NEW EVIDENCE OF IMMUNE SYSTEM “FLARE UPS” POST COVID SHOT
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | December 15, 2023
US Sends Carrier Strike Group to Gulf of Aden Amid Houthi Attacks – Reports
Sputnik – 17.12.2023
The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.
Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.
“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.
Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”
On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.
After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Most young Americans want Israel given to Hamas – poll
RT | December 16, 2023
Over half of US adults from ages 18 to 24 believe the ongoing crisis in Gaza should be resolved by abolishing the state of Israel and turning it over to Hamas and the Palestinian people, a new poll has found.
The Harvard-Harris poll, conducted this week and released on Friday, showed that 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended,” compared with 32% who favor a two-state solution. Just 17% said Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians to resolve the conflict. Among all age groups, six in ten Americans call for a two-state deal, while only 19% want Israel to be given to the Palestinians.
The survey marked the latest poll showing a dramatic divide between Americans young and old on issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people amid the ongoing war between West Jerusalem and Hamas. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that nearly half of US adults under age 30 either believe the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is a myth or are not sure that it happened.
Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the Harvard-Harris poll said they agree that “Jews as a class … should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 73% of Americans in all age groups – and 91% of respondents ages 65 and older – disagreed with the anti-Jewish statement. Similarly, half of the youngest respondents said they support Hamas in the war, while 81% of overall participants favor Israel. Six in ten young adults – but only 37% of overall respondents – believe Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza.
Americans are similarly divided on identity politics. For instance, 79% of young adults believe that “white people are oppressors” and that non-white people should therefore be shown favoritism in college admissions and employment, the poll found. Among all age groups, 65% of Americans oppose such anti-white discrimination.
Just 42% of Americans approve of how US President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war, down from 45% in November, the poll showed. Only 32% believe that the country is on the “right track,” and 33% see the nation’s economy as heading in the right direction.
Such perceptions may bode poorly for Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024. The president has a net favorability rating of minus 10%, the poll showed. By comparison, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest favorability rating among all political figures listed in the survey, at plus 18%.
The poll found that if the election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat Biden by a margin of 43% to 35%, while Kennedy would garner 17% of the votes. More than seven in ten Americans believe that a vote for Biden would essentially be a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because the 81-year-old incumbent wouldn’t likely complete a second term.
Joe Biden’s World War III Fantasy
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.12.2023
On July 13, 2023, US President Joe Biden confidently announced to the world that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already lost the war.”
The “war” Biden spoke of was Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.
Biden’s bold statement was made during a press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto, following a meeting with Nordic leaders that came on the heels of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Biden declared that the US and its NATO allies had, through their decision to commit to the military victory of Ukraine over Russia, reached “an inflection point in history,” adding that “This fight is not only a fight for the future of Ukraine, it is about sovereignty, security and freedom itself.”
The American president’s pronouncements followed similarly themed rhetoric spoken in Vilnius a day prior, where he announced to his NATO colleagues, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken,” adding that “We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes,” it turns out, isn’t the same as “long as needed.”
Confronted with a trifecta of bad news—the calamitous defeat of the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military in the much-hyped summer counteroffensive, a Russian Army that is growing stronger by the day, and the collapse of political will and fiscal ability on the part of Ukraine’s erstwhile allies in the US and Europe to continue funding Ukraine’s flagging war effort—Joe Biden was compelled to alter his pledge to the cause of Ukrainian and European liberty and freedom to “as long as we can,” with the modifier contingent upon the US Congress’ willingness to throw another $60 billion into the $120 billion in aid the US has provided Ukraine since May 2022.
To intimidate Congress into yielding to his demands regarding money for Ukraine, Biden undertook a campaign of terror. “Frankly,” Biden said in a statement delivered at the White House in early December, “I think it’s stunning we have gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership.”
While many Republicans support continued funding of the Ukraine war effort, the issue has become politicized in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where domestic issues tend to trump foreign affairs. And, currently, there is no more high-profile domestic policy issue than border security and immigration reform. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, noted that while he would support continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort, he could not return to his home state of South Carolina to “try to explain why I helped Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and did nothing to secure our own border. I will help all of our allies, but we have got to help ourselves first.”
Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House and a hardline conservative, indicated that the objection to continued funding for Ukraine went beyond simply funding issues. “What is the objective?” Johnson said to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier this month. “What is the endgame in Ukraine? How are we going to have proper oversight of the funds?”
Russian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher towards Ukrainian positions in the course of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, at the unknown location in the
Both Graham and Johnson had been subjected to a full-court press by Joe Biden and the White House in an effort for the recalcitrant Republicans to reverse course on their objections. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden pleaded. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” Biden noted, “he won’t stop there.” The US president said an emboldened Putin would move on to threaten his NATO neighbors. And then, Biden stated, “We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.”
If the threat of a Third World War in the face of Congressional inaction wasn’t enough, Biden authorized the Pentagon to declassify and release to CNN an intelligence report that claimed that Russia had suffered enormous casualties in its war with Ukraine, with some 315,000 of an estimated 360,000 troops that made up Russia’s pre-conflict ground force, having been killed or wounded. The declassified intelligence report also claimed that 2,200 of Russia’s 3,500 tanks have been lost, along with 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.
The release of the declassified report was clearly timed to influence the US Congress by emphasizing the very talking points that have been repeatedly made by Senator Graham and others that the US aid was “Best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”
Given the history of the US intelligence community of declassifying intelligence reports for the specific purpose of releasing the information to mainstream media outlets to shape public opinion—even if the intelligence community knows the information contained in the report is wrong—one must take the report regarding Russian casualties with a heavy grain of salt. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia currently has some 617,000 troops deployed in the Special Military Operation zone. These forces are on the offensive, actively advancing on several fronts against a Ukrainian Army which is rapidly losing its ability to sustain large-scale ground combat operations. This doesn’t sound like the performance of an organization that suffered some 87% casualties, a figure which would make the survivors combat ineffective.
The fact is, US and European support for Ukraine is flagging, and Ukraine is facing an existential crisis in the coming weeks and months that it most likely will not be able to resolve in its favor.
While Russian troops are taking casualties, it is far more likely than not that the real Russian casualty figures are significantly less than the number reported in the declassified US intelligence report, spread out over the original force and the hundreds of thousands of mobilized reservists and volunteers who have entered the fighting since. These losses pale in comparison to the more than 400,000 dead and nearly one million wounded Ukraine has suffered.
Russia’s combat power grows every day, with fresh troops and equipment being made available for the war effort. Ukraine, on the other hand, has exhausted its reserves, and is left scraping the bottom of its human resources barrel to man whatever units it is able to organize from what is left of Ukraine’s diminished, and diminishing, arsenal.
While the Russian Army is indeed large, and growing, and its capabilities expanding as it becomes more combat experienced, it is an army with a very specific mission—the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian force structure is currently more than sufficient to defeat the Ukrainians on a frontage that stretches some 2,000 kilometers in length. It is even large enough to secure some additional Ukrainian territory, in addition to liberating the newly absorbed Russian territories of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions still held by Ukraine. But there are physical limitations as to what one can accomplish with 617,000 troops and occupying all of Ukraine before invading Poland and/or the Baltics is well beyond the capacity of the Russian forces currently deployed in the Special Military Operation.
Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has never intimated that Russia had any intention to either occupy all of Ukraine or seek to attack NATO — just the opposite. The Russian goals and objectives of the Special Military Operation are spelled out very clearly — demilitarization (the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), de-Nazification (the elimination of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-Nazi political element inside Ukraine), and permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO). There is no intent to take the war to NATO. Such thinking is a fear-based construct of the Biden administration that is inaccurate and far removed from reality, little more than a fantasy which the sober-minded Russian government, ever mindful of the need to carefully manage escalation because of the Special Military Operation, will pay scant attention to.
Joe Biden and his national security team are scrambling to manage the consequences of policy failure. Putin, it seems, has not lost the war with Ukraine. Russia is winning, something no amount of funding by either the US, the Europeans, or both, can reverse. The best thing that could happen to Ukraine is for the congressional Republicans to hold steadfast to their objections and allow Ukraine to be taken off the life support that US funding provides. Ukraine is a terminal case. Continuing to underwrite its failed war effort simply prolongs the agony of its people.
Zelensky’s Global Begging Tour Is an Obscene Fiasco
Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023
The United States’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.
Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.
Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath – the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.
The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.
This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.
After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.
As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as “historic” but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?
The EU membership talks were granted no doubt as a way to distract from the fact that the EU funds were not forthcoming and especially following the miserable response from U.S. lawmakers.
The whole sorry saga indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine has become a deplorable black hole for Western public money. Given the military debacle and the futile bloodshed, it is becoming politically untenable for Washington and Brussels to keep shovelling billions of taxpayer money into this abyss.
Up for the asking this week was a total of nearly $100 billion between the U.S. and Europe for Ukraine. How many badly needed public services in Western states could do with – and are denied – that kind of financial sustenance?
The spectacle of Zelensky touring the world scrounging for more money is as shameful as it is sordid.
Official figures show that the Western governments have already donated a combined total of $200 billion to Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022.
To put that largesse into perspective, it is estimated that the U.S. Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of the whole of Europe following World War Two was equivalent to $173 billion in today’s money.
Think about that. The Western funding to Ukraine already exceeds this historic salvage package by some $30 billion. And yet Western governments are trying to muster another $100 billion on top of that.
There are several conclusions to be made. First of all, the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia is indisputably a calamitous failure. Despite the unprecedented financing of weapons and other support to the Kiev regime, the war is a dead-end for the Western powers. The 30-member NATO military alliance is staring at a defeat unparalleled in its 75-year history.
Secondly, it is patent that the Kiev regime is only being propped up by the transfer of colossal flows of aid from the West. Without those transfusions of weapons and capital, the regime is finished. It has already lost grievous numbers of troops on the battlefield. Conscription drives are scraping the barrel. Without the lifeline of aid, the regime is finished. The Kiel Institute for World Economy reported last week that Western capital pledges to the Kiev regime have fallen off a cliff since the summer.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week in his annual marathon televised Q&A with the public and journalists that Russia will push on with its objectives of eradicating the NATO-backed Nazi forces in Ukraine. There seems little doubt that the objective will be achieved given the parlous state of the Kiev regime.
Another conclusion to draw is the scale of corruption that Ukraine is mired in. For all the funds pumped into this regime so much of it has been siphoned off from the stated purposes.
The obscenity of this war racket is the inordinate corruption, deaths and destruction of economies across Europe while Western weapons corporations have raked in mega-profits.
Zelensky’s global begging tour is a desperate attempt to keep the war racket going for a while longer. He and his wife Olena have enriched themselves with overseas properties and shopping trips to Paris and New York. Zelensky and his cronies have been paid off with blood money for their role in peddling the biggest war scam in modern history. A scam that is funded by hard-pressed and hoodwinked Western taxpayers who have been gaslighted by their politicians and media about “defending democracy and freedom”.
To keep this grotesque charade going, Western politicians in the pay of arms companies and NATO think tanks are resorting to desperate scaremongering and blackmail.
President Biden has repeatedly warned that if extra funds were not released to Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression” the rest of Europe will be overrun by Moscow.
In Washington this week, U.S. lawmakers who refused to pass the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine were, in effect, accused of being traitors by helping Russia.
Zelensky appealed to European leaders by saying that Putin would exploit any negativity towards Ukraine, and he pleaded with the EU to not “betray” Ukrainians.
On the eve of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, the European Commission declared that it was finally releasing €10 billion in withheld funds to Hungary. That was a bribe to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to concede to the proposed €50 billion in extra aid for the Kiev regime. In the end, Orban did not concede to the multi-billion-euro handout, however, he gave way to his objection to talks for Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Such is the shoddy business of propping up the Kiev regime that arm-twisting and bribery are the order of business in Brussels.
The horrendous waste of lives and financial resources in Ukraine by the Western elite – instead of pursuing diplomacy and peace – is the hallmark that these regimes are terminally corrupt and doomed to failure.
The conflict in Ukraine has recklessly stoked tensions between nuclear powers and has condemned generations of Americans and Europeans to debt. The war in Ukraine is a historic dead-end for the U.S. and its European vassals. Zelensky’s begging bowl is a death rattle.
US F-35 Still Underperforms Rival Jets as Taxpayer Bill Hits $1.7 Trillion – Experts
Sputnik – 16.12.2023
WASHINGTON – The F-35 fighter jet continues to lag Chinese and Russian counterparts in terms of effectiveness despite costs soaring to exorbitant levels, forcing the US to seek more war to justify the investment, experts told Sputnik.
Earlier this week, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in an audit sponsored by Congress said the $1.7 trillion F-35 program’s costs continued to soar out of control, rising another $44 billion 17 years after it first flew and eight years after it entered service. The aircraft continues to be plagued by issues with technology upgrades including cockpit electronics software, the Pentagon has said.
“The cost of this aircraft, continually rising and hard to justify financially, is a stunning example of what the corporate defense industry has wrought in its domination of Congress and of the Executive Branch,” former Pentagon analyst and retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “A new war anywhere in the world means new and long-term contracts, and provides high paying jobs for a small sector of the country.”
As a result, the former Pentagon analyst said the US political establishment is seeking to foment conflicts regardless of the best interests of the United States.
Kwiatkowski said the F-35 was designed to deliver “a continuous and growing paycheck” to the defense contractors who conduct a lifetime of extensive repairs on the aircraft.
“One plane, all missions, and guaranteed profits. As older and more battle hardened US air combat capabilities are retired and shifted to the F-35, the rest of the world may in fact be chuckling instead of shaking in their boots,” she said.
REMAINS OUTGUNNED BY CHINA, RUSSIA
Kwiatkowski said the US Air Force recognizes the shortfalls of the program such as inability to operate far from logistics support, lessons that would be applied if the F-35 was deployed to defend Taiwan or in a war in the Pacific theater.
“In a battlespace where the F-35 is part of an offensive combined arms campaign, far from home… F-35 would not remain in the fight for long,” the former Pentagon analyst said.
F-35 availability rates, she added, would be far below the current 55% due to both inherent reliability and durability issues. Plus, it is still unknown whether the aircraft has the ability to successfully operate in an active hostile environment, Kwiatkowski said.
Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Earl Rasmussen, former vice president of the Eurasia Foundation, said the F-35 is impressive when it is operational but it will likely face problems when facing Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 or China’s J-20.
“While the F-35 may have an advantage in a perfect environment, war is not a perfect environment. Operational effectiveness may cause challenges and a degradation of sensor and network communication capabilities will likely put the F-35 at a disadvantage in a one-to-one engagement with both the SU-57 and J-20,” Rasmussen said.
The Russian Su-57 and the Chinese J-20 and J-31 have advantages with respect to speed, range, agility and lethality, he added.
“The Chinese J-20 is faster, has longer range, and carries more weapon systems,” Rasmussen said. “The Russian Su-57 while lacking in stealth capabilities is faster, has a longer range, and is more agile with significantly more maneuverability than the F-35. The SU-57 carries a wide variety of armaments to include cruise missiles giving it a great stand-off capability and the ability to engage targets from a range of 300 km [180 miles].”
Dying to Lose Weight? U.S. Poison Control Centers Report 1,500% Spike in Calls About Popular Weight-Loss Drug
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 15, 2023
U.S. poison control centers are reporting a sharp increase in calls related to semaglutide, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity, CNN reported Wednesday.
Developed by drugmaker Novo Nordisk, semaglutide is sold under the brand names Ozempic for diabetes, and Wegovy for weight loss. According to Medscape, Novo Nordisk said the two drugs are not interchangeable — although Ozempic is often taken off-label for weight-loss.
According to CNN, America’s Poison Centers said that between January and November, it responded to nearly 3,000 calls — a more than 15-fold increase since 2019 — about semaglutide. In 94% of those calls, semaglutide was the only substance reported, while 6% of the callers reported taking semaglutide plus one or more other drugs.
Also this week, an investigation by The BMJ highlighted examples of potentially illegal marketing of semaglutide in the U.K., suggesting the marketing may be a contributing factor to growing hype and ongoing shortages of the drug.
According to the BMJ report, webpages promoting semaglutide may violate U.K. laws, which prohibit the direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers.
The New York Daily News reported that celebrities have publicly promoted Wegovy, helping to fuel the growing demand for the drug. According to Medscape, physicians looking to prescribe Ozempic are struggling to locate the medication for their patients due to shortages.
The hype — and the subsequent shortages — have arguably contributed to a growing market for semaglutide knock-offs and an online black market for the drug, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, the high cost of Ozempic — partially fueled by growing demand for Wegovy — has resulted in an increasing reluctance of insurers and employers to cover the drug. Reuters reported a growing number of employers are instead hiring virtual healthcare providers to implement weight-loss management programs for employees.
Aside from the drugs’ high cost and the reluctance of insurers to pay for semaglutide drugs, weight-loss medications also have been associated with potentially serious side effects — including suicidal thoughts, thyroid cancer and gastrointestinal problems, and pose a serious but little-known risk for pregnant women.
Accidental overdoses behind many of the calls to poison control centers
Semaglutide, first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) in 2017 as a diabetes medication, works by reducing blood-sugar levels and slowing down the passage of food exiting the stomach, CNN and the BBC reported.
According to CNN, among the nearly 3,000 reports of semaglutide poisoning this year, many have involved accidental overdoses.
Julie Weber, director of the Missouri Poison Center, told CNN that as of October, it had received 94 calls relating to semaglutide this year, as compared to 28 calls for all of 2021. Dr. Joseph Lambson, director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, told CNN semaglutide calls nearly quadrupled between 2021 and 2022.
CNN reported the largest increase in calls occurred among adults ages 40 through 70 and, in particular, the 60-to-69-year-old age group.
In remarks to CNN, Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director of America’s Poison Centers, said most calls this year concerned dosing errors.
In some cases, callers had to be “hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain,” CNN reported. Other warning signs of a semaglutide overdose are dizziness or lightheadedness, feeling jittery, sweating and chills, irritability, headache, weakness, fatigue, nausea, seizures, confusion, hypoglycemia and passing out.
Semaglutide, a GLP-1 agonist, has been associated with potentially severe adverse events even in cases not involving overdoses.
According to JAMA Medical News, clinicians are increasingly observing more serious gastrointestinal side effects associated with Ozempic and Wegovy, in addition to self-harm behavior, anesthesia complications, serious vision problems and cancer cases among people taking the drugs to either to lower their blood sugar or lose weight.
The FDA said Ozempic and Wegovy may pose a risk to pregnant women and warned they should discontinue taking these medications at least two months prior to pregnancy. However, those warnings are buried and long-term testing won’t be completed for years.
Semaglutide also has been linked to an inducement of suicidal thoughts among some users, and to serious digestive problems such as stomach paralysis, pancreatitis and bowel obstruction.
According to CNN, “There’s no specific antidote for a semaglutide overdose. The drug has a half-life of about a week, meaning it takes one week to clear half of it from your body.”
Celebrity promotion of Ozempic leads to shortages, online black market
According to the BBC, demand for Ozempic “spiralled last year after it hit the headlines for being Hollywood’s secret weight loss drug — nicknamed the ‘skinny jab,’” because users must inject it.
In addition to celebrity endorsements, an “elite” and influential group of prominent doctors and obesity specialists have received nearly $26 million in payments from Novo Nordisk to promote weight-loss drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to a Reuters investigation and a report by investigative journalist Lee Fang.
“After celebrities began openly embracing Ozempic on social media in 2022 as a way to lose weight, demand overwhelmed supply,” CNN reported, adding that the FDA officially recognized a shortage of the drug in 2022.
This opened the door for certain qualified pharmacies to make compounded versions,” according to CNN. It also led to a rise in off-label prescriptions for weight loss, which “triggered global supply issues and created a shortage for diabetes patients in the U.K,” the BBC reported.
There are differences between the patented and compounded versions of semaglutide, CNN reported, noting that compounded versions have often not been tested for safety and are frequently sold in unapproved dosages.
According to the BBC, “Doctors say drugs bought from unregulated sources are dangerous and could contain potentially toxic ingredients.”
The name-brand versions of semaglutide “are sold in pre-filled pens, which come with some safeguards,” but the compounded versions “typically come in multidose glass vials,” for which “patients draw their own doses into syringes.”
Packages delivered by mail usually contain needles and two vials — one containing a white powder and the other a liquid — which have to be mixed together before the drug can be injected, according to the BBC.
According to CNN, some callers to poison control centers overdosed despite using the pre-filled pens — in at least one instance “giving themselves an entire month of doses at once.”
The BBC reported that the hype surrounding the use of semaglutide for weight loss fueled an “online black market” driven by “unregulated sellers offering semaglutide as a medicine, without prescription, online,” in the form of “diet kits.” The drug was also “being offered in beauty salons in Manchester and Liverpool.”
“These compounded versions are popular because they may cost less out-of-pocket, especially if the treatment isn’t covered by insurance,” CNN reported.
In June, the FDA issued a warning against taking compounded versions of semaglutide if the prescription version is available, stating the agency received adverse event reports connected to administration of the compounded versions of the drug.
The FDA has also sent letters to two online sellers asking them to stop selling the drug. Novo Nordisk sued six medical spas, medical clinics and weight-loss clinics for selling knock-off versions of semaglutide.
According to CNN, data collected by poison control centers regarding reported symptoms of semaglutide do not provide a clear indication as to whether the patented or compounded versions were taken, “but some state poison center directors say they believe that compounded versions are behind many of the calls.”
Shortages spur new virtual weight loss management programs
The shortage of Ozempic and Wegovy also created difficulties for physicians, Medscape reported. Kevin Huffman, D.O., a board-certified bariatric physician and CEO of AmBari Nutrition told Medscape physicians “must now prioritize patients at the greatest risk who stand to benefit considerably — a complex decision-making process.”
Physicians also “face a bias from private insurers and Medicare,” who typically won’t cover weight loss medications for patients without Type 2 diabetes, and who “would prefer patients try and fail at every diet plan and weight loss medication, many with serious cardiovascular side effects, before being approved for newer drugs.” Huffman said.
The high cost of semaglutide has dissuaded employers and insurers from offering coverage for those drugs, Reuters reported.
Instead, companies like Boeing, Fortune Brands and Hilton “have signed up for or expanded deals with virtual healthcare providers,” who implement “weight-loss management programs” which “may require diet and exercise before granting access to the medicines.”
According to Reuters, drugs such as Wegovy “have list prices of more than $1,000 a month,” leading insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to offer employers the option to sign their patients up for weight loss programs offered via virtual telemedicine platforms.
Reuters quoted Truist analyst Jailendra Singh, who forecast that the market for virtual obesity drug management may reach $700 million by next year and $9 billion “longer term.”
American Medical Association President Jesse Ehrenfeld, M.D., MPH, told Reuters that telehealth providers “should be a supplement to, not a replacement for, in-person provider networks” and that a reliance on telehealth may drive patients away from their current physicians.
But in a statement provided to The Defender, Brandon Welch, Ph.D., an associate professor in public health sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and co-author of Telehealth Success: How to Thrive in the New Age of Remote Care, said “telemedicine has the potential to create better patient outcomes” regarding weight loss.
Potentially illegal advertising practices of semaglutide investigated by The BMJ
Despite shortages and the drugs’ high cost, companies like Novo Nordisk are reportedly planning to market drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to children as young as 6, even though the drugs’ long-term risks are unknown and despite some experts’ warnings that the drugs may exacerbate our “toxic diet culture.”
Notably, in January, just weeks after the FDA approved Wegovy for use in children, the American Association of Pediatrics issued new childhood obesity recommendations, advising that children as young as 8 can be treated with weight loss drugs, including those containing semaglutide.
Novo’s new marketing plan comes despite an investigation by The BMJ finding inappropriate and possibly illegal marketing of semaglutide.
The BMJ’s investigation focused on the U.K., and according to Fierce Pharma, the findings “rais[e] questions about the effectiveness of regulatory oversight of materials on the weight loss and diabetes treatment.”
According to The BMJ, online searches for terms like “Wegovy” turned up results including “pharmacy websites unrelated to the drugmaker,” some of which appeared to be directly marketing the prescription drug to consumers, which violates the U.K.’s Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and is illegal in most of Europe.
One such example was a blog post by Pharmadoctor, which according to The BMJ is “a website that supports pharmacists in providing services for patients.”
According to The BMJ, the Pharmadoctor post stated that “Wegovy is a weekly weight loss injection made famous by celebrities such as Elon Musk and Boris Johnson. If Wegovy is suitable for you, your pharmacist will be able to provide it.”
“With celebrity fans and proven weight management benefits, Wegovy is the weight loss jab that has everyone talking,” Pharmadoctor also stated.
Examples such as this led Shai Mulinari, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Lund University in Sweden, and Piotr Ozieransk, Ph.D., senior lecturer of social and policy sciences at the University of Bath in the U.K., to file a complaint Oct. 10 with the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), for the alleged illegal promotion of a prescription drug.
The complaint stated that they were “appalled” to find that Pharmadoctor was marketing Wegovy “directly to the public.”
In a response dated Nov. 22, the MHRA said that following an investigation, the Pharmadoctor page in question was “removed in line with our guidance.” But according to The BMJ, what Mulinary and Ozieranski discovered was that “a link and the word ‘Wegovy’ had been removed” but “the blog post remained online.”
The BMJ’s investigation found that the MHRA has not issued a single sanction for prescription drugs in the past five years. Among 16 cases where the MHRA took action by requesting changes to advertisements for weight loss drugs from June 2022 to July 2023, all were” triggered by external complaints, not internal mechanisms, and none resulted in sanctions.”
Dr. James Cave, editor in chief of the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin, a BMJ journal with a focus on drug safety, filed multiple complaints about semaglutide advertising with the MHRA and the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority in the past year, but according to The BMJ “was disappointed with the results.”
For instance, the ASA “would not consider websites that were not being promoted through paid advertising on search engines,” while actions taken by the MHRA were often “minor,” sometimes involving “only a few words.”
Cave told The BMJ that such lax regulation and oversight creates only weak incentives for companies to follow regulations and abstain from the advertising of prescription drugs.
Regardless of how the drug is marketed, some doctors warn that reliance on medications to lose weight is dangerous.
In April, for instance, Dr. Joseph Mercola wrote,“By relying on medication to get thin, you rob your body of the chance to balance its weight naturally, in the way biologically intended, and expose yourself to untold side effects in the process.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The moral obligation to shut down Israeli weapons manufacturers
By Naila Ahmed | MEMO | December 14, 2023
You may be unaware that currently eight people are standing trial for shutting down an Israeli weapons factory, amongst other actions. Over the course of the last few weeks I have managed to attend some of their hearings at Snaresbrook Crown Court. For the duration of that time, the courtroom was packed as the defendants, known as the Elbit Eight, gave evidence about why they took action for Palestine, Israeli war crimes and Elbit Systems’ participation in those crimes.
Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, profiting off the genocide of Palestinians, it markets its drones and weapons as “battle tested”. The weapons are tested on civilians in Gaza before being mass produced. Elbit Systems supplies up to 85 per cent of the Israeli military’s drones and land based equipment. These weapons are produced here in the UK by Elbit Systems’ factories across the country. In the last few weeks alone Israel has murdered over 20,000 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals, schools, homes and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – using weapons produced by Elbit Systems. One of the main witnesses from Elbit, their chief of security, was due to give evidence for the prosecution at the trial, but Israel refused to let him travel or even give evidence remotely, despite him being a crucial witness for the prosecution.
The Elbit Eight have been on trial since 13 November,two of them are founders of Palestine Action. They are all on trial for the direct action they have taken against Elbit Systems in the first six months of Palestine Action’s work, from July 2020. Direct action is a form of protest that seeks to shut down and disrupt. For the Elbit Eight this included protesting inside Elbit Systems offices, spraying red paint to signify Palestinian blood, and shutting down weapons factories by blocking entrances and locking themselves to the building so they cannot be moved and weapons supply is halted. The charges against these actionists are politically motivated and there’s even evidence of Israel’s involvement in them being charged.
Choose courage for Palestine
I’ve been listening to testimony from the Elbit Eight, and reflecting on the actions they took and why they took them. One thing that stood out to me most was that these actionists chose courage for Palestine. They didn’t let the fear of prison or prosecution stop them from using their voices and their bodies to prevent weapons being sent to kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
In each testimony given by the eight actionists, they stated their moral and legal obligation to stop an apartheid regime, to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people and to shut Elbit down. Many of them testified to the numerous ways they engaged in the system prior to taking direct action, whether that be writing to MPs or other forms of traditional campaigning, all of which amounted to nothing. One actionist said that they wished direct action wasn’t necessary, that our government would just sanction Israel and stop arming them. But that isn’t a reality. Britain is responsible not only in the creation of the Zionist state but also in the continuous arming of this apartheid regime. So the obligation is upon us to take action in order to stop arming Israel.
As the state seeks to protect institutions and warmongers at every level, taking action to shut down the flow of weapons to the occupation becomes the most moral action we can take. There’s a moral duty to prevent the genocide of an entire people. The state seeks to criminalise such principled actions by arresting, charging and in some cases imprisoning those who take action.
With courage comes risk
All of the actionists that work with Palestine Action are the same. They choose courage and compassion over all else. They take actions knowing there is inherent risk – risk to their livelihood, to their liberty, but the moral obligation to act and prevent harm overrides the concern for their personal lives.
I have been privileged to work alongside the Elbit Eight and many other activists in the run up to this trial. One of my colleagues at CAGE also took action previously and won her case last year by a unanimous not guilty verdict. The acts of courage she took, could have cost her a career as a barrister, but it was a material risk she was willing to take in the defence of the Palestinians and to prevent harm from reaching them.
Over the last three years, Palestine Action has been highly effective in its campaigning and direct action against Israeli arms manufacturers, in particular Elbit Systems. Its stated aim is to shut Elbit down, and this has galvanised across the country, and across the globe as you see people taking direct action to stop weapons being sent to Israel. Palestine Action in the UK has been successful in:
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Costing Elbit over £280 million ($356 million) in lost contracts,
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Shutting down Elbit’s offices in central London,
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Forcing the permanent closure of two of Elibit’s weapon factories,
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Just this month, getting their sole recruiter in the UK, iO Associates, to stop working with Elbit,
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Getting the property managers of Elbit’s drone factory in Shenstone (UAV Engines), Fisher German, to cut all ties with Elbit Systems.
These successes have inspired the launch of Palestine Action US and Italy who have already taken a series of effective actions.
‘Let him change it with his hand’
When I see those actionists taking direct action to stop Israeli weapons from being manufactured here in the UK, I am reminded of the often repeated hadith – saying – of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) – one we may cite often, but how often do we implement it?
“Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart, which is the weakest level of faith.” (Sahih Muslim 49)
I see the work of Palestine action and the Elbit Eight as an embodiment of that hadith, of seeing an evil and changing it with their hands – that is, taking direct action.
We have all been witnessing what’s been happening in Gaza, the daily massacres, destruction, devastation and we often respond with despair and helplessness. There is an obligation upon us as Muslims to end oppression. This is not a time for despondency, confusion or weakness, we must not be bystanders as we witness genocide. The Elbit Eight chose courage for Palestine and we must choose courage too. Either by joining Palestine Action’s movement or by using our voice and supporting them in their work. Courage is indeed a choice. It may not be comfortable for many of us, but it is a choice we can build up to.
No matter the outcome of the trial, the Elbit Eight have already succeeded. First, in taking action that stopped weapons and parts being sent to Palestine. And secondly, for drawing attention to Israel’s and Elbit’s war crimes in open court, testifying to the massacres and current genocide of our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Whatever comes from this trial, the Elbit Eight have already won, they put their bodies and freedoms on the line for Palestine. A courage many of us would hope to emulate. And I’m honoured to have supported them in the Elbit Eight campaign.
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US murdering 1 million Iraqis is democracy, Iran giving yogurt to Iraq is “domination”
By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017
The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.
The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. … continue
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