The New York Times – generally considered a mouthpiece for US militarism and ruling class interests – published an article Saturday agonizing over the possibility that former President Trump would withdraw from NATO in a second term.
The report, although rife with opinion and speculation, was published as a news item in the Saturday edition of the controversial newspaper.
“For 74 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been America’s most important military alliance,” read the article. The authors went on to suggest there is “enormous uncertainty and anxiety” throughout Europe and among “American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role” (which has resulted in the death of at least 4.5 million since 2001).
“There is great fear in Europe that a second Trump presidency would result in an actual pullout of the United States from NATO,” said James G. Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander. “That would be an enormous strategic and historic failure on the part of our nation.”
Despite NATO’s ostensible existence as an “alliance” between the United States and European countries Stavridis, like every other NATO supreme commander, is American.
Benjamin Norton, the founder and editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report, has derisively labeled the alliance as the “Nazi Arming and Training Organization” for their support of Nazi elements. Historically, the alliance elevated former German Nazis to key positions of power throughout the Cold War and supported terrorism, assassinations, psychological warfare, and false flag operations through a covert effort known as Operation Gladio.
The strategy was duplicated in Latin America where the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) utilized and provided safe haven for former Nazis like Klaus Barbie.
Despite ostensibly existing as an anticommunist alliance, NATO remained hostile to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued expanding east in violation of the agreement with the country during the final days of the Cold War. Recently the US government-backed Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe laid bare the country’s intention to balkanize Russia in a conference advocating for “decolonization” even as the United States continues to support the “colonization” of the Gaza Strip.
Recently the consequences of US hegemony in Europe have been made clear as Germany endures a deep economic crisis brought about by the country’s participation in US-led sanctions on Russia.
December 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | NATO, New York Times, United States |
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The video above features a lecture David E. Martin,1 Ph.D., gave in Dornach, Switzerland, in late October 2023. Martin is a national intelligence analyst and founder of IQ100 Index, which developed linguistic genomics, a platform capable of determining the intent of communications.
This technology has allowed Martin to scan and review millions of patents, resulting in a paper trail2,3 that conclusively proves SARS-CoV-2 is a manmade bioweapon that has been in the works for 58 years.
Unambiguous Admission of a Premeditated Plandemic
As he is now in the habit of doing, Martin opens his lecture with a quote by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance. During a March 27, 2015, forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events, Daszak noted4 that unless an infectious disease crisis is at an emergency threshold, it tends to be ignored.
“To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs (medical countermeasures) such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine,” Daszak said, adding:5
“A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”
Martin comments:
“This is the admission, unambiguously, which states without any equivocation, that the reason for the global terror campaign that began officially in the minds of most people in late 2019, was a premeditated plan of terrorism, collusion, coercion and, ultimately, murder … This quote is the admission of four felonies, regardless of which side of the Atlantic you’re on.”
What Felonies Did Daszak Admit to in 2015?
Martin then goes on to explain how, in that quote from 2015, Daszak admitted to several different felonies. In summary:
• “To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis …” — Daszak is not speaking of expanding or benefiting public health here. He’s also not referring to an actual health crisis that was taking place when the comment was made.
No, according to Martin, “the crisis was that there was a reduction in funding of biological weapons programs sponsored by the World Health Organization. The crisis was not a health crisis. It was a funding crisis for the people who were running out of money for their bioweapons programs. Those are two crimes.”
• “A key driver is the media, and the economics will follow the hype.” — This, according to Martin, is an admission of two additional crimes. “Hype” refers to psychological terror. In other words, funding will follow provided the psychological terror is great enough, and he admits the media will be used to push that fear porn.
The second felony is economic conspiracy, because “economics that follow hype is not informed consent,” Martin notes. “That’s not willing buyer, willing seller, informed of all the facts.” Using psychological terror to secure funding implies “an intent to defraud.”
Martin explains: “Under Crown Law we call it ‘fraudulent conveyance’ when you don’t inform the counterparty of the risks associated with a contract … Why is this important?
The reason why fraudulent conveyance is such an important principle in the law, is … [because] the fraud-perpetrating party is required under the law to not just recompense the damage.
Their legal obligation is to return the damaged party to their pre-damaged state. It’s not, ‘We’re going to give you a couple bucks for your pain and suffering. No, you are legally required to return the condition to the pre-damage state.”
So, to reiterate, financial compensation is not the legal standard when it comes to fraudulent conveyance. The party that engaged in the fraud is legally required to make the defrauded whole again. And why is THAT important? Because “we’re not even asking for what we should ask for,” Martin says.
Is there a dollar amount that can cure the myocarditis you suffered after the shot? Or the turbo cancer that’s killing your mother? Or the blood clots that killed your father? “If we followed the law, we would actually recommend, not a financial compensation, we would recommend a return to the pre-damaged state,” Martin says.
• “We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues.” — What are “the real issues”? To get investors to respond with funding, which they will do if they can “see profit at the end of the process.” In other words, investors will open their pocketbooks if they can confirm that psychological terror makes people line up to receive an injection.
Why Do We Need a Vaccine for an Eradicated Infection?
Martin goes on to note that a Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine Program was actually publicly announced during the moratorium on gain of function on coronaviruses in the United States, which was in place from 2014 until 2017.6
“That gain of function moratorium was going on while we were announcing a global plan of global terrorism, a pan-coronavirus vaccine, which, by the way, the World Health Organization … declared eradicated a year earlier,” Martin says.
“How do we need a vaccine for an eradicated disease, during a gain of function moratorium, when there’s theoretically no chance that we could have a reason to need a vaccine for a thing that doesn’t exist? Well, because we were making it — professor Baric. We were hyping it — Peter Daszak … And we were going to hijack liberty with it.”
The 58-Year Timeline of SARS-CoV-2
As explained by Martin, the virus called “coronavirus” was first described in 1965. Two years later, the U.S. and U.K. launched an exchange program where healthy British military personnel were infected with coronavirus pathogens from the U.S. — “as part of our biological weapons program.”
In 1992, Ralph Baric at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, took a pathogen that used to infect the gut and lungs and altered it with a chimera to make it infect the heart, causing cardiomyopathy.
“Pause and think about what I just said,” Martin says. “What what goes on in the head of a person who says, ‘This was a little glitch in my tummy, it was a little sniffle in my nose. Let’s see if we can make it hit hearts and … create cardiomyopathy,’ one of the most lethal heart inflammations possible …”
In November 2000, Pfizer patented its first spike protein vaccine. So, Operation Warp Speed really didn’t produce a spike protein vaccine in a few months. No, that research had been going on since late 2000. So, the COVID shots were 19 years in the making by the time they were rolled out.
The problem is that during those 19 years, none of the coronavirus vaccines worked. “Every single trial, from November of 2000 until [2019], had killed all of the animals into which the experimental injections were placed,” Martin says.
Despite that, the University of California San Francisco’s institutional review board was told, in the summer of 2020, that the clinical trials for the coronavirus vaccine were a “straight to humans protocol.” In other words, it didn’t need to go through preliminary animal research.
As noted by Martin, it would be quite inconvenient to have safety data showing it kills animals. No one would line up for a shot like that, no matter how many free cheeseburgers you throw at them.
How Can We Know That SARS Was a Weapon?
While all of that is disturbing enough, there’s more. Martin continues:
“You kind of can’t make this egregious level of a crime up unless you realize that behind this, there must be another crime. Each one of these, in and of themselves, is horrific. But the sum of them becomes much, much, much more problematic.
Let’s go ahead and jump to the wonderful creation of the patent that was filed in 2002, which is actually the reason why I am done with everybody who ask the question ‘Was there a novel virus; was there novel disease?’ Let’s stipulate, with the facts, that there were neither.
There’s not a novel virus. There WAS a variety of biological weapons designed off the back of the patent that was filed in 2002, which was the ‘infectious replication-defective clone of coronavirus.’
Now let’s slow down and answer the question, what does that phrase mean? Infectious replication-defective. ‘Infectious’ means we want to target a cell in the body to make sure the thing that we’re injecting goes into the cell …
‘Replication-defective’ means we want the information that we inject to infect that cell, but not replicate and spread to others, which means that the bioweapon itself was engineered as a weapon to hit a target, but not proliferate.
That’s what the patented technology is, which is the reason why, when we had SARS 1.0 in 2002 and 2003 … we were [told there would be] dead people everywhere. [But] as hard as we tried to make it into a pandemic … we [could] only kick 900 people off the mountain. That was the global pandemic. Why? Because the weapon worked.
If you exposed somebody to the toxic agent, they died. But they didn’t spread it to others, which is the reason why we did not have the transmission of SARS 1.0, because you can’t transmit a thing that’s designed not to replicate.
But worse still: What is the definition of a virus? … A virus is a replicating protein sequence. Guess what this isn’t? Replication-defective means we took the virus out of a virus. It was not a replicating device. It was in fact a weapon.
Now, I’ve got tons of people who go, ‘Dave, you’re crossing the line, don’t say it’s a weapon. It’s not a weapon … You offend people who kill people when you call it a weapon.’ Well, guess what, if you’re offended, I don’t care, because I didn’t call it a weapon — the guy who built it called it a weapon.”
mRNA Spike Protein Is a Biological Warfare Agent
Indeed, mRNA spike protein was publicly described as a bioweapon 18 years ago. In 2005, at a conference hosted by DARPA and the Mitre Corporation in the U.S., the mRNA spike protein was hailed as a “biological warfare-enabling technology.” Does that sound like it has any public health-related applications? No, as Martin insists, “biological warfare-enabling technology” means it’s a biological warfare agent.
“So, I’m not the one saying that it’s a biological weapon. I’m not the one saying it’s biological warfare,” Martin says.
“The perpetrator called it that in 2005, and was rewarded with a dual entry budget, where … the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, received money from Anthony Fauci’s NIAID/NIH budget, and exactly at the same time … Fauci had a second checkbook [that] came from the Department of Defense pandemic preparedness program. And guess what that was? An equal matching noncompetition grant …
In Europe, that’s a violation of anti-competition laws. You’re not allowed to double down on a public grant without competition or transparency, saying that this agency is going to give you $10 million … and [a second] one is going to give you $10 million … because [the first] one gave you $10 million —
Not because it was fair, not because it was open, not because it was transparent, not because there was actually grant competition, but by virtue of the determination of one side, the other side facto matched the money. And that started in 2005, not in 2019.”
Big Pharma Owns All North Carolina Universities
Over the past two years, a lot of information has come out exposing how Daszak funneled millions of research dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China for gain of function research on coronaviruses. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to Martin, at least $141 million went to the U.S. bioweapons program led by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Martin continues:
“I have been the most ardent advocate for shaming the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for a very good reason … and the reason is because in 1984, the state of North Carolina, not just the university, sold itself to … GlaxoSmithKline and the Wellcome companies.
The reason why you’ve heard the term ‘Research Triangle Institute’ or ‘Research Triangle Park’ — which is University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University — is because the state of North Carolina sold its universities to GlaxoSmithKline Wellcome, and they did it because of AZT.
AZT was on patent, and we needed a state in the United States to be ground zero, to make sure that AZT became the drug of choice for the treatment of HIV. So in 1984, we invent HIV, conveniently for the purpose of making sure we have one treatment: AZT.
Here’s the interesting little fact that very few people know. If you go back and look at the videos of Anthony Fauci in 1985 and 1986 … he’s talking about [getting] a vaccine for HIV. But he suddenly got a knock on the door from GlaxoSmithKline going, ‘Hey Mr. Fauci, don’t start that project until the patent on AZT runs out.’
I’m not making this up. It’s actually videos that you can see. And so, mysteriously, courtesy of the Wellcome AZT protest, from 1991 to 1996, the world was told that the only treatment for HIV was AZT, and as such, the patent and the rest of the patent life on AZT could expire, so that GlaxoSmithKline Wellcome could get all of the money for the patented technology for a thing that was killing patients that allegedly had HIV.
Murder for hire. North Carolina sold the state so that could happen. Conveniently, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) decided that UNC Chapel Hill was its go-to institution, while AZT was in its monopoly run, to begin the process of doing HIV vaccine research …
So, ‘91 to ‘96 is the AZT cover story. Underneath that you have Ralph Baric genetically modifying and making chimeras of this coronavirus thing to create an HIV vaccine, which is going to conveniently roll out in 1997, as the patent on AZT expires.
[This] is the reason why you need to figure out how to get the gastrointestinal and flu problem to become a heart problem: Because you need to get that package, that little envelope around what we call coronavirus … to deliver the HIV vaccine.
So all of the funding for the HIV vaccine that was going to this program was actually going to use coronavirus as the packet in which the HIV vaccine was going to be delivered. That’s the model. [There are] hundreds of papers on this.
And, this is why this question of … is there HIV fragments somewhere in [the COVID shots]? The answer is, of course there is. It was designed into it. And it was designed into it, not a couple of years ago, not by Moderna, not by BioNtech. This was designed in many, many years earlier.
Not surprisingly, from ‘96 to ’99, Ralph Baric begins the weaponization of this allegedly synthetic coronavirus envelope to become a vaccine vector. 1999 comes along, and lo and behold, Baric and Fauci create what I affectionately call FrankenCoV.
What’s that? That is the monster, that’s the chimera. That’s the idea that we can change surface glycans, we can change surface spike proteins, we can change surface oligomerization, we can do all kinds of things to modify this thing.
So we can actually have this … package shell, the outer edge of coronavirus, we can allow that to be the carrier of getting anything we want into any cell we want. Which is the reason why the 2002 patent becomes interesting.”
NIAID Funded Research to Increase Human Pathogenicity
Next, Martin shows a letter, dated October 21, 2014, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, declaring that Baric’s grant I1077810-02 had been deemed subject to the moratorium on gain of function research involving coronaviruses. However, at the bottom of the page 1, it also states that:
“As this grant is already funded, the pause is voluntary and you can continue to conduct the applicable GOF [gain of function] research until the end of the currently active budget period.”
In other words, the NIAID gave Baric a free pass to decide whether he wanted to abide by the moratorium or not. What’s more, the grant actually didn’t have a termination date, because it was a noncompetitive, perpetually funded grant. So, Baric was given a free pass to conduct gain of function research indefinitely.
And what was this grant for? To increase the “human pathogenesis” of coronavirus in vivo, meaning inside the body. “Two billion people are going to be incapacitated or killed — because of this letter,” Martin says.
Who Can Be Held Accountable?
Alright. So, why can’t we just prosecute Baric, Fauci and whomever else and be done with it? Because this research project was placed under the World Health Organization’s GAVI Vaccine Alliance, and under Article 5, Section 13 of the WHO’s charter, they cannot be investigated or prosecuted for any crimes committed. GAVI, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, also has diplomatic immunity and cannot be investigated by local authorities there either.
“They knew that if they put the project under the WHO, it was shielded from all criminal investigation and all criminal liability — forever,” Martin says.
But that’s not all. 2010 to 2020 was declared The Decade of Vaccines. GAVI devised a global vaccine action plan that included global acceptance of a “universal influenza-coronavirus vaccine” by 2020, to protect against “accidental or intentional release” of a respiratory pathogen. As noted by Martin, “release” is “an active, intent-filled word. It is not an ‘oops’ accident.”
Recall, the same person who said they needed to create media hype to create sustained funding, Daszak, was appointed to lead the WHO’s investigation into the lab leak theory. Not surprisingly, his team decided there was no evidence to support the lab leak theory and it was probably a case of zoonotic transference after all.
A Crime That Keeps Going and Going
Martin also stresses that this crime is not just about the creation of COVID. It’s a crime that keeps going and going. He explains how children were murdered in 2011 clinical trials for a malaria vaccine. Sixty-six of the children in the vaccine group suffered serious and/or fatal adverse events, as did 28 in the control group. However, controls were not given saline, but rather a cocktail of other vaccines.
“When people attempted to hold the clinical trials agents accountable for their actions, guess what they referred to? They referred to Article [5 Section] 13 of their representative as members [of the WHO, which gives them] ‘immunity from personal arrest or detention and from seizure personal baggage and respect to words spoken or written and all acts done by them in their official capacity, immunity from legal process of every kind.’
That’s in the charter of what we call the World Health Organization. That ladies and gentlemen is the mafia, and we should stop pretending it’s something else.
It is an embarrassment to the Swiss people. It is embarrassment to the Swiss government that the World Health Organization exists in this place. Because the Swiss have enabled the organized crime of the World Health Organization, and they have enabled it so that real individuals can murder children under the age of three months …
We the People cannot allow this to happen. We’re talking about the [WHO pandemic] treaty … [when] we should be talking about the World Health Organization itself, not the treaty. And as long as Section 13 of Article 5 remains in the charter, I don’t care what treaties they pass, it doesn’t matter, because the institution is corrupt at its core, and you can’t fix that. That is a license to kill.”
Martin also provides a quick review of the history of how the WHO came to be, and how, in 1952, then-director-general of the WHO, Brock Chisholm, declared that “the role of the WHO is population control.”
Aside from being in charge of population control, the WHO is a marketing and distribution arm for private sector interests that sponsor it (Bill Gates being a primary one), while simultaneously providing them with immunity from prosecution.
According to Martin, Gates various organizations provide so much money to the WHO that “By every definition of the law, [the WHO] is a wholly owned subsidiary.”
Timeline
Toward the end of his speech, Martin summarizes some of the key items on the timeline of the conspiracy to commit global genocide:
• In 2002, U.S. scientists developed the weapon.
• In 2003, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention patented the weapon in its first commercial deployment (SARS).
• In 2005, mRNA spike protein was declared a biological “warfare-enabling” technology.
• In 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published “SARS-Like W1V1-COV Poised for Human Emergence.”7 The W1V1-COV refers to the first COVID-like virus made at the WIV. In that article, they not only state that the virus is ready for release, but they also detailed the best ways to release it.
At the bottom of the article, you also learn that the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill impaneled two separate institutional review board reviews of this study, the first to review the ethics of the research and a second to review the ethics of violating the gain of function moratorium, which is unusual to say the least. As noted by Martin:
“You do not usually have an ethics board going ‘Well, should we do this? It’s probably a bad idea.’ And then somebody goes, ‘It’s illegal’ … ‘OK, should we do the illegal thing?’ ‘Yeah, let’s go ahead do that. The guys over here said it was ethical to do the illegal thing to kill people.’ That happened and is published in this 2016 article.”
• September 18, 2019, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, jointly founded by the WHO and the World Bank,8 warned that “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (whether naturally emergent or accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements.”
Furthermore, the “Progress indicator by September 2020” section specified the commitment by donors and member countries to finance and develop a universal influenza vaccine and other therapeutics.9
“This is the admission by the World Health Organization that they are going to do a release of a respiratory pathogen,” Martin says, adding:
“And, by the way, the reason why this is particularly important is they say ‘a lethal respiratory pathogen.’ They knew they were going to kill people. That’s why they use the word lethal …
This is the evidence that we can use in a criminal case to say, ‘This was not an accident. This was an actual premeditated act of lethality.’ They not only told you when it was going to happen. They told you the deadline for the outcome response. ‘We’re going to release the pathogen so that by September 2020, the world has accepted a universal vaccine.’ That is prima facia terrorism, collusion, racketeering, criminal conspiracy and … murder.
So that’s why we have the Wanted posters … [for] Peter Daszak … Ralph Baric … Jeremy Farrar … Chris Elias … Ghebreyesus … Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, the World Health Organization, DARPA, the United Nations … Rockefeller Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation.
These individuals, in violation of racketeering, antitrust and anticompetition laws, colluded to create the largest act of global terrorism known to Earth and announced the plan to do it on September 18, 2019, with premeditation and with the intent to kill.
This was entirely a premeditated act. They told us it would happen in 2011. They announced the event horizon in 2019 … Conspiring to commit acts of terror, restraint of trade, deceptive medical practices, price fixing, fraudulent conveyance. These are the crimes that the World Health Organization not only allowed to happen, but [it also] promoted these crimes and gave political cover for those crimes …
All-cause mortality in the ages of 18 to 55 is now 40% higher in the people that were injected with a biological weapon. That number is not going down. That number is going up in every jurisdiction. And here’s the saddest part about it. That number will continue to go up. If they [meet] their 2011 objective, that number will go up to 2 billion people.”
The Damage Is Done
Martin points out that even if they don’t unleash any other bioweapons, the desired death toll may still be achieved, because they used pseudouridine in the mRNA shots, which is causing “turbo cancers.”
Pseudouridine suppresses cancer-controlling agents and promotes oncogenic activity in the body, and this has been known since 2018, so its inclusion was hardly an accident.
The shots are also targeting reproduction, which is a key target if you want to depopulate. It’s not just infertility. Prostate, ovarian and uterine cancers make it more difficult to have sex, and hence more difficult to have children.
According to Martin, the evidence is clear. None of this is accidental. It’s a conspiracy, alright. But not a conspiracy theory in the dismissive sense. It’s a global conspiracy by identifiable agents who have, for nearly 60 years, plotted to commit, and profit from, the greatest genocide the world has ever seen, while hiding behind the false veneer of “public health.”
Sources and References
December 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, NIAID, United States |
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An “elite” and influential group of obesity specialists over the last decade pocketed at least $25.8 million in payments from Novo Nordisk, maker of weight loss drugs Wegovy and Saxenda, in exchange for promoting the drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to an investigation by Reuters.
“Those payments are part of a campaign to convince U.S. doctors to make Wegovy one of the most widely prescribed drugs in history — and to persuade skeptical insurers to pay for it,” according to the report.
Wegovy and Saxenda have rapidly transformed the treatment of obesity in the U.S., with a boom in prescriptions so big in 2023 that JP Morgan doubled its 10-year sales projection, predicting sales of $71 million for the drugs by 2032.
Despite the drugs’ serious side effects — including major gastrointestinal issues, self-harm behaviors and cancers — the Association of American Pediatrics recommends the drugs in its new clinical guidelines, the American Medical Association urges insurance carriers to cover the drugs, and the mainstream and medical press heavily promote them.
‘They have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy’
Reuters examined data from the federal Open Payments database, which reports payments made by pharmaceutical companies to doctors, other medical professionals and teaching hospitals for consulting, speaking, research, travel or meals. It analyzed payments for speaking, consulting, food and travel for two of Novo’s obesity drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda.
The analysis also excluded payment for research.
Overall, Reuters found at least 57 U.S. physicians each accepted a minimum of $100,000 from Novo in payments related to the two drugs over 10 years. It also found Novo made other large payments to some of those same doctors, but the payments were not classified as related to a particular drug and were not counted in the $25.8 million total.
Of that group, 41 of the physicians run weight-management clinics, work at academic hospitals, write obesity-treatment guidelines or hold top positions at medical societies.
Collectively, the report said:
“[They] have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy and similar medicines to a large proportion of patients with obesity and for comprehensive coverage by government and private insurers. The company and some of its paid experts have called denying coverage tantamount to discrimination against people with obesity, rooted in the faulty notion that they are to blame for their condition.”
Reuters also analyzed Novo’s spending among experts involved in writing five prominent sets of obesity-treatment guidelines for doctors. Among the 109 guideline writers and editors, 53 had accepted payments from companies selling or developing obesity drugs — $8 million of the total $12.4 million of those payments were from Novo.
In a statement provided to Reuters, Novo said, “Responsible engagement between pharmaceutical companies and the medical community is good for patients and advances care and science.”
Since the Affordable Care Act created the Open Payments system over a decade ago, it has been easier to expose the kinds of financial conflicts of interest identified in the report.
However, the increased transparency hasn’t stemmed the flow of industry money, Reuters found. “Companies’ annual payments have surged from $6.5 billion in 2014, the first full year data were collected, to $12.6 billion last year,” the report stated.
Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a health administrator and former dean of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, the U.S. military’s medical school, told Reuters the investigation sheds light on a long-standing problem in the drug industry.
He called the payments “morally and ethically way over the line,” adding:
“The pharmaceutical industry still sees value in paying medical thought leaders to promote their products, and too many of them are happy to sign up for a six- or seven-figure check …
”As sales grow, Medicare and the insurance industry come under intense pressure to pay for these hugely expensive drugs … The end result is that everybody’s healthcare costs go up.”
Another recent report by investigative journalist Lee Fang similarly found a wide network of celebrities, physicians, patient advocacy groups, public health experts, academics, and community leaders have appeared in dozens of media outlets to tout the drugs without disclosing their financial ties to Novo Nordisk.
Which doctors take money from Novo Nordisk?
The report profiled several key physicians taking money from Novo.
For example, Novo paid Lee Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., chief of obesity medicine at Dartmouth’s medical school, former head of Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, $1.4 million for consulting work and travel related to the two drugs between 2013 and 2022.
It also paid him another $976,019 million during that same period for unspecified reasons.
Kaplan, who teaches a popular obesity course taken by physicians seeking certification in obesity medicine or continuing education credits — for which Novo contributed $10,000 this year — dismissed the idea that he is a mouthpiece for the drugmaker. He told Reuters he accepts money from numerous companies and “that he’s not beholden to any one drugmaker.”
Another physician, Dr. Donna Ryan, former president of The Obesity Society and member of The Diplomate at the American Board of Obesity Medicine, has taken more than $1 million from Novo over the last decade, including $600,691 related to Wegovy and Saxenda.
Ryan was instrumental in persuading the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to cover Wegovy and similar drugs for millions of federal workers, an agency official told Reuters.
In the process, she connected government officials with two key groups: the Obesity Action Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the STOP Obesity Alliance at George Washington University. Both have ties to drugmakers.
Novo is the Obesity Action Coalition’s top corporate donor, paying it more than $500,000 annually.
STOP medical director Dr. Scott Kahan, who will assist in writing The Obesity Society’s new “standards-of-care” guidelines that primary-care doctors commonly use as a quick-reference guide, has accepted more than $300,000 from Novo.
Dr. Jamy Ard, of Wake Forest University, the incoming president of The Obesity Society who will oversee the guideline writing, has taken over $200,000 from Novo.
Ryan told Reuters she had no qualms about taking such payments, “Being a purist isn’t helping anyone,” she told Reuters.
The report also quoted Ryan speaking to a group of doctors at a conference, where she argued that these blockbuster drugs have been positive for both patients and investors. “There is nothing wrong with money,” Ryan said.
She and obesity specialist Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Scripps Clinic Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center in San Diego, have taken 130 Novo-paid trips over the past decade, traveling to make speeches and do consulting.
They said the travel allows them to provide medical advice that is valuable to patients, physicians and the manufacturer.
But other doctors disagreed. Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center who studies pharmaceutical marketing practices, told Reuters :
“These highly paid doctors end up drowning out the voices of people who aren’t being flown around to every medical meeting. As a result, there’s not a lot of resistance to the prevailing industry-funded view.”
‘Serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women’
The 2020 U.S. approval of Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda, a once-daily injection for weight loss, opened a new era of pharmaceutical-based weight management, The Defender reported.
This was followed, in June 2021, by the licensing of Wegovy, and less than a year later of Ozempic, which is indicated for Type 2 diabetes, but contains the same active ingredient, semaglutide, as Wegovy, and is prescribed off-label for weight loss.
Semaglutide drugs are taken as a once-weekly injection, which is considered a benefit compared to a once-daily jab. Liraglutide is a daily shot. Semaglutide is also available as a once-daily pill under the brand name Rybelsus, another Novo drug.
These drugs mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which assists patients in losing weight by regulating their appetite.
In November 2023, the FDA approved Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, another injectable diabetes drug, for weight loss. The active ingredient in Zepbound, tirzepatide, sets this drug apart from Wegovy and Ozempic but it works similarly through a weekly injection.
Tirzepatide is sold by Eli Lilly as a diabetes drug under the trade name Mounjaro.
These approvals were accompanied by what Fang called a Novo Nordisk-driven “aggressive campaign to persuade Americans of the merits of semaglutide.”
According to a KFF Health poll, 45% of adults would take a “safe and effective prescription weight loss drug,” including 59% of those trying to lose weight.
Enthusiasm fell to just 23%, however, when they learned that treatment involved a routine injection, to 16% if either insurance did not cover the high monthly cost or if the drug was not specifically approved for weight loss.
The surging popularity of the medication led to shortages and made Novo Nordisk one of the most valuable global pharmaceutical companies, behind Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.
The shortages raised concerns because the drugs are not made for short-term use. Studies show that when people stop taking them, they regain much of the weight they lost, or potentially gain even more weight. Most people who start taking the drugs and want the effects to last will have to stay on them long-term.
But recent pharmacy claims data shows that most people who start taking Wegovy stop taking it within a year, some because of side effects and some because of the high cost of the drugs.
In addition to suicidal ideation and thoughts of self-harm, pancreatic cancer and gastrointestinal disorders, other adverse effects linked to semaglutide are also becoming apparent. A study using data from EudraVigilance, also found metabolic, nutritional, eye, renal, urinary and cardiac disorders were also reported.
The drugs also carry serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women.
Despite the high drug cost and the associated risks, there is an ongoing debate about whether insurance companies and Medicare should cover the cost of weight loss drugs, which would increase profits exponentially.
Reuters reported that Wegovy’s U.S. prescribing label recommends the drug for anyone with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, the threshold for obesity and for people with a 27 BMI who also have a weight-related medical condition.
That would cover about 46% of American adults — about 120 million people, according to the report.
A study published in March in the NEJM estimated that if Medicare were compelled to cover Wegovy, with an estimated 23% discount, it would cost $27 billion to treat just 10% of patients with obesity enrolled in Medicare. That would equal nearly a fifth of the yearly spending for Medicare’s program covering prescription drugs.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Empirical data demonstrates that, although US warmongering may fatten the pockets of military contractors, the consequences for citizens around the world have been dire.
Former Congressman Ron Paul was met with a decidedly mixed reaction in 2007 when, during the height of the so-called “War on Terror,” he lambasted the pernicious influence of US-backed militarism around the globe.
But since then his analysis has gone mainstream, and now a new study from Brown University provides empirical backing for the claim the US war machine is making Americans – and the world – less safe.
“There are more militant groups than there were when we started the so-called ‘War on Terror’ in 2001,” said Stephanie Savell, a senior researcher with the university’s Costs of War project. “There are more recruits to those groups, there’s a ton of blowback to all of this military action around the world,” she added.
“And we’re seeing in Iraq and Syria right now that the US presence in these places in the name of counterterrorism actually… makes it more likely that [US troops] engage in aggressive actions abroad,” the researcher emphasized.
In other words, war and violence only beget more war and violence.
The United States military currently has a “footprint” in 78 countries according to Savell’s research, a full 40% of the world’s nations. Her study also pinpoints 800 US military bases around the globe (controversy over what constitutes a “base” provides some uncertainty to this count – some have placed the number of military installations at over 900).
Meanwhile, US and allied troops have been attacked some 82 times in Iraq and Syria since October 17 as American support for Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza has fueled rage throughout the Arab world.
Savell’s research has also found that at least 4.5 million deaths have occurred as a direct or indirect result of US-led wars since September 11, 2001.
“We’ve gotten extremely far in the direction of using the military as the primary tool of US foreign policy,” said Savell. “And arguably, that’s not keeping Americans or anyone else in the world any safer.”
“A lot of times what’s happening is that the US is providing funding, weapons and training for regimes that are very far from democratic. They’re using those tools to crack down on political dissidents and political opponents. And it’s really creating and fueling a cycle of blowback in which those targeted groups are then joining militant movements,” the researcher stressed.
Contrary to America’s oft-stated goal of promoting democracy and “freedom,” another study demonstrated the United States militarily backs 73% of countries deemed “dictatorships” throughout the world. US belligerence has damaged the country’s global reputation in recent years, especially in the Middle East, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has forged diplomatic relations on the principles of sovereignty and mutual respect.
Recently the late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” went viral on the TikTok platform. The missive cast opposition to the United States throughout the Arab world as a function of resistance to the country’s militarism, contradicting the oft-repeated “they hate us for our freedom” mantra of the post-9/11 era.
US lawmakers responded by renewing calls for the banning of the TikTok platform, and British newspaper The Guardian removed the letter from their website lest Americans be encouraged to further engage in wrongthink.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Middle East, United States |
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The ongoing ruling-class meltdown over the recent Dublin riots tells us a lot about the breadth and depth of the gulf fixed between Western governments and their citizens. It’s as if those in charge are outraged by the temerity of their subjects to cry out over the pain and death inflicted upon them by their supposed leaders.
Angry Irish citizens took to the streets, chanting “Enough is enough,” after suffering the latest consequence of mass migration: The November 23 stabbing attack in which three children and two adults were injured in central Dublin. Having failed to be heard by the policymakers who are destroying their quality of life, they burned buses, torched police cars, and clashed violently with officers.
The suspect hasn’t been identified or officially arrested. Unlike the Irish people, he’s being protected by their government, and he’s reportedly too incapacitated to be questioned by police because of injuries suffered during the stabbing spree. He has been described as a 49-year-old Algerian who was given Irish citizenship.
A media controversy erupted days after the attack when independent journalist John McGuirk reported – incorrectly – that the suspect was an Algerian migrant who had been living in Ireland, at taxpayer expense, since 2003. McGuirk referred to a man who faced a deportation order after an arrest years ago, but he was allowed to stay in the country and was later given an Irish passport. Earlier this year, he was arrested for illegal knife possession and damaging a car. He was let go by the court because of a mental health issue, according to media reports.
McGuirk was assailed by establishment mouthpiece media figures not for getting the story wrong, which wasn’t initially known, but for deciding not to withhold sensitive information from his readers. Pressed in a television interview by host Ciara Doherty on whether he “inflamed” a “hostile situation” by reporting details about the suspect’s background, he replied, “Your essential position is that you, as a journalist, sitting in that chair, should decide what information the people watching this program have, and if you decide they can’t handle it, you don’t give it to them.”
Police subsequently revealed that McGuirk had identified the wrong Algerian migrant. Although he wasn’t named in the article, the details of his background made it possible for online sleuths to identify him. Police are now protecting the man who was misidentified, according to media reports, while continuing to withhold information about the actual suspect.
McGuirk took down his erroneous article from the internet and issued a statement saying that the source who gave him false identification was a senior police official. He also cross-checked the information with a senior official in the Irish justice system before posting his story. His media outlet, Gript Media, is now investigating whether the false tip was a deliberate act of sabotage.
It would be easy to see why powerful figures in the Irish government would be pleased to have such a story misreported by an adversarial journalist. The discussion has turned to the spread of “misinformation” and the inciting of angry citizens rather than excessive immigration and poor public safety.
The situation is reminiscent of when WikiLeaks reported on emails showing that America’s Democratic National Committee had rigged the party’s 2016 presidential primaries in favor of its chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. Rather than focusing on the scandal, legacy media outlets made the story about Clinton’s unproven claims that Russian hackers stole the emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.
The thing is, even if you knew that an adversary with ulterior motives had revealed that your spouse was cheating on you, wouldn’t you be more concerned about the infidelity than the source? The story in Ireland should be destructive immigration policies, not identifying the wrong Algerian migrant criminal.
Ironically, the distraction and misdirection in the Dublin story doesn’t really matter. The fact is that the dangerous migrant identified by McGuirk has been allowed to stay in Ireland by a government that doesn’t prioritize the safety of its own people. He didn’t perpetrate this particular assault, but he’s a criminal migrant, and if and when he commits another crime, it will be an unforced error inflicted on the Irish people by their government. The fact also remains that the real suspect is an Algerian migrant, meaning he came from a country more than 1,000 miles away that isn’t at war. If he was a legitimate refugee, Ireland wasn’t the nearest available safe haven – not by a long shot.
However, if Ireland’s leaders can help it, attention will be shifted away from the country’s migration crisis. Never mind the policies that endanger Irish citizens and diminish their quality of life. There won’t be a serious discussion, either, of why illegitimate asylum seekers and other migrants are allowed to stay in the country, even after they’ve committed crimes.
Rather than decrying the stabbing of children or confronting the policy questions raised by the rampage, Irish government officials and their media stenographers are focusing their ire on the citizens who violently demanded change, dismissing them as “emboldened racists.”
National police chief Drew Harris blamed the riots on a “complete lunatic hooligan factor driven by far-right ideology.” Justice Minister Helen McEntee pledged tougher police tactics to quell any such revolts by the “thugs and criminals” who were using the stabbing attack to “sow division.” Kenyan-born UK politician Lilian Seenoi-Barr blamed the unrest on a small far-right minority and called the rioters an “organized terrorist group of people who want to harm immigrants.”
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar insisted that people shouldn’t connect the stabbing spree to the mass migration that is transforming Ireland’s population. The PM said the rioters couldn’t possibly have been motivated by a desire to protect their way of life; rather, they were “filled with hate, they love violence, they love chaos, and they love causing pain to others.” He also called for enhancements to Ireland’s hate-speech legislation. “We will modernize our laws against incitement to hatred and hatred in general.”
To the extent the mob was whipped up, it was whipped up by reality – the reality created by the policies of the country’s tone-deaf leaders. The influx of migrants – many of them illegitimate asylum seekers from outside war zones – has swelled Ireland’s population to 5.15 million, up 31% in the past two decades. One in five residents of Ireland isn’t Irish-born. Many young people have given up on looking for homes because of the housing crisis and crushing inflation. Rates of murder and other crimes have risen sharply.
As for the notion that people are violently angry about their collapsing quality of life, recent polling shows that 75% of Irish people believe their country is taking in too many asylum seekers. An even larger majority, 76%, agreed that it was justifiable for people to be angry when migrants were moved into their communities. Presumably, most of those citizens aren’t inclined to torch trams or burn buses, but if even one in 100 of the people who oppose what’s being done to their country are angry enough to rise up, you have a mob nearly 40,000 strong.
Not all of the rioters were motivated by real grievances. Some, for instance, took the unrest as an opportunity to loot. In any case, a strong majority of the Irish people aren’t getting what they want from policymakers. Their message isn’t being heard when they burn things, just as it was ignored when they held peaceful protests. So, what comes next?
Irish leaders have responded by demonizing their critics and criminalizing dissent. For example, Irish MMA legend Conor McGregor is reportedly among the many people being investigated for alleged “incitement to hatred.” McGregor posted on social media that the stabbing suspect was a “grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place.” Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin denounced the fighter’s accurate comment as “absolutely disgraceful,” to which McGregor responded by calling the politician “worthless and spineless.”
McGregor doubled down on his criticism last week, saying Irish officials were trying to use him as a “scapegoat.” He added, “The truth of the many failed policies of this government, however, will never stop being the reason we have innocent children in hospital on life support after being stabbed by a deranged criminal.” The fighter even hinted on Monday about running for president.
Contrast the reaction in Dublin with how the Western ruling class treated the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. There were scenes of police kneeling with the protestors rather than calling them extremist hooligans. Rather than calling for everyone to hush up about the racial overtones of the triggering event – the death of a black criminal, George Floyd, after a white police officer kneeled on his neck – the story was made all about racism.
Even as cities burned and dozens of people were killed, many politicians agreed with the mob’s demands to “defund the police” and “reimagine policing.” The future US vice president, Kamala Harris, promoted a fundraising campaign to bail out rioters who had been arrested during the mayhem. Nike, Google, Apple, and other big names in Corporate America pledged massive donations to “racial justice” causes.
And while inflaming the Dublin rioters by linking the crime to migration has been deemed irresponsible, inflaming the BLM mob with falsehood may even have been a government strategy. A new documentary on Floyd’s death has claimed that the original autopsy found no indication that he had died from injury to his neck; however, he was infected with Covid-19 and had fatal levels of fentanyl in his blood. A day after the medical examiner met with FBI agents, the documentary said, the autopsy was altered to suggest that Floyd had been killed by police.
The cop who was found guilty of killing Floyd, Derek Chauvin, is still serving a long sentence in prison, where he was stabbed 22 times by another inmate last month. His attacker was a former FBI informant.
Western rulers seem to base their reaction to civil unrest and violent crimes on the ideology of the perpetrators. If it aligns with the political agenda, the message is amplified and treated sympathetically. If it exposes the folly of destructive policies, it must be crushed. The BLM riots provided an opportunity for race-baiters to further divide the people and promote “reforms” that favor criminals over law-abiding citizens and non-white people over whites. The Dublin riots screamed that the people had reached their breaking point with mass migration and leaders who refused to serve the interests of their citizens.
The same criteria were on display when an election fraud protest at the US Capitol escalated into a riot in January 2021. Rioters breached the Capitol to disrupt congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Biden reacted by calling the riot the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” More than 1,100 people have been arrested for their alleged roles in the riot. Many have received long prison sentences. One man who wasn’t even in Washington on the day of the riot – but who sent messages cheering on the breach from his Baltimore hotel room – was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
A similar approach is taken to other high-profile crimes. When a white gunman wounded four people at a Missouri Walmart last month, the FBI came out just two days later to report that the shooter may have been motivated by racist ideology. Never mind that two of his victims were white, and two were black.
And yet, more than eight months on from an incident in which a transgender shooter killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Tennessee, police are still refusing to release the “manifesto” written by the murderer. In fact, seven officers have been suspended on suspicion that they may have leaked part of the document online. In leaked pages of the manifesto, shooter Audrey Hale spoke of killing “all you little crackers” with “white privileges.” Similarly, it took seven months for police to reveal that the man who killed five people and wounded eight at a Kentucky bank wanted to inspire tougher gun control laws by killing “upper-class white people.”
The suppression of truth, the lying, and the situational outrage cannot be sustained forever. Leaders who cram down policies that destroy their countries and harm their citizens, whom they supposedly represent, cannot endlessly evade a real reckoning of their betrayals. The critics can no longer be completely silenced, no matter how aggressive the censorship efforts.
How sustainable is being at war with your own people? How long can a government defy the interests of its citizens and vilify those who complain? Short of replacing the native-born population quickly enough to avert accountability, the leaders will have to answer to their subjects at some point.
The same voices that call for tamping down the rhetoric and even suppressing the facts to avoid inflaming the mob in Dublin are only inciting more escalation by dismissing the rioters as extremist, racist thugs. People whose lives are being destroyed – at their own expense, as taxpayers, and by the traitorous leaders who have a moral duty to serve their interests – will eventually find a way to be heard.
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Ireland, United States |
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The presidents of Venezuela and Guyana – Nicolas Maduro and Mohamed Irfaan Ali, respectively – will sit down next week to discuss a long-standing territorial dispute that has recently intensified, the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has revealed. While Caracas has laid claim to the oil-rich Esequibo region since the late 19th century, President Maduro recently took steps toward gaining actual control over the area, which covers some 160,000 square kilometers.
Earlier this week, the Spanish daily El Pais reported that the Venezuelan government had deployed troops to the border with Guyana.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines PM Ralph Gonsalves, who also serves as president pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), broke the news after speaking with Maduro on Saturday, saying the negotiations would take place on Thursday.
The Venezuelan government has confirmed the planned talks, saying they hoped to “preserve our aspiration to maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace.”
The Office of the President of Guyana, for its part, stressed that “Guyana’s land boundary is not up for discussion.”
Also on Saturday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spoke with Maduro, calling for dialogue and warning against unilateral measures that could escalate the situation. The Brazilian head of state has also been invited to take part in Thursday’s talks as an observer.
Speaking on Tuesday, the Venezuelan president said Caracas wanted the “peaceful rescue of the Guayana Esequiba,” which “has been de facto occupied by the British Empire and its heirs and they have destroyed the area.” Maduro also unveiled a new map of Venezuela that incorporates the disputed territory, and appointed a new governor to the region.
Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, in turn, gave a televised address to the nation, accusing Venezuela of attempting to annex more than two thirds of his country.
“This is a direct threat to Guyana’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and political independence, and a violation of fundamental principles of international law,” the leader stressed.
“The Guyana Defense Force is on high alert… Venezuela has clearly declared itself an outlaw nation,” Ali added.
The recent escalation followed Sunday’s referendum, in which 10.4 million Venezuelan voters backed Caracas’ claim to Guayana Esequiba.
The territorial dispute stems from the US’ decision in 1899 to assign the territory to what was then British Guiana – a move Venezuela never accepted as legitimate.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Guyana, Latin America, United States, Venezuela |
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The administration of US President Joe Biden was complicit in the arrest of an American journalist who has been jailed and tortured in Ukraine for criticizing the Kiev government, the father of Gonzalo Lira has claimed. He believes his son may have sealed his fate when he also spoke out against Washington.
Gonzalo Lira was apprehended by Ukrainian authorities for the third time in August while trying to escape to Hungary after being released on bail. The Chilean-American writer had repeatedly criticized the government of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, arguing that Kiev had provoked its conflict with Russia and had no chance of winning.
“This that is happening to my son, he’s a victim of this Biden government and his relation with that puppet Zelensky,” Gonzalo Lira Sr. said on Saturday in an interview with US journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson. “Zelensky is a man that has made opponents, political opponents, disappear.”
The 80-year-old father said his son had bravely reported on about a dozen Zelensky opponents who had been “disappeared.” The younger Gonzalo Lira also predicted correctly that the Russian economy would be relatively unscathed by Western sanctions and that NATO members would suffer a boomerang effect from their efforts to arm Ukraine and punish Moscow.
However, it was only after the blogger sharply criticized Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris that he was arrested for a second time in May, Gonzalo Lira Sr. told Carlson.
“Isn’t it odd that four days later, after condemning Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Gonzalo was arrested?” the father asked. “Why was he not detained earlier? When he was let go the previous year, he continued the same criticism against the war.” He added, “The USA government, with its silence in the face of this scandalous incident, suggests a degree of complicity, or at least tacit approval of Gonzalo’s arrest.”
Lira contrasted the Biden administration’s “conspicuous lack of response” to his son’s arrest to Washington’s aggressive efforts to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in Russia on espionage charges in March.
The younger Lira is relying on a court-appointed Ukrainian attorney who speaks no English for his legal defense. Just before being captured in August, he warned his audience that if he failed to get safely into Hungary and be granted political asylum, he would likely die in a Ukrainian labor camp.
Gonzalo Lira Sr. has called his son a political prisoner and has argued that his case illustrates the absurdity of US claims that the world must defend “freedom and democracy” in Ukraine. “If we are going to protect democracy in the world, let’s start by taking out that puppet called Zelensky,” he said.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | Human rights, Ukraine, United States |
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The United States imposed restrictions on Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki’s communication with the media as a precondition for his visa to the country, according to reports seemingly confirmed by his Saudi counterpart.
In a press conference in the American capital Washington yesterday, in which the foreign ministers from a number of Middle Eastern nations addressed reporters, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan revealed that US authorities restricted his Palestinian counterpart al-Maliki from speaking to reporters and media representatives.
“The US government has imposed restrictions on his Excellency that does not allow him to respond to media questions or to engage with the media”, bin Farhan said. When a reporter – Yunus Paksoy from CNN Turk and Hürriyet – asked “what happens if he talks?”, the Saudi minister reportedly replied that “there will be sanctions”.
Following the press conference and the remarks made, further reports emerged claiming that Washington and the administration of president Joe Biden restricted his communication with the media as a precondition for the issuing of his visa.
The US State Department has since denied that any such restrictions were imposed, however, with spokesperson Matthew Miller stating that “Visa records are confidential under US law, so we cannot discuss the details of any individual visa case, but United States immigration law does not include any provisions that prohibit individuals from speaking to the press, and we have imposed no restrictions that prohibit individuals from speaking to the press”.
Although the reports of al-Maliki’s restrictions have not yet been verified, the confirmation by bin Farhan is perceived by some as enough of a verification. If true, it raises significant questions and criticism by many as to why the Palestinian foreign minister would be subject to sanctions for speaking to the media while Israel is able to commit war crimes in its bombardment and invasion of Gaza without consequences or condemnation from the US.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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A DC think tank has pointed out that Washington could lose influence in the Arab and Muslim world by killing off the UN ceasefire resolutions.
The US was the only country that vetoed a UN Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolution on Friday. The 15-member gathering voted 13-1 in favor of the initiative – with the United Kingdom abstaining.
Israel’s military operation in the strip has already claimed the lives of more than 17,700 people with 70% of them estimated to be women and children, per Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Judging from the opening remarks at the 21st Doha Forum in Qatar on Sunday, the Arab world is deeply frustrated by Washington’s veto, DC think tank The Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft pointed out.
In particular, Foreign Minister of Qatar Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that Washington’s move to kill the resolution exposed the “great gap between East and West… and double standards in the international community.”
He placed emphasis on the necessity to create a new multipolar world order that “respects justice and equality between the people where no people are more powerful than the other.” The Qatari leadership vowed to continue exerting pressure on Tel Aviv and Hamas to implement a new truce despite “narrowing” chances.
Palestine Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh argued that the US gave the “greenest of green lights” to Israel’s brutal methods of waging war in Gaza. Per him, Washington should be held responsible for Israel’s attacks and the loss of Palestinian lives.
For his part, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Tel Aviv of implementing a policy of expelling Palestinians out of Gaza by military actions.
Addressing the forum, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that the humanitarian system is currently under threat: “We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region.”
“Last week, I delivered a letter to the President of the UN Security Council invoking Article 99 of the Charter of the UN for the first time since I became Secretary General in 2017,” said Guterres. “I wrote that there is no effective protection of civilians in Gaza. As a matter of fact, during my mandate, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza in such a short period is totally unprecedented.”
Article 99 of the UN Charter states: “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Meanwhile, DC think tank The Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft highlighted that humanitarian advocates repeatedly called the situation in Gaza “unprecedented”, adding that UN agencies are continuing to lose people in the war zone. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has lost 134 relief workers in Gaza since Tel Aviv’s military operation began.
The Quincy scholars also warn about the growing anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, as Washington is seen as the major obstacle on the way to peace in Gaza due to its repeated vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the UN.
Khaled Saffuri, executive director of the National Interest Foundation in Washington, told the think tank that he was “struck by the backlash against American brands” during his travels in Kuwait and Qatar over the last week. Per him, Arab customers and restaurants are boycotting Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. Saffuri called Washington’s latest veto in the UNSC “horrible.” “America is losing a lot in the Muslim world,” he told the think tank.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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The announcement on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will seek reelection for a fifth term in office came as no surprise. That he chose the occasion of a Kremlin ceremony conferring the Hero of Russia medals to servicemen who had taken part in Russia’s military operation against Ukraine to make the announcement is striking.
Putin was found responding to an exhortation by the Hero of the Donetsk People’s Republic Artyom Zhoga, commander of the famous Sparta Battalion (who succeeded his son Vladimir, who died at the age of 28 in 2022 and was posthumously awarded the title “Hero of Russia”) that the entire Donbass would like him to participate in the election. There is no question that Col. Zhoga voiced a collective wish of the Russian people.
The Ukraine war has turned out to be a defining event in Putin’s political life. There was some misjudgement initially when the special military operation commenced in late February 2022 that it would be a short-lived affair and President Vladimir Zelensky would take up the Russian offer to negotiate. But where Moscow went horribly wrong was that the US wouldn’t get into a proxy war with them with such gusto and manipulate Zelensky from seeking peace. (See an excellent account, in English, of the US’ sabotage of the Istanbul Agreement, titled Peace for Ukraine authored by a distinguished German troika of a diplomat, an historian and a general.)
Indeed, Putin eventually steered the tentative special military operation out of the woods by making a tactical withdrawal of troops in the northern sectors, allowing a large mobilisation of troops to pursue a war of attrition and ordering an effective multilevel fortification of the frontline. In retrospect, his military decisions turned the tide of war and Russian weaponry and military technology outclassed what the US and NATO supplied to Kiev.
As of now, Russian forces are pressing ahead all across the 900-km frontline and the momentum might carry them far, even across the Dnieper. Crimea and the Black Sea are not in any serious danger; the four new territories are resource-rich and Russia controls all the ports in the strategic Sea of Azov, which is an important access route for Central Asia from the Caspian Sea via the Volga-Don Canal.
However, although the US failed to achieve a military victory in Ukraine, the Biden Administration will try to prolong the conflict for as long as possible through 2024 hoping to bleed Russia in a gruelling struggle as in Afghanistan in the eighties. But it is a vain hope.
Sergey Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence service wrote last week in the agency’s journal Razvedchik (The Intelligence Operative) that “there is a high probability that further support for the Kiev junta, especially given the increasing ‘toxicity’ of the Ukrainian theme for transatlantic unity and Western society as a whole, will accelerate the decline of the international authority of the West.
“Ukraine itself will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing material and human resources the further it goes,” he continued. “In the end, the US risks creating ‘another Vietnam,’ which every new US administration will have to deal with until some sensible person who has the courage and determination to break this vicious circle takes over in Washington.”
Ukraine will remain a priority issue for Russia and that is one main reason why the Russian elite and the nation at large want Putin to remain in power until 2030. The heart of the matter is that Putin also brilliantly tweaked the economic and social policies to sequester the lives of ordinary Russians from the usual deprivations characteristic of a ‘war economy’. Life moves on, and the ‘new normalcy’ is working well.
Putin has scattered the US’ goal to entrap Russia in an apparent quagmire — sending the Russian economy into a tailspin and stoking social discontent and creating conditions for an insurrection against the regime — to weaken Russia and remove it from the global stage as an increasingly effective counterpoint to the western hegemony by fuelling fissiparous tendencies to threaten the unity and integrity of the Russian Federation.
In reality, Putin’s achievements are a work in progress and his continuance in power remains a pre-requisite for Russia’s re-emergence as a ‘superpower’ surpassing even the Soviet Union in some ways in circumstances that are as much challenging as offering opportunities that must be creatively seized in a volatile world environment in historic transition.
Putin tested the waters and has put Russia on the right side of history, so to speak, which presents a study in contrast with the disarray and lack of conviction and mediocre leadership in the US and the transatlantic system as a whole.
If the above-mentioned essay by Naryshkin (entitled 2024 Is the Year Of the Geopolitical Awakening ) is taken as benchmark, the world in transition can be expected to have a trajectory on the following lines:
- A fundamental conflict between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ world, which has been maturing below the surface through the three decades since the end of the cold war, has “moved into an open phase” with the commencement of Russia’s special military operation and has “acquired a geographically all-encompassing character” in the last year.
- An increasing number of countries that “share the ideas of multipolarity and adhere to a traditional worldview” are pushing back the West’s globalist and anti-humanistic agenda.
- Consequently, the risks of instability are multiplying, which lead to “an increase in the chaotic nature of the processes taking place in the foreign policy arena.” The emergent situation demands “remarkable restraint and foresight” from world leaders.
- In sum, the current situation is “increasingly reminiscent of a class revolutionary situation, when the ‘upper classes’ in the face of the weakening United States can no longer provide their own leadership, and the ‘lower classes’, as the Anglo-Saxon elite refer to all other countries, no longer want to obey Western dictates.”
- In order to preserve their global hegemony, the Euro-Atlantic elite will follow the well-trodden path of creating controlled chaos — de-stabilising the situation in key regions by pitting some ‘recalcitrant’ states against others and “forming a sub-system around them as operational and tactical coalitions controlled by the West.”
- However, “responsible world players, especially Russia, China and India and some others demonstrate their readiness to resolutely resist external threats and independently implement crisis management.” Even the closest allies of the US are striving to diversify external relations faced with lack of confidence in America as provider of security. The eruption of Israel-Palestine conflict is “a sobering example” for many Western politicians.
- In such a backdrop, “the world stage will be marked by a further intensification of the confrontation between the two geopolitical principles — namely, the Anglo-Saxon, or island, ‘divide-and-rule’ and the continental ‘unite-and-lead’ directly antagonistic to it. Manifestations of this fierce confrontation in the coming year will be observed in even the most remote regions of the world.”
Interestingly, in Naryshkin’s prognosis, it is not the Indo-Pacific but the Arab world that will remain “the key arena of the struggle for a new world order” in 2024. By the way, the essay appeared on the eve of Putin’s daylong trip to the UAE and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday where he recieved a hero’s welcome. In an extraordinary courtesy by the host countries, Putin’s presidential jet was flanked by four armed Su-35 multi-role 4th + + generation multi-role fighter jets noted for great combat power, high speed and matchless flight range.
December 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Russia, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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On Sunday, December 17, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, will debate Dr. Kate Klonick, Associate Professor of Law at St. John’s University Law School, on whether Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction restricting the Biden Administration’s communications with social media platforms hindered or helped “national internet policy.”
The topic refers to the federal district court’s 155-page ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which ordered the federal government to halt its efforts to induce Big Tech to censor its political opponents. Judge Doughty wrote that if the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Dr. Bhattacharya is a Plaintiff in the lawsuit, which alleges that he and his colleagues “experienced extensive censorship on social media” for their criticism of the US Government’s Covid policies. In his affidavit, Dr. Bhattacharya testifies that there was a “relentless covert campaign of social-media censorship of our dissenting view from the government’s preferred message.”
Dr. Klonick previewed her support for the Government’s ability to work with private companies to control the flow of information in a July op-ed for the New York Times, “The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana.”
Klonick’s article raises factual and analytical questions that Bhattacharya should raise in their debate.
Does the Future of Online Speech Belong to Anyone?
Klonick’s headline is fundamentally at odds with the concept of free speech. Under the First Amendment, speech does not belong to any person or entity. Future speech receives heightened protections under Supreme Court precedent to curtail prior restraint.
Next Sunday, Dr. Bhattacharya should ask Klonick: who should “speech” belong to? This is not a pedantic or rhetorical point; those with control over information instinctively protect their own interests. A survey of American power structures demonstrates the corruption that power breeds.
Should the future of speech belong to CISA? The Department of Homeland Security subdivision monitored speech in the 2020 election through “switchboarding,” a process in which it flagged content for removal from social media platforms.
The US Security State censored posts related to natural immunity, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the lab-leak theory, and side effects of the vaccine, many of which were later proven true. In each instance, the suppression of information benefitted the country’s most powerful institutions.
Or should it belong to the Biden Administration? Every day, the White House slowly kills Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison. The President hasn’t accused the Wikileaks publisher of falsehoods; instead, Assange has spent over ten years in confinement for disrupting the preferred narrative of the American political class.
Should speech belong to unelected bureaucrats? Biden cronies like Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt have worked for years to control Americans’ access to information, including censoring “mal-information,” meaning “often-true information” that they consider “sensational.”
Should it instead belong to health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci? Fauci learned that he was complicit in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology on January 27, 2020, and orchestrated a cover-up campaign to shield himself from criticism and potential legal liability. He called for a “quick and devastating… take down (sic)” of the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Dr. Bhattacharya, because it questioned his judgment on lockdowns.
Our First Amendment demands that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Alleged falsehood does not overturn this principle. As the Supreme Court recognized in United States v. Alvarez: “Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation.”
Free speech is predicated on the notion that it belongs to no man or government entity. Klonick’s entire position is based on her opposition to that pillar of constitutional liberty.
The Flaws in Klonick’s Argument
Beyond the title, each prong of Dr. Klonick’s argument relies on falsehoods. First, she described the case as “part of a wider war conservatives believe they are fighting, in which tech executives and Democratic government officials are supposedly colluding to censor conservative voices.”
Like Professor Larry Tribe, the censors use terms like believe and supposedly to imply the censorship doesn’t exist. They call it a “thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory” while ignoring the documented suppression of Alex Berenson, Jay Bhattacharya, the Great Barrington Declaration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others.
Klonick never mentions that Facebook banned users who promoted the lab-leak hypothesis at the behest of the CDC, that the Biden Administration launched a campaign to censor dissent surrounding vaccines in July 2021, or that the Twitter Files demonstrated the infiltration of the US Security State in Big Tech. Acknowledging those facts would unravel her premise.
Second, Klonick argued that the injunction was “overbroad” because it “seems to prevent anyone in the Biden administration from having any kind of communication with online platforms about matters related to speech.”
Here, she either didn’t read the order or deliberately misrepresented it. The injunction does not “prevent anyone” in government from communicating with online platforms “about matters related to speech,” as she claims; to the contrary, the injunction explicitly permits the Defendants to communicate with social media companies provided it does not infringe upon “free speech [protected] by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment.”
Third, she described the Biden Administration’s demands to social media giants to remove content as “classic examples of what political scientists call jawboning: the government’s use of public appeals or private channels to induce change or compliance from businesses.”
This ignores the inter-agency and systemic nature of what Michael Shellenberger calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Recent reports have revealed military contractors’ role in establishing systems for global censorship and the Intelligence Community’s direct involvement in the operations of our information centers.
The “content moderation” demands were not mere requests that could be freely accepted or denied. As Brownstone has detailed, they were mafia-like tactics where thuggish officials used the threat of retaliation to demand compliance.
Klonick exemplifies the censors’ repeated strategy: deny, deflect, and defend. The prongs of her augment are inherently contradictory. She defends the censorship tactics that she pretends don’t exist. Further, she either remains willfully blind to the corruption behind the usurpation of First Amendment freedoms or deliberately omits any mention of it.
No matter her intentions or misunderstandings, her aim is unconstitutional.
The Pretext for Tyranny
Pro-censorship advocates like Klonick and The New York Times imply that the internet presents unique challenges that require the government to “stifle disinformation.” But “disinformation” has long been the pretext for tyrants to banish unwanted speech.
In 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the Wilson Administration’s convictions of journalists, immigrants, and presidential candidate Eugene Debs for their opposition to the Great War. Charles Schenck, a pamphleteer, argued that the military draft violated the US Constitution. Debs told his followers, “You need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. affirmed their jail sentences, offering the now-famous slander that the First Amendment did not protect “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.”
Holmes’ metaphor was a precursor to disinformation. It dismissed the dissidents as liars and accused them of endangering those around them. In the Covid era, we saw the slanderous nature of Holmes’ glib principle return to the public square as men like Dr. Bhattacharya were accused of killing grandmothers, hating teachers, and spreading Russian propaganda.
A century after the censorship of the Great War, Dr. Klonick asserts that the future of speech should belong to someone, just not Trump-appointed judges. But history, through figures such as Holmes, warns us of the tyranny inherent in that principle.
As one Irish Senator recently demonstrated, censors justify their totalitarianism in the name of the “common good.” They march under innocuous banners like public health, anti-racism, and civility.
But the results always serve the censors’ interests, stifling dissent to augment power.
Judge Doughty’s injunction may have flaws, but on the question of whether it advances or hinders free speech in the United States, the answer is undeniable. Missouri v. Biden is a litmus test for Americans. Either the Government has a right to curate citizens’ newsfeeds by using the power of the federal government to nationalize our information centers, or we embrace the First Amendment and unshackle ourselves from the militarized system of informational warfare that has dominated our airwaves for over three years. Dr. Klonick must answer, who would she appoint to control the future of our speech, to determine whether there really is fire in the theater?
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Human rights, New York Times, United States |
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Judicial Watch has come forward with newly acquired evidence of an intriguing alliance during the US 2020 election. The investigative body was able to obtain, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit, a series of records demonstrating a comprehensive synergy between the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and a controversial entity, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
These files reveal a concerted effort to execute “real-time narrative tracking” on principal social media networks during the critical days leading up to the 2020 election. Interestingly, these records illustrate instances of social media post “takedowns” and an intentional avoidance of creating public records that would be subject to the FOIA process.
These records also allow us a peek into the operations of EIP. Originally known as the Election Misinformation Partnership, it invested in monitoring online election discourse round the clock, especially prioritizing “disinformation that is going viral.”
A lawsuit launched under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gave Judicial Watch access to the records. The lawsuit was deemed necessary in response to a lack of transparency from the DHS, which did not respond to a formal request submitted by Judicial Watch on October 5, 2022.
This data was part of an extensive request by Judicial Watch that included all communication records between CISA and EIP, minute details of a meeting between DHS officials and EIP members on July 9, 2020, and all records of communication between CISA and Stanford University’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, specifically regarding the Election Integrity Partnership, the 2020 US election, online misinformation and disinformation, or various social media platforms.
The Election Integrity Partnership, established right before the Presidential elections in July 2020, was composed of four major entities: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, and social media analytics firm Graphika.
This partnership provided a valuable service to federal bodies, such as Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), enabling them to file tickets for flagging or censoring specific social media posts and online stories. It also extended similar privileges to three liberal organizations – the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause, and the NAACP – along with the Homeland-funded Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
In 2023, a report by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed the drastic evolution of CISA. Established in 2018 to protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats, it had emerged by 2020 as the central conduit for domestic surveillance and censorship of social media by the federal government. CISA’s focus shifted to reporting supposed disinformation on social media. By the following year, they had officially formed a team specializing in misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. As criticism intensified in 2022 and 2023, CISA sought to obscure its activities, ostensibly serving a purely “informational” role despite judicious allegations of unconstitutional conduct.
“These records show the lengths to which a ‘Homeland Security’ Deep State agency went in its effort to censor and suppress Americans during and after the 2020 election,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That it took a federal lawsuit to extract these disturbing records should raise additional worries about what else this Biden administration is up to.”
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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