Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

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 | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | 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 | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 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 | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 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.”

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 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s backers blinded by Russia hate – top analyst

RT | October 5, 2023

Kiev’s globalist and neo-conservative supporters in the West are so driven by their hatred of Russia that they completely disregard the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are dying in a futile effort to defeat Moscow’s forces, US public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has argued.

Sachs, an award-winning economist who advised the Russian and Ukrainian governments following the breakup of the Soviet Union, made his comments in an interview posted on Thursday by US podcast host Andrew Napolitano. Asked how the US and its NATO allies can ignore the catastrophic destruction of Ukraine while prolonging the conflict and making false claims of battlefield successes, Sachs said they are “blinded” by their hatred of Russia.

“They are not counting the Ukrainian dead,” the analyst said. “They have lied to the public all along about the military situation . . . . They want so much to fight Russia and have someone else do the fighting and the dying that they want another massive recruitment of the remaining Ukrainian young men that can be grabbed off the streets and be thrown into the killing fields.”

More than 83,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed during a Donbass counteroffensive that began in June, according to an estimate released by the Russian Defense Ministry last month. Despite knowing that the Ukrainians have no chance of making major gains on the battlefield amid Russia’s air superiority and artillery dominance, Kiev’s benefactors have shown a “grotesque” disregard for the heavy casualties, Sachs said. He argued that the UK, in particular, has championed the counteroffensive because of London’s centuries-long and deeply embedded desire to crush Russia.

Sachs, now a UN adviser and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has argued that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe helped trigger the current crisis. He said Washington and its allies missed many opportunities to avoid the current conflict, then kept it going by discouraging Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky from finalizing a peace deal with Russia in March 2022.

Responding to claims by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that critics of Washington’s Ukraine policy are “siding with” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sachs argued that he’s showing concern for the Ukrainian people. “I don’t want Ukraine to be completely destroyed by these neocons, by their fantasy world, by their desire to throw Ukrainians by the hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” he said. He added, “This isn’t siding with Putin or siding with anybody. This is trying to protect Ukraine from American zealots.”

Sachs claimed that US President Joe Biden must reach out to Putin to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, which would involve ruling out adding Ukraine to NATO, as well as addressing Russia’s legitimate security concerns. “We have stoked so much provocation in this, so much anxiety, overthrowing governments, starting multiple wars, pushing NATO enlargement, abandoning nuclear agreements, and then saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t want to negotiate,’” the analyst said.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

McCarthy’s Ouster Signals US ‘Preparing Populace at Large’ to Defund Ukraine

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.10.2023

Kevin McCarthy lost the House speakership this week after his GOP colleague Matt Gaetz tabled a motion to remove him over alleged “side deal” talks with President Biden and the Democrats on Ukraine funding. The shock ouster comes amid growing weariness among Americans over the proxy war, and possible preparations to dump Kiev, experts told Sputnik.

The fallout over Kevin McCarthy’s historically unprecedented removal as speaker of the House of Representatives continues to send shockwaves of confusion and dread across the furthest reaches of the American empire, including in Ukraine.

“We are freaking out. For us it is a disaster,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker responsible for lobbying Kiev’s efforts to join the European Union, told US media, commenting on the threat of Washington cutting off its military and financial support.

“We are interested in getting things sorted out so American democracy can function, and so we can restore the bipartisan consensus on supporting their own national interest by supporting Ukraine,” Klympush-Tsintsadze emphasized. Apparently, to the politician, a “functioning” American democracy seems to mean continuing to pump tens of billions of additional dollars into Kiev, which faces a looming debt crisis, and is now dependent on Washington and its allies for some 70 percent of all government expenses, as Western creditors prepare to collect dividends on their “investments.”

“There is nothing good, but, objectively, we have simply become hostages of their internal politics,” Ukrainian parliament finance committee deputy chairman Yaroslav Zheleznyak complained, referring to last week’s budget deal showdown – in which Republicans threatened to force a shutdown if the budget included billions in additional funding for Kiev.

The Zelensky government estimates that Kiev still has access to about $1.6 billion in US defense support and $1.23 billion in budgetary assistance. The Pentagon says some $5.4 billion in cash also remain in Presidential Drawdown Authority funds –allowing for weapons stocks from American armories to be sent to Kiev. However, senior Biden administration officials, including the president himself, have expressed fears that “only weeks remain” before a lack of additional funding will start becoming “a serious battlefield concern” for Kiev.

“It does worry me,’ Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of funds drying up. “But I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties who have said that they would support funding Ukraine,” he added. “I’m going to make the argument that it’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America that Ukraine succeeds.”

“Obviously, time is of the essence,” an administration official stressed, warning of the risks of Congress sitting on its hands without appropriating additional cash to Kiev before the current short-term spending package runs out in mid-November.

Preparing the Public for Bad News?

“I have difficulty thinking of Ukraine as a primary issue for American politicians,” Dr. Nicolai Petro, an international politics professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Sputnik, commenting on the role played by Ukraine funding in the chaos in Washington over the past week.

“I think it is more of a symbolic issue and that their primary interest is not voting up or down on Ukraine aid,” but “what that symbolizes and how it can play out in the American political process.”

Pointing to the deeply murky nature of US spending on Ukraine and the “hide the ball” approach to appropriations, Petro predicted that the Biden administration will likely be able to squeeze out more cash from already appropriated funding for some time even if additional Congressional funding dries up.

The growing debate in Washington over Ukraine has also rippled across the Atlantic to Britain – the second-staunchest supporter within NATO of continuing the proxy war. Even there, Petro pointed out, a debate seems to be gaining strength over just how much more money can be lifted from taxpayers’ pockets and transferred to Kiev.

“London and Washington seem to be on the same wavelength here. We’re both at the same time ramping up production and are not sure how much we have and how much is even needed. Last month, for example, the new UK defense minister said London would deliver tens of thousands of new artillery shells. Three weeks later, it’s ‘we’ve given away as much as we can afford’. This sort of flip-flop is very convenient when you’re preparing the populace at large for a transition of policy from ‘we’ll do whatever it takes as long as it takes’ to ‘no we really need to be thinking about the cost.’ That’s a very different argument to make,” the academic emphasized.

This shift in rhetoric is related to the fact that the US and some of its allies are approaching crucial elections, with “all the polls and the recent elections [in Europe] suggest[ing] that this NATO proxy war in Ukraine is extremely unpopular. And that in and of itself it is going to at least affect the narrative between now and several key elections,” Petro said.

Dems Shoot Themselves in the Foot

McCarthy was ousted Tuesday by an extremely narrow margin of 216 in favor to 210 opposed, with only eight Republicans – led by rebel Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, supporting his removal alongside Democrats.

“My biggest question going forward is, is this going to be the right move for Democrats?” independent US journalist Rachel Blevins told Sputnik.

“Because they may have just shot themselves in the foot a little bit by getting rid of someone like Kevin McCarthy, who was trying to work with them, you know, maybe promising a separate vote to ensure funding for Ukraine and all that. Well now it could end up being that the next Republican speaker does not want to work with them whatsoever,” the observer pointed out.

The ouster could have repercussions for Ukraine going forward. While interim House Speaker Patrick McHenry has repeatedly supported Congressional votes on Ukraine funding – apart from last week’s attempt to roll assistance into the government funding bill, several candidates vying for the speakership have expressed opposition to further aid, including Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern, and Florida Congressman Byron Donalds.

What a Difference a Year Makes

“I know that Joe Biden is not happy right now,” Blevins emphasized. “He’s probably the most furious with all of this, because he was expecting McCarthy to get that funding through. He was not happy that it was not there in that bill to keep the government open.”

“What was interesting was to see that back and forth” over Ukraine, the observer added. “Because in the Senate, they had at least $6 billion for Ukraine, which is a lot of money to the average person, obviously. But when it comes to Ukraine, that’s just enough to keep it rolling for a few months. So they come up with $6 billion. Then in the House, they basically put Democrats in a position where they said, ok, here’s a funding bill to keep the government open. If you say you’re against it, it’s literally just over Ukraine funding. So that’s on you. And you have to answer to your constituents and saying that you wanted a government shutdown just so that you could fund a country that most Americans can’t find on a map,” the observer said.

“Also notable is the latest polls show that half of the American public doesn’t think Congress should keep continuing to approve funding for Ukraine. And so whenever those members of Congress go in there, they’re going to have to find a better justification for it than now, because it’s something that at least half of Americans don’t say is a priority. And that’s certainly not where Congress was even just one year ago when they were passing unprecedented funding and there was no fight about it whatsoever,” Blevins summed up.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gitmo detainees continue to be tortured by CIA physically, mentally: Attorney

By Syed Zafar Mehdi | Press TV | October 4, 2023

Torture has always existed at Guantanamo Bay in different forms and the inmates there continue to be tortured physically and psychologically, says a US-based human rights attorney.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Alka Pradhan, who has represented Guantanamo Bay detainees as well as victims of US drone strikes, described various forms of torture prevalent at the notorious American detention facility, also known as Gitmo, in southeastern Cuba.

“In the early days, it took the form of beatings and forced nudity, starvation and force-feedings, and other terrible techniques,” said Pradhan, referring to the institutionalizing of torture at Gitmo.

“Now, decades of arbitrary detention, and lack of family visits and medical care – including botched or substandard procedures carried out by poorly qualified staff – continue to torture these men psychologically and physically.”

Pradhan, one of the leading human rights lawyers in the US, is currently Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions. She was previously Counter-Terrorism Counsel at Reprieve US, where she represented several Guantanamo Bay detainees.

She also conducted advocacy and litigation on behalf of civilian victims of US drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan and has advised the US government on compliance with international legal obligations.

Last week, Pradhan was invited to the European Parliament to speak on Gitmo human rights abuses amid growing calls from human rights advocates to shut down the notorious US detention center.

She is an attorney representing Ammar al-Baluchi, an Iranian citizen, who has suffered high-degree torture at the hands of the CIA and even denied medical care by the White House.

“Ammar, an Iranian citizen, was brutally tortured for 3.5 years at the “black sites” – the CIA’s secret prisons all over the world – before he was rendered to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006,” Pradhan told the Press TV website.

“According to CIA records, CIA personnel used him as a human experiment, bashing his head against a wall over and over again for hours, to obtain their interrogator certifications. They also tortured him using water, shackling his wrists over his head, beatings, forced nudity, and forced starvation. For most of his time at the black sites, he was sleep-deprived, first with ear-splitting music, and then with 24/7 fluorescent lights,” she hastened to add.

Ammar, the American human rights attorney, said is 46 years old today and suffers from multiple brain injuries because of CIA torture as well as severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), inability to sleep normally and cognitive decline, denied proper medical care by the US government.

“They will not allow medical histories to be taken that discuss the causes of his ailments (torture), the DoD (US Department of Defense) will not allow independent doctors to treat him, and according to the Chief Medical Officer, they do not have the ability to provide complex medical care or do proper surgeries here,” she said.

“Despite entreaties, the White House and DoD have absolutely refused to either implement a proper medical and torture rehabilitation program here or conduct humanitarian transfers of the remaining men to places where they can receive the care they need.”

Pradhan also spoke about the Guantanamo military commissions set up by the US government that have only exacerbated the miserable conditions of Gitmo inmates.

These military commissions, she said in a conversation with the Press TV website, were built to “benefit from CIA torture while hiding as many details of the torture program as possible.”

“The US government made a conscious decision after 9/11 to torture men abroad instead of bringing them to court for prosecution. Once they could no longer hide them in secret prisons, it was too late to prosecute them in real US courts because of that torture,” Pradhan said.

“The Military Commissions Act was written to allow the government to use torture-acquired evidence (the bulk of their evidence against these men), but also to prevent them from giving the defense the information we require about exculpatory or mitigating factors – like the men’s torture in CIA black sites,” she added.

The US-based attorney said the US government has “continuously invaded attorney-client privilege, with listening devices in our meeting rooms and the FBI attempting to place an informant on one defense team”, noting that the corruption in the military commissions “precludes any justice.”

On why the US government chose a detention facility in Cuba, away from the mainland, to detain people after the 9/11 attacks, Pradhan said the decision was taken so that the US “exercises complete control” and international and domestic laws do not apply.

“To this day, the US refuses to apply the Constitution in the military commissions, or the full provisions of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to the remaining detainees. And the detainees themselves have no real legal remedies – they are not allowed to file lawsuits in the United States, and no country will sanction the US for its illegal treatment of these men,” she stated.

The international calls for the closure of the notorious detention facility have grown louder, but the Joe Biden administration, like previous administrations, has adopted the policy of dilly-dallying.

Pradhan said the strength of the US propaganda campaign around Guantanamo at the beginning, “labeling all of the men here the “worst of the worst” and categorizing them all as some sort of combatant against the United States, has proven impossible to reverse.”

“Despite the fact that no one should ever have been held at Guantanamo, that most were sold to the US for bounty payments, and that only a handful have ever been charged, most Americans still believe that Guantanamo detainees are all terrorists,” she told the Press TV website.

“President Obama had the ability to tell the truth about the men at Guantanamo, even when Congress stopped him from closing the facility, but he did not. The enduring misinformation about the detainees means that many countries do not want to accept them and that Congress has banned any transfers of the men to US territory.”

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

Eight years since US forces turned Afghanistan hospital into slaughterhouse

By Ajmal Barakzai | Press TV | October 4, 2023

In the pitch darkness of night, on October 3, 2015, a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz city came under high-precision, indiscriminate airstrikes, shattering the deafening silence.

Kunduz Trauma Center – including its intensive care unit, emergency rooms, laboratory, x-ray unit, outpatient department, mental health and physiotherapy ward – were all reduced to rubble.

At least 42 people, including patients, staff and caretakers, were killed in the devastating attack carried out by an American gunship, marking one of the deadliest chapters in the 20-year-long American war.

Tuesday marked the eighth anniversary of the tragic incident, and yet another reminder of how the US-led coalition perpetrated horrendous war crimes in the South Asian country following the invasion in 2001 and how the victims of America’s longest war that lasted two decades were denied justice.

The only thing Americans did was “apologize” to MSF – apologize for destroying dozens of lives and families, making more children orphans and filling more graveyards in Afghanistan.

How did the attack unfold?

At the end of September 2015, there was fierce fighting between the government and rebel forces in the north of the country, and the Taliban managed to capture the city of Kunduz.

The Afghan National Army responded to it with a counter-offensive in an attempt to regain control of the city, so they called in the US Air Force for help.

The Kunduz Trauma Centre was located in the city center, operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) since 2011. It catered to the local population in Kunduz.

Although it was in the middle of a rapidly changing frontline, MSF personnel had informed all warring parties of the location of its hospital complex.

Medical facilities are protected under international humanitarian law, so MSF officials and doctors had considered themselves relatively safe until all hell broke loose.

American military officials were also informed, and precise GPS coordinates were sent to them four days before the airstrike, according to multiple reports.

At 2:08 a.m. on October 3, the US Air Force started precise and repeated airstrikes on the Kunduz Trauma Centre complex that lasted for around one hour.

A US AC-130 Hercules gunship fired 211 shells on the main hospital building where patients were sleeping in their beds or being operated on in the operating theatre.

The surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched. During an hour of horror, MSF teams desperately called both Afghan and US military authorities to stop the airstrikes.

In a report at the time, the Washington Post admitted that US AC-130 gunship aircraft circled the hospital in the darkness of night, loaded with 25mm and 40mm cannon as well as a 105mm howitzer.

Every time the aircraft passed, approximately every 15 minutes, it fired and hit the main hospital building “repeatedly and precisely”, MSF said at the time, suggesting that it was not accidental.

US commander in Afghanistan John F Campbell later admitted that the hospital was “mistakenly struck”, without a shred of remorse and without any promise of justice and accountability.

Who were the victims?

Amid the fighting between two warring sides, the MSF staff were overwhelmed with hundreds of wounded patients whose number increased as the fighting intensified.

In the five days leading up to the airstrike, they treated 376 patients in the emergency room.

On the night of the fatal air attack, there were 105 patients in the hospital building, as well as 140 of the MSF staff, of whom 80 were on duty, according to reports.

According to official MSF data, at least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients (among others three children), 14 staff and 4 caretakers. An additional 37 people were seriously injured.

The killed staff were all Afghan nationals, which was a significant loss for a nation that had and continues to have an extremely low doctor-patient ratio.

Their patients burned in their beds, their medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs, and others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.

The US airstrike made the hospital unusable and all surviving critical patients were referred to other providers, and all MSF staff was evacuated from the war-torn Kunduz.

It was the only health facility of its kind in northeastern Afghanistan, according to MSF, which provided free high-level life and limb-saving trauma care, especially during the years of war.

After the attack, MSF demanded an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFCC.org) to establish the facts of the devastating attack.

The call was summarily rejected by Washington. A US report concludes that it was not a war crime.

“The investigation concluded that certain personnel failed to comply with the rules of engagement in the law of armed conflict,” Joseph Votel, commander of US Central Command, said after the attack.

“However, the investigation did not conclude that these failures amounted to a war crime. The label war crimes is typically reserved for intentional acts — intentional targeting of civilians or intentionally targeting protected objects or locations.”

In response, MSF President Meinie Nicolai said the report amounted to “an admission of an uncontrolled military operation in a densely populated urban area, during which US forces failed to follow the basic laws of war”.

Human rights activists say the demand for an independent investigation was fair but it could have exposed the US military adventures in Afghanistan and that was a reason enough for them to reject it.

How did the US push it under the carpet?

US officials tried hard to downplay their role in the undeniable crime and even pushed it under the rug, changing the story several times and giving contradictory information to the media.

The first official reaction was that they were targeting Taliban positions and that the airstrike may have resulted in “collateral damage” in a nearby hospital, which is a long-standing US euphemism for civilian casualties.

MSF immediately denied US claims of an “accident,” stating that the building was hit precisely and repeatedly, despite giving coordinates to the Pentagon and their desperate calls during the attack.

Multiple examples appeared in the media when the US military did not show humanitarian principles towards doctors, destroying and invading numerous hospitals and even interrupting surgical operations.

As a result, the official story was changed and it was no longer a stray bomb or an accident, but a deliberate airstrike targeting the Taliban fighters at the hospital.

Once again, MSF denied US claims as none of its staff at the hospital heard or saw Taliban fighters engaging US or Afghan forces. MSF has issued this statement:

“Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff.

Their description of the attack keeps changing, from collateral damage to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs.

The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition.

There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”

The Pentagon’s final report released in April 2016 changed the story again and called the attack an “accident,” arguing it thus did not amount to a war crime.

After the investigation, 16 members of the US military were disciplined in the form of suspension and removal from command, though none were criminally charged.

The victims were offered money as compensation, $6,000 for dead and $3,000 for wounded people, which tells us how much Washington values Afghan life.

A similar compensation of $5,000 was offered by the German government for the victims of the 2009 German airstrike in Kunduz that killed between 100 and 200 Afghan civilians.

For comparison, in 2018 a federal judge in New York set damage awards for 9/11 victims according to the following scale: $12.5 million per spouse, $8.5 million per parent, $8.5 million per child and $4.25 million per sibling.

Ajmal Barakzai is an Afghan activist currently living in Europe.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Real Anthony Fauci – The Movie

Watch at Bitchute

“2022 The Real Anthony Fauci – Everyone Deserves To Know The Truth. Different experts make a stand against today’s putatively criminal and harmful health system, focusing on Anthony Fauci and his role in the shaping of the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics.”

THE REAL ANTHONY FAUCI: Movie based on the 2021 RFK jr book “The Real Anthony Fauci”.

Written and directed by Kala Mandrake
Production: Jeff Hayes Films

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

FDA ties with Gates Foundation

Maryanne Demasi, reports | October 4, 2023

In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Under the MOU, the two entities agreed to share information to “facilitate the development of innovative products, including medical countermeasures,” such as diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to combat disease transmission during a pandemic.

The FDA has MOUs with many academic and non-profit organisations, but few have as much to gain as Bill Gates, who has invested billions into pandemic countermeasures.

Experts are concerned the Gates Foundation could have undue influence over the FDA’s regulatory decisions of these countermeasures.

David Gortler, an ex-senior adviser to the FDA commissioner between 2019 and 2021, says he is “suspicious” of the MOU.

“If the Gates Foundation establishes an MOU with a regulator on a product they want to develop, it seems like it would be a conflict of interest.  What if every other drug company did the exact same thing as the Gates Foundation?” he says.

David Gortler, former senior advisor to FDA commissioner 2019-2021

Gortler, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, explained that normally, meetings between developers and regulators are supposed to be an official part of the public record and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

“However, an MOU such as this can circumvent the usual requirements for the transparency of official communications,” says Gortler. “This way their communications can be kept secret.”

David Bell, a former medical officer for the World Health Organisation (WHO) who now works as a public health physician and biotech consultant, agrees that the MOU has potential to corrupt the regulatory process.

“The narrative is that philanthropic foundations can only be good, because they’re making vaccines and saving thousands of lives, so we need to cut the red-tape and help the FDA get stuff done quickly otherwise children will die,” says Bell. “But in reality, it has potential to corrupt the whole system.”

David Bell, physician and biotech consultant

Bell adds, “Speaking generally, close relationships between regulators and developers raise inevitable risks that shortcuts and favours will break down the rigorousness of the product review, putting the public at risk.”

Revolving door

The FDA has been roundly criticised for its “revolving door.” Ten of the past 11 FDA commissioners left the agency and secured roles with pharmaceutical companies they once regulated.

Similarly, the Gates Foundation hired high-ranking members of the FDA, who bring with them intimate knowledge of the regulatory process.

For example, Murray Lumpkin had a 24-year career at the FDA, serving as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner and representative for global issues. Now, he is deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Gates Foundation, and signatory on the MOU.

And Margaret Hamburg, who served as FDA commissioner between 2009 and 2015, is now on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gates Foundation.

Murray Lumpkin, deputy director regulatory affairs, Gates Foundation; Margaret Hamburg, scientific advisory board, Gates Foundation

Bell has no doubt that these appointments were strategic to “game the system” saying, “If I worked at the Gates Foundation, I would certainly hire somebody like Murray Lumpkin.”

The only way to fix the revolving door problem Bell says, is to have a ‘non-compete clause’ in their contracts.

“It might be that FDA employees cannot work for the people they’ve regulated for at least 10 years. There are places that have those rules – private companies have agreements that you can’t work for a rival,” said Bell.

The FDA dismissed questions about the potential for conflicts of interest, or the lack of transparency over its communications with the Gates Foundation. In a statement, the FDA said:

FDA regulatory decision making is science-based. Former FDA officials do not impact regulatory decisions. FDA only collaborates with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the MOU as described.

Gates has billions at stake

Gates boasted about receiving a 20-to-1 return on his $10 billion investment into the “financing and delivery” of medicines and vaccines.

“It’s the best investment I’ve ever made,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Decades ago, these investments weren’t sure bets, but today, they almost always pay off in a big way.”

In Sept 2019, just prior to the pandemic, SEC filings showed the foundation purchased over 1 million shares for $18.10/share. By Nov 2021, the foundation dumped most of the stock for an average of $300/share.

Investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel reported the foundation pocketed approximately $260 million in profit – more than 15 times its original investment – most of it untaxed because it was invested through the foundation.

In his recent book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic,” Gates warns that future pandemics are the biggest threat to humankind and that survival depends on global pandemic preparedness strategies, firmly positioning himself at the centre of shaping the agenda.

In October 2019, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201, which gathered government agencies, social media companies and national security organisations to war game a “fictional” global pandemic.

October 2019, Gates and WEF fund Event 201 to simulate a global pandemic response

The key recommendations from the event were that such a crisis would require the deployment of new vaccines, surveillance and control of information and human behaviours, by orchestrating the co-operation and co-ordination of key industries, national governments, and international institutions.

Several weeks later when the covid-19 pandemic emerged, many aspects of this ‘hypothetical scenario’ became a chilling reality.

The Gates Foundation, which holds shares in a range of drug companies including Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, is now credited with wielding significant influence over the direction of the global response to the pandemic, saying its goal is to “vaccinate the entire world” with a covid-19 vaccine.

Global dominance

The Gates Foundation has poured millions into funding NGOs, media, and international agencies, earning Gates significant political clout.

Financial contributions to the media have garnered Gates favourable news coverage, boasting on the foundation’s website it committed almost $3.5 million to The Guardian in 2020 – 2023.

The UK medicines regulator – the MHRA – disclosed it took approximately $3 million in funding from the Gates Foundation in 2022, which would span across several financial years.

Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr labelled Gates “the most powerful man in public health” because he managed to steer the WHO’s pandemic strategy to focus primarily on vaccination.

Kennedy said in an interview that the WHO “begs and rolls over” for Gates’ funding, which now makes up over 88% of the total amount of the WHO’s donations by philanthropic foundations.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Presidential Candidate

“I think [Gates] believes that he is somehow ordained divinely to bring salvation to the world through technology,” said Kenney. “He believes the only path to good health is inside a syringe.”

The Gates Foundation’s CEO Mark Suzman responded to concerns that the foundation has “disproportionate sway in setting national and global agendas, without any formal accountability to voters or international bodies.”

“It’s true that between our dollars, voice, and convening power, we have access and influence that many others do not,” admitted Suzman in his 2023 annual letter .

“But make no mistake – where there’s a solution that can improve livelihoods and save lives, we’ll advocate persistently for it. We won’t stop using our influence, along with our monetary commitments, to find solutions,” he wrote.

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Fatigue Is Worrying NATO Elites – and So They Should Be

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 4, 2023

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is now discernible fatigue and anger among citizens over the bottomless money pit that is NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

The only wonder is that it has taken so long for the Western public to get wise to the scam.

The disgraceful adulation of a Nazi war criminal by the whole Canadian parliament in a perverse show of solidarity with Ukraine against Russia has helped focus public attention on the obscenity of the NATO proxy war.

All told, since the NATO-induced conflict blew up in February last year, the American and European establishments have thrown up to €200 billion into Ukraine to prop up an odious Nazi-infested regime.

All that largesse that is billed to U.S. and European taxpayers has resulted in a slaughter in Europe not seen since the Second World War – and a failed Ukrainian state. And of course huge profits for the NATO military-industrial complex that bankrolls the elite politicians.

Times are changing though. In the United States, the financially conservative Republicans have had enough of the blank checks to the Kiev regime. The U.S. Congress finally showed a modicum of sanity to prevent a government financial shutdown – by dropping military aid to Ukraine. That shows how twisted Washington’s priorities have become when national self-interest has to wrestle with funding for a Nazi regime.

And then following the Congressional vote to temporarily end funding for Ukraine, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba dared to reprimand American lawmakers: “We are now working with both sides of Congress to make sure that it does not (get) repeated under any circumstances.”

Meanwhile in Europe, Slovakian citizens have voted for a new government to end the military fueling of war in Ukraine. The Smer-SD party led by Robert Fico won the parliamentary elections primarily on the vow to shut off any further weapons supply to the Kiev regime.

This week also saw massive protests in Germany against Olaf Scholz’s coalition government over the latter’s abject pro-war policies in Ukraine. German Unity Day on October 3 prompted a mass rally in Berlin denouncing the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and calling for peace negotiations to end the conflict.

There were also unprecedented protests across Poland in Warsaw, Lodz and other cities against the PiS government’s slavish implementation of the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Faced with millions of Ukrainian refugees and neglect of social needs for Poles, the PiS ruling party has recently threatened to end weapons supply to Kiev – a move less about principle and more about trying to buy votes in the forthcoming election on October 15. Nevertheless, the belated move by the Polish government illustrates the concern among European leaders about growing public disdain over the seemingly endless financial aid allocated to Ukraine.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, says it is a “worrying” sign that Washington for the first time closed the coffers for Ukraine.

The EU foreign ministers held a summit in Kiev on Monday. It was the first time that their summit was convened in a non-EU country. The agenda was a little too self-conscious, slated as a show of “solidarity” with Ukraine.

Borrell and the other EU diplomats said the summit was a warning to Russia to not count on “weariness” among Europeans over support for Ukraine. Who is he trying to convince? Russia or Europeans?

The unelected European elites described the war in Ukraine as an “existential crisis” which requires never-ending support for the Nazi regime against Russia.

Such melodrama needs serious qualification. The conflict is only “existential” for certain people: the NATO ideologues, the elitist leaders, the military-industrial complex, and the corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev. But it’s not existential for most other people who want to end this insane slaughter, grotesque wasting of public finances, and perilous flirting with nuclear war.

Significantly, the contrived EU summit in Kiev was not attended by Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto. In highly critical comments on the EU’s misplaced priorities, he said that other countries do not understand why Europe “has made this conflict global” and why people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America have to pay for it due to growing inflation, energy prices and unstable food supplies.

The Hungarian diplomat slammed the EU leaders for their double standards and hypocrisy, adding: “I can say that the world outside Europe is already really looking forward to the end of this war because they do not understand many things. They do not understand, for example, how it can be that when a war is not in Europe, the European Union, looking down with fantastic moral superiority, calls on the parties to peace, advocates negotiations and an immediate end to violence. However, when there is a war in Europe, the European Union incites the conflict and supplies weapons, and anyone who talks about peace is immediately stigmatized.”

At least two members of the EU and the NATO alliance – Hungary and Slovakia’s new government – are opposed to the absurd military and financial support fueling the war in Ukraine. Both countries want peace negotiations with Russia to be prioritized. There is an unavoidable sense that this common sense dissent will grow into a domino effect because it is the truth and has an unassailable moral force.

What the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated clearly to the Western public is just how morally bankrupt their governments and media have become. American and European elitist leaders may kid themselves a little longer by pretending there is no weariness and fatigue over their proxy war against Russia. The more they pretend the greater the eventual crash and downfall from public anger.

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment