US House Panel Says Disinformation ‘Pseudo-Experts’ Targeted Political Speech Online
Sputnik – 07.11.2023
WASHINGTON – US government officials used a government-linked group of disinformation pseudo-experts to launder the censorship of political speech online, the US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said in an interim report.
The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) – a group of purported disinformation academics led by the Stanford Internet Observatory – worked with US government officials to monitor and censor online speech ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the report, released Monday, said.
“This interim staff report details the federal government’s heavy-handed involvement in the creation and operation of the EIP, which facilitated the censorship of Americans’ political speech in the weeks and months leading up to the 2020 election,” the report said. “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”
The House Weaponization Subcommittee released the report in conjunction with the House Judiciary Committee.
The EIP worked with the US Department of Homeland Security and other US government agencies to bypass First Amendment protections for speech through the consortium of disinformation “pseudo-experts,” the report said.
The EIP was created at the request of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the report said. US government officials would submit misinformation reports to EIP analysts, who would then recommend censorship actions to tech companies, the report added.
An “untold number” of US citizens across the political spectrum were impacted by the censorship of true information, jokes and opinions, the report said.
The House committees’ investigations into the weaponization of the federal government and violations of civil liberties remain ongoing, the report said. There is “more to come,” Judiciary and Weaponization panel chair Jim Jordan also said in a statement via social media platform X.
The American people deserve to know whether they were targeted by the US government and affiliated disinformation pseudo-experts, Jordan added.
US, Israel to open second front in Lebanon
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 6, 2023
The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of an Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.
It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East.
Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.
In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.”
Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which form part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad”, near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an Israeli escalation into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction.
In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he warned the US explicitly of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon.
Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu.
The point is, after bombarding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does.
Equally, the Biden administration’s clumsy attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc. has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers – from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said the US would not push for one.
Blinken travelled to Ramallah from Amman where the head of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas apparently gave him short shrift saying that the PA would only be ready to shoulder full responsibility for the Gaza Strip in the framework of a “comprehensive political solution” that would include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — and, furthermore, that security and peace can only be achieved by ending the occupation of the territories of the “State of Palestine,” and by recognising East Jerusalem as its capital. The meeting lasted for less than an hour and ended without public statements.
Meanwhile, China and the UAE (by the way, Israel’s Abraham Accords partner) have since called for a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in another attempt to seek an immediate ceasefire, which the Biden Administration will certainly oppose. Suffice to say, the Biden Administration feels boxed in and the only way out is for something to give way through the exercise of coercive means.
The US is watching with frustration as new regional equations are appearing among Muslim nations. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held another phone conversation today. The OIC later announced that an extraordinary summit will be held in Riyadh on November 12 at the request of the current chairman, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people.
As the death toll in Gaza crosses 10,000, feelings are indeed running high in the Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said today that “all the evidence and indications show the direct involvement of the Americans in running the war” in Gaza. Khamenei added that as the war goes on, the reasons behind the US’s direct role would become more explicit.
The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also disclosed that Khamenei held a “recent meeting in Tehran” with the Head of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh where he told the latter that Tehran’s support for the resistance groups is its “permanent policy.”
Evidently, Tehran no longer sees a problem in acknowledging its dealings with the resistance groups. This is a paradigm shift indicative of the shift in the power dynamic, which the US and Israel seem to have decided to counter through use of force where diplomacy failed to make headway to isolate Iran.
The Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday during a meeting in the Northern Command, “We are ready to strike in the north at any moment. We understand that it can happen… We have a clear goal of restoring a significantly better security situation at the borders [with Lebanon], not only in the Gaza Strip.”
No power on earth can stop Israel in its tracks now. Its existence is inextricably linked to this war which will ensure abiding US commitment to its security as a key template of American global strategies for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.
There is no question that the location of the US nuclear submarine to the east of Suez is an attempt to intimidate Iran from intervening, as Israel, with US backing, proceed to open a second front. The Israeli authorities have announced evacuation of people from settlements located in a zone up to five kms from the border with Lebanon.
A prolonged war of indeterminate timeline is set to begin in the Middle East. The Middle East that emerged after World War II is breaking loose and drifting away into the chronicles of history. As the call of the jihad begins, there is no knowing how the 80-year old American president will respond.
No, this won’t turn into a world war. It will be fought in the Middle East itself, but its outcome will decisively impact the making of a new world order.
Iran FM says Tehran received new message from Washington on Gaza
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
Press TV – November 6, 2023
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.
The minister, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Monday meeting between Iranian and Iraqi heads of governments in Tehran, said, however, that the message did not correspond to what the US has done in practice in Gaza where it has supported the Israeli crimes against the civilians.
“The Americans … delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard,” said Amir-Abdollahian, but “they, however, back mass killing and genocide” of people in Gaza.
“We hope that the US will soon change its policy and stop supporting the occupying party,” he said.
The US had sent similar messages to Iran, a country with influence over resistance groups in Palestine, since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7, according to statements by Amir-Abdollahian and other authorities.
Amir-Abdollahian also commented about reports suggesting that his US counterpart Antony Blinken had arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier on Monday while wearing a bullet-proof vest out of fears that he could be targeted because of his support for the Israeli carnage in Gaza.
“This is the reality about the US role in the region,” said the diplomat.
Resistance groups in Iraq have launched attacks on US military bases in the Arab country in response to Washington’s offering of direct and open support for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Those groups and peers in other countries of the region have warned that such attacks on US interests could expand if Israel does not stop its brutal aggression against Gaza.
Gaza health authorities said on Monday that the number of people killed in 31 days of Israel attacks had exceeded 10,000 with children accounting for nearly half of the death toll.
What Message Does US Tomahawk-Carrying Submarine Send Amid Gaza War?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.11.2023
An Ohio-class guided missile submarine arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, as per a social media post by the US Central Command.
The Ohio-class guided missile submarine (SSGN) – depicted entering the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo by the US Central Command – is one of the four US underwater craft of this type converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Per the US press, each SSGN sub can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is 50% more than a US guided-missile destroyer and nearly four times what the US Navy’s newest attack submarines are equipped with.
The Tomahawk cruise missile can strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away and has been used in combat more than 2,300 times by the US and its allies. Most recently, US Navy warships and subs fired 66 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government facilities in 2018.
According to the US press, the heavily armed submarine sends “a message of deterrence” to Israel’s “regional adversaries, as the Biden administration “tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.”
The deployment of the submarine is triggering concerns, as per the DC-based think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The crux of the matter is that the US has already amassed a huge military force in the Middle East over the unfolding Gaza war.
The think tank particularly refers to:
· two aircraft carrier strike groups, with roughly 7,500 personnel on each;
· two guided-missile destroyers;
· nine air squadrons (deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea region);
· 4,000 troops dispatched to the region, with another 2,000 on standby, in addition to roughly 30,000 troops already stationed in the region.
These figures do not include “several dozen” commandos deployed to Israel in order to “actively help the Israelis to do a number of things,” as per Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defense.
On top of that there are US top military advisers on the ground in Israel to work out strategies to defeat Hamas together with the Israel Defense Forces.
“The United States is barreling toward another war in the Middle East,” Jon Hoffman, a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, wrote for RS on Monday. “The conflict between Israel and Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the United States directly into the fray.”
Kansas Energy Freedom Now!
By Sherri Lange | Master Resource | November 3, 2023
Nixing the Mandates in Kansas: Representative Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, reach astounding consensus on Energy Resolution: 180 to 1. There will be no energy “victims” in this state.
I don’t believe I am the typical politician. I don’t care about a political career or political threats. I care about doing the right thing.
I care about people. Period! (- Rep Carrie Barth in an email, October 9 2023)
Carrie Barth (R-Kansas, District 5) and Dennis Hedke, unapologetic supporter of the U.S. Constitution, acclaimed author of The Audacity of Freedom (2011), geophysicist, and former member Kansas House of Representatives (former Chair of the House Energy Committee), have drafted a clean and accurate Resolution for the Republican Party. This passed with overwhelming support. It appears to acknowledge that wind is not a good corporate citizen.
Representative Barth in an email:
Our Constitution of the United States gives the power to the people and states, not a dictator movement to control people. The “Green Agenda” is a joke. What they call green energy of wind and solar is anything but green other than it takes a lot of money to mine, build and construct, maintenance for the units, along with remediation when blades break off and the turbines catch on fire. It takes more green money from there to then build transmission lines that take people’s green land when eminent domain is used. Then people see transmission line tariffs on their energy bills. Oh, and wait, your rates never go down even though the energy industry tells you how cost effective it is.
I would refer to wind and solar as “brown or black energy”. They are unreliable and cause brownouts and blackouts. This hurts people, it hurts businesses, and even the ground under them turns brown.
Dennis Hedke added in an email:
The United States of America, and now by default, the rest of the world, have been seriously misinformed since the SCOTUS made a very serious error in 2009, via Massachusetts v. EPA. They allowed the EPA to falsely transform the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. As a result, Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights, and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Excerpts from the Resolution follow:
Kansas Republican Party Resolves to Support Candidates and Legislative Intent to Protect Kansans from Unreliable and Foreign-Sourced ‘Renewable’ Wind and Solar Energy
For your easy reference:
- CO2 is not a dangerous gas, nor a pollutant, to be avoided and scare mongered.
- The Kansas Republican Party Platform opposes efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development guidance from the federal government or the United Nations, which are actively attacking our local communities in an effort to implement the Paris Climate Agreement
- Kansas is not to be victimized by lobbyists guiding KS into blackouts and profiteering from subsidies, and alliances with the UN Global Agenda
- Kansas (Republican Party) supports alternative energy, while continuing to support oil and gas reserves within the State
- Kansas will prefer reliable and affordable energy above all
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject the “UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan”
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject energy projects that are obvious land grabs, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects
- Kansas (Republican Party) opposes so called Cap and Trade schemes
The resolution concludes:
Whereas irrefutable evidence demonstrates that ill-health effects to mankind and the environment are occurring due to the side effects of industrial scale wind installations. These occurrences are widespread, wherever these installations have been constructed;
Therefore, be it resolved, the Republican Party of Kansas, in view of the preponderance of evidence, will support candidates and legislative intent regarding energy policy that will serve to provide protection to our citizens security, physical health, financial health, access to reliable energy and property rights across all Kansas counties.
Of worthy note is that the CLINTEL declaration is referenced; nearly between 1600 and 2000 professionals and scientists indicate that climate change has always been with us, and the world is NOT on fire, or drowning, or otherwise careening to imminent disaster as some would have us believe. Climate change fear has been the false driver of the wind and solar proliferation, a universal clear economic and environmental disaster.
Some note that renewables policy can be termed Energy Vandalism. We concur: See this link for more detail on the nearly universally accepted articles in Kansas.
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
Comment
This is the first time we have seen a legislative body, organize, and nearly 100% agree, that climate change, which it always does and has done, should not be a driver for energy policy. It is the first time we have seen in such a document, a clear rejection of industrial wind and solar profiteers, and references to the irrefutable evidence of harm to the environment, people, and a clear intention to go forward with reliable, responsible, and cost-effective energy policy, while respecting property rights.
Kudos and respect to the two co-sponsors. Game changer.
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: “The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured.” (Lange: It most certainly can be documented and appreciated.)
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ADDENDUM ONE
Quotes from Clintel (There is no climate emergency)
ADDENDUM TWO
Additional excerpts from the Resolution
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
XIII. ENERGY
We support an energy policy which creates a strong State economy with affordable and reliable energy. Kansas residents must be considered first when developing new, potentially expensive technology.
We encourage the development of alternative energy supplies, while continuing to support the oil and gas industry within the state. Ever increasing energy prices are creating new avenues for entrepreneurs and existing companies to develop new sources of energy. New developments in wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal energy sources show real promise for clean, inexpensive, renewable energy for future generations. Increasing energy sources will inevitably create a more market-based system which ultimately lowers utility prices for consumers.
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
A report on the energy declaration, indicates this is a nonpartisan issue:
…. the energy producer is already allowing ESG rhetoric and the UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan.
This is not only a direct violation of the Republican party platform, but an attack on all citizens in the State, as we are seeing with recent reports that the supposed “green” Panasonic plant is actually an energy hog that caused Evergy to request a rate increase on customers in order to supply power to the plant.
The “green energy” project is also responsible for stalling efforts to transition the Lawrence power plant from coal to natural gas, due to the demands of traditional energy sources necessary to power the supposed “renewable” energy plant.
This is not a partisan issue. It’s a money and land grab issue, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects.
This resolution will protect Kansas from outside special interest groups by holding all legislators accountable for reliable, affordable energy that stays in our state to benefit our citizens.
ADDENDUM THREE
A conversation with Kansas Rep Carrie Barth and Former Chair of Energy and Environment House, Dennis Hedke. We asked Barth and Hedke to further explain the resolutions’ evolution, and possible resonances.
Conversations with Rep Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, Kansas: How did the exceptional resolution re mandate sanity and “exit renewables”, evolve?
Kansas, which ranks fourth in the U.S. for wind power, (is) the biggest wind energy-producing state to mandate light mitigation.
Wind turbines haven’t just exploded in numbers, they’ve grown ever taller. Since 2016, 400 new turbines have gone up in Kansas with rotor hubs taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The state now has between 3800 and 4,000 turbines, with hubs between 210 and 400 feet high.
It is clear that the pushback against the tyranny of renewables is accruing and accelerating. In August 2023, Robert Bryce again updates his files on rejected projects in the US. Kansas appears “ready able and willing,” to grab the mandates out of energy policies, leaving the door open to more affordable and reliable power.
(Recently, in the last ten days)….”local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects. Those moves bring the total number of rejections or restrictions in the Renewable Rejection Database to 574.”
Kansas legislators of the Republican Party have as noted in this blog, created an Energy Resolution of outstanding clarity. The push for reliable and affordable energy is on. No herd mentality here.
Question: Lang to Rep Carrie Barth: How did you become enlightened re climate misinformation? Was this gradual, and is there a single source that sped your learning? (See Barth’s two page submission to the Senate Local Government Committee.)
Answer: When door knocking last summer as a new candidate running for Kansas House of Representatives District 5, I met a constituent on her fourth-generation farm porch. She shared with me about what is going on in Southwest Douglas County, Kansas, that was affecting her and her neighbors with the Florida based energy company signing leases in the area for wind turbines.
Keep in mind, I live in SW Douglas County and this was the first time I was hearing about it. She shared with me concerns about her property rights, concerns about health, concerns about crops and livestock, concerns about wildlife, concerns about noise, and how she wants to keep this land for her kids and their kids. She spoke through tears as her way of life her family has worked hard for could permanently change if an industrial Commercial wind complex were approved in Douglas County.
I listened intently to her. She had done her research, she had been talking with her neighbors, and she shared with me highly unethical business practices the energy company was using where multiple individuals have completed affidavits that have already been filed with Douglas County and the Kansas Attorney General’s office. We ended the conversation with a hug and she asked me to help save our county and to do something about it. I left there knowing I had to help.
Through my education I’ve learned growing up, climate change has been around since the beginning of time regardless of the size of population as about every 100 years our climate shifts. So I started to dig in to learn more on why people decided to think differently. And I started to follow the money as the science and history is already there.
Not only is there wind trying to come into my county, we also have a 3,000 acre solar industrial complex trying to plop right in the middle of our agriculture zoned county that also bleeds into Johnson County, KS. I started reading a lot and talking with anyone that had experience in wind and solar energy. After I was elected where I beat an incumbent and took office January 2023, I started asking questions, reading our House Rules, and talking with anyone who would listen to me about the problem we have not only in Douglas County, but across our state.
I proposed a budget proviso during session that was an independent third-party study on the health and environmental effects of wind turbines, solar arrays, hydrogen hubs, and transmission lines. It would be the first study of its kind that I am aware of. It passed the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Committee but failed the House Appropriations Committee with only eight votes in support of it.
When they say follow the money, it’s true! There were energy lobbyists everywhere during this time. I was told by a fellow legislator they believe 50-75 lobbyist were hired to combat my budget proviso. People from all over Kansas, Republicans and Democrats showed up at the Capitol for the Appropriation Committee Budget meeting in support of the proviso wearing red shirts filling the room to observe what was happening and hear what was said.
You might be wondering, why would the energy industry be so afraid of people finding out the results of an independent study? Doesn’t everyone want to know the truth? The energy lobbyist and their attorney, along with their hired expert, like to tell me and others that they don’t understand why we are worried about our health and environment. They say wind and solar are safe and effective and are low cost. Because of my budget proviso, I received emails and calls from people all over the state of Kansas telling me the issues they have.
Other states learned of my proviso and they reached out to me. I even connected with people from Canada and the issues are ALL THE SAME! The evidence and data is clear! This is why I believe the resolution passed by the GOP delegates 180-1 votes.
Question to Rep. Barth: “To what extent do you think this Kansas Republican decision can impact other US legislators?”
Answer: The Resolution states the GOP party will support candidates that support legislative intent aligned with this resolution. Which means our Federal Republican candidates and elected positions will be held to this same standard as our state elected officials at all levels, including county elected Republicans. I have even shared our Kansas GOP Energy Resolution with other states so that they can do the same.
Question to Dennis Hedke (Geophysicist and former House Chair of Energy and Environment)
What is your background so we can understand the evolution that led to this remarkable achievement for the Republicans in KS?
Answer: I have been studying the issues surrounding the blatant misguided policymaking related to Energy, then Climate, since the Carter presidency, just after graduating from the University of Virginia, School of Engineering & Applied Science, M.S. Diploma in Materials Science. I wrote Carter a letter, and of course got no response. I had graduated from Kansas State University with a B.S. in Geophysics before leaving for Charlottesville. I was born and raised in Manhattan, KS, and moved to Miami, FL, to take my first job out of college in the spring of 1979.
Ronald Reagan moved the needle in the Right direction for 8 years, but then we got Bill Clinton, and of course Al Gore, one of the biggest liars in world history. We have been paying for his misguided malfeasance ever since.
We moved to Texas for a job change for me, as Exploration Manager for a small independent oil and gas exploration company in 1999. I was seething while seeing the very bad things in the making regarding ‘Global Warming’. We returned to Kansas in 2003/4, where I joined another small independent, as Geophysical Manager.
Fast forward to 2009, and I found myself inside the Kansas Capitol, as an unpaid lobbyist, fighting to resist the Legislature’s temptation to foist upon Kansan’s, Renewable Energy Mandates. I (we) lost that fight, and I knew it was going to be a disaster for all kinds of reasons, policy-wise and every-otherwise. I had run for a seat on the State Board of Education in 2008, and narrowly lost because the outgoing Republican seat holder endorsed my Democrat opponent. I ran a very clean race, and people in the party noticed.
In 2010, Sam Brownback won the Governor’s race, and the District 99 Representative was called to be Brownback’s Insurance Commissioner, this creating a vacancy in the Kansas House, which I was appointed to fill on January 24th, 2011. I became the Chairman of the House Energy & Environment Committee January 2013, and held that position until I left office, after 3 terms, ostensibly June 2016.
I and many allies forged a battle against the mandates, and moved Kansas into ‘Voluntary’ discretion in creation of power delivery to Kansan’s, in April, 2015.
That’s my answer as to how some things got into motion between myself and Carrie. Six years after I left office, she was elected to her seat. She is a real Firebrand and is dedicated to helping Kansas get back on track with Energy Policy. She is a tireless worker, and I deeply appreciate what she has done already in her first year as a legislator.
She had heard about me, and she reached out to me for some advice and guidance.….which brings us to today.
Question: I think you mentioned a serious “error” that allowed the EPA to falsely label the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. You are adamant that this decision resulted in the fact that:
(Hedke) Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Also: The Kansas Legislature, ruled by Republicans in the 2009 Session, made a serious error in forcing Power Companies to deliver Mandated Renewable Energy. This happened under the purported agreement to allow a single coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, KS to justifiably expand its deliverability of Electric Power to the Grid. Only, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health & Environment, Rod Bremby, denied a Permit to expand the plant, due solely to politics related to ‘Global Warming’.”
The Resolution passed by the Republican Party of Kansas contains very specific language and intent to right the multitude of wrongs that Kansas Legislators conducted in 2009, and which served to spread the Mandate Mentality across America. It remains to be seen if the current body of Legislators will have the political will to hold the line, and in fact push back, where necessary and appropriate.
Question: A lot of readers will be wondering how you and Rep Barth achieved a 180-1 vote for this very clear resolution. Given that KS has a pro wind record of placing wind factories in the State, even with a Republican House and Senate, is there a catalyst for this resolution at this time and at this place? Was a lot of lobbying needed, or was this more evolutionary, organic in nature due to the fast paced media pieces on changing perspectives of “renewables and climate”?
Answer: Former Chair, Dennis Hedke:
I perceive much of the reason for the success was due to the fact that the Committee reviewing the Resolution is heavily conservative. They had to present it to the Republican Party Delegates, which are probably also more conservative leaning.
The Legislators, Carrie excluded, are a lot more squishy, caring more about holding on to their seats, than acting with resolve and principle.
There may be some renewed pressure on Legislators to resist the absolutely ridiculous reasons for being ‘green’. That remains to be seen. Many of them simply forget that “The Truth Will Set You Free”.
I forgot to answer your question about cost of electricity. My bills range from about .13/kwh to .14/kwh.
Prices have increased by about 55% since wind power has been replacing coal and natural gas, commencing around 2011.
Thank you for your interest. Dennis.
Thank you again Former Energy Chair Hedke, and Rep Carrie Barth.
Tulsi Gabbard’s Warmongering is Nothing New
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | November 5, 2023
Some people are expressing surprise about the warmongering comments Tulsi Gabbard has been making in regard to the Israel war that has been ramping up over the last few weeks.
I thought she was for peace; how can she be saying this? That’s what some people are asking when discovering the recent comments of Gabbard who had worked hard to portray herself in the 2020 presidential election as the candidate for voters favoring peace.
The recent comments by Gabbard that have surprised people include this statement at Twitter on October 9, two days after the Hamas attack that sparked the new war:
The United States must stand with Israel in the face of this terror attack by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. This is just the latest example of the greater war being waged by both Sunni and Shia Islamist jihadists throughout the world. This should be a wakeup call to leaders everywhere that Islamist jihadists are the greatest short and long-term threat to the safety, security, and freedom of the American people, and people throughout the world.
Saying the United States must “stand with Israel” is a shorthand expression politicians in Washington, DC routinely use to declare that they support the United States government providing whatever aid Israel requests to pursue Israel’s “national security” related objectives. Indeed, Gabbard, a former member of the US House of Representatives, mentioned this week in a Fox News interview with host Laura Ingraham that House members can demonstrate they “stand with Israel” by voting to provide Israel with the roughly 14 billion dollars in aid for Israel’s war effort that was then under consideration in the legislative body.
The House on Thursday approved legislation, HR 6126, to provide this aid. (This money will supplement the billions the US already doles to Israel yearly.) As Gabbard would put it, the House “stood with Israel.”
While Gabbard’s support for the US jumping in to help Israel pursue its new war is surprising to some people, it is in line with a warning I provided in February of 2019 — two weeks into her presidential run. Here is what I stated then:
In 2015, Gabbard spoke regarding foreign policy in her speech at a Christians United for Israel conference. Comments in that speech suggest Gabbard’s foreign policy may be more interventionist than that of President Donald Trump. In comparison with Trump, Gabbard seems in that speech as antagonistic toward Iran, at least as devoted to Israel, more devoted to the Kurds, and much more devoted to the “they attack us because we are free” perspective on terrorism that has been at the heart of the Global War on Terror.
Check out Gabbard’s speech I mentioned here. It is an eye-opener for people who had fallen for the Tulsi Gabbard is an antiwar presidential candidate charade.
US in campaign to isolate Russia within the IAEA over Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
By Uriel Araujo | November 4, 2023
As part of its overall strategy to isolate and “cancel” Russia, the US, for the last few months, has been pursuing, both publicly and behind the scenes, a policy aimed at ousting Moscow from international organizations, with a focus on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and also the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). A large part of this campaign has to do with the issue of Zaporizhzhia’s Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Europe’s largest atomic power station, where the IAEA established, last year, a permanent presence to monitor compliance with agreed principles aiming at nuclear safety.
In April, for example, the US Department of Energy sent a letter to Rosatom (Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company), stating that the US possesses “sensitive” nuclear technology at the ZNPP and warning Moscow not to “manipulate” it. In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in turn, without providing further details, said that Russian authorities were planning a “terrorist act” at the plant. In July, he further claimed Russian troops had planted explosive devices on the roofs of the reactor units there. It turns out an IAE team inspected said roofs and found “no evidence of explosives”, as the organization reported in September.
Hawkish voices within the US have been urging NATO to be “prepared” for “intervention” so as to protect the ZNPP and avoid a “nuclear disaster” brought about by Russian President Vladimir Putin – any such disaster would obviously bring terrible consequences for Russia as well and it remains unclear why Moscow would seek to have a nuclear catastrophe in the very region it currently controls and which has become part of its territory after the referendums.
The IAEA last month did voice its concern about threats to Zaporizhzhia’s Nuclear Power Plant. Its experts, deployed there, have reported hearing a number of explosions (albeit with no damage to the plant), which indicate an increase in military activity. On September 8, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated the agency is concerned about dangers facing the plant involving “heightened military tension”.
The IAEA and the US are not the only actors concerned about this. It would seem, however, that the main threat to the ZNPP comes from Ukraine. In June, Moscow itself asked the IAEA to ensure Kiev does not shell the nuclear plant. On Thursday, however, Ukrainian drones reportedly launched an attack near the facility, and Russian air defense forces shot them down. According to Russia’s defense ministry, Kiev “continues to carry out provocations” in the sensitive area. There is no reason to doubt this, as it is in line with Ukraine’s modus operandi in the last few years.
As I wrote before, if one is to believe Western media, Russia is but a kind of pariah state with no credibility at all. Thus, its allegations about Ukraine employing “human shields”, for example, were at first ridiculed. However, in August 2022, an Amnesty International’s report exposed Kiev as doing precisely that. Last year I also wrote on how Ukraine kept gathering data about chemical facilities in Donbass. On 19 June 2022, Ukrainian troops irresponsibly shelled the Yasinovka coke and chemical plant in the Kirovsky district of Makiivka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Moreover, the Ukrainian military strategy has famously involved employing extremist paramilitary groups as proxies for terrorist attacks and provocations. The so-called “Freedom of Russian Legion” (FRL) and the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RVC) paramilitary organizations, for example, have been behind a number of such acts. The latter, the RVC, is one of the most violent far-right groups worldwide, according to Telegraph’s journalist James Kilner, and is led by notorious neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin. The Ukrainian military intelligence agency itself confirmed that the RVC has a unit within the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. Kiev relies heavily on such extremist groups for warfare, the infamous Azov regiment playing a key role in its security forces since 2014 (see this Guardian piece by Shaun Walker, for instance) – such organizations of course are not notorious for being safety-concerned. Ukraine’s strategy has also involved attacking chemical plants and facilities. The hard truth is that thus far Kiev rejected all IAEA proposals for ensuring the safety of the ZNPP.
Zaporizhzhia, as well as Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, are typically described, plain and simple, as Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. The reality regarding these disputed areas, like everything else in the post-Soviet world, is far more complex. In late September 2022 referendums were held in Zaporizhzhia, as well as in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson. At the time of these referendums, the Russian Federation did not in fact fully control any of the four regions. The legality of such elections has been disputed by international actors, but their results are arguably coherent with previous polls and cannot be explained away by Russian military presence. In Crimea, many years before (2014), the majority of the population favored accession treaties for the region to become once again part of the Russian people, and this without any armed conflict and without the presence of any Russian forces
Interestingly, in November 2021, according to surveys conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), which is part of the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research, 49% of the total Ukrainian population wanted to have no borders and no customs with Russia. Those are total figures, but we know that in Southern and Eastern Ukraine the percentage of people having “pro-Russian” attitudes has always been much higher, due to historical, language and ethnic reasons. More recently, over 8 years of armed far-right rise in the country and Ukrainian military campaigns against Donbass and Russian-speaking people greatly contributed to it. In early February 2022, before Moscow launched its military campaign, Kiev was massively bombing the Donbass region.
Today, any American hopes of victory in their proxy attrition war in Ukraine are now quite low, Israel being in the spotlight. House Republicans in the US have in fact just approved a $14 billion Israel aid package bill and lawmakers object to further aiding Ukraine. According to former US Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis (a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities), there is just “no amount of aid” that could grant Kiev a military victory. He writes: “If Ukraine was unable to break the Russian defensive lines after four full months of effort, after six full months of preparation, after receiving over $46 billion in military backing… by what logic can supporters of additional aid argue that giving another multi-billion dollar package will succeed where all previous efforts have failed? There is none.” Davis concludes that “It is time to acknowledge this obvious on-the-ground truth and seek out other pathways forward.”
From a Western perspective, such “pathways” should include reestablishing diplomatic channels to Moscow, in preparation for Kiev’s likely defeat, with commitments to ensure the rights of both ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, as a way to seek a framework for peaceful Western-Russian competition and coexistence in the emerging de-dolarized polycentric world. Trying to isolate and oust Russia from major international organizations is clearly not the way to do it.
Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
An explosive discussion with ex-CDC scientist Norman Pieniazek
BY MARTIN NEIL, JONATHAN ENGLER, AND JESSICA HOCKETT | OCTOBER 30, 2023
Dr Norman Pieniazek is a molecular biologist, geneticist, epidemiologist with 147 publications in virology and parasitology. Before he retired, he spent 24 years working at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA. He has also spent time abroad including time working in Spain and Poland.
We met up with Norman for what was planned to be a short meeting to introduce ourselves and informally discuss common interests around covid. However, this turned into a two-hour long, wide-ranging and fascinating discussion that touched on a huge number of topics.
Early on in the meeting Norman made the wise suggestion that we record and share the discussion. So, he hit the record button on Skype and we started again. The video, accessible below, is approximately two hours long. Be aware that, given it wasn’t planned as an ‘interview’ or for broadcast, it is largely unstructured. However, for those short of time here is a synopsis of the discussion with a focus on what Norman said1:
- The bacterial pneumonia hypothesis suggests that early treatment – hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and antibiotics address bacterial infection. Norman confirmed bacteria are everywhere in our bodies including in the lungs, creating an ever-present potentially hazardous predisposition that, given the right circumstances, might cause a deadly bacterial pneumonia infection.
- Well-understood remedies such as the stockpile of antibiotics, as recommended by Fauci, were cast aside in 2020. Bacterial infection can cause sepsis hence we need antibiotics. A Cytokine storm is caused by bacterial infection in the lungs, filling them with fluid; this lowers the oxygen level in the blood because of poor lung function.
- In-person diagnosis by a physician based on physical symptoms was largely replaced by the PCR test, and with the rise in tele-health visits, social distancing etc physicians stopped using stethoscopes to listen to a patient’s chest. This is an essential diagnostic tool to enable a doctor to audibly tell whether a patient has crossed the line into a bacterial infection which will then require antibiotics.
- Norman knew Donald Henderson who co-authored a classic work on how to best respond to a flu epidemic. Henderson and colleagues did not recommend any of the NPIs that were followed during covid because of the obvious severe health, social and economic costs. (As an aside this work was co-authored by Prof. Thomas Inglesby at John Hopkins who attended Event 201 and, oddly, recommended NPIs be used for covid – the very same ones he had rejected previously).
- Orthodox immunology was ignored – herd immunity is a fiction given there is a ‘soup’ of constantly mutating coronaviruses.
- Why didn’t scientists at the CDC question things early in 2020? Work from home restrictions meant that people at CDC couldn’t communicate and coordinate to overturn the madness being imposed from the ‘sixth floor’ top brass. You could not isolate CDC from the HHS (Health and Human Services) and it was HHS that were calling the shots.
- The Wuhan scientists were on a routine ‘fishing expedition’ for coronaviruses and unusual pneumonias. Why was this work being done in Wuhan? It is easier to do in China because it is legal and because there are lots of hospitals, in a concentrated area, where the population is in relatively poor health. Also, it is easier to get permission to perform a painful bronchial lavage procedure on patients to obtain pathogens in China; this is much harder to do in the USA. This procedure is done in the lower respiratory tract and guarantees higher quality samples than can be obtained using swabs, which really just measure the quality of the air that has entered your upper respiratory tract.
- To determine what pathogen is causing lower respiratory tract symptoms you should not use swabs and PCR. Why not? CDC acknowledges the inability of swabs to collect causative agents as reported by the EPIC study in these 2015 NEJM articles (one done on adults and one on children). Hence a positive result gained from a sample taken from the upper throat or the nose does not mean an infection is caused by the detected pathogen.
- In 2002-2004 SARS-COV was not subject to mass PCR testing, yet SARS-COV-2 was. PCR was used for SARS-COV but only on samples taken using bronchial lavage, but NOT from swab samples taken from the nose or upper throat.2
- Wu et al discovered WH-Human-1 using samples collected by bronchial lavage, and next generation sequencing of the collected genetic samples, and ultimately reported it in GenBank.
- Before reporting on GenBank they published a preprint identifying the genetic sequences3, which was appropriated and found its way into the hands of Corman and Drosten, who then decided to exploit it for personal gain (via commercial PCR testing), fabricating a story about validating it against SARS-1. It was subsequently renamed SARS-COV-2. (For a proposed timeline of events see here).
- Norman thinks SARS-COV-2 is simply a beta coronavirus (a cold), one of the many thousands of cold viruses that had remained undiscovered until 2020, but which have always been ever present in nature.
- SARS-COV-2 cannot be a novel virus created in a lab or by natural zoonotic mutation. It is simply novel to detection4. As soon as the EUA approved PCR tests started to be used the virus was simultaneously discovered in a number of disparate geographical regions. There was no evidence of sudden spread.
- In effect the results of any test are as much determined by the choice of test to apply as by the presence/absence of viruses. Norman says, “you will find whatever you want to find”. Hence people will be symptomless yet will have a lot of, whatever viruses happen to be around in their nose or throat.
- The established taxonomy of viruses is unusable simply because there are so many unknown viruses circulating in the wild.
- The mRNA vaccine technology ended in a ‘garbage heap’, because it is extremely toxic, and was rendered obsolete by protein subunit vaccines by 2019. So, the mRNA vaccines were doomed from the start. Subunit (protein-based) vaccines have been known since the late 1970s, but Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech needed a way to realise a return on their vast investments in mRNA. Hence the pandemic.
- Novavax is a protein subunit vaccine, based on the spike protein, which was available in August 2020 but did not get approval from the FDA. Although it is protein based it will stay in the deltoid muscle injection site. It was however approved in Canada. It may not be very good for you (and ineffective against coronaviruses), but it is less dangerous than the mRNA vaccines.
- mRNA vaccines were found to be too dangerous for animals. Also, arguments that they are a safe basis for cancer drugs are based on lies. There is a competing technology called humanised monoclonal antibodies that cured President Carter from a melanoma that had migrated to his brain and there are now 500 versions of these drugs currently available.
- Norman was told that the patent on the flu vaccines, grown in eggs, expired in 2020. Hence there was little ROI in continuing with this technology.
- Viruses are in your respiratory tract and antibodies, responding to vaccines, are in your blood. These two things do not match well because the antibodies in the blood do not get into the lungs. The immune system ‘stays away’ from the complex respiratory system that deals with the thousands of pathogens we breathe in with every breath.
- Are serology studies a pointless exercise? Because of wide variation between individual’s antibody measurement only makes sense by studying change in any single individual over time.
- Testing for antibodies means nothing because antibodies in the blood cannot travel to the lungs to react.
- Testing for antigens is a cheaper and less sensitive version of the PCR test with the same limitation.
- Norman is very sceptical of a number of covid virus theories including those by Walter Chesnut and JJCoey’s infectious clone theory, though they weren’t discussed in any great detail and were probably not characterised fully (or maybe even fairly).
- The issue with ‘infectious clones’ is that ‘you do not know what to create’ because there are millions of sequences of coronavirus so there is no ‘clonality’ and each one has 30 thousand nucleotides and there are combinatorically infinite changes you could potentially need to consider when creating a coronavirus5. It therefore isn’t possible to know what to change, via Gain of Function (GoF), to make the virus behave in more dangerous ways.
- As part of the ‘partnership for peace’ programme in 1994 Norman hired two ex-Soviet bioweapons scientists and asked them ‘how come you worked for 20 years and didn’t create any new deadly viruses?’
- They can create thousands of virus combinations, but the problem is how to test these creations. There is no way to test the billions and billions of possible changes to a virus and identify which changes to the sequence are ‘bad’. You need the phenotype, and you cannot deduce the phenotype from the genotype. So how would GoF researchers – E.g., EcoHealth alliance – know exactly what to create?
- The claim that Saddam Hussian had biological weapons was groundless and this was confirmed to Norman by Donald Henderson who was involved at the time and who said it was not possible.
- Thus, GoF claims that changes to spike protein and furin cleavage sites make a virus more deadly are fiction. It isn’t possible and there is no proof they can produce deadly bioweapons. Those advocating this position and making these claims – EcoHealth alliance (Fauci, Baric and Duszak) should get fired by their bosses for producing “not a tiger but a kitty”.
- We discussed Gulf War syndrome. Norman said people imagine anthrax is dangerous, but the ex-Soviet bioweapons researchers said to attack New York with anthrax would need 20,000 Boeing 747s flying over the city, dropping millions of tons of anthrax spores from a low height then people spreading it with shovels. The only way to infect people with anthrax is by direct means via an oxygen line or a direct injection.
- Norman said the Tokyo gas attack was successful in Japan because the terrorist used sarin, a nerve agent. The biological agents used, botulinum and anthrax, fortunately failed.
- Within the CDC Fauci was called the ‘mean midget’ and during the AIDS epidemic he sunk Robert Gallo by inventing the story that Gallo had stolen the HIV virus from Luc Montagnier, thus destroying Gallo’s chances of being awarded the Nobel prize (he was also denied a patent).
- Fauci is “not stupid, he is mean”. Fauci wanted to get a Nobel prize, but he didn’t get a Nobel prize for AIDS, so he wanted it for the Wuhan virus. In January 2023 knowing that he wasn’t going to get the Nobel prize he “pulled the plug” and published this paper saying new types of vaccines are needed for respiratory infections, as an act of spite.
We learned a lot from Norman and are very grateful to him for giving us his valuable time. You will notice that we briefly discussed the vaccines, but you will be very pleased to hear that Norman has agreed to follow up with another meeting in early December to share his thoughts on this important topic (see here for a sneak peek)
You can access Norman’s other material on YouTube and Facebook (much of his material is in Polish and Norman speaks six languages!) His twitter handle is @normanpie.
1 Note that this synopsis is not a verbatim and true transcription of the conversation.
2 This document presents evidence PCR was used to collect samples, but no mass testing was undertaken.
3 Submitted (05-JAN-2020) Department of Zoonoses, National Institute of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The first submission to GenBank had two subsequent revisions.
4 The supposed ‘novel and deadly’ attributes of the virus are discussed extensively here.
5 See this paper. “Mammals are the reservoir hosts of the majority of emerging zoonoses (2, 3, 18). If we assume that all 5,486 described mammalian species (19) harbor an average of 58 viruses in the nine families of interest (as estimated here in P. giganteus) and that these viruses exhibit 100% host specificity, the total richness of mammalian viruses awaiting discovery exceeds ~320,000.”
Taxpayer-Funded Initiative Urges Dentists to Push HPV Vaccines
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 2, 2023
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded over $685,000 to HealthPartners Institute to test strategies for getting dentists to recommend the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to children and young adults ages 11-26, documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed.
The NIDCR operates under the government’s taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The HealthPartners study is being conducted three years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added prevention of oropharyngeal cancer, a form of head and neck cancer, to a growing list of indications for the HPV vaccine — despite a lack of clinical evidence to support the claim.
Dentists remain generally reluctant to recommend or administer the vaccine to their patients, studies show.
The NIDCR funding covers the first two years of a six-year, $3.5 million proposal for the healthcare nonprofit to experiment with training dental providers to deliver scripted messages to their patients about why they should get the HPV vaccine.
HealthPartners will then run a clinical trial in 21 dental clinics to determine whether the training and messages lead more dental providers to recommend the vaccine, and more patients to take it.
The grant is one of nearly 50 identified by CHD in June — totaling more than $40 million — awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to universities, healthcare systems and public health departments to increase HPV vaccine uptake among adolescents.
The NIDCR is the latest of several HHS sub-agencies to fund behavior modification research aimed at providers and patients in order to increase vaccine uptake.
Why would dentists be charged with recommending the HPV vaccine?
Dentists are uniquely positioned to promote the HPV vaccine because they tend to have more regular contact with young patients than other healthcare providers, the HealthPartners proposal states.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry all recommend that dental providers promote HPV vaccination — but most dental providers don’t see vaccine promotion as part of dentistry.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. Most people will get the infection at some point in their lives, but more than 90% of infections clear on their own with no residual health consequences on clinical follow-up.
High-risk HPV types can cause cervical cell abnormalities that are precursors to cancer, however, HPV infection is not the sole risk factor for cervical cancer.
Regular pap screening has been found to reduce the incidence of and mortality from cervical cancer among women by at least 80%.
Merck’s Gardasil 9 — the only HPV vaccine marketed in the U.S. — is a widely used vaccine commonly administered to teens and young adults before they are sexually active to protect against nine of more than 200 strands of HPV that can be sexually transmitted later in life.
Despite Merck marketing Gardasil as a vaccine that protects against some forms of cancer, clinical trials for Gardasil did not test whether the vaccine protected against any cancer — only whether it had efficacy against the indicated strains of HPV.
Gardasil has been associated with a number of serious adverse events.
Some of the signature impacts observed following HPV vaccination include permanently disabling autoimmune and neurological conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
More than 80 lawsuits against Merck now pending in federal courts allege the drugmaker fast-tracked Gardasil through the FDA’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.
In June 2020, the FDA added the prevention of oropharyngeal and other head and neck cancers to the list of indications for the HPV vaccine under the “accelerated approval licensure pathway.”
That pathway allows treatments to be approved before clinical data demonstrating benefit exists, based on early clinical predictions that the treatment will likely produce a benefit.
Later, if a clinical benefit is never found, the FDA “can seek withdrawal” of the drug from the market.
According to the HealthPartners grant proposal, HPV is the leading cause of oropharyngeal cancers in the U.S., However, the references cited to support that claim are from 2014 — and they don’t appear to support the claim.
The CDC estimates 70% of oropharyngeal cancers in the U.S. are “thought to be” caused by HPV, and qualifies even that claim by adding, “It is unclear if having HPV alone is enough to cause oropharyngeal cancers.”
There is no evidence that the HPV vaccine prevents oropharyngeal cancers, but some trials have found that it does have efficacy against vaccine-type oral strains of HPV.
Top NIH-funded Merck consultants in the field, like Noel Brewer, Ph.D. — who developed and promotes the “announcement approach” to increasing vaccine uptake — have long looked to expand HPV vaccination into settings outside of primary care.
On that basis, the HealthPartners study aims to change dental providers’ behavior so they consistently recommend the HPV vaccine to their patients. Dr. Brad Rindal, a dentist, and Patricia Mabry, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, are co-leading the study.
The proposal falls within HHS’ mission to understand the mechanisms of behavior change in order to develop methods of “experimental manipulation or intervention” with providers and patients that can help it meet its targets in various aspects of public health.
HHS, through the NIH, has been funding behavioral studies to assess and influence providers’ willingness to recommend and administer the HPV vaccine in order to increase rates of vaccine uptake since shortly after the vaccine was first licensed in 2006.
Study design explicitly waives informed consent for patients
In the study, a team of researchers from HealthPartners — which provides healthcare, coverage, research and education to 1.8 million plan members — will train providers, teaching them about the relationship between the HPV vaccine and the risk of oropharyngeal cancer.
Trained providers also will receive scripts for use in patient conversations tailored to “reduce fear” that such conversations will negatively impact provider-patient relationships. They also will learn how to refer their patients to a vaccine scheduler.
Researchers will then measure changes in provider behavior through direct provider reporting — they press a button in their office when they make a recommendation — and follow-up surveys.
Patients or patient parents or guardians will receive follow-up survey calls after the office visits to assess how effective the provider communication was.
Researchers will measure changes in patient behavior by assessing how many patients receive initial and follow-up doses of the HPV vaccine within 30 days of their office visit.
In the first two years of the study — funded by the initial grant — the team will develop and pilot test their training and scripts. Their control group will receive patient education brochures and untailored scripts and their intervention group will receive the training and the tailored scripts.
In the next phase, they will test the efficacy of these interventions in clinic-randomized trials, comparing the control and intervention groups. Twenty-one HealthPartners Dental Group clinics and their providers will participate.
Patients 11-26 years old who go to HealthPartners dental clinics and whose electronic health records indicate they have not initiated or completed the HPV vaccine series will be automatically enrolled in the study without their knowledge. HealthPartners estimates there will be approximately 8,000 qualifying visits with HPV unvaccinated patients.
Verbal informed consent will be obtained for participation in the post-intervention patient/parent phone survey.
The patients will not otherwise be informed of the study.
The study requests a waiver of informed consent for patients by arguing that the dental providers will only be making recommendations already endorsed by the CDC, the American Cancer Society and the National HPV Roundtable, which is a joint venture of the CDC and the American Cancer Society.
“Therefore,” they state, “the recommendations conform to current standards of care and don’t present a risk to patients that exceed the risks that patients assume when they seek care within any healthcare system focused on disease prevention through vaccination promotion.”
They also argue that the research “would not be feasible without such a waiver” because it would bias the provider involvement and patient response.
They add that patients sign a HIPAA authorization form that allows them to opt out of using health data for research purposes and that they will be certain to check that list.
Finally, they note that “patients can elect not to pursue vaccination despite the recommendation of the dental care provider” — even though the intervention is designed to change their behavior so they don’t make such an election.
Merck, federal public health agencies, and WHO looking to grow market for HPV shots
Merck’s Gardasil was first licensed in 2006 for use in girls and women ages 9-26 to prevent four high-risk strains of HPV.
The FDA in 2009 expanded the license for use in males ages 9-26 for the prevention of genital warts and in 2011, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended it for routine use in boys.
In 2014, the FDA approved Gardasil 9, designed to protect against 9 HPV strains, for use in the prevention of HPV-related cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in females and HPV-related anogenital lesions and anal cancers in males and females.
The FDA also expanded the age range of potential HPV vaccines to males and females between the ages of 9 and 45.
Early marketing strategies focused on promoting the drug as guarding against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease. But in 2016, as vaccination rates lagged, the CDC recommended that doctors stress the HPV vaccine’s cancer-prevention benefits, rather than talking about STDs as a way to get more parents to vaccinate younger kids.
And in 2020, it added oropharyngeal and other head and neck cancers to the list.
Over the last several years, HHS has invested tens of millions of dollars in research to get U.S. HPV vaccine uptake numbers to HHS’ “healthy people” target rates of 80% of children and teens vaccinated by 2030.
Meanwhile, Merck has expanded its ad campaigns beyond teenagers to target parents of young children and adults.
In 2020, the WHO set a goal of vaccinating 90% of teenage girls by 2030. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is currently launching a series of campaigns to vaccinate tens of millions of girls in Africa, following similar campaigns in India and Indonesia.
Last week Merck announced its third-quarter earnings from Gardasil were up 13% to $2.9 billion. Allied Market Research predicts the global HPV vaccine market — in which Merck is the primary player, although GSK also markets its Cervarix outside of the U.S. — will grow to $10.8 billion.
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.
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From the Archives
The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
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- UK whines about losing billions to ‘Putin tax’
- If Americans Knew
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- Nearly 2 Million in Gaza Need Urgent Shelter Assistance as Winter Looms: IOM Chief Warns
- Suppressing Palestinian resistance: US charity under fire for AI monitoring of Gaza classrooms
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- How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel
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- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
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- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
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