funding sources and the populations upon whom they seek to impose their will is where the self-righteousness culture of the public health workforce becomes so important. They need enforcers whose culture renders them willing to impose harm and restrictions upon others. Apologists and sanitizers who are in a position of trust.

A Captured but Willing Workforce

If you are going to sell a product, you can advertise it and hope potential buyers are interested. This carries a commercial risk. If a product can be mandated – essentially force the market to buy it – then this risk is eliminated. If you can then remove any liability for harm done, you are simply printing money with no risk at all. This is such a ridiculous and indecent approach that it would never fly in a normal commercial context. You would need a workforce capable, en-masse, of putting aside the moral codes that prevent such practices. A shield between the people being managed and the commercial or political interests standing to gain.

Historically, public health has often provided such a shield – a way of sanitizing vested interests that would otherwise appear repulsive to the public. In the United States, it implemented racist and eugenic policies to sterilize and send into decline ethnic groups it considered inferior, or individuals considered to have lesser mental capacity (or socially inferior).

The Johns Hopkins University psychology laboratory was founded by proponents of just such an approach. The fascists in Italy and Germany were able to extend this to active killing first of the physically ‘inferior,’ then whole ethnic groups claimed by governments and health professions to be threats to the purity of the majority. Examples such as the Tuskegee study show that this attitude did not stop with World War Two.

Most of the doctors and nurses implementing eugenics and other fascist policies will have convinced themselves that they were acting for the greater good, rather than demons. Medical schools told them they were superior, patients and the public reinforced this, and they convinced each other. Having the power to directly save or not save lives does that, while carting trash and repairing sewers (equally important to public health) does not. It enables people to tell others what to do for a perceived greater good (even sterilization or worse) and to then stand together as a profession to defend it. They will do this for those who direct them, as health professionals are also trained to follow guidelines and superiors.

Accepting Humility

The hardest thing in public health is accepting that none of the above is actually for the public’s health. It is about unleashed human ego, a large part of greed, and a trained and frequently reinforced willingness to bow to authority. Hierarchies feel good when you are near the top.

In contrast, health depends on mental and social well-being, and all the multiplicity of influences from within and without that determine whether each person experiences, and how they deal with, disease. It requires individuals to be empowered to make their own choices, irrespective of human rights, because mental and social health, and a large part of physical health, are dependent on the social capital this agency enables. Public health can advise but once it steps over the line to coerce or force, it ceases to be an overall positive influence.

To provide sensible public health, you must therefore be comfortable allowing others to do what you consider to be against their physical interests or some ‘greater good.’ When you are convinced that you have superior intellect, this can feel wrong. It is harder again when deferring to the public means breaking ranks with, and losing standing with, peers who consider themselves superior and more virtuous.

To do this, one has to accept that intellect has no standing when assessing human worth, and that each human has some intrinsic characteristic that puts them above all considerations regarding greater societal good. This is the basis of fully informed consent – a very difficult concept when considered deeply. It has its basis in the Nuremberg Code and post-1945 medical ethics and human rights, and is a concept with which many in our health professions and their institutions disagree.

Facing Reality

We are now entering one of those more extreme periods, where the hierarchy really becomes clear. Those pulling the public health strings have gained enormous power and profit from Covid-19 and are focused on getting more. Their chosen enforcers did their job during Covid-19, turning a virus outbreak that kills near an average age of 80 years and at a rate globally perhaps slightly higher than influenza into a vehicle to drive poverty and inequality. They continue to do this, pushing ‘boosters’ associated with rising rates of the infection they are aimed against, and with unusual evidence of harm, ignoring prior understanding of immunology and basic common sense.

Now public health is moving further in response to the same masters, the Covid profiteers, promoting fear of future outbreaks. With near-total obeisance, they are now supporting a reordering of society and health sovereignty through amending the WHO IHR regulations and negotiating a pandemic treaty to build a permanent health technocracy to sustain concentration of wealth and power through recurrent pharmaceutical profit.

This reordering of our democracies into Pharma technocracies, with the public health bureaucracy being aligned to enforce it, will make the right to travel, work, go to school, or visit sick relatives dependent on compliance to health dictates passed down from a massively wealthy corporate aristocracy. Those health dictates will be enforced by people whose training was funded and careers supported by those who directly profit. The modelers who will produce the numbers needed to scare will be similarly funded, while a sponsored media will continue to promote this fear unquestioningly. The institutions above this, the WHO and the big public-private partnerships, take funding and direction from the same sources. The proposed pandemic regulations and treaty are just cementing all in place, repeating the massively harmful restrictions on human rights applied during Covid whilst ensuring that there is less room for dissent.

We need legislators, and the public, to reclaim public health ethics and to return to credible concepts of health and well-being – as the WHO once did – “physical, mental and social.” This is what was intended when previous generations fought to overthrow dictators, striving for equality and for the rights of individuals over those who would control them. History tells us that public health professions tend to follow self-interest, taking the side of those who would be dictators. If our democracies, freedom, and health are to survive, we must accept reality and address this as a basic issue of individual freedom and good governance for which we are all responsible. There is too much at stake to leave this to self-interested corporatists and the notorious enforcers they control.

David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Fake Scientific Studies by Nobel Prize Winner and Johns Hopkins Prof. Gregg Semenza

BY IGOR CHUDOV | MAY 28, 2023

Gregg Semenza, a pediatrician and a professor of Genetic Science, is a prominent researcher. Prof. Semenza works at Johns Hopkins University, a premier scientific institution so important that it received $1,050,368,895 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (JHU played the most prominent role in the Covid pandemic response.)

Prof. Semenza made major discoveries regarding how cells adapt to oxygen availability. Those findings could potentially lead to curing cancer! So important was his work that he was awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2019.

There was a small problem, however.

Seven of his studies were fake and were eventually retracted. Retraction Watch has the details. Even the pictures of mice used in the studies were photoshopped:

The authors have retracted this article as multiple image irregularities have been noted within this article, specifically: Figure 1A, upper panel (HIF-1a blot), lanes five and seven appear to be duplicates. Figure 6B, lower panel (b-actin blot), the first six lanes appear to be identical to Fig. 6G, lower panel (b-actin blot). Figure 3G, the image of the third mouse in the D10 Saline group is identical to the image of the third mouse in the D21 Digoxin group.

Here’s one retracted article and the retraction notice. I downloaded the image from that study and highlighted the mouse in question, which appears in two pictures but with different scan results.

The authors copied/pasted the mouse picture and overlaid different scan results on the two copies. So, they did not have the scientific measurements they claimed to have!

Other retractions expose similarly ridiculous scientific fraud, including fake Western blots and more.

This fraud was not perpetrated by an obscure researcher languishing at a third-rate institution. Quite to the contrary, Prof. Semenza is a world-renowned scientist, occupying a position at a premier facility favored by the major funder of science, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prof. Semenza shares the honor of receiving a Nobel prize with other famed recipients, such as Barack Obama, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and António Egas Moniz, inventor of lobotomy and the winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Antonio Moniz, Inventor of Lobotomy

So, the world of Nobel prizes is very special!

In consolation, we at least know about this fraud, and Semenza’s articles in question were properly retracted. So the self-correcting scientific process worked as intended, at last.

Sadly, as we know, retractions do not always work in an evidence-based, scientific way. For example, many honest articles questioning Covid vaccines or masks were retracted under pressure from science funders.

I feel that my trust in scientists has been violated by “COVID science” and certain other new scientific developments, but I still like the science of the good kind. I have much less faith in Nobel Prizes, however.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

The ‘Science’ of Manipulation: Researchers Craft Messages of Guilt, Shame to Foster Vaccine Compliance

By Ann Tomoko Rosen | The Defender | February 4, 2022

There’s an entire field of research dedicated to developing messaging designed to persuade “vaccine-hesitant” individuals to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

None of the messaging examined by researchers involves conveying factual evidence that supports the claims — widely disseminated by Big Pharma, Big Media and public health agencies — that the vaccines are “safe” and “effective.”

Researchers last month published the results of a clinical trial involving two survey experiments on how to manufacture consent for COVID vaccines.

The Yale-sponsored study, “Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions,” examined how different persuasive messages affected 1) intentions to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, 2) willingness to persuade friends and relatives to get the vaccine, 3) fear of those who have not been vaccinated, and 4) social judgment of people who choose not to vaccinate.

According to the study’s authors:

“Given the considerable amount of skepticism about the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine, it has become increasingly important to understand how public health communication can play a role in increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake.”

The paper did not address the underlying reasons someone might have concerns about the safety or efficacy of COVID vaccines but focused instead exclusively on how to persuade them to get the vaccine.

From the paper:

“We conducted two pre-registered experiments to study how different persuasive messages affect intentions to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, willingness to persuade friends and relatives to receive one, and negative judgments of people who choose not to vaccinate.

“In the first experiment, we tested the efficacy of a large number of messages against an untreated control condition … In Experiment 2, we retested the most effective messages from Experiment 1 on a nationally representative sample of American adults.”

The messages tested by the researchers have been woven into mainstream media narratives and public health campaigns throughout the world. But the study completion date for part 1 was July 8, 2020, which means all of these messages were created prior to the release of any science to support them.

The baseline information control message states:

“To end the COVID-19 outbreak, it is important for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 whenever a vaccine becomes available. Getting the COVID-19 vaccine means you are much less likely to get COVID-19 or spread it to others. Vaccines are safe and widely used to prevent diseases and vaccines are estimated to save millions of lives every year.”

In order to establish which messaging strategies elicited an inclination to get vaccinated, 10 additional messages were added to bring context to the baseline message.

These messages incorporated themes of self-interest, community interest, guilt, embarrassment, anger, bravery, trust in science, personal freedom, economic freedom and community economic benefit.

“We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators,” the researchers wrote.

To study the impacts of guilt, embarrassment and anger, researchers prompted people to think about how they would feel if they did not get vaccinated and then spread the virus to others.

“Emotions are thought to play a role in cooperation, either by motivating an individual to take an action because of a feeling that they experience or restraining them from taking an action because of the emotional response it would provoke in others.”

The “not brave” and “trust in sciences” messages were designed to evoke concerns about reputation and social image. The “not brave” message “reframed the idea that being unafraid of the virus is not a brave action, but instead selfish, and that the way to demonstrate bravery is by getting vaccinated because it shows strength and concern for others.”

The “trust in science” message suggested, “those who do not get vaccinated do not understand science and signal this ignorance to others.”

Personal freedom, economic freedom and community economic benefit messages drew on concerns linked to COVID restrictions.

Overall, it was a message that appealed to community interest, reciprocity and a sense of embarrassment that proved most persuasive, resulting in a 30% increase in intention to vaccinate, a 24% increase in willingness to advise a friend to get vaccinated and a 38% increase in negative opinions of people who decline the vaccines relative to the placebo message.

Community interest messages that incorporate embarrassment were determined to be most effective in getting people to encourage others to get the vaccine, while “not brave” messaging showed the most promise in creating negative judgments of non-vaccinators.

The Yale study findings are consistent with another recent paper, “Vaccination as a Social Contract,” which demonstrated people view vaccination as a social contract and are less willing to cooperate with those who refuse vaccination.

The study stated:

“The experiments consistently showed that especially compliant (i.e., vaccinated) individuals showed less generosity toward nonvaccinated individuals … It is concluded that vaccination is a social contract in which cooperation is the morally right choice.

“Individuals act upon the social contract, and more so the stronger they perceive it as a moral obligation. Emphasizing the social contract could be a promising intervention to increase vaccine uptake, prevent free riding, and, eventually, support the elimination of infectious diseases.”

Forget the facts, appeal to ‘values’

Saad Omer, one of the authors of the Yale study, has an extensive interest in public health messaging.

His efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy earned him a spot on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts working Group on COVID-19 Vaccines, the Sabine Vaccine Institute’s Board of Trustees and the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

In 2020, Omer initiated a “Building Vaccine Confidence Through Tailored Messaging Campaigns” project involving randomized trials in five countries using social media messaging to increase COVID and childhood vaccine coverage.

In his keynote address at the first WHO Global Infodemiology Conference in June 2020, Omer referenced “moral foundation theory” and suggested appealing to values could change decision-making behaviors.

Omer provided details about a messaging study for the HPV vaccine and discussed how similar strategies could be applied to create compliance for COVID measures:

“We wanted to test out, can we have a purity-based message? So we showed them pictures of genital warts and described a vignette, a narrative, a story, talking about how someone got genital warts and how disgusting they were and how pure vaccines are that sort of restore the sanctity of the body.

“So we just analyzed these data. This was a randomized control trial with apriori outcomes. We found approximately 20 percentage point effect on people’s likelihood of getting an HPV vaccine in the next 6 months …

“We are trying out liberty-based messages or liberty-mediated messaging around this behavior related to COVID-19 outbreak. That wearing a mask or taking precautions eventually make you free, regain your autonomy. Because if the disease rates are low, your activities can resume.”

The ‘science’ of infodemiology, infoveillance and infodemic

Omer is one of many prominent voices in what is known as the field of “infodemiology,” a term coined in 2002 by Dr. Gunter Eysenbach.

As the first infodemiologist and founder of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Eysenbach defines infodemiology as ”the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy.”

Eysenbach also coined the terms “infoveillance,” defined as “a type of syndromic surveillance that specifically utilizes information found online,” and “infodemic,” which refers to “an overabundance of information” that generally includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals.”

Using just three words, Eysenbach created a scientific niche, identified a problem and proposed at least part of a so-called solution.

The WHO readily embraced this language during the pandemic. An editorial in the August 2020 issue of The Lancet began with a quote from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “We’re not just fighting a pandemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.”

The WHO hosted several infodemiology conferences throughout the pandemic. Asserting that “misinformation costs lives,” the WHO, the United Nations and other groups created the perfect justification for social media surveillance and the suppression of dissent.

In 2020, the WHO created a resolution asking member states to take measures to leverage digital technologies to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” and worked with more than 50 digital companies and social media platforms, including TikTok and even Tinder, to support these efforts.

The efforts to eliminate “misinformation” resulted in unprecedented censorship of virtually anything that steps outside of state-sanctioned consensus and the creation of a captive audience primed to accept a singular narrative.

A National Defense Authorization Act amendment in 2012 that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public makes it easier for governments to create self-serving narratives.

And thanks to a multi-billion dollar budget from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we are under the influence of the best messages money can buy — whether or not those messages are true.

This is likely why the CDC, public health departments and mainstream media can make broad assertions like this: “COVID-19 vaccines were developed quickly while maintaining the highest safety standard possible,” and this: “Hydroxychloroquine shouldn’t be used to treat COVID-19,” and claim they are “fact.”

Articles and posts that challenge those assertions are regularly removed if they’re even permitted to be published in the first place.

Public health compliance: A cottage industry

Yale is not the only university researching the science of compliance. Academic institutions and government agencies throughout the world are immersed in this emerging behavioral science.

In February 2021, the University of Pennsylvania newsletter, Penn Today, published, “When the Message Matters, Use Science to Craft It,” covering behavioral scientist Jessica Fishman’s Message Effects Lab (MEL) initiative and research related to “what sways decision-making,” particularly with regard to COVID vaccination and testing.

MEL currently has partnerships and ongoing projects with the World Bank, the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, Penn Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Independence Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the Government of Canada to address health-related behaviors.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a branch of HHS, also sponsored research to explore influences on COVID vaccine decision-making. The study, “Attitudes Toward a Potential SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine: A Survey of U.S. Adults,” concluded:

“We found that a substantial proportion (42.2%) of participants in a national survey conducted during the coronavirus pandemic would be hesitant to accept vaccination against COVID-19. Black race was one of the strongest independent predictors of not accepting vaccination; this is especially alarming, given the outsized impact of COVID-19 among African-Americans.

“Our findings suggest that many of the individuals who responded ‘not sure’ may accept vaccination if given credible information that the vaccine is safe and effective. As vaccine development proceeds at an unprecedented pace, parallel efforts to proactively develop messages to foster vaccine acceptance are needed to achieve control of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Behavioral scientist Dr. Rupali Limaye took the messaging a step further. She teaches a free online training course, offered by Johns Hopkins University, that “prepares parents of school-age children, PTAs, community members and school staff to be Vaccine Ambassadors and promote vaccine acceptance in their communities.”

Limaye will be a panelist for an interactive webinar “Making COVID-19 vaccines APPEALing: Pilot message testing in India,” later this month.

Changing messages, same goals

While government agencies and the scientific community cling to unsupported beliefs about vaccine safety and efficacy, they appear to recognize the importance of constantly revisiting their understanding of the impacts of messaging.

UPenn’s updated research found intentions around vaccination have changed. The university’s Annenberg School for Communication reported:

“The researchers found that trust in scientific institutions and health authorities was central to individuals’ intentions to be vaccinated, especially in the early part of the pandemic. However, as the pandemic continued, other factors related to trust emerged …

“The evidence, the researchers wrote, ‘documents the need for the public health community to redouble its efforts to preemptively and persistently communicate not only about how vaccines in general work but also about their benefits, safety, and effectiveness.’”

Research from Civics Analytics, a technology company that creates data-driven audience campaigns, seconds the notion that effective messaging must evolve.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the company explored COVID concerns among different demographics and determined that a “one-size-fits-all” message would not work. The company said:

“In the spring of 2021, before the Delta variant emerged in the U.S. and when vaccine mandates had not yet been implemented, we found that messages highlighting experiences that are off-limits to unvaccinated individuals (such as concerts or international travel) or emphasizing personal choice were most persuasive…

“As you’ll see in this research, the most persuasive messages have changed.”

According to Civics Analytics, FOMO (fear of missing out) and “personal decision” messages were the most impactful. But more current data indicates the “protecting children” message has become more effective at persuading people to get vaccinated.

From the study:

“For general messaging targeting all unvaccinated people, focus on protecting children from COVID-19 and on the financial ramifications of contracting the virus.”

The company found “vaccine safety,” “scary COVID statistics” and “personal story” messages were inclined to backfire and could decrease the likelihood of vaccinating.

Perhaps some good scientists will advance the learning curve and study what happens when the public discovers that “proven messages” lack supporting scientific data.

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

February 5, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Johns Hopkins study explodes COVID death hoax; it’s re-labeling on a grand scale

By Jon Rappoport | November 30, 2020

“This patient who died had an ordinary heart attack.”

“Not anymore. We’re repackaging it as COVID.”

Don’t blink. Johns Hopkins may delete or retract their analysis at any moment. Their author’s study is devastating. Too hot to handle.

UPDATE: Yes, I wrote that opener a few hours before Johns Hopkins stepped in and DID retract the article. Boom. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Hopkins claims the article has been used to spread misinformation about the pandemic, and contains factual errors. CDC is cited as one correct source of facts. Hmm.

Regardless, here is my article, finished before the Johns Hopkins retraction. Since then, I’ve only polished it a bit in several places, for clarity:

Months ago, I told you this, in a number of articles: The overwhelming percentage of people who are “dying from the virus” are actually dying from traditional diseases.

These people have been relabeled and repackaged as “COVID-19.”

It has nothing to do with “the virus.”

A new analysis from Johns Hopkins confirms this in spades.

The Johns Hopkins News-Letter article, in a student publication, is headlined, “A closer look at US deaths due to COVID-19.” It lays out the case made by “Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins.”

As you keep reading, keep this in mind: If the so-called increase in mortality from COVID is offset, almost exactly, by a decrease in deaths from all other major diseases…

Indicating that the so-called COVID deaths are nothing more than an exercise in re-labeling, then…

You can say there is a new coronavirus, but it’s even less harmful than flu, because virtually everybody recovers…

Or you can say the whole story of a new coronavirus is a fake narrative. There is no new virus.

My readers know I’ve been offering much evidence for the latter conclusion.

Here are key quotes from the Johns Hopkins News-Letter article:

“These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

“This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?”

“When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to [deaths per cause in] 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.”

“This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be [may have been] recategorized as being due to COVID-19.”

“The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.”

“’All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,’ Briand concluded.”

“’If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification [re-labeling],’ Briand replied.”

“In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 [was first announced] has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand’s view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning.”

Of course, there is some mealy-mouthed backtracking in the article. The virus is deadly and the pandemic is real, etc. But the data are the data.

The whole COVID operation is a hoax.

If I thought other honest researchers would investigate and re-calculate the Hopkins analysis, I would say, let’s see what they come up with. But based on my experience, there will be, at best, a brief flurry of articles in the press about this extraordinary finding, and then the scientific and press denizens will move on, as if nothing happened. That is their way. They briefly expose a scandal and then they slither off to cover up the scandal.

The other possibility is: Hopkins will retract the analysis, claiming it was flawed. That is the other strategy the low-crawling creatures sometimes deploy.

So there you have it.

Hoax. Con. Fake.

As I keep reporting, the virus (never proven to exist) is the cover story for the true phase-one goal: destruction of the economy.

If the virus were real, if it were attacking people left and right, the all-cause mortality numbers would be through the roof.

But they aren’t.

“I have a great idea, Bill. Let’s declare a fake pandemic. We’ll report all sorts of high death numbers. But really, we’ll just be subtracting numbers from other traditional diseases that cause deaths, and we’ll add those numbers to our fake pandemic.”

“Sounds great, Tony. Can you pull it off? I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Sure, we can pull it off. And if some journalist with a mainstream reputation or an institution suddenly develops a brief infection of ETHICS, we’ll call their work a mistake or a lapse in judgment.”

“You mean an institution like the World Health Organization or Johns Hopkins?”

“Right. We’ll say the institution didn’t issue the study, it was just one of their people, a lone researcher. And if necessary, the institution, under pressure, will back off. But that’s assuming anyone noticed the study in the first place. Normally, these ‘revelations’ surface for a moment and then sink like a stone. No one cares. A pandemic is a money waterfall. The beneficiaries won’t sacrifice their bottom lines, or their reputations…”

Of course, people can rise up and raise holy hell.

SOURCES:

[1] https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

Johns Hopkins, Bristol-Myers Face $1 Billion Suit For Infecting Guatemalan Hookers With Syphilis

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 19, 2019

A federal judge in Maryland said Johns Hopkins University, pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Rockefeller Foundation must face a $1 billion lawsuit over their roles in a top-secret program in the 1940s ran by the US government that injected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis, reported Reuters.

Several doctors from Hopkins and the Rockefeller Foundation were involved in the government program, as well as four executives from Bristol-Myers’ predecessors, Bristol Laboratories and the Squibb Institute, according to the complaint.

“The overall purpose of the study was to test out whether antibiotics could be used to prevent syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections before its symptoms appeared in someone who was exposed to them. So the researchers initially recruited sex workers with syphilis to have sex with prisoners.

Later on, they directly infected volunteers without their informed consent or knowledge of what was really happening.

In many cases, though, infected people were left untreated. In total, 83 deaths were linked to the study, though it’s not entirely certain whether the infections were the direct cause (That said, late-stage syphilis is often fatal),” reported Gizmodo.

In a January 3 decision, US District Judge Theodore Chuang denied the defendants’ argument that a recent Supreme Court decision shielding foreign businesses from lawsuits in US courts over human rights abuses abroad also applied to domestic firms absent Congressional authorization.

Chuang’s decision was a big victory for 444 victims (all mostly dead) and their relatives suing over the experiment.

The experiment was concealed until a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts discovered the files in 2010.

Chuang said lawsuits against US businesses under the federal Alien Tort Statute were not “categorically foreclosed” by the Supreme Court decision last April 24 in Jesner v Arab Bank Plc covering foreign corporations.

He said the “need for judicial caution” was “markedly reduced” where US businesses were defendants because there was no significant threat of diplomatic tensions from foreign governments.

The federal judge said letting the Guatemala case proceed would “promote harmony” by giving foreign plaintiffs a chance at a remedy in the American court system.

“Johns Hopkins expresses profound sympathy for individuals and families impacted by the deplorable 1940s syphilis study funded and conducted by the U.S. government in Guatemala,” the university said in a statement. “We respect the legal process, and we will continue to vigorously defend the lawsuit.”

Hopkins, Bristol-Myers, and the Rockefeller Foundation and their lawyers did not immediately respond to Reuters‘ requests for a statement.

Paul Bekman, a lawyer for the 444 Guatemalans, said his clients would proceed with discovery, including the exchange of decades-old documents.

An earlier decision found no statute of limitations arguments could be made since the plaintiffs did not learn about the experiment until 2010.

Infecting Guatemalan hookers with sexually transmitted diseases was one of many eugenic programs the US government conducted during the 1940s and Post–World War II era. Now the academic institutions and corporations involved in these horrific government experiments are being served with massive lawsuits that could be financially devastating.

January 20, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia: A Retrograde Rentier Dictatorship and Global Terrorism

By James Petras | January 10, 2014

Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over. The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, “Wahhabi” a sect of Sunni Islam.

Faced with internal dissent from repressed subjects and religious minorities, the Saudi dictatorship perceives threats and dangers from all sides: overseas, secular, nationalists and Shia ruling governments; internally, moderate Sunni nationalists, democrats and feminists; within the royalist cliques, traditionalists and modernizers. In response it has turned toward financing, training and arming an international network of Islamic terrorists who are directed toward attacking, invading and destroying regimes opposed to the Saudi clerical-dictatorial regime.

The mastermind of the Saudi terror network is Bandar bin Sultan, who has longstanding and deep ties to high level US political, military and intelligence officials. Bandar was trained and indoctrinated at Maxwell Air Force Base and Johns Hopkins University and served as Saudi Ambassador to the US for over two decades (1983-2005). Between 2005-2011 he was Secretary of the National Security Council and in 2012 he was appointed as Director General of the Saudi Intelligence Agency. Early on, Bandar became deeply immersed in clandestine terror operations working in liaison with the CIA. Among his numerous “dirty operations” with the CIA during the 1980s, Bandar channelled $32 million dollars to the Nicaragua Contra’s engaged in a terror campaign to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. During his tenure as ambassador he was actively engaged in protecting Saudi royalty with ties to the 9/11/01 bombing of the Triple Towers and the Pentagon. Suspicion that Bandar and his allies in the Royal family had prior knowledge of the bombings by Saudi terrorists (11 of the 19), is suggested by the sudden flight of Saudi Royalty following the terrorist act. US intelligence documents regarding the Saudi-Bandar connection are under Congressional review.

With a wealth of experience and training in running clandestine terrorist operations, derived from his two decades of collaboration with the US intelligence agencies, Bandar was in a position to organize his own global terror network in defense of the isolated retrograde and vulnerable Saudi despotic monarchy.

Bandar’s Terror Network

Bandar bin Sultan has transformed Saudi Arabia from an inward-looking, tribal based regime totally dependent on US military power for its survival, to a major regional center of a vast terror network, an active financial backer of right-wing military dictatorships (Egypt) and client regimes (Yemen) and military intervenor in the Gulf region (Bahrain). Bandar has financed and armed a vast array of clandestine terror operations, utilizing Islamic affiliates of Al Qaeda, the Saudi controlled Wahhabi sect as well as numerous other Sunni armed groups. Bandar is a “pragmatic” terrorist operator: repressing Al Qaeda adversaries in Saudi Arabia and financing Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. While Bandar was a long-term asset of the US intelligence services, he has, more recently, taken an ‘independent course’ where the regional interests of the despotic state diverge from those of the US. In the same vein, while Saudi Arabia has a longstanding enmity toward Israel, Bandar has developed a “covert understanding” and working relationship with the Netanyahu regime, around their common enmity toward Iran and more specifically in opposition to the interim agreement between the Obama-Rohani regime.

Bandar has intervened directly or via proxies in reshaping political alignments, destabilizing adversaries and bolstering and expanding the political reach of the Saudi dictatorship from North Africa to South Asia, from the Russian Caucuses to the Horn of Africa, sometimes in concert with Western imperialism, other times projecting Saudi hegemonic aspirations.

North Africa: Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, and Egypt

Bandar has poured billions of dollars to bolster the right-wing pro-Islamic regimes in Tunisia and Morocco, ensuring that the mass pro-democracy movements would be repressed, marginalized and demobilized. Islamic extremists receiving Saudi financial support are encouraged to back the “moderate” Islamists in government by assassinating secular democratic leaders and socialist trade union leaders in opposition. Bandar’s policies largely coincide with those of the US and France in Tunisia and Morocco; but not in Libya and Egypt.

Saudi financial backing for Islamist terrorists and Al Qaeda affiliates against Libyan President Gadhafi were in-line with the NATO air war. However divergences emerged in the aftermath: the NATO backed client regime made up of neo-liberal ex-pats faced off against Saudi backed Al Qaeda and Islamist terror gangs and assorted tribal gunmen and marauders. Bandar funded Islamic extremists in Libya were bankrolled to extend their military operations to Syria, where the Saudi regime was organizing a vast military operation to overthrow the Assad regime. The internecine conflict between NATO and Saudi armed groups in Libya, spilled over and led to the Islamist murder of the US Ambassador and CIA operatives in Benghazi. Having overthrown Gadhafi, Bandar virtually abandoned interest in the ensuing blood bath and chaos provoked by his armed assets. They in turn, became self-financing – robbing banks, pilfering oil and emptying local treasuries – relatively “independent” of Bandar’s control.

In Egypt, Bandar developed, in coordination with Israel (but for different reasons), a strategy of undermining the relatively independent, democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohammed Morsi. Bandar and the Saudi dictatorship financially backed the military coup and dictatorship of General Sisi. The US strategy of a power-sharing agreement between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military regime, combining popular electoral legitimacy and the pro-Israel-pro NATO military was sabotaged. With a $15 billion aid package and promises of more to come, Bandar provided the Egyptian military a financial lifeline and economic immunity from any international financial reprisals. None were taken of any consequences. The military crushed the Brotherhood, jailed and threatened to execute its elected leaders. It outlawed sectors of the liberal-left opposition which it had used as cannon fodder to justify its seizure of power. In backing the military coup, Bandar eliminated a rival, democratically elected Islamic regime which stood in contrast to the Saudi despotism. He secured a like-minded dictatorial regime in a key Arab country, even though the military rulers are more secular, pro-Western, pro-Israel and less anti-Assad than the Brotherhood regime. Bandar’s success in greasing the wheels for the Egyptian coup secured a political ally but faces an uncertain future.

The revival of a new anti-dictatorial mass movement would also target the Saudi connection. Moreover Bandar undercut and weakened Gulf State unity: Qatar had financed the Morsi regime and was out $5 billion dollars it had extended to the previous regime.

Bandar’s terror network is most evident in his long-term large scale financing, arming, training and transport of tens of thousands of Islamic terrorist “volunteers” from the US, Europe, the Middle East, the Caucuses, North Africa and elsewhere. Al Qaeda terrorists in Saudi Arabia became “martyrs of Islam” in Syria. Dozens of Islamic armed gangs in Syria competed for Saudi arms and funds. Training bases with US and European instructors and Saudi financing were established in Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey. Bandar financed the major ‘rebel’ Islamic terrorist armed group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, for cross border operations.

With Hezbollah supporting Assad, Bandar directed money and arms to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades in Lebanon to bomb South Beirut, the Iranian embassy and Tripoli. Bandar directed $3 billion to the Lebanese military with the idea of fomenting a new civil war between it and Hezbollah. In co-ordination with France and the US, but with far greater funding and greater latitude to recruit Islamic terrorist, Bandar assumed the leading role and became the principle director of a three front military and diplomatic offensive against Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. For Bandar, an Islamic takeover in Syria would lead to an Islamic Syrian invasion in support of Al Qaeda in Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah in hopes of isolating Iran. Teheran would then become the target of a Saudi-Israeli-US offensive. Bandar’s strategy is more fantasy then reality.

Bandar Diverges from Washington: the Offensive in Iraq and Iran

Saudi Arabia has been an extremely useful but sometimes out of control client of Washington. This is especially the case since Bandar has taken over as Intelligence chief: a long-time asset of the CIA he has also, at times, taken the liberty to extract “favors” for his services, especially when those “favors” enhance his upward advance within the Saudi power structure. Hence, for example, his ability to secure AWACs despite AIPAC opposition earned him merit points. As did Bandar’s ability to secure the departure of several hundred Saudi ‘royalty’ with ties to the 9/11 bombers, despite a high level national security lockdown in the aftermath of the bombing.

While there were episodic transgressions in the past, Bandar moved on to more serious divergences from US policy. He went ahead, building his own terror network, directed toward maximizing Saudi hegemony – even where it conflicted with US proxies, clients and clandestine operatives.

While the US is committed to backing the right-wing Maliki regime in Iraq, Bandar is providing political, military and financial backing to the Sunni terrorist “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”. When the US negotiated the “interim agreement” with Iran Bandar voiced his opposition and “bought” support. Saudi signed off on a billion dollar arms agreement during French President Hollande’s visit, in exchange for greater sanctions on Iran. Bandar also expressed support for Israel’s use of the Zionist power configuration to influence the Congress, to sabotage US negotiations with Iran.

Bandar has moved beyond his original submission to US intelligence handlers. His close ties with past and present US and EU presidents and political influence have encouraged him to engage in “Big Power adventures.” He met with Russian President Putin to convince him to drop his support for Syria, offering a carrot or a stick: a multi-billion dollar arms sale for compliance and a threat to unleash Chechen terrorists to undermine the Sochi Olympics. He has turned Erdogan from a NATO ally supporting ‘moderate’ armed opponents to Bashar Assad, into embracing the Saudi backed ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, a terrorist Al Qaeda affiliate. Bandar has “overlooked” Erdogan’s “opportunist” efforts to sign off oil deals with Iran and Iraq, his continuing military arrangements with NATO and his past backing of the defunct Morsi regime in Egypt, in order to secure Erdogan’s support for the easy transit of large numbers of Saudi trained terrorists to Syria and probably Lebanon.

Bandar has strengthened ties with the armed Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, arming and financing their armed resistance against the US, as well as offering the US a site for a ‘negotiated departure’.

Bandar is probably supporting and arming Uighur Muslim terrorists in western China, and Chechens and Caucasian Islamic terrorists in Russia, even as the Saudi’s expand their oil agreements with China and cooperate with Russia’s Gazprom.

The only region where the Saudi’s have exercised direct military intervention is in the Gulf min-state of Bahrain, where Saudi troops crushed the pro-democracy movement challenging the local despot.

Bandar: Global Terror on Dubious Domestic Foundations

Bandar has embarked on an extraordinary transformation of Saudi foreign policy and enhanced its global influence. All to the worst. Like Israel, when a reactionary ruler comes to power and overturns the democratic order, Saudi arrives on the scene with bags of dollars to buttress the regime. Whenever an Islamic terror network emerges to subvert a nationalist, secular or Shia regime, it can count on Saudi funds and arms. What some Western scribes euphemistically describe as “tenuous effort to liberalize and modernize” the retrograde Saudi regime, is really a military upgrade of its overseas terrorist activity. Bandar uses modern techniques of terror to impose the Saudi model of reactionary rule on neighboring and distant regimes with Muslim populations.

The problem is that Bandar’s “adventurous” large scale overseas operations conflict with some of the ruling Royal family’s “introspective” style of rule. They want to be left alone to accrue hundreds of billions collecting petrol rents, to invest in high-end properties around the world, and to quietly patronize high end call girls in Washington, London and Beirut while posing as pious guardians of Medina, Mecca, and the Holy sites. So far Bandar has not been challenged, because he has been careful to pay his respects to the ruling monarch and his inner circle. He has bought and brought Western and Eastern prime ministers, presidents, and other respectable notables to Riyadh to sign deals and pay compliments to the delight of the reigning despot. Yet his solicitous behavior to overseas Al Qaeda operations, his encouraging Saudi extremists to go overseas and engage in terrorist wars, disturbs monarchical circles. They worry that Saudi trained, armed and knowledgeable terrorists — dubbed as “holy warriors” — may return from Syria, Russia, and Iraq and bomb the King’s palaces. Moreover, overseas regimes targeted by Bandar’s terror network may retaliate: Russia or Iran, Syrians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Iraqis may just sponsor their own instruments of retaliation. Despite the hundreds of billions spent on arms purchases, the Saudi regime is very vulnerable on all levels. Apart from tribal legions, the billionaire elite have little popular support and even less legitimacy. It depends on overseas migrant labor, foreign “experts” and US military forces. The Saudi elite is also despised by the most religious of the Wahhabi clergy for allowing “infidels” on sacred terrain. While Bandar extends Saudi power abroad, the domestic foundations of rule are narrowing. While he defies US policymakers in Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, the regime depends on the US Air Force and Seventh Fleet to protect it from a growing array of adversarial regimes.

Bandar, with his inflated ego, may believe that he is a “Saladin” building a new Islamic empire, but in reality, by waving one finger his patron monarch can lead to his rapid dismissal. One too many provocative civilian bombings by his Islamic terrorist beneficiaries can lead to an international crises leading to Saudi Arabia becoming the target of world opprobrium.

In reality, Bandar bin Sultan is the protégé and successor of Bin Laden; he has deepened and systematized global terrorism. Bandar’s terror network has murdered far more innocent victims than Bin Laden. That, of course, is to be expected; after all he has billions of dollars from the Saudi treasury, training from the CIA and the handshake of Netanyahu!

January 11, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment