By Tom Luongo | Gold Goats N’ Guns | April 5, 2022
Fungal President Joe Biden openly declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a recent outburst while speaking at NATO. He’s repeated this in the wake of the initial images coming out of the town of Bucha, Ukraine where an alleged massacre of civilians by Russian soldiers took place.
Like many incidents similar to this in the past it is hard to take any of these claims of blame seriously. The US and UK have staged many a ‘false flag’ operation in the past at convenient times to gin up diplomatic outrage to advance a particular political agenda.
That agenda is always to justify more war to deal with the villain du jour. Today it’s Putin. In the past it’s been Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad. The playbook is always the same. Shocking images and film of honest-to-god atrocities against civilians and an endless back and forth of accusations and suppression of real information about the event.
Sadly, that becomes the focus not the fact that civilians were murdered for political gains.
Bucha seems to fit this pattern quite well, if more crudely implemented than events like this in the past.
The censorship is nearly total to support the ‘current thing,’ in this case Bucha. But it is no different than the campaigns against certain medications to fight COVID-19.
When it comes to foreign policy objectives, there is always a common denominator in these events to frame that villain and Putin, in particular, as some evil madman… British intelligence.
From the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, to the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, to the ammonia gas attack in Douma, at the center of these allegations is always some arm of the Brits.
All the roads to RussiaGate lead through Ukraine and British Intelligence. At some point you just have to face the face of the agitator. Every one of those stories have logical inconsistencies wide enough to drive a column of tanks through.
These are painstakingly worked through by investigative journalists pushed to the fringe by the technocrats’ willing partners in Silicon Valley to minimize their influence over the narrative.
That, in itself, should be considered prima facia evidence of malfeasance but sadly it isn’t.
From the moment Russia’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24th there has been a clear strategy by the Russian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to head off potential false flags publicly before they could be pulled off.
The Russian Foreign Ministry singled out the UK for its histrionics saying if they wanted to lead the charge, they’ll get the worst treatment.
With the pullout of Russian troops from around Kiev however, they have little control over the preparing of the stage. You believe what you want to believe about Bucha, I don’t care.
Given the track record of Russia’s accusers here I’m taking the position that these allegations have to be incontrovertibly proven publicly for me to believe a word of them. Here’s one version of the story (warning: very graphic).
That is how low the credibility of the sources on this are. The UK government has been, along with Biden’s Dept. of State and National Security Council, the most belligerent in their response to Russia’s military operation. Their history and naked hatred of all things Russian stretches back multiple centuries.
In short, they have motive, means and opportunity to stage a false flag to push public sentiment further towards NATO’s intervention into Ukraine officially, therefore a false flag is the most likely scenario.
Complaints about how Russia waged the initial part of this war have centered on their unwillingness (but not opposition) to target civilians. Kiev could have easily been taken if the Russians wanted to commit massive atrocities against civilians.
They did not do so. That flies in the face of what’s being alleged about Bucha. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way it is being alleged, but the burden of proof lies with the accuser (Ukraine) and their allies (The US and UK).
And the main amplifier of this story, the UK, blocked not one but two proposals by the Russian Federation to investigate what happened in Bucha. We can’t have that, there’s a war to escalate.
Remember this story is only possible because the Russians first got repulsed from taking Kiev and then pulled back from the areas surrounding it. They are redeploying forces and regrouping for a major push against Ukrainian forces trapped in the eastern part of Ukraine.
That operation will likely wipe out what’s left of the UAF troops there and push the next phase of this war on the ground to its natural state of equilibrium for the next few months.
There are so many people whose crimes in Ukraine would be exposed by a Russian win there that it is truly existential to keep that from happening. It goes deeper than even the ideology of the West which needs to subjugate Russia if the Davos plan for global governance is going to have any hope of succeeding.
This is also personal for everyone from Joe Biden himself to hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the various schemes, plots and crimes committed in the petrie dish of corruption they’ve staged their attacks on common decency from.
So, when I say they have motive, means and opportunity, I mean it. These are the same people who impeached Donald Trump over a phone call. Of course they will say the quiet parts out loud about what they want to do to Putin for screwing up their grand plans.
This brings me back to my article from the other day handicapping the Hungarian elections. Because Hungary is now in a very strong position I posited they’d be in if Viktor Orban won the election, which he did, emphatically. And that means the EU is in a very precarious position to continue supporting an anti-Russia policy stance.
With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.
In anticipation of any resistance to the EU’s new set of draconian and frankly insane sanctions on Russia the European Commission wasted no time in announcing they are beginning ‘rule of law’ procedures against Hungary to cut them out of any monetary distributions within the bloc.
The European Commission will soon trigger a powerful new mechanism to cut funding to Hungary for eroding the bloc’s rule-of-law standards, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
The announcement comes two days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won a fourth consecutive term in an election that international observers said was marred by an uneven playing field benefiting the ruling Fidesz party…
… Von der Leyen said her team informed Hungary of its decision on Tuesday after reviewing Budapest’s responses to an informal letter the Commission sent last November asking for information on its rule-of-law concerns.
“We’ve carefully assessed the result of these questions,” von der Leyen said, speaking to the European Parliament. “Our conclusion is we have to move on [to] the next step.”
There’s nothing ‘careful’ about the EU’s assessment here. Hungary and Poland were forced to accept these new rules in a major political battle with the EU in 2021 over their Green New Deal. He wasn’t in a strong enough position to stop this and it meant then we would wind up here today if he won re-election.
The EC’s formal charges against Hungary over their furry law is just like other such moves, namely against Poland for its hated Supreme Court recall law. They are forcing the ultimate choice on Hungary because all the EU really has is Article 7 censure and expulsion from the Union as a threat.
The amount of money they are holding as a carrot to Orban in COVID relief funds is just 30 pieces of silver and he knows it.
So, if you play this out to the end, this is where Orban has to go. He must force the EU to do what Mark Rutte said last month, kick them out or back down.
Today the European Commission is staring at the real threat: that Hungary has no intention of going along with the new sanctions and Orban actually welcomes Von der Leyen’s move to censure and cut off Hungary’s funds from the EU budget.
They will be a country that now pays in but gets nothing in return other than the stick.
But as long as they are a member of the European Commission they can and will veto anything else Von der Leyen cooks up to punish Russia with as a political cudgel to beat vulnerable EU members into going along with.
The EC thinks they will be making an example of Hungary but what they will really be doing is giving Orban an even stronger hand to play on the European Council. Now he can stay in Budapest and tell Hungarians that the EU no longer works for Hungarians and they would be better off free from their yoke.
Hung-exit, anyone?
Elections have consequences when you don’t control the outcome of them. This is why the neocons and war criminals like Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden are all screaming that something or someone has to do something to stop Putin whose operation in Ukraine still has the potential to expose everything.
It’s why Bucha was so haphazardly staged and ham-fistedly packaged up to us.
The blow out results in Hungary on Sunday were a major blow to EU confidence and solidarity. Twelve years of calling Orban a Nazi while supporting real 4th generation Nazis in Ukraine landed with a whimper.
Von der Leyen is a certifiable idiot for invoking the ‘rule of law’ weapon against Orban here using the alleged events at Bucha. She’s using it as an excuse to purposefully destroy the European economy per the directive of her Davos handlers. Their calculus is simple, burn the entire global economy down to punish Putin, Xi and everyone else not down with the Comintern.
It exposes the EU’s complicity in the war on Russia as willing partners with the US and UK because if they wanted to continue virtue signaling they would propose crazy new sanctions and let Hungary veto them.
But now we can only conclude this is exactly what they wanted.
That puts things into stark relief as we look ahead to the increasingly likely probability that French President Emmanuel Macron loses to Marine LePen in France who would be in a far stronger position to break up EU solidarity, freezing it politically at a time when Europe’s financial vulnerability has never been higher.
Meanwhile Putin keeps saying “Got Gold or Rubles?” and Orban is preparing a cold dish of political revenge on the nastiest people in Europe. When this mouse roars, they may finally have to listen.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 6, 2022
The UK’s current effort to censor online speech, the Online Safety Bill, will give the government broad powers to dictate content that the tech giants have to censor and empower the police to arrest people over what they post online.
While these new powers are chilling, they are at least still tied to the UK justice system which guarantees citizens the right to a fair trial and the right to appeal.
But some provisions in the Online Safety Bill skip the police and the courts entirely and instead require the tech giants, some of which are monopolies, to act as enforcers of speech.
The bill deputizes Big Tech to seek out and prevent their users from encountering “illegal” and “fraudulent” content without any oversight from the police or the courts. This gives these powerful tech platforms the freedom to brand something illegal or fraudulent without any of the checks and balances of the justice system.
The bill also gives these tech giants additional powers that aren’t granted to police and the courts, such as the power to set their own rules around how they’ll deal with harmful content. All they have to do is state how they’ll tackle harmful content in their terms of service and then apply these provisions in their terms consistently.
These Big Tech companies already censor millions of posts each year for supposedly being harmful. With their additional powers and the threats of punishment in the Online Safety Bill, the number of censored posts is likely to be even higher if the bill comes into force.
Although the Online Safety Bill does require platforms to give users the right to appeal content takedowns, these appeals are far more centralized than the right to appeal a UK judicial decision. Under the UK justice system, citizens have the right to appeal decisions and have them reviewed by independent judges. Under the Online Safety Bill, citizens have to appeal to the tech companies that took down their content.
By deputizing Big Tech, the Online Safety Bill also creates a dystopian censorship alliance between these powerful companies and the UK government. The government can dictate its censorship requirements directly to its Big Tech enforcers without the police gathering any evidence of an alleged offense and without prosecutors gaining a conviction in a court of law or even a court order.
These provisions that skip the police and the courts and give the tech giants new enforcement powers in the UK are just one of the many aspects of the Online Safety Bill that throttles UK citizens’ civil liberties. Other provisions in the bill take aim at privacy and give large media companies benefits that aren’t afforded to regular citizens.
You can get a full overview of all the free speech and privacy threats posed by the Online Safety Bill here.
You can see a full copy of the full Online Safety Bill here.
The bill is currently making its way through Parliament and you can track its progress here.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 5, 2022
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, a sweeping online censorship law that’s currently making its way through Parliament, will force Big Tech platforms to censor some categories of content that the government has deemed to be “harmful” and will introduce new criminal offenses for posts that are deemed to cause “harm” without a “reasonable excuse.”
The bill gives the Secretary of State new powers to brand some content as harmful and platforms that fall under the scope of the bill’s regulations have to prevent children from encountering this content and allow adults to “increase their control over harmful content.”
Not only does the badly-written Online Safety Bill base most of its censorship requirements and these new criminal offenses on the vague term harm but it also ambiguously extends beyond the idea of physical harm to the realm of what it calls “psychological” harm.
As if the definitions are not far-reaching enough, it further demands that simply the “risk” or “potential” of harm is to be treated “in the same way as references to harm.”
The examples of harm that are listed in the bill are equally ambiguous – such as; when “individuals act in a way that results in harm to themselves or that increases the likelihood of harm to themselves.”
Another badly-worded and wide-ranging example includes; “where, as a result of the content, individuals do or say something to another individual that results in harm to that other individual or that increases the likelihood of such harm (including, but not limited to, where individuals act in such a way as a result of content that is related to that other individual’s characteristics or membership of a group).”
These unclear and far-reaching definitions not only trample over the free speech rights of the British public, but also make it impossible for platforms to determine how to comply with the bill. That’s because many posts could be considered harmful under such broad and flighty definitions, especially when combined with the postmodern idea that speech can be psychologically harmful and with increasing sections of the public that expect to be coddled.
Adding to the lack of clarity, just days before the final bill was published, the UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, one of the main proponents of the bill, has contradicted the bill’s own wording.
Dorries tried to defend the bill by saying those who fear that “the Government wants to ban legal content if it ‘upsets’ or ‘offends’ someone” have a “complete misunderstanding” of the bill.
Dorries even tried to argue that some of the bill’s provisions would actually reduce the risk of platforms being pressured into removing legal content by activists “who claim that controversial content causes them psychological harm.”
However, in the era of safe spaces, the vague definitions leave the notion of determining psychological harm open to wide interpretation, likely causing platforms to play it safe and over-censor speech to avoid facing the whims of whichever government is in power.
This lack of clarity around the definition of harm also extends beyond the censorship requirements in the bill. There are two new criminal offenses in the Online Safety Bill that reference this term – a “harmful communications offence” and a “false communications offence.”
The harmful communications offense defines harm as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress” and describes a harmful communication as intentionally sending a message to “cause harm to a likely audience,” – ominously adding; when there’s “no reasonable excuse.”
It comes with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
The false communications offense describes a false communication as sending a message that contains “information that the person knows to be false” with the intention of causing “non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience” when there’s “no reasonable excuse.”
It comes with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in prison.
The UK’s police forces are already internationally infamous for using another vague and subjective term, “hate,” to justify adding people’s podcasts and tweets to their register of over 120,000 “non-crime hate incidents.” And with these new criminal offenses outlined in the bill, the police would have the power to arrest and charge UK citizens who are accused of causing someone “psychological harm” with speech that would be legal if it was communicated offline.
The censorship requirements and new criminal offenses related to harmful content are some of the many threats to civil liberties posed by this Online Safety Bill. It also threatens privacy and gives larger media outlets special exemptions that aren’t afforded to regular UK citizens.
You can get the full overview of all the free speech and privacy threats posed by the Online Safety Bill here.
You can see a full copy of the full Online Safety Bill here.
The bill is currently making its way through Parliament and you can track its progress here.
MEMO | April 3, 2022
The British government’s plans to designate Yemen’s Houthi movement as a terrorist group risk worsening the humanitarian crisis in the country, leading aid agencies have warned in a letter to cabinet ministers.
According to a report yesterday by The Guardian, 11 British aid agencies, including Save the Children, Care, the International Rescue Committee and Islamic Relief sent the letter upon being informed that Home Secretary Priti Patel was pushing for the designation under the Terrorism Act as part of a review of British policy in Yemen.
There are fears that the move, described as a “blunt tool” could hamper aid efforts in the country, already on the brink of famine, as international banks and companies that import food, medicines and fuel could be impacted by terrorism laws, especially as the Houthi-led, de-facto government based in Sanaa control the most densely populated areas in the north.
“The likely ‘chilling effect’ on banks and other commercial actors could prove catastrophic for the millions of Yemenis already at risk from hunger, conflict and disease,” the letter stated.
“Grain importers and banks told humanitarian agencies they are unsure if they will be able to continue supplying Yemen if the UK proceeds with proscription of Ansar Allah,” the aid agencies explained, referring to the formal name of the Houthi group.
“[If] banks were to refuse transfers because of UK proscription, this would likely have a serious impact on remittances, which are a lifeline for 500,000 Yemeni families. Up to one in 10 Yemenis rely on remittances to meet their essential needs. They are the biggest source of foreign exchange into the country, making up 20% of the country’s GDP. More than 100,000 Yemenis living in the UK would no longer be able to support their loved ones.”
However, the plans have received the support of some of the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE who have been hit by cross-border attacks by the Houthis. Both are joint-leaders of the Arab coalition which militarily intervened in the country in 2015 at the request of the internationally-recognised Yemeni government following the fall of Sanaa to the Houthi forces and their military allies the year before.
Last year the Houthis were listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation towards the end of former US President Donald Trump’s administration, which was condemned by human rights groups at the time who warned it could further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. However, President Joe Biden formally delisted the movement amid announcements that the US would end its support for the Saudi-led war. Earlier this year, Biden said he would consider relisting the Houthis as a terrorist group and it has become a source of tensions between Washington and its Gulf allies, Saudi and the UAE.
Samizdat | April 3, 2022
The Russian military has firmly denied accusations of mass killings of civilians in Bucha, a Ukrainian town northwest of Kiev. The claims have been raised by Ukraine itself, some Western media outlets and human rights groups, after Moscow had withdrawn its troops from the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital.
“All photographs and video materials published by the Kiev regime, allegedly showing some kind of “crimes” by Russian military personnel in the town of Bucha, Kiev region, are yet another provocation,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday.
Russian troops had been pulled out from the area on March 30, the military said, pointing out that “the so-called ‘evidence of crimes’ in Bucha appeared only on the fourth day” after the withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and “representatives of Ukrainian television arrived in the town.”
“Moreover, on March 31 the mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, confirmed in his video address that there was no Russian military in the town, but did not even mention any local residents laying shot in the streets with their hands tied,” the Russian military also pointed out.
“It’s particularity concerning that all the bodies of people whose images were published by the Kiev regime, after at least four days, have not stiffened, do not have characteristic cadaveric spots, and have fresh blood in their wounds,” the military noted, adding that all these inconsistencies show that the whole Bucha affair “has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media, as was the case with the [fake news from the] Mariupol maternity clinic.”
Graphic footage from Bucha shows multiple bodies in civilian clothing lying in the middle of a street. Some of the dead apparently had their hands tied, while others were white armbands, commonly used by Russian forces and civilians in areas under Russian control.
Kiev has blamed the Bucha killings on Moscow, with Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba claiming it was a “deliberate massacre” by Russian troops.
“The Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new, devastating G7 sanctions NOW,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Top Western politicians have backed Kiev’s assessment of Bucha, with some explicitly pinning the blame for the killings on Moscow as well. “Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
A similar stance was voiced by the UK, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss stating that such “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians should be probed as war crimes. “We will not allow Russia to cover up their involvement in these atrocities through cynical disinformation,” she said.
Moscow launched a large-scale offensive against its neighbor in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military alliance. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.
By Robert Carnaghan | The Daily Sceptic | April 1, 2022
The addition of a fluoride, such as hexafluorosilicic acid or disodium hexafluorosilicate, to public water supplies has been recommended in a joint statement by the four Chief Medical Officers of the U.K. The Government’s Health and Care Bill, which has reached its final stages in Parliament, includes a small section to facilitate water fluoridation, which is now expected to be spread throughout the U.K.
Although water is already fluoridated in a few parts of the U.K. (mainly Birmingham), for nearly forty years no new schemes have been implemented since local opposition has managed to defeat them all. The Government is now determined to impose its wishes.
A recent press release said that “higher levels of fluoride are associated with improved dental health outcomes”, and that the “Health and Care Bill will cut bureaucracy and make it simpler to expand water fluoridation schemes”. The Bill’s explanatory notes state: “Research shows that water fluoridation is an effective public health intervention to improve oral health for both children and adults and reduces oral health inequalities.”
For about 70 years it has been claimed that fluoridation reduces dental decay, and that it is safe. Although there is abundant evidence showing that in fact it is neither effective nor safe, the proponents of fluoridation have long had the advantage of far greater funding than that available to sceptics.
Trials of fluoridation started in 1945 in the U.S. and Canada but, before any had been completed, and without any comprehensive health studies, fluoridation was endorsed as safe and effective by the U.S. Public Health Service. The American Dental and Medical Associations soon added their approval, as later did their equivalents in the U.K.
The original trials were studied by Dr. Philip Sutton in Australia who graduated with honours in Dental Science. Asked to examine them, he found they were of low quality, full of errors and omissions.
In Austria, Rudolf Ziegelbecker also studied the original fluoridation trials and found they did not show what had been claimed. Professor Erich Naumann, Director of the German Federal Health Office, said of him: “Your results have been accepted everywhere in Germany with the greatest interest and have increased the grave doubts against drinking water fluoridation.” Prof. Naumann added: “It is regrettable that the existing data on water fluoridation had not been examined earlier using mathematical-statistical methods. Otherwise the myth of drinking water fluoridation would have already dissolved into air long ago.”
In the U.K., pilot schemes started in the mid-1950s in four areas, all of which sooner or later abandoned the practice: Andover (1955-58), part of Anglesey (1955-92), Kilmarnock (1956-62), and Watford (1956-89). In 1957, Dr. Geoffrey Dobbs wrote in New Scientist that they “are now officially described as demonstrations of the benefits of fluoridation, not experiments, so the results are a foregone conclusion” and their purpose quite openly “promotional”. He added that the studies would gain enormously in value if those responsible were willing to submit them to impartial scientific assessment.
When the UK pilot studies started, it was officially stated that they should include “full medical and dental examinations at all ages”, but no medical examinations were done, and neither short-term nor long-term possible harms were explored. This lack of concern continues, with a general failure in fluoridated countries to monitor fluoride exposure or side effects.
In 2000, a major report by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York concluded that, despite many studies over 50 years, “We were unable to discover any reliable good-quality evidence in the fluoridation literature world-wide”. Even among the 26 better studies on fluoridation and tooth decay, not one was evaluated as “high quality, with bias unlikely”.
In 2015, a Cochrane review added: “There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.”
When Israel ended fluoridation in 2014-15, partly because of health concerns, its Ministry of Health pointed out that WHO data indicated no significant difference in the level of tooth decay between countries that fluoridate and those that do not fluoridate.
A trial in Hastings in New Zealand was apparently so successful that it was widely reported as a classic case of the benefit of fluoridation, with tooth decay reduced by at least half. However, when New Zealand passed freedom-of-information legislation, two university researchers were able to access the original records, which revealed that the published results were fraudulent. One of those involved in running the trials was asked for an explanation but he did not even try to justify the published results.
Not only is there a great absence of good quality evidence that fluoridation significantly reduces tooth decay, there has, especially in recent years, been growing evidence that it is harmful.
In 2006, a major report by the U.S. National Research Council said that fluoride exposure is plausibly associated with neurotoxicity, gastrointestinal problems, endocrine problems and other ailments. It was also unable to rule out an increased risk of cancer and of Down’s syndrome in children.
In 2017, a team of experts in Chile, supported by the Medical College of Chile, concluded that fluoridation is ineffectual and harmful.
Fluoride occurs naturally in a few water supplies, but so does arsenic. A recent study from Sweden shows an increased prevalence of hip fracture in post-menopausal women associated with long-term exposure to natural fluoride at levels in water in the same range as used in some parts of the U.K. for artificial fluoridation.
About half a century passed before the declassification of hundreds of U.S. Government documents provided clues to the real reason for fluoridation. Much meticulous research by an award-winning investigative journalist, Christopher Bryson, resulted in his thoroughly documented book, The Fluoride Deception, showing beyond doubt the extensive fraud involved.
Bryson’s research revealed the strong connection between fluoridation and the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bombs. Huge amounts of fluorine were used to extract the isotope of uranium needed. Workers suffered hundreds of chemical injuries, mostly from the gas uranium hexafluoride.
In 1943 and 1944, farmers reported workers made ill, crops blighted and livestock injured, with some cows so crippled they could not stand. When the war was over, farmers in New Jersey sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage. In response the Government mobilised officials and scientists to defeat the farmers.
In 1946, the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs, and the New Jersey farmers’ legal action was seen as a threat, because of the potential for enormous damages and a public relations problem, with more trouble likely if they won. The farmers’ legal action was blocked by the Government’s refusal to reveal how much hydrogen fluoride DuPont had vented into the atmosphere.
Dr. Harold Hodge defended the nuclear programme against the legal threat from farmers. He had the idea of calming the public’s fears by talking about the usefulness of fluorine in tooth health. In January 1944, a secret conference on fluoride metabolism took place in New York. Organised by President Roosevelt’s science adviser, James Conant, documents from it are among the first that connect the atomic bomb programme to water fluoridation and to the Public Health Service.
Manhattan Project scientists were ordered to help the contractors. They also played a prominent role in the fluoridation of the public water supply in Newburgh, New York, an experiment that began in May 1945. In 1947 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission took over from the Manhattan Project.
Dr. Harold Hodge, the Project’s senior wartime toxicologist, became the leading promoter of fluoridation. He announced it was so safe that it would take a massive dose of fluoride to cause harm. (Some 25 years later, in 1979, he quietly admitted in an obscure paper that he had been wrong.)
A Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth was formed, with powerful links to U.S. military-industrial interests and their determined effort to escape liability for fluoride pollution. The aim was to transform the public image of fluoride from that of a dangerous pollutant to a beneficial prophylactic medicine.
This aim was achieved with the help of Edward Bernays, an expert in the use of psychological techniques to achieve “manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses” and “the engineering of consent”. Bernays advised the avoidance of debate: fluoridation was to be presented as indisputably beneficial; only the ignorant could object to it.
Reviews of Bryson’s book included one in the scientific journal Nature, noting that he “raises the stakes by reporting a great deal of relevant and often alarming research”, and describing the book as “thought-provoking and worthwhile”.
Publishers Weekly wrote: “Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people.”
Chemical & Engineering News stated: “We are left with compelling evidence that powerful interests with high financial stakes have colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and investigation into fluoride toxicity.”
Bryson found that, while the American Dental Association had previously opposed fluoridation, it changed its tune after receiving a large donation from an industrialist with a stake in the commercial use of fluoride.
A study of workers at a chemical company in Cleveland was used to promote the idea that fluoride reduces tooth decay. It said workers exposed to fluoride had fewer cavities than those not exposed to it. The report helped to shift public opinion. The secret version of the report, discovered decades later, stated that most of the men had few or no teeth, and that corrosion affected such teeth as they had.
As early as 1951 a confidential gathering of State Dental Directors in the U.S. was advised by Dr. Frank Bull, “We have told the public it works, so we can’t go back on that”. If it was difficult then, it must be very difficult now for prestigious dental and medical organisations to admit that the assurances of effectiveness and safety they have given for so long were at best mistaken and at worst fraudulent.
Among the various methods used to suppress adverse evidence and dissent have been mocking, silencing, sacking and denigration of scientists who threatened the official story. One of the earliest to suffer was Dr. George Waldbott, an eminent U.S. physician who was viciously maligned after reporting fifty cases of people made ill by fluoridated water, as established by double-blind tests.
Dr. John Colquhoun, a former supporter of fluoridation in New Zealand, was Chief Dental Officer for Auckland when he discovered and reported that fluoride was damaging children’s teeth. This was not what the authorities wanted to hear and he was sacked.
Dr. William Marcus was Senior Science Adviser in the Office of Drinking Water in the Environmental Protection Agency. He was sacked when he warned that research by the famous Battelle Institute showed that some forms of cancer could be caused by fluoride.
Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was the Chief Toxicologist at the prestigious Forsyth Dental Center, who discovered that fluoride is a neurotoxin that can adversely affect the brain. Following publication of her peer-reviewed study, U.S. Government pressure resulted in her being sacked and the institute’s toxicology department closed.
Often those whose research gave results unfavourable to fluoridation found that medical journals were hostile. Dr. Albert Schatz was a co-discoverer of streptomycin, the first effective drug for tuberculosis. When he found that infants in Chile had much higher death rates in fluoridated areas he sent a report in 1965 to the editor of the Journal of the American Dental Association who returned it unread.
The reluctance of many medical journals to publish adverse findings on fluoride resulted in the foundation of the International Society for Fluoride Research and its quarterly journal Fluoride. However, MEDLINE, the bibliographic database published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, declined to index the peer-reviewed journal’s contents.
Dr. Richard Foulkes chaired a committee that recommended fluoridation in British Columbia. Later, a friend urged him to do his own research, after which he changed his mind and said: “My initial belief was based on information given to me by those in authority rather than on the basis of my examination of the facts.”
Dr. Hardy Limeback was Head of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto when in 1999 he apologised for having promoted fluoridation. “I did not realise the toxicity of fluoride,” he said. “I had taken the word of the public health dentists, the public health physicians, the USPHS, the USCDC, the ADA, the CDA that fluoride was safe and effective without actually investigating it myself”.
It used to be claimed that fluoride works on the teeth from within and therefore that pregnant mothers should take fluoride for the sake of unborn children’s teeth. Now it is said that fluoride’s main effect is from the outside (topical, not systemic). Therefore, there is no need to imbibe it.
Water fluoridation is a blunderbuss that hits far more than the intended target. About a third to a half of fluoride that is ingested remains in the body where it accumulates, not only in the teeth and bones but also in the kidneys, pineal gland and the cardiovascular system. Kidney patients are particularly at risk from fluoridation.
The dose of fluoride a person gets in water is haphazard since people consume widely differing amounts. Bottle-fed babies get very much more fluoride than breast-fed ones, and the American Dental Association conceded in 2006, with little publicity, that “using water that has no or low levels of fluoride” should be considered when preparing formula milk for infants. However, neither an ordinary water filter nor boiling can remove fluoride.
Recent research also finds that fluoride damages children’s brains. For example, studies show a loss of IQ and increased symptoms of ADHD in offspring when pregnant women are exposed to fluoride at doses commonly experienced in fluoridated communities in Canada.
Leading scientists concerned about fluoride’s toxicity, and willing to speak out, include Dr. Philippe Grandjean (Harvard University: “Fluoride is causing a greater overall loss of IQ points today than lead, arsenic or mercury”); Dr. Kathleen Thiessen (“The principal hazard at issue from exposure to fluoridation chemicals is IQ loss”); Professor David Bellinger (Harvard Medical School: “It’s actually very similar to the effect size that’s seen with childhood exposure to lead”); Professor Bruce Lanphear (“Fluoride exposure during early brain development diminishes the intellectual abilities in young children”); and Dr. Howard Hu (“Fluoride is a developmental neurotoxicant at levels of exposure seen in the general population in water-fluoridated communities”).
No less important is the fact that fluoridation is treatment without consent. People without the resources needed to obtain alternative supplies of water for drinking and cooking are chemically treated, in effect compulsorily.
For more information see Fluoride Free Alliance U.K., Fluoride Action Network and Stop Fluoridation U.K.
Samizdat | April 2, 2022
British energy major Shell will not be able to buy Russian gas due to London’s anti-Russia sanctions, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the media on Saturday.
“London wants to be the leader of everything anti-Russian. It even wants to be ahead of Washington! That’s the cost!” Peskov outlined.
He was referring to the fact that the UK is the only country to have imposed sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank, through which payments for Russian natural gas are made. The measure effectively denies Britain the ability to pay for the commodity.
On March 31, Putin signed a decree requiring gas buyers from “unfriendly countries” to open special ruble and foreign currency accounts with Gazprombank to pay for gas supplies. They will transfer funds in foreign currencies to Gazprombank, which will buy rubles on exchanges and transfer them to the buyers’ ruble accounts to make payments to Russia’s suppliers.
Samizdat | April 2, 2022
The US will be sending an additional $300 million in military aid to Ukraine, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby announced on Friday.
He added that the package will include laser-guided rocket systems, switchblade tactical drones which are capable of taking out armored vehicles, Puma surveillance drones, armored Humvees, ammunition, night-vision devices, machine guns, communications equipment, medical supplies, and other items.
“This decision underscores the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in support of its heroic efforts to repel Russia’s war of choice,” Kirby said.
The secretary explained that the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative allows the US government to procure supplies and equipment directly from defense industry contractors, rather than taking it from the Defense Department’s own stockpiles.
The US has so far committed over $2.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia launched its military operation in the country last month.
Earlier, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that Britain and its partners agreed to send more lethal aid to Ukraine after a conference involving 35 countries, explaining that Ukrainian soldiers need different weapons depending on the tactics on the ground.
Last month, US President Joe Biden signed a government spending bill that approved $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, while some members of the Senate demanded the US spend even more to assist the country.
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 1, 2022
The National Farmers’ Union has warned the UK is sleepwalking into a food security crisis. Soaring energy and fertilizer costs have led to an unprecedented situation where growers’ margins have collapsed, forcing many to halt growing operations.
Reuters says because of the inclement weather in the UK. Farmers grow cumbers, plant peppers, aubergines, and tomatoes in vast greenhouses. Greenhouses use natural gas for heat, but after last year’s surge in gas prices exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month, the crops have become uneconomical to produce.
Trade body British Growers said the average cost to produce a cucumber in Britain before the energy crisis was around 25 pence, which is now more than doubled and set to hit 70 pence when higher energy prices fully kick in.
“Gas prices being so sky-high, it’s a worrying time,” grower Tony Montalbano said.
“All the years of us working hard to get to where we are, and then one year it could just all finish,” Montalbano said.
He noted his 30,000 square meters of glasshouses at Green Acre Salads business, which supplies major supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Morrisons, are shuttered because costs outpace market prices. In fact, the farmer would be losing money if he were to grow.
Compared with this time last year, European gas prices are up a mindboggling 500%.
Fertilizer prices have tripled since last year, along with soaring prices for packaging, diesel, freight, labor, and everything related to running a grow operation.
“We are now in an unprecedented situation where the cost increases have far outstripped a grower’s ability to do anything about them,” said Jack Ward, head of British Growers.
With many greenhouses offline, this will inevitably push down the output of produce for supermarkets and result in persistent and or even higher food inflation when overall inflation is at historic levels.
To give an idea of just how bad the situation is, the Valley Growers Association, whose members produce about 75% of Britain’s cucumber and sweet pepper crop, said 90% of farmers didn’t plant in January. Others said they would not grow with elevated gas prices.
“There’s definitely going to be a lack of British produce in the supermarkets,” association secretary Lee Stiles said. “Whether there’s a lack of produce overall depends on where and how far away the retailers are prepared to source it from.”
The UK could increase imports of produce, but countries worldwide are implementing protectionism measures to keep farm goods domestically to mitigate shortages due to the Ukraine conflict disrupting the global food supply.
Like many other countries worldwide, the UK is sleepwalking into a food crisis.
Samizdat | April 1, 2022
A top US national security official has called on India to scale back its economic and military ties with Russia, warning of “consequences” for any nation that helps Moscow avoid the recent wave of Western sanctions.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Indian officials on Thursday, Washington’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, Daleep Singh, urged New Delhi not to boost Russian energy imports, and to avoid any moves that might “undermine” the US dollar.
“What we would not like to see is a rapid acceleration of India’s imports from Russia as it relates to energy or any other any other exports that are currently being prohibited by the US,” he said, adding that the United States is “very keen for all countries, especially our allies and partners, not to create mechanisms that prop up the ruble and that attempt to undermine the dollar-based financial system.”
While condemning Russia’s “needless war” on Ukraine, Singh said his visit to India was “in a spirit of friendship to explain the mechanisms of our sanctions,” but nonetheless warned that there would be “consequences [for] countries that actively attempt to circumvent or backfill” those penalties.
Asked what those consequences could entail, the adviser declined to elaborate, saying that was part of “private discussions that I’m not going to share publicly.”
Singh’s remarks followed reports that Moscow and New Delhi are currently working out a rupee-ruble payment system, which would allow the two nations to conduct bilateral trade in each others’ currencies. India also recently agreed to buy a quantity of Russian crude oil at a discount, an unpopular decision with the US and some allies, who have embarked on a punitive sanctions campaign designed to isolate Russia’s economy and wreck the ruble.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also visited the Indian capital on Thursday, coinciding with official meetings with Singh as well as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Though American, Australian and British officials have criticized India’s refusal to go along with the sanctions spree, US State Department spokesman Ned Price insisted that Washington is not “seeking to change” any nation’s “relationship with the Russian Federation,” citing India in particular.
“What we are seeking to do, whether it is in the context of India or other partners and allies around the world, is to do all we can” to ensure that “the international community is speaking in unison,” Price added in comments on Lavrov’s trip.
Often portrayed as the “architect” of the US sanctions regime on Moscow, Singh went on to cite growing ties between Russia and China, cautioning that their partnership could have major consequences for India, which has long been locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing along the Sino-Indian border.
“If you set that against the reality that China and Russia have now declared a no limits partnership, and that Russia has said that China is its most important strategic partner, by extension, that has real implications for India,” he said, claiming that Moscow would not “come running to India’s defense” in the event of a Chinese incursion.
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By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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