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House Cuts WHO Funding Through 2024, But Critics Push for Full Withdrawal to Protect U.S. Sovereignty

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 6, 2023

The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a bill that cuts U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The House approved H.R. 4665, the Fiscal Year 2024 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, including the provision that, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available for the World Health Organization.”

The bill’s passage comes as a sharp turnaround after the U.S. in 2022-23 was the WHO’s top contributor, surpassing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and over the past decade provided the WHO between $200 million to $600 million annually.

The bill, which passed by a 216-212 vote, is seen as a partial victory for critics of the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), which would give the global health agency the power to dictate policies during health emergencies.

H.R. 4665 stipulates that the U.S. Senate must first ratify any WHO proposal, including a pandemic treaty, before the U.S. Department of State can use taxpayer dollars to implement it.

The bill also states the Constitution’s Senate treaty ratification requirement applies to “any international convention, agreement, protocol, legal instrument, or agreed outcome with legal force drafted by the intergovernmental negotiating body of the World Health Assembly or any other United Nations body.”

The bill goes next to the Senate, where it was placed on its legislative calendar.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health, praised the bill, telling The Defender, “As WHO is obviously advocating for policies that are contrary to basic principles of democracy, human rights and ethical public health at present, defunding such work is necessary to protect society.”

Bell — who formerly worked as a medical officer and scientist at the WHO — said there are important aspects of cooperation in international health that the U.S. needs to support, but there are “other avenues for this that do not undermine human dignity” instead of working through the WHO.

The WHO’s response to COVID-19 demonstrated that it is “compromised by vested interests that are seeking to profit by imposing human rights restrictions based on false assertions, using fear and coercion,” Bell said. “It is irrational to use taxpayers’ money to support such approaches.”

‘A good start, but not quite good enough’

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender the House bill limits funding but said nothing about preventing the U.S. from signing or adopting documents like critics fear.

“This is a good start, but not quite good enough,” he said.

“The fiscal cut-off and the treaty ratification requirement will only be for the fiscal year,” Boyle said, “but the Globalists will keep coming after us to establish a worldwide totalitarian police state under the auspices and the guise of the WHO.”

In February, the WHO’s intergovernmental negotiating body convened to discuss its latest draft of a pandemic treaty, which the U.N. agency now calls the “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” — or “WHO CA+” (sometimes also referred to as “PPPR”).

WHO CA+ seeks to create a global pandemic authority with the power to enforce universal vaccination and vaccine passports, lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions, establish early warning virus surveillance systems, and roll out “One Health” initiatives and censor “misinformation,” including anything that could induce “vaccine hesitancy.”

The estimated price tag is $30 billion annually.

The president of the WHO General Assembly in September approved a nonbinding pandemic declaration, without a vote of the full assembly and over the objections of 11 countries, aimed at mobilizing the national and global political will for completing the pandemic treaty negotiations by May 2024.

Proposed amendments to the IHR, currently numbering over 300, include recommendations such as:

Changing the WHO “from an advisory organization … to a governing body whose proclamations would be legally binding” (Articles 1 and 42).
Removing language preserving “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people” (Article 3).
Giving the WHO “authority to require medical examinations, proof of prophylaxis, proof of vaccine and to implement contact tracing, quarantine and treatment” (Article 18).
Instituting “a system of global health certificates in digital or paper format” (multiple articles and annexes).
Empowering the WHO’s Emergency Committee “to override decisions made by sovereign nations regarding health measures” (Article 43).

Pandemic treaty ‘a skillfully crafted decoy’

James Roguski, an author and researcher who has written extensively on stopping a global pandemic treaty and the IHR amendments, wrote that the Zero draft of the pandemic treaty “is a real thing” but also “a skillfully crafted decoy” designed to distract from the proposed IHR amendments, which he called “a clear and present danger.”

Together, the WHO CA+ and IHR amendments represent “a huge grab of power” by “unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats,” warned Andrew Bridgen, a U.K. member of Parliament in April.

Responding to these criticisms, U.N. officials and international public health experts claimed in a Sept. 25 letter appearing in the Lancet that the WHO CA+ does not threaten national sovereignty.

The letter stated as “categorically false” claims the WHO would “deploy troops to enforce the treaty,” dismissing rumors of vaccine mandates and digital passports and the WHO’s purported “authority to sanction countries,” which would cede authority to the WHO.

But Boyle said the WHO was attempting to conceal its true intentions.

In an earlier interview with The Defender, he said the WHO CA+ and IHR amendments — one or both — would set up a totalitarian medical and scientific police state beyond the control of national, state and local government authorities.

Boyle said:

“[Director-General] Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ph.D.] and the WHO … are basically a front organization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and the Chinese Communist government that pays a good chunk of their bills.”

Pandemic treaty drafted to ‘be brought into force upon signature’

Boyle explained that the WHO CA+ was intentionally drafted so that it could immediately be brought into force upon signature.

Boyle, author of several international law textbooks and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said, “I don’t know, in any of my extensive studies of international treaties, let alone treaties setting up international organizations, of any that has a provision like that in it.”

“It’s completely insidious,” he added.

According to Boyle, “The only way to protect the Sovereignty of the United States of America and for other States to protect their own Sovereignty is to pull out of the WHO. The sooner the better!”

Roguski agreed, telling The Defender he believes defunding the WHO is not going to stop the WHO from moving its global agenda forward.

“I advocate that the United States and all other nations exit the WHO,” he said.

‘WHO Withdrawal Act is what we really need’

Both Boyle and Roguski said they support a bill called, the “WHO Withdrawal Act,” introduced on Jan. 9 by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), that would repeal the 1948 act establishing U.S. membership and participation in the WHO.

“The Biggs legislation is what we really need to solve all of the problems here,” Boyle said.

Should the Bigg’s legislation be passed, it will be the second time in the last three years that the U.S. has tried to extricate itself from the WHO.

In April 2020, the Trump administration stopped U.S. financial support to the WHO, arguing that the U.N. agency should be held accountable for mismanaging and covering up the spread of the COVID-19 virus after it emerged in China.

Then-President Donald Trump in July 2020 initiated a process to withdraw the U.S. from membership in the organization.

However, President Joe Biden, upon taking office in January 2021, reversed the decision and restored U.S. funding to the WHO.

U.S. taxpayer money still makes its way to WHO

Despite the passage of the appropriations bill, U.S. governmental funding is still making its way to the WHO, Roguski pointed out. He said:

“In the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed in December 2022, the federal government pledged to provide up to $1 billion per year to the World Bank-led Pandemic Fund.

“Earlier this year, several hundred million dollars were allocated from the Pandemic Fund and the WHO was the ‘implementing entity’ in the majority of those projects.”

Roguski said that humanity “survived quite well” for thousands of years before the WHO came on the scene.

“I think that we will do just fine after we permanently abolish the WHO,” he added.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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.

October 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, IHR, United States, WHO | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia willing to forego oil production cuts to secure Israel normalization: Report

The Cradle | October 7, 2023

Saudi Arabia has offered Washington to boost oil production levels next year if crude prices are “too high” as part of negotiations to reach a normalization deal with Israel, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 6 October.

This plan is allegedly aimed at winning over US lawmakers who are wary about Biden’s “megadeal” with Riyadh, which includes mobilizing US troops in case of an attack in the kingdom.

The deal would also see the US help Saudi Arabia develop a uranium enrichment program.

“Saudi negotiators emphasized that market conditions would guide any action on production, and officials familiar with the talks said the discussions didn’t represent a long-term agreement to cut prices,” the WSJ says.

For the past year, Saudi Arabia has led the powerful OPEC+ bloc into significantly cutting oil production levels to offset the damage caused to the market by western sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.

The ongoing cuts have come despite multiple demands and threats from Washington.

In September, Riyadh, in a joint effort with Moscow, voluntarily extended oil cuts to help maintain the market’s stability. This cut sent oil prices up nearly two percent to $91.08 a barrel.

Per WSJ, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein flew to Riyadh in late September to warn Saudi officials that soaring oil prices would make winning Washington over on the “megadeal” much harder.

This deal has raised concerns by 20 Democratic senators sent US President Joe Biden a letter on Wednesday regarding the deal. They voiced how he should demand that Israel makes a “meaningful and enforceable” concession to the Palestinian people as part of the normalization deal.

Negotiations are now discussing the defense benefits for Saudi Arabia, which requires US Senate approval for the civilian nuclear site in the Kingdom and billions of dollars in weapons sales.

The deal has left a sour taste in the US public’s mouth. In a poll conducted in September, 3 out of 5 US citizens “feel this is a bad deal for the US.” Those polled added that they don’t feel there’s justification for US soldiers defending the Gulf nation.

It has also caused an uproar in the Islamic world, as many see a normalization agreement with Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

Publicly, Riyadh has expressed that any deal with Tel Aviv must also include significant concessions for the Palestinians, including forming an independent state.

The WSJ report was released one day before the Palestinian resistance in Gaza launched its biggest offensive against Israel in Gaza, with officials saying the operation serves as a message to Arab nations who want to normalize ties with Israel.

October 7, 2023 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Saudi Arabia, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

The High Stakes in the Legal Battle for Free Speech

Brownstone Institute | October 6, 2023

The ongoing war between the US Security State and the First Amendment is perhaps the most underreported development of the 21st century. Now, Missouri v. Biden may bring it to the Supreme Court.

Just two decades ago, the internet promised liberation as dictatorships would cave to the emerging swell of information. That was the hope, at least.

“There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet,” President Clinton said in 2000. “Good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

That optimism did not come to fruition. Instead of Westernizing the Orient, technology laid the foundation for the US Security State to pursue unprecedented social control.

At first, the conflict appeared to be between rank-and-file military members and transgressive cyber actors. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seemed like mere hackers, not harbingers for the impending suspension of American liberty.

The battle suddenly became a civilizational struggle in 2020. A highly efficient technocracy declared war against the Bill of Rights. The US Security State shut down American society, eradicated due process, and captured the public health apparatus. The CIA bribed scientists to cover up the origins of Covid, and the Department of Homeland Security dictated what Americans could and could not see in their newsfeeds. The FBI helped banish the country’s oldest newspaper from Twitter for reporting on its preferred candidate’s son.

When Clinton made his “Jell-O” comment, few of us could imagine that we’d live in such a country. We trusted our courts and our elected government to protect us. We thought the rule of law was sacrosanct. We were wrong.

Now, however, the judiciary has the opportunity to reclaim the First Amendment from the tyranny of the Security State in Missouri v. Biden.

Missouri v. Biden and the CISA Injunction

Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit reinstated an injunction against CISA, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security, that prohibits its agents from colluding with social media companies to promote censorship of any kind.

The case demonstrates how far the United States has strayed from its former free speech ethos. CISA held ongoing meetings with social media platforms to “push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech,” according to the Fifth Circuit. This included criticism of lockdowns, vaccines, and the Hunter Biden laptop. Through a process known as “switchboarding,” CISA officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content was “true” or “false,” which became Orwellian euphemisms for acceptable and prohibited speech.

CISA’s leaders reveled in their usurpation of the First Amendment. They overturned hundreds of years of free speech protections, appointing themselves the arbiters of truth. Without freedom of “election-related speech,” we no longer live in a democracy. They pursued a faceless dictatorship.

They sought to eradicate dissent surrounding the policies that they imposed. CISA had been responsible for dividing the workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential” in March 2020. Hours later, the order became the basis for the country’s first “stay-at-home” order, a process that quickly spiraled into a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.

CISA betrayed the country’s founding principle. A group of unelected bureaucrats hijacked American society without ever having a vote cast in their names. They disregarded the First Amendment, due process, and elected government in their pursuit of power.

The Framers understood that liberty relied on the free flow of information. They were well aware of the dangers of widespread lies and an incendiary press corps, but tyranny presented a far greater risk to society. Government could not be trusted to wield power over the minds of men, so they enshrined freedom of press, worship, and speech in our Constitution.

The Security State unwound those liberties. White House officials used the power of the federal government to suppress dissent. The Biden Administration launched an interagency attack on free speech. The Covid regime’s coup d’etat continued unimpeded until Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction.

Now, the Fifth Circuit has remedied its previous error by reinstating the injunction against CISA. The case may now head to the Supreme Court, where the Justices would have the opportunity to dismantle the technocratic censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response.

The war is far from won. Julian Assange remains in jail alongside terrorists for publishing news reports that undermined the Security State’s deceit surrounding the War on Terror. Edward Snowden is banished from his homeland for exposing the lies of James Clapper.

President Biden’s “misinformation” crusade shows no signs of retreat entering the 2024 election cycle. Social media is still censored. Your Google results are still gamed at the behest of powerful state actors. YouTube has proudly announced that it will censor content based on the diktats of the World Health Organization. Say the wrong thing on LinkedIn and you are toast.

Among the large players, only X, formerly known as Twitter, is eschewing routine takedowns of speech deemed oppositional to regime priorities. That is truly only because one man had the means to buy and the drive to liberate it from the Censorship Industrial Complex, for now.

Tuesday’s decision reaffirmed what the Supreme Court called the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment” in 1989: “that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Rebuilding from the wreckage of Covid will require reclaiming those fundamental pillars of American society. The freedom to speak was not the first right earned by a people in revolt against ancient-world forms of statism but it might be the most essential. That’s why it is instantiated in the very first amendment to the Bill of Rights.

If the regime can control the public mind, they can control everything else too. A loss here is a loss everywhere.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | CIA, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

‘Biden plots stopgap funding for Ukraine aid’

RT | October 6, 2023

US President Joe Biden’s administration has reportedly set its sights on a State Department grant program to keep weapons and financial aid flowing to Ukraine, while waiting for divided Republican lawmakers to approve more spending to help Kiev fight Russian forces.

One of the stopgap-funding sources under consideration is a fund that provides grants or loans to US allies to buy weapons, Politico reported on Thursday, citing two unidentified government officials with knowledge of Biden’s plans. The president acknowledged on Wednesday that he was worried about a possible disruption to Ukraine aid amid congressional chaos, but he suggested that he might find another way to keep the funding going, at least temporarily, without getting a new spending bill passed.

Washington’s continued support for Ukraine was thrown into doubt last week, when Republicans stripped Biden’s $24 billion aid request out of a spending bill that averted a government shutdown for 45 days. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was voted out of his leadership position on Tuesday, the first such ouster in US history, reportedly after conservative Republicans heard that he had promised Biden a separate Ukraine funding bill.

The State Department, the Pentagon and Biden himself have warned this week that any disruption to aid could have devastating consequences for Ukraine on the battlefield. Republicans have become increasingly critical of Biden’s Ukraine strategy as public support for funding the bloody conflict wanes. Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion.

Biden administration officials have privately admitted that only weeks remain before a potential lapse in US funding to Kiev. The State Department grant program had about $650 million remaining as of September 21. Lawmakers originally allotted $4.6 billion for the program, which was designed to provide military grants and financing to Ukraine and other allies affected by the conflict with Russia.

However, even if the administration uses the financing authority to purchase weapons, it will still need approval from Congress to authorize additional funding for Ukraine, a US official told Politico. A Pentagon official said the White House also would need approval from lawmakers to redirect other defense spending to Kiev.

The Pentagon warned last week that it had exhausted “nearly all available security-assistance funding for Ukraine.” About $1.6 billion in funding remains to replace US weapons that were sent to the Ukrainians.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia’s shadowy role in the Ghouta chemical attack

There is now substantial evidence Saudi intelligence conducted false flag chemical attacks in Syria to trigger US military intervention and regime change

By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | October 6, 2023

On 13 September, acclaimed US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed a crucial five-page memo prepared for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on 20 June, 2013. This document contained alarming details about the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front’s disturbing plan to manufacture sarin nerve gas with the aim of executing a chemical attack within Syria.

The significance of this memo extends beyond its surface, as it adds to the mounting evidence pointing toward Saudi intelligence’s involvement in orchestrating a false flag chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta a month later, on 21 August 2013.

The attack resulted in the tragic deaths of numerous civilians and nearly triggered a western military intervention in support of Islamist militant factions aiming to overthrow the Syrian government.

Nusra’s sarin procurement

The DIA memo, which provides details obtained by US National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, states that in April and May that year, “several Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators” working for the Nusra Front “were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large-scale production effort in Syria.”

Notably, the memo identifies three Nusra operatives — Abd al-Ghani, Kifah Ibrahim, and Adil Mahmud — who planned to perfect “a process for making sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an unidentified lab in Syria.” Ibrahim and Mahmud were both captured in Iraq in May 2013, according to the memo.

The revelation that the NSA had identified Nusra operatives seeking sarin precursors in Saudi Arabia raises the implication that Saudi intelligence, then under the leadership of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, would also have been aware of these activities.

This implies that Riyadh might have either actively facilitated Nusra in obtaining sarin precursors or chosen not to interfere, allowing these sinister plans to progress unimpeded.

The memo further states that:

“The Syria-based part of this effort [to produce sarin] may have begun as early as late 2012. Abu Muhammad al-Hamawi, the [Nusra Front] emir for Hamah, was attempting to obtain phosphorous trichloride, a key sarin precursor, in December 2012. We cannot definitively connect this to the sarin cell, but it could very well be linked.”

Saudi’s ‘southern strategy’

According to US-based, regime-change advocate Charles Lister and Swedish journalist Aron Lund, Abu Muhammad al-Hamawi is also known as Sheikh Saleh al-Hamawi, a Syrian from the town of Halfaya in Hama. He was one of six founders of the Nusra Front and a recipient of Saudi support.

The timeframe in December 2012, when Hamawi was purportedly seeking sarin precursors, coincides with the period when Prince Bandar bin Sultan — the well-connected former Saudi ambassador to Washington — oversaw the implementation of Saudi intelligence’s “southern strategy” to shift the focus of the conflict towards Damascus.

Bandar had assumed the position of director of Saudi intelligence in mid-2012 and established an operations center in Jordan to covertly direct efforts against the Syrian government. He came into his role with guns blazing: on July 18, armed elements turned their sights to the capital city, beginning with the Damascus bombing of Syria’s National Security headquarters, which killed key officials in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle.

The New York Times reported that in November 2012, a “cataract of weapons” procured by Saudi intelligence began flowing from Jordan into Syria. While the weapons were publicly presented as going to so-called “moderates” in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), US officials acknowledged that many of them ended up in the hands of “hard-line Islamic Jihadists.”

In February 2013, the Washington Post interviewed Hamawi, identifying him as an FSA rather than a Nusra commander (the FSA and Nusra collaborated closely and, in many cases, were indistinguishable).

Hamawi suggested his units had received weapons shipments in previous weeks from Saudi Arabia as part of Bandar’s southern strategy while stating that “Deraa and Damascus are the key fronts on the revolution, and Damascus is where it is going to end.”

According to a leaked NSA document, Prince Bandar’s subordinate, National Security Council deputy chief Prince Salman bin Sultan, provided 120 tons of explosives and other weaponry to opposition forces, giving them direct instructions to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the airport in March 2013.

Regiment 111

In December 2012, several jihadist groups spearheaded by the Nusra Front captured a Syrian army base in the Aleppo countryside known as Regiment 111. The base contained stocks of mustard gas, chlorine, and sarin, which Nusra seized. Katibat al-Muhajireen, an Islamist armed group of foreign fighters supported by British intelligence, also participated in the capture of Regiment 111.

It is highly probable that US intelligence was aware of Nusra’s acquisition of these chemical weapons. On 7 December, 2012, just two days before the base’s fall, Syria Deeply, a platform funded by the US government, reported that, according to an Arab diplomat, US contractors were operating on the ground in Syria with the mission of monitoring the status of the country’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

The diplomat said there “are 24-hour Skype links connecting the US with rebel brigades to enhance monitoring of chemical weapons sites on the ground.”

Just as jihadists backed by Saudi and western intelligence were about to acquire sarin (or the components to create sarin) from Regiment 111, US officials began floating accusations that the Syrian government was preparing to use chemical weapons. US officials also cited these claims as a justification for possible western military intervention.

Predictably, the Syrian opposition soon asserted that the Syrian government had employed chemical weapons. On 25 December 2012, a Syrian army defector claimed to Al-Jazeera that the Syrian government had used a nerve gas resembling sarin in an attack on Homs. However, the evidence supporting these allegations was so flimsy that even US officials promptly dismissed them.

Nonetheless, Prince Bandar saw an opportunity in this incident. In February 2013, he tried to persuade the White House that Syria’s Assad had crossed US President Barack Obama’s “red line” by employing chemical weapons.

US response and arming opposition

Several months later, evidence began to emerge suggesting that the Nusra Front had managed to obtain or produce some low-grade sarin. On 19 March, 2013, a rocket containing chemical agents was launched at the town of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province, resulting in the death of 25 individuals.

Notably, among the casualties, 16 were Syrian soldiers, a detail that raised doubts about Assad’s culpability in the attack.

On 5 May that year, UN investigator Carla del Ponte said she had gathered testimony indicating that sarin had been used by “the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

Bolstering del Ponte’s claim, Reuters reported on 30 May that Turkish authorities detained 12 Nusra Front militants in possession of 4.5lb of sarin gas, while a Nusra fighter who helped capture the Regiment 111 base later speculated that Nusra had carried out the Khan al-Assal attack with the sarin captured at the base.

When the Syrian army and allied-Hezbollah forces captured the strategic town of Qusair on the Lebanon border in June, officials in Washington began to panic, believing that drastic measures were needed “to stem the tide of Assad victories.”

Amid calls for a no fly zone in Syria from prominent US lawmakers and the media, the Pentagon announced it was sending F-16s and Patriot missile batteries to Jordan. Although Obama refused direct military intervention, his administration issued a special assessment claiming the Syrian government had used chemical weapons and announcing that the US would now arm extremist opposition groups directly.

But for Prince Bandar, this was not enough. Reuters reported that Saudi officials, including the late King Abdullah and Prince Bandar, “want more US involvement … They are really worried about the attitude in Washington.”

Foreign support for Syrian ‘rebels’

On 20 June, the DIA memo revealed by Seymour Hersh was written and distributed, confirming that the Nusra Front was seeking to produce sarin. But this information was ignored, and western officials continued to make new fabricated claims that Damascus had carried out chemical attacks, including in Saraqeb, Sheikh Maqsoud, and Jobar.

It is in this context that Prince Bandar, with the help of his counterparts in US and Israeli intelligence, prepared to launch a massive “rebel” assault on Damascus.

The French newspaper La Figaro reported that according to its sources, the “first Syrian contingents trained in guerrilla warfare by the Americans in Jordan have been in action since mid-August in southern Syria, in the Deraa region. A first group of 300 men, probably supported by Israeli and Jordanian commandos, as well as by men from the CIA, would have crossed the border on August 17. A second would have joined them on the 19th.”

The stage was now set for a US air campaign to aid Bandar’s jihadist groups amassing near Damascus. However, a trigger was still needed to force Obama to authorize it.

The Ghouta attack

On the morning of 21 August 2013, a flurry of videos appeared on social media allegedly showing the aftermath of a mass chemical attack carried out by the Syrian army in Ghouta, killing 1,429 civilians, including 456 children.

The New York Times reported that “Within hours, [Obama] administration officials began signaling that they were preparing for an immediate military strike to punish the Syrian government,” reversing Obama’s previous reluctance.

The following day, 22 August, La Figaro published its report about the jihadist offensive on Damascus, stating “the anti-Assad operation has begun.”

However, the US president soon reversed his decision to authorize military intervention after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that the evidence linking Assad to the deadly attack was “not a slam dunk.”

In the absence of a wide-scale US bombing campaign, the armed offensive on Damascus failed after 15 days of brutal fighting.

In their interim report released in September 2013, UN investigators later confirmed sarin had been used in Ghouta.

The UN team did not have a mandate to attribute responsibility for the Ghouta attack, however, a detailed analysis published in 2021 by Rootclaim showed that the Saudi-backed Liwa al-Islam fired the sarin-filled rockets in Ghouta – not the Syrian army.

Furthermore, the conclusive UN report released in December 2013 corroborated that jihadist groups had indeed used small quantities of sarin in attacks against Syrian soldiers in the Damascus suburb of Jobar on 24 August and in Ashrafiah Sahnaya in the capital’s countryside on 25 August.

Continued false flag attacks

Jordanian journalist Yahya Ababneh visited Ghouta days after the attack and interviewed several opposition fighters, their families, local doctors, and civilians. According to his sources, local armed groups received chemical weapons via Saudi Prince Bandar and were responsible for carrying out the Ghouta attack.

Ababneh reported that fighters he spoke with “reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government” and that “Prince Bandar is referred to as ‘al-Habib’ or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaeda militants fighting in Syria.”

One month later, a senior UN official who dealt directly with Syrian affairs claimed that according to fighters in Ghouta, “Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks, and unfortunately nobody will dare say that.”

Syria Deeply reported in December 2012 that as part of a special task force sent to Jordan, the “US and its allies have hired contractors to train some Syrian rebel brigades in chemical weapons security.”

After Ghouta, jihadist groups supported by the CIA, Saudi intelligence, and Mossad continued to stage false flag chemical attacks blamed on Assad, most notably in Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, and Douma in April 2018.

Saudi-funded sedition

The Saudi role in such false flags was further illustrated in March 2018 when the Syrian army liberated some Eastern Ghouta farmlands and discovered a well-equipped chemical laboratory run by Saudi-backed Liwa al-Islam (by then known as Jaish al-Islam).

The Cradle columnist Sharmine Narwani visited the lab that year and reported that it was packed with equipment, chemical substances, and munitions. The equipment included a US-manufactured gas compressor for which Saudi Arabia put out tenders in 2015.

In the nine months leading up to the Ghouta false-flag incident, Nusra operatives were actively seeking sarin precursors in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, a Nusra commander in Syria, identified by the DIA as being involved in seeking sarin precursors, had received Saudi military support.

Saudi intelligence was not only arming and financing jihadist groups but was also issuing direct orders for attacks in Damascus. Liwa al-Islam fired the sarin-filled rockets at Ghouta at a critical juncture when a major offensive on Damascus, planned by Saudi intelligence in cooperation with the CIA and Mossad, was about to commence.

The broader pattern of false flag chemical attacks blamed on the Syrian government, such as those in Khan Sheikhoun and Douma, further underscores the potential Saudi role in such operations.

Considering the documented evidence, it becomes increasingly implausible to suggest that Liwa al-Islam acted alone in the Ghouta false-flag attack. The incident resulted in the deaths of numerous Syrian civilians, including women and children, and nearly led to western military intervention, aligning with the objectives of US, Saudi, and allied intelligence agencies seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, UK, United States | Leave a comment

Europe worried that US support for Ukraine waning

By Ahmed Adel | October 6, 2023

Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren made a shocking statement at the Warsaw Security Forum by emphasising the strategic importance of arming Ukraine as a cost-effective means of containing Russia when responding to questions about the sustainability of US and allied support for Kiev given the political turbulence in Washington.

“Of course, supporting Ukraine is a very cheap way to make sure that Russia with this regime is not a threat to the NATO alliance. And it’s vital to continue that support,” she said. “It is very much in our interest to support Ukraine, because they are fighting this war, we are not fighting it.”

Responding to the shocking admittance that NATO only views Ukraine as a “very cheap way” to contain Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 5 that Ukrainians would soon “stop liking” how they are seen and used by the West.

“[The West does not hide its intention to fight to the last Ukrainian and continues to use Ukraine] as cheap soldiers,” the spokesman said when commenting on Ollongren’s recent statement that it was vital to continue to support Ukraine. “[Soon, Ukrainians will begin to hear such statements] in a different light for themselves” and “they will stop liking it.”

Mentioning developments “overseas,” referring to the US, Ollongren said it is “worrying and also I think we have to address that worry.”

“We cannot pretend that we’ll just wait and see how the American elections are going,” she said before highlighting that if Washington’s support for Ukraine falls, that would be “substantial.”

Her concern about the situation in the US comes as a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, published on October 4, found that 47% of Americans believe the US should support Ukraine for as long as necessary, a drop from 58% in July 2022; support for providing economic and military assistance to Ukraine has dropped from 78% in March 2022 to 61% in September 2023; and, support for sending US troops to Ukraine dropped from 36% in March 2022 to 26% in September 2023.

According to the survey, “There have been dips in support, which is not surprising given that both the length of the conflict and the extent of the US financial contribution have likely exceeded Americans’ initial expectations.”

“Americans express less confidence now than in previous surveys that Ukraine is doing better than Russia on the battlefield. Now only 14 percent of Americans say Ukraine has the advantage in the war, compared with 26 percent in November 2022,” the Chicago Council on Global Affairs report added.

US President Joe Biden has long been confident that Congress would continue to provide billions of dollars in support to Ukraine, even as the situation becomes increasingly tense in a divided Washington. The last agreement was only to avoid a collapse of the American government. However, it should not last long as it became clear how unpredictable Washington can be in its negotiations to support Ukraine as it continues encountering serious difficulties.

To avoid the collapse of the government, on September 30, a decision to leave Ukraine out of the budget was made, demonstrating that the situation is not only delicate but there is also great pressure from critics of the support given by Biden to Kiev. The challenge now, especially for the Europeans, is that a politically polarised America extends to foreign policy.

Despite all the domestic financial problems, the US continues to allocate huge funds to Ukraine. Since February 2022, Kiev has received more than $110 billion from Washington. This means that the “very cheap way” to fight Russia is turning out to be very expensive, as demonstrated by the fact that the government of the world’s greatest superpower almost shut down.

The removal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the US Congress only worsens the already troubled process of Washington’s military and financial aid for Ukraine as its counteroffensive against Russia grinds on with little change to the frontlines. This is significant because, without a Speaker, the House cannot pass legislation, throwing Washington’s military backing for Kiev into doubt since it could be another week or more before a successor is elected.

Although Ukraine is not a “very cheap way” for NATO to fight Russia, the statement by Ollongren provides a fascinating insight into how the Atlantic bloc views the beleaguered Eastern European country – nothing more than an expendable proxy weaponised against its far larger and more powerful neighbour.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Russophobia | European Union, NATO, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

US to continue using Russian spaceships – NASA official

RT | October 6, 2023

The US space agency has no intention of cutting cooperation with Russia in manned expeditions to the International Space Station (ISS), Sean Fuller, a senior NASA official, has said. Being able to use each other’s spacecraft makes exploration safer for everyone, according to Fuller.

TASS caught up with the veteran space official, who previously headed NASA’s Human Space Flight Program office in Moscow, on the sidelines of this week’s 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan. Fuller said he sees “no reason” for astronauts to stop using Russian Soyuz spaceships.

NASA and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos have an arrangement that allows them to use each other’s capsules. For almost a decade after retiring the Space Shuttle program, the US relied solely on Russian Soyuz flights to rotate ISS crews.

After 2020, when piloted Crew Dragon craft were cleared for manned missions, the two parties returned to a ride-sharing scheme. It was last renewed in July 2022, despite relations between Moscow and Washington having soured over the Ukraine conflict.

Fuller stressed that US-Russian cooperation could become crucial if the ISS were to encounter an emergency requiring swift evacuation. Expedition members can use whichever spacecraft is docked to return home, he explained.

The SpaseX Endurance capsule is currently in orbit, having delivered four passengers, including Russia’s Konstantin Borisov, to the station in late August. It is the third mission for the reusable capsule.

The Soyuz MS-23 was the latest spacecraft to bring back to Earth ISS crew members, including astronaut Loral O’Hara. It landed in late September.

Fuller currently works as NASA’s International Partner Manager for the Gateway Program, the project to build a space station orbiting the Moon to facilitate further missions beyond the immediate neighborhood of the Earth.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Russia, United States | Leave a comment

Biden’s Semiconductor Spat With China Could Backfire, Warn US Chipmakers

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 06.10.2023

As the Biden administration pushes on with efforts to curb China’s technological progress with new restrictions, America’s semiconductor giants are indicating alarm, warning that the US may be shooting itself in the foot, according to a media report.

Amid the semiconductor trade spat with Beijing that Washington launched last year with a plethora of restrictions, and fueled further with new attacks across the past months, America’s semiconductor companies have responded with the unabashed warning that such poorly thought out measures could eviscerate their own businesses. Furthermore, slashing sales to China could wreck the Biden administration’s ambitious plans of building new semiconductor factories on US soil, according to the report, citing scores of industry interviews.

Three global giants in the chip-making industry – Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm – have reportedly been meeting with officials in the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, along with representatives of an array of think-tanks to press the case for reconsidering additional chip restrictions to China.

China accounts for close to a third of the global semiconductor market, and more than $50 billion in combined annual revenue for Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.

Leaders of these companies have, thus, been justifiably pointing out that loss of revenue on such a scale could provoke inevitable cuts in jobs, spending, and technology development, affecting US semiconductor hubs located in Ohio, New York, and Arizona.

The chief executives of these companies have warned that Washington’s attacks on Beijing could result in China speeding up the creation of its own independent chip industry.

Thus, they claimed, America’s ill-conceived semiconductor trade war would result Chinese-created chips dominating globally.

“What you risk is spurring the development of an ecosystem that’s led by competitors… And that can have a very negative effect on the US leadership in semiconductors, advanced technology and AI,” Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, was cited as saying.

Lobbying by these chip giants has brought results, according to cited sources, resulting in both a delay in issuing new restrictions, and a reportedly “narrowed list” of further changes that the Biden administration might potentially embark upon.

After last year’s restrictions stemming from the CHIPS Act signed by Biden, the American companies cited above have sought to “adjust” their businesses, revealed the report.

Thus, Nvidia was forced to come up with a new version of its AI chip, the H100, specifically tailored for China. To ensure compliance with US restrictions, that chip’s performance power was “lowered below the maximum levels allowed”, said the report. Nevertheless, losses grew and when chatter of impending new restrictions surfaced this summer, the chief executives ostensibly set off on more lobbying to Washington. Intel’s Patrick Gelsinger, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm met with White House officials.

“Without orders from Chinese customers, there will be much less need to go ahead with projects such as Intel’s planned factory complex in Ohio,” Gelsinger reportedly told US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Furthermore, the Semiconductor Industry Association was cited as issuing a statement slamming the government’s restrictions as “broad, ambiguous and at times unilateral,” warning they could harm “the industry’s competitiveness”.

“Right now, China represents 25 percent to 30 percent of semiconductor exports. If I have 25 percent to 30 percent less market, I need to build fewer factories… You can’t walk away from 25 to 30 percent and the fastest-growing market in the world and expect that you [continue] funding the [R&D] and the manufacturing cycle that we’ve released… This is strategic to our future; we have to keep funding the [R&D], the manufacturing, etc… Today, we have more than 1,000 companies on the entities list, many of which have nothing to do with national security and nothing to do with security concerns in China,” Gelsinger subsequently said at the Aspen Security Forum in July.

Semiconductor Trade War

It has been slightly more than a year since the Biden administration took its first shot, with the US commerce department prohibiting companies from supplying advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China, and thus taking the trade war that his predecessor Donald Trump had waged against Beijing into the technological sphere.

The restrictions, along with the Washington’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, were portrayed as limiting China’s technological prowess. The US government had cited national security concerns, claiming that it was restricting the export of cutting-edge technologies that China could use for military purposes or to enhance its domestic semiconductor capabilities. The Act included more than $52 billion in subsidies for US semiconductor manufacturers. In response, China warned that the industrial policy bill to support the local producers of semiconductors would disrupt global supply chains and hamper international trade.

“The United States said that the Act aims to increase the competitiveness of US technologies and semiconductor production. However, this Act provides huge subsidies to US enterprises producing chips and introduces a differentiated policy of industry support, some provisions of which, among other things, restrict normal investment and trade and economic activities of relevant Chinese enterprises, as well as normal scientific and technical cooperation between China and the US,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin had said.

Beijing reached checkmate by saying it needed to protect its own “national security and interests”, and first sanctioned US semiconductor giant Micron Technology in May, 2023. It then set in place export restrictions on rare earths – including gallium and germanium which are crucial for the world’s electronic chip-making industry. Since China produces upwards of 80 percent of the world’s gallium, and 60 percent of its germanium, experts were quick to predict that it could take “generations” for the US to replace lost Chinese capacity.

In early August, the White House announced that US President Joe Biden signed an executive order that authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate certain US investments into Chinese entities engaged in activities involving national security-sensitive technologies in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and certain artificial intelligence systems.

The US has also urged its partners – South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, and the government in Taiwan – to restrict or ban chip sales to China, and to relocate production facilities out of or away from China, such as to Europe or the United States.

China, the largest global semiconductors market, has repeatedly warned that by imposing restrictions on normal trade, the United States will end up harming itself as well as other market players.

“The US measures to restrict chip exports to China violate market rules and lead to fragmentation in the global semiconductors market, which not only harms lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies, but also significantly affects the interests of semiconductors manufacturers throughout the world, including in the US,” China’s Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong said in September.

To counter Washington’s restrictions, reports surfaced in September that Beijing was seeking to provide its own semiconductor chip-manufacturing industry with financial support. The People’s Republic of China was described as gearing up to launch a state-backed investment fund to bolster the country’s semiconductor industry.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Economics | China, United States | Leave a comment

HPV vaccine on trial – the making of another drug tragedy, Part 1

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | October 4, 2023

Sally Beck has been investigating the HPV vaccine since it was introduced; here she serialises sections of a new book called The HPV Vaccine on Trial by Mary Holland and Kim Mack Rosenberg. Since its authorisation in 2006, Merck’s HPV vaccine has left thousands of girls and women damaged or incapacitated. Part 1 covers the background to its introduction and what happened to two of the girls on whom it was tested in Europe.

MORE than 270 million doses of the human papilloma virus vaccine have been administered in over 125 countries worldwide since it was introduced in 2006. It was supposed to prevent cervical cancer but instead we have yet another emerging scandal with manufacturers and drug regulators doing their best to suppress the evidence.

The late Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, who discovered the HIV virus, said of the HPV: ‘The side effects are underreported by medical personnel, while there are a growing number of parents suing manufacturers and governments for inducing lifelong handicaps, even death, of their loved ones.’

The percentage of adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system (VAERS), in the US between 2007 and 2013 represented between 42 per cent and 80 per cent of adverse events for all vaccines administered to females aged nine to 29. Following its introduction to the UK in 2008, our Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has received 4,000 reports of serious adverse reactions.

Sadly, the UK has yet to sue on behalf of injured women here, but lawsuits have now been filed by many countries including the US, India, Colombia, Japan, Spain, and France against government health agencies, and the two manufacturing companies Merck and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Despite this, boys and girls as young as nine still receive the HPV in the US, and from age 11 to 26 in the UK.

A new book, The HPV Vaccine on Trial, makes it clear that trial participants were lied to and the results were skewed. Women who volunteered to take part were told they would receive a saline placebo. In fact it was a ‘fauxcebo’, a potentially toxic aluminium adjuvant that could cause devastating side effects.

Merck hoped the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, would distract from its expensive Vioxx scandal and replenish its coffers. Vioxx, a painkiller, provided it with $2.5billion (£2.04billion) in revenue, but its side effects caused heart attacks, strokes and death. Merck was showered with 24,000 lawsuits and entered a $4.85billion (£3.96billion) settlement with injured plaintiffs. The HPV vaccine, supposed to be a blockbuster drug, was dubbed ‘Help Pay for Vioxx’. Now Merck is being investigated for making false marketing claims, failing to disclose material information to consumers, and more.

The most affecting stories come from two young Danish women who volunteered to take part in what should have been a double-blind placebo-controlled trial – but there was no saline placebo.

Kesia Lyng was 18 and still at school when she received a brochure in the mail inviting her to join the trial. It said the vaccine had no side effects as it had already been thoroughly tested, and that half of the participants would receive saline – a trial protocol recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Six months earlier, her beloved grandmother had died of cervical cancer at 68. Kesia wanted to help prevent others suffering such a loss and although her worried parents discouraged her, Kesia was determined.

She had her first shot in 2002. It hurt, a lot. Later that day she felt tired, her arm was weak and she felt disconnected. Kesia had her second shot two months later. After this she developed flu-like symptoms, muscle pains, and for most of the week felt like her head was in a vice. Then, for the first time, she had trouble sleeping. Exhausted, it took her hours to drift off and she awoke every hour, as she would do for the next 14 years.

Kesia remembers her third appointment vividly. The corridor looked long, and she walked slowly. She told the trial nurse she wasn’t feeling well, was tired and in pain, and about the headaches that lasted all day. The nurse said not to worry, some headaches were normal.

Reluctantly, she took the third shot. She felt dizzy, nauseous and her arm hurt even more. Kesia went to see her GP, who was concerned enough to put a double exclamation mark in her notes next to details about the trial. Trial staff simply said these were the symptoms they would expect to see after the vaccine and Kesia had no reason to disbelieve them.

However, she became so ill that she missed exams and was unable to graduate from school. She could not get through the day without headache or pain in her joints and muscles. It was a struggle to get out of bed. She had wanted to study as an interior designer or window dresser in Copenhagen. Instead, she lost count of doctors’ visits; they could never find a reason for her pain and fatigue.

Kesia struggled on, married and had two children, and in 2007 learned she had not had the placebo.

Then she met Sesilje (pronounced Cecelia) who had been in the same trial. Their stories were remarkably similar, but Sesilje had received the placebo.

She was a 21-year-old undergraduate at the time who was also told the vaccine was safe. Her first shot was painful, and she had an unusual menstrual period. After her second and third shots she experienced not just another heavy period; her skin hurt, she had headaches and flu-like symptoms. Her stomach hurt and she lost 12lb in two weeks. She developed allergies. She was baffled, so were her doctors. Trial staff said all symptoms were unrelated.

In 2007, she discovered she had received the placebo and her doctor found she had abnormal cervical cell growth. Trial staff put her under pressure to take the vaccine and she was more afraid of cancer than the jab, so she did. Her health plummeted and her other symptoms worsened.

Both women connected the dots after a controversial Danish documentary, The Vaccinated Girls, in 2015, shone a spotlight on many who suffered neurological symptoms following Gardasil injections.

Sesilje then read that Merck had used an aluminium solution as a control. A clinical researcher by now, she discovered there was no saline group and realised that the aluminium had caused her first symptoms, compounded by the jab.

Denmark’s trial investigators knew that the placebo was the adjuvant amorphous aluminium (a known neurotoxin) hydroxyphosphate sulphate (AAHS) and, inexplicably, did not object. The vaccine also included the potentially toxic components polysorbate 80, which crosses the blood brain barrier and is associated with health problems including infertility in men and women, and cardiac risk. Also sodium borate, a genetically modified yeast used in cleaning products and banned in food products by the US Food and Drink Administration (FDA) because of its risks, and L-histidine, an essential amino acid important for tissue repair and growth, blood cell production and the development of embryos and organs. There’s scant data on L-histidine in vaccines but it may cause the immune system to malfunction, attacking the body’s own L-histidine. Low L-histidine levels are associated with autoimmune disease, particularly rheumatoid arthritis.

So, how essential is the HPV jab? HPV infections are endemic throughout the world and 90 per cent of infections resolve within two years without intervention. Around 0.18 per cent progress to cervical cancer. In a press release the FDA said most HPV infections were neither serious nor life-threatening, they were ‘short-lived and not associated with cervical cancer’. It advised women to have regular cervical screening.

There was no health emergency, which means the vaccine should not have been fast-tracked, which it was in 2002. Instead there was an aggressive marketing campaign which induced fear and created a market out of thin air. Merck sold fear of cervical cancer, not the vaccine itself, to consumers. The vaccines do not prevent infections from all HPV types associated with cancer, and not all cervical cancer is associated with HPV.

Merck’s ‘One Less’ campaign urged girls and teens to be one less cervical cancer victim. It featured athletic girls and young women skateboarding, playing basketball, surfing, dancing and swimming while their mothers showered them with affection.

The ads conveyed that ‘good mothers vaccinate’ but said nothing about sex, how the virus was acquired, potential side effects from the vaccine, or safer alternatives for cervical cancer prevention. Now the FDA and the WHO have received over 100,000 reports of adverse events, including deaths, from around the world. Are we supposed to believe these are all unrelated coincidences?

Part 2 tomorrow turns to the vaccine’s unauthorised testing on tribal Indian girls in 2009-10 which led to the deaths of seven of them.

The HPV Vaccine on Trial was written and researched by Children’s Health Defense legal expert Mary Holland, lawyer and advocate for autistic children Kim Mack Rosenberg, and vaccine safety advocate Eileen Iorio.

Read our previous articles on HPV vaccine injured here and here.

October 6, 2023 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | UK, United States | Leave a comment

Anatomy Of A Protection Racket

Money, Medicine, And Madness

By David Marks | Report From Planet Earth | October 5, 2023

Few who consider the recent history of medicine are surprised by the heavy-handed tactics of health regulatory agencies and the attempt by international organizations to dominate the formation of medical policies.

Recent developments are a culmination of practices implemented over many years, that have been and continue to be — strikingly apparent.

The ethos of modern healthcare is exemplified in an anecdote about Dr. Max Gerson when he first came to the United States. Dr. Gerson was a respected physician in Europe, who had great success in treating arthritis, tuberculosis, and cancer with diet. He escaped from Nazi Germany just as his knowledge and techniques were being hailed as effective and revolutionary. Dr. Gerson’s reputation preceded him, and many doctors were seeking his opinion and assistance — until he was confronted by the mentality of the American medical establishment.

Dr. Gerson was called to New York as a consultant for a wealthy industrialist who had arthritis. He had successfully treated the patient’s brother-in-law in Europe. In a Park Avenue penthouse, he joined the house physician and another consulting specialist to see the patient. After the examination, the three physicians retired to discuss the case. Dr. Gerson proceeded to explain the treatment for arthritis he had so successfully used in Europe, then described the manner in which he expected the patient to recover. There was an awkward pause. Finally, one of the other doctors said, “Dr. Gerson, you don’t understand. This man is a wealthy member of the W.R. Grace family. They own steamship lines, banks, chemical companies, and so on. You don’t cure a patient like this, you treat him.”

This simple, insidious message drives most aspects of the medical world. The motivation to keep people healthy is completely undermined by the permeation of profiteering throughout a deeply corrupted industry that depends on the vulnerability of the suffering.

Dr. Gerson’s conclusion that most illness is related to poor diet — and thus correctible, particularly in the early stages of disease — continues to be minimized and ridiculed.

The Confidence Game

There are certainly well-meaning and brilliant physicians; some nobly struggle to practice outside the constraints of conventional wisdom and financial incentives. Most attempt to do the best they can for their patients. But most are thwarted by the theft of their moral compass; their compassion has been hijacked by the greed of corporate interests that have taken healthcare into a destructive realm.

Practitioners and clinics are cornered into using a narrow set of profitable, yet ineffective treatments in changing the course of disease.

Doctors with the best motivation are powerless against the assault from corporate forces. Even if they have the will to cure someone, the structure of the business manipulates them into seeing patients as their source of income. An inextricable relationship with pharmaceutical companies provides an endless supply of products that treat symptoms rather than supporting immunity and good health.

Discussions of the true causes of illness and what is needed to cure them are outlawed. Anyone who strays outside the corporate guidelines is deemed dangerous and a quack — and threatened with losing their license to practice medicine.

Within this restricted environment, all traces of fair compensation have disappeared from healthcare. There is no other service or product that doesn’t provide some estimate of pricing in advance; a model for compensation has no equal. Those with acute or chronic conditions enter the doors of a doctor’s office or hospital without a clear opportunity to ask what they will need to pay. And this happens — with no guarantee that they will be helped — while defenseless against a hurried and fearful dynamic.

The integrity of any healthcare system can be evaluated by whether or not it takes advantage of those who are suffering — and further appraised by the devotion of the necessary time and effort to give lasting support to individual patients.

Suffering Means Profits

People with illness or pain are hostages to the medical establishment. Most who are in physical or mental agony easily give up their autonomy to authorities who apply symptomatic solutions that often suppress illness.

Pharmaceutical interests and government agencies have steadily displayed how their merger has little to do with the well-being of individuals. The muted reaction of the public to this damaging corruption exposes the culmination of a conditioned response that has been developing for decades.

The ability to choose one’s preferred methods of prevention and treatment had been diminishing long before the global efforts to enforce isolation, masking, and vaccination. The doctor-patient relationship has been manipulated and defiled by the same, increasingly powerful economic and political forces.

This ethical depravity of modern medicine has become more apparent in recent years. The increasingly restrictive economic structure that doctors work within is a symptom of this degradation — most obvious during a public health crisis.

Those who dominate the sales of drugs rely on a simple concept: The greater the threat of severe symptoms or death, the narrower the scope of treatment is deemed appropriate and viable, with more potential for profits.

This skewed prioritization has allowed the largest part of gargantuan healthcare profits to be pocketed during the last few weeks of a patient’s life.

Whether for acute, chronic, or infectious diseases, the general public blindly embraces the orders of agencies and doctors who inform them of their vulnerability and the need for medicine. They are simply threatened; drug protocols must be strictly followed, or pandemonium will ensue. Seemingly incontestable facts and decrees overwhelm any personal discretion.

This unprecedented plethora of harmful actions causes incalculable damage to society. A consortium of drug pushers and authoritarian leaders have created an endless war on disease, coercing physicians to peddle their potions — while lifting them from pedestals to the pulpit of supreme medical arrogance.

Poison

Long before the advent of vaccine injuries, an untold number of medical problems were caused by prescribed drugs. These iatrogenic disorders continue to be a leading cause of suffering, hospitalizations, and death.

Within any medicine chest in America, a hideous picture is revealed. The addiction to pharmaceuticals is so entrenched that a good diet, fresh air, balanced living, and restful sleep are minimized and overwhelmed by bogus and suppressive products.

The height of this dehumanizing sales effort has been the description of some narcotics as non-addictive; causing the deaths and destruction of millions of lives.

The flagrant marketing of noxious medications to the ill is only surpassed by the mandating of untested drugs for healthy people. No hawking is necessary; vaccines are hailed as an unassailable defense against sickness and death. Whereas other medications require patients to be diagnosed to sell a product, vaccines can be dispensed to those who have no symptoms, merely using the threat of disease to push inoculation. The government has ensured that while they are experimental, liability is diminished.

That they are described as free is a staggering lie. The inverse is true; inoculations have a special status as a commodity with unrivaled profitability as they can be forced on anyone, particularly when distributed by governments — whose revenues come from taxpayers.

This corruption is relentless. The marketing of vaccines to those who receive no benefit and are likely to suffer subtle or life-changing damage has no limitations. Without the restraint of any truth, the definitions of vaccine and adverse reaction have been changed to maximize proceeds and diminish liability.

This boundless world of profiteering has allowed the vaccination of healthy infants and children; an unmatched, abominable, unforgivable crime.

The illicit behavior of the heavy-handed forces in the medical establishment only becomes more apparent. The recent escalation in threats to streamline and mandate public health policy overtly confirms the blind faith that has been given to an industry that has lost the ability to care for patients and nurture self-healing.

The same foundations, corporations, and organizations that pretend to have humane priorities have consistently promoted poisonous pharmaceuticals and repressed all forms of natural and alternative medical care. This is simply because preventative and remedial methods have minimal cost and lasting effects — and return responsibility for good health to the individual.

The eradication of personal medical autonomy has been a priority of the forces of pharmaceutical interests and corporate medicine for well over a century. The dispensing of poisonous medications is a critical element of this disastrous scheme.

Conclusion: This Is Organized Crime

It is no secret that money is the primary driver of the pharma and medical industries; monopolizing healthcare is the priority of investors. This obvious defect of modern medicine in facing human suffering and disease is rarely discussed. Within the ceaseless debate about overhauling the healthcare bureaucracy, few dare to mention how orientation toward profits has completely corrupted the ethics of medicine.

Almost every challenge and crisis in healthcare has been engendered by the relentless effort to diminish the availability of rival products or treatments. An industrial competitive mindset has been applied to promoting lucrative symptomatic drugs and therapies. The profits from a vast range of prescribed pharmaceuticals that impact symptoms rather than causes — are only exceeded in damaging effects by unnecessary and dangerous inoculations — distributed by the same criminal racket.

As the proceeds of the medical and pharmaceutical industries increase directly with the threat or escalation of disease, complicit authorities show no concern for engendering a healthy world.

Although personal health and general welfare are invoked as reasons to follow medical orders or join the cult of the vaccinated, there is a spurious insistence to accept instructions without question or doubt. This militaristic state of healthcare remains unchecked. Rather than providing safeguards and supporting wellness, ultimatums demanding toxic treatments are sabotaging the vitality of those who fearfully obey coercive dictates.

Reasons for compliance are explicitly described by the enforcers — you need our protection, or else — anyone who doesn’t obey is threatened, degraded, and ridiculed for not surrendering to the edicts of the mafia-like, medical-industrial complex.

The abhorrent means of extortion of an organized crime protection racket are now the standard practices of the pharmaceutical industry and their cronies; government agencies and doctors are their enforcers. This reckless atmosphere allows associated criminal activity, including the engendering of disease through negligent oversight of toxic causes and experimentation with pathogens.

The insidious machinations of a criminal consortium reveal the pernicious influence of money on medical policy and practice. Until this primary failure in providing support for the suffering is recognized and addressed, human health will continue to deteriorate.

October 5, 2023 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment

Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Online Censorship To Include CISA

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2023

A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.

Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.

The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.

This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.

This persistent governmental interference has been described by Judge Doughty as perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Indeed, it beautifully mirrors a dystopian reality, where a government body, akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, suppresses intellectual discourse and emulation.

The suppression campaign under the Biden administration is far from prejudiced; it has methodically targeted any view conflicting with government narratives. Subjects like natural immunity to Covid-19, vaccine efficacy, origins of the virus, and the effectiveness of mask mandates have become taboo, leading to a wilful silence of experts and common citizens alike.

Such tactics have seen CISA act as a bridge between third parties, flagging potentially problematic content. Having regular interactions with social media platform representatives, they have exploited their authoritative position by pushing them to adopt practices aligned with their censorship agenda.

This has led the Fifth Circuit Court to reassess their previous position. Contrary to their September ruling which stated that communication between CISA and social media companies was constitutional, they now acknowledge that CISA had crossed the line of mere information sharing and actively influenced content moderation policies, leading to the demotion and removal of posts.

While the court order stands, a 10-day stay allows the government to seek permission for a review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

October 5, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Has Ties to Hollywood, Corporate Dems

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023

The latest series of revelations by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker concerning the organization responsible for creating the list of the “Disinformation Dozen” confirm connections to more dark money sources and to key political and Hollywood figures.

In an article published Monday in Tablet Magazine and on his Substack, Thacker also revealed the organization — a nonprofit called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm.

Prior to coming up with its “Disinformation Dozen” list, Thacker said, CCDH was part of a campaign to silence independent media and prominent political opponents.

CCDH has since turned its attention to attacking X (formerly Twitter) and its owner, Elon Musk, and supporting the recent passage of a sweeping new censorship bill in the U.K.

According to Thacker, the influence of CCDH and its founder and CEO, Imran Ahmed, on the Biden administration, policymaking circles and mainstream and social media is disproportionately large for a small organization founded and managed by a non-American — raising questions about who, or which entities, are backing CCDH.

Those questions led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH in late August. Jordan gave CCDH until Sept. 29 “to produce its communications with the executive branch related to content moderation, the accuracy or truth of content, and the deletion or suppression of content.”

CCDH responded to the subpoena on Sept. 29, claiming it “produced all documents and communications” which were requested. Notably, the letter came on the letterhead of a law firm representing CCDH, instead of from the organization directly, while the publicly viewable online version of the letter does not include the accompanying documents.

‘Disinformation Dozen’ list led to censorship of Kennedy, others

In March 2021, CCDH drafted a report and accompanying list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.

The report claimed, “Just twelve anti-vaxxers are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media platforms,” and concluded social media “platforms must act” against these individuals.

The White House and social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook used the report to censor the individuals on the list.

In one example, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki cited the CCDH report during a July 2021 press briefing to pressure Facebook into censoring the accounts in question. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki claimed.

Legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others also cited the report, in an attempt to discredit the people on the list.

Thacker, writing for Tablet, said Twitter specifically took action against Kennedy after it received the “Disinformation Dozen” list — and was subjected to White House pressure:

‘“COVID-19 misinfo enforcement team is planning on taking action on a handful of accounts surfaced by the CCDH report,’ a Twitter official wrote on March 31. One account they eventually took action against belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running against Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.”

CCDH provides White House with ‘powerful weapon to use against critics’

“What, then, do we know about the CCDH?” Thacker wrote Monday in Tablet. “In effect, it seems, the organization provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration’s policies.”

“While few journalists have bothered to investigate the opaque group, the available evidence paints a picture that is likely different from what many in the public would expect of a ‘public interest’ nonprofit,” Thacker added.

As part of his July investigation leading to the release of the CCDH-related “Twitter Files,” Thacker was unable to discover who funds and supports the organization. He told The Defender in July that he believed CCDH was a “dark money” group.

Kennedy, testifying at a July 20 hearing organized by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, also called CCDH a “dark money” group.

A subsequent investigation by GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji was able to trace some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.

Yet, unanswered questions about CCDH and Ahmed remained for Thacker, who wrote on Substack:

“How did some guy from London with no D.C. political experience get noticed by the White House and attract so much media attention? Where does he come from? What’s his background? Where does he get his money? Who is behind this?”

As part of his latest investigation, Thacker wrote that he “lucked into finding a critical, anonymous donor who dropped $1.1 million into CCDH’s coffers.”

A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.

This represented “around 75% of all the funds they took in that year,” Thacker wrote on Substack.

Writing for Tablet, Thacker added, “According to tax records, Ahmed began to run CCDH from D.C. in 2021, and CCDH took in $1.47 million in their very first year operating in the United States.”

‘CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party’

This was not the only interesting insight into CCDH’s operations. Thacker also discovered CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).

According to Thacker, CAP is a “D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party.” It was founded by John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump. And yes, CAP has close ties to the Biden administration,” Thacker wrote.

Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab, Thacker wrote in Tablet. In a previous “Twitter Files” release, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was funded by various U.S. government agencies and defense contractors and “remains a central piece in the ‘censorship-industrial complex.’”

Thacker quoted Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. Benz told Thacker the Atlantic Council is “one of the premier architects of online censorship” and has, in recent years, “had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers.”

“One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right,” he added.

CCDH spent $50,000 to lobby Congress on COVID ‘misinformation’

Thacker also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.

“Go a little deeper and you find the other members of the [CCDH] board,” Thacker wrote on Substack, adding, “The one who caught my attention is Aleen Keshishian.”

Keshishian, who is also an adjunct professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, lists clients including actor Mark Ruffalo, who according to Thacker, “tweets support” for CCDH.

Her other clients include Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez and Natalie Portman.

“Ahmed’s connections to Hollywood actors could account for some of the money he has raised from anonymous sources, as wealthy celebrities sometimes wish to keep their political donations hidden from fans,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.

Unusual for a nonprofit, CCDH also hired a PR and lobbying firm, Lot Sixteen, to work on its behalf.

“Very few activist groups have the financial means to hire private lobby shops — even those with an established presence on Capitol Hill — but during a few quarters of 2021 and 2022, CCDH paid Lot Sixteen $50,000 to lobby congressional offices on COVID-19 misinformation and ‘preventing the spread of misinformation and hate speech online in social and mainstream media,’” Thacker wrote.

Thacker told The Defender that even large and well-established nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Public Citizen have not hired PR firms to work on their behalf.

“None of those groups that I’m aware of, the longest-established groups in D.C., have ever had the money to hire a private lobby shop like CCDH did. It’s just bizarre,” he said, adding that this is because CCDH is “a political campaign designed to look like a grassroots public-interest organization.”

Thacker said he contacted Lot Sixteen and “asked them how they confirmed that Imran Ahmed was compliant with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act],” noting that “This guy’s a foreigner. No one knows where his money comes from. How do they know his money’s not coming from overseas and he’s not in violation of foreign lobbying laws?”

“They didn’t get back to me,” Thacker said. “My guess is they didn’t do due diligence.” He also told The Defender that while CCDH “lists only four or five employees” on its website, “if you go on LinkedIn, there’s about 20 other people working for him.

“What nonprofit does not list all their employees? It’s just bizarre,” Thacker said.

CCDH ‘rarely disclose funders’

According to Thacker, CCDH and associated groups have operated in secrecy and under multiple identities for several years.

“Ahmed’s history is hard to track,” he wrote for Tablet. “The two groups he has run — Stop Funding Fake News [SFFN] and CCDH — seem to pop up out of nowhere, switch addresses, rarely disclose funders, omit naming all employees, and feature websites that change names or disappear from the internet.

“While Ahmed eventually acknowledged in 2020 that he helped launch both [groups] … his involvement remained hidden for some years. Stop Funding Fake News started in February 2019 claiming to be a ‘social movement’ too frightened to name its own grassroots activists,” Thacker added.

Thacker said that by searching archived versions of CCDH’s website on the Internet Wayback Machine, he was able to find out more information about the organization.

“One of the first things I ran across was reports about CCDH incorporating in the U.K. back in 2018,” said Thacker who looked up their filings in England to find their address and who was on their board. “One of CCDH’s first directors is a guy named James Morgan McSweeney,” he wrote on Substack.

According to Thacker, McSweeney “is a power broker in UK politics, and a top staffer to Keir Starmer, who is now the head of the British Labour Party. So CCDH is not really some disinterested, public nonprofit, it’s a political campaign by British Labour.”

Writing for Tablet, Thacker said that CCDH “registered in late 2018 in London, first as Brixton Endeavours Limited” and when it incorporated, its “only director was a staffer for Keir Starmer.” The group also “shared an address with an organization that supported Starmer,” while Damian Collins, a member of the Tory Party, later joined as an officer.”

Thacker wrote on Substack that CCDH, SFFN and Ahmed have often operated as “political operative[s] for conservative members of the British Labour party,” including on behalf of Starmer, to help “destroy the Left in the United Kingdom.”

Starting in 2019, SFFN “claimed some very sizable left-wing scalps in London, mostly by lobbing vague accusations of fake news at political enemies. The group helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership while tanking the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.

In one instance, SFFN claimed that they convinced 40 major brands, including Adobe, Chelsea FC, eBay and Manchester United, to stop placing their advertisements on the websites of such news outlets, a tactic SFFN called “demonetizing.” They also claimed that they were “educating” advertising agencies.

“Essentially, SFFN and [CCDH] were front groups created by conservatives in Labour for an internecine battle against leftists in their own party. The Canary reported that CCDH’s address linked the group back to Keir Starmer’s people,” Thacker wrote on Substack. SFFN reports were also cited in the British Parliament.

Having accomplished this, SFFN “became moribund, rarely tweeting from their social media account,” Thacker wrote in Tablet, noting that this did not matter as Ahmed “pivoted his focus” to the U.S., where his list of “‘disinformation’ targets just happened to be critics of the Democratic Party establishment” — including Kennedy.

“Just as he had done for the Labour Party, Ahmed used the CCDH to attack as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ various critics of the Biden arm of the Democratic Party,” Thacker wrote.

Association with Democrat-affiliated groups helped CCDH’s ‘unusual’ ascent

According to Thacker, CCDH now primarily operates in the U.S., based out of a virtual office that hundreds of D.C. nonprofits list as their residence. This is despite the fact that CCDH is still based in the U.K.

The site lists CCHD as a broad nonprofit devoted to “Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy / Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis (NTEE).” It lists Ahmed as CEO with a 2021 base salary of $126,333 and Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress, the think tank of the corporate Democrats, as chair of the board.

According to Thacker, the prominent ascent of CCDH and Ahmed in U.S. policy and media circles is unusual.

“I want to point out how odd it is that a British political operative is now running a partisan campaign in the United States. This rarely happens,” Thacker wrote on Substack. “For a variety of complex reasons, British political operatives don’t come to the United States, Americans go to England [and other countries].”

“It doesn’t happen,” Thacker told The Defender. “That was my question from the beginning. This guy is quoted from the White House podium, has all these Congressmen sending letters on his behalf, who has appeared in front of Congressional hearings run by Democrats when they had the House of Representatives.”

“Probably what it is, is Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress,” Thacker said. “That’s the think tank for the corporate Democrats. That’s probably his entryway.”

Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “One rumor that came up often in the dozen or so conversations” he had “with people who have observed Ahmed for years, is that he works for British intelligence,” although this has not yet been confirmed.

Thacker told The Defender that Ahmed and CCDH have played “the same game” in the U.S. and U.K., except that “instead of it being directly ‘Republicans are bad, these people are good,’ they find some way that they can say, ‘aha, hate!’ So, it’s taking this idea and rebranding it for political purposes.”

Writing in Tablet, Thacker said that “Ahmed’s story is critical to understanding the new push for censorship under the guise of combating hate.”

‘Obsession’ with Kennedy, Musk, vaccines

Having become fully embroiled in U.S. politics, Thacker said that Ahmed and CCDH have developed an “obsession” with figures such as Kennedy and with issues such as COVID-19 vaccines — receiving broad media coverage in the process.

Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.”

Thacker told The Defender that “every one of these ‘disinformation experts’ out there — I don’t care if they’re a fact-checker, a think tank, a journalist, an academic, they’ve all done work on elections and on vaccines. So, they’re all election ‘experts’ and vaccine ‘experts.’ How you become an expert in both, I don’t know, but that’s what they are.”

“It’s a complete and total obsession,” Thacker added. “There’s not a single ‘disinformation’ expert out there who I’ve not seen do something on vaccines. They’re obsessed … why, out of all the things that you can target, why do you target vaccines? I can only think that there’s some kind of funding behind it, where that funding comes from, what it’s about. That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”

Thacker also said “it’s just bizarre” that someone like Ahmed can come in and be obsessed about vaccines and not have a single tweet criticizing Pfizer or Moderna. “He’s not found any problems with the Biden administration’s vaccine policies. Not one … Ahmed appears where the corporate Democrats need expertise.”

Musk recently became a new target for CCDH and Ahmed. Writing in Tablet, Thacker said, “Ahmed is now trying to drive away Elon Musk’s advertisers on X, this time based on dubious claims that the … site is a playground for racists,” including claims made in interviews with The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian.

“Once again, these efforts have been uncritically amplified in the press and in a letter to Musk from House Democrats that reiterates Ahmed’s claims, and cites him and CCDH,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.

These attacks led Musk and X to sue CCDH and Ahmed in July, accusing them of making false and misleading claims about hate speech on the platform, and illegally accessing the computers of Brandwatch, a company that works with Twitter — a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

In response, MSNBC published an Aug. 1 op-ed by Ahmed, claiming CCDH “has been at the forefront of cataloging and reporting on the hate proliferating on the platform owned by Elon Musk.”

“All of his targets just happen to be the people who the corporate Democrats don’t get along with, so that’s Elon Musk right now,” Thacker told The Defender, noting that Ahmed and CCDH have not targeted other social media platforms to the same extent.

Yet, Ahmed continues to enjoy a platform in the establishment media. Thacker told The Defender this is “because none of those reporters have bothered to look into his background in the U.K. or to look at where his money’s coming from, or to look at what’s inside the [Musk/X] lawsuit against him. It plays into their weird obsession with Musk.”

In parallel, CCDH board member Damian Collins “led a series of inquiries” in the British parliament “into ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’ on social media,” helping promote the “Online Safety Bill,” intended to purge online “disinformation,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.

“When Collins held hearings on the bill — which was passed into law just weeks ago — the first person to give testimony in support of online bans was Imran Ahmed,” Thacker added.

On Substack, Thacker previewed more reports about CCDH and Ahmed he will soon release, including regarding ties “to Peter Hotez, an American physician, an ardent proponent of Anthony Fauci and cheerleader in the national media for vaccines and Biden administration pandemic policies.”

“I hope this helps people understand how to do their own digging into dark money groups,” Thacker wrote on Substack.

In Tablet, he wrote that Ahmed has “been a servant to the power of political parties who deployed him and the CCDH to weaponize the charge of hate speech and misinformation against their enemies.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

October 5, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | CIA, COVID-19 Vaccine, Democratic Party, UK, United States | Leave a comment

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By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017

The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.

The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”

Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. … continue

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