Artificial intelligence can’t be trusted to auto-correct emails, much less make civilization-altering decisions about the use of lethal force, a peace activist told Sputnik on Wednesday. Putting autonomous weapons into high-risk situations only risks triggering a war nobody can back down from.
The US Department of Defense has unveiled a new AI drone program designed to close the gap with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Called “Replicator,” the program aims to introduce thousands of cheap and disposable – “atrittable” in Pentagon parlance – autonomous drones over the next two years.
“Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of US military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said on Tuesday at an industry event.
Noting that China’s core advantage is mass – “more ships, more missiles, more people” – Hicks said the US would “counter” the PLA’s mass “with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat.”
Michael Wong, the national vice president of Veterans for Peace, co-chair of the Veterans for Peace China Working Group, and co-founder of Pivot to Peace, a coalition of Chinese and peace communities, told Radio Sputnik that giving AI the power to both trigger and escalate military conflicts “poses a great danger to all of humanity.”
“We should be very concerned. Let me make three main points. First, China does not want an arms race. They’ve spoken at the UN about this and they’re very much against having such a race in the first place. And my second point is, if there is an arms race, if the United States is foolish enough to force it on China, China will win. And my third point is, these AI, sometimes called killer robots, are a danger to all of humanity because they interact with each other, they could conceivably interact with our nuclear systems, and it risks decisions being made by AI without the oversight of humans or controlled by humans that will escalate situations out of control,” he said.
“Zhang Jun, who is the China representative to the UN, spoke at the UN recently, and he urged the UN to lead in advocating for a peaceful use of AI, regulations and rules to control the development of AI and to direct AI for peaceful use, not for weapons. And he felt that standards need to be made to regulate and control AI. And UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres also said that interaction between AI, nuclear weapons, biotechnology, neurotechnology and robotics is deeply alarming,” Wong explained.
“And yes, if China were to have an arms race forced on them on AI, China’s actually slightly more advanced in some ways in AI than we are. They also are able to mass produce things in general much faster than we are. For example, here in California, we’ve been trying for over a decade to build high speed rail just from San Francisco to Los Angeles. We have not been able to do that. China has built thousands of miles of light rail all across the country, networking every major city in China in just about ten years. So in terms of mass producing anything, China will win if we engage in a race with China.”
Wong then pointed out a very practical example of why giving computers such authority is dangerous: they can’t even get things like spell-checking and auto-correcting text right.
“How much trouble do you have with your computer? Would you trust your computer to make life and death decisions for you?” he asked. “You know, I have trouble with my smartphone auto-correcting my email, making mistakes, and making them wrong. Yeah, you know. So do we want autonomous robots, killer robots out there deciding which humans to kill and when and why?”
“And also if two automated nationwide systems are fighting each other, they will be geared and programmed to win, which means that if they can’t win, they will escalate. And that means that escalation could easily spiral out of control. We could end up in a nuclear war. So this is very foolish. There is actually an organization I discovered called Stop Killer Robots dot org. If anybody wants to go to their website, they can get involved.”
For years, the US and its allies have engaged in so-called “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPS) in which they deliberately flout the territorial claims of other nations that they consider to be “excessive” by sailing US warships through those waters. In the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, such demonstrations have become commonplace, although China takes them seriously and has at times met FONOPS with a stern response, sending their warships and aircraft to within a few dozen feet of the violating US ship or plane.
Wong noted that the Pentagon’s “Replicator” program would increasingly put AI into such flashpoints.
“For Americans to understand how China feels, just imagine if China or Russia were doing freedom of navigation patrols up and down our coast. And when I say freedom of navigation patrols, I’m not even just talking about sending a cruiser or a destroyer through these waters every every few months, I’m talking about entire aircraft carrier battle groups, a whole armada of ships patrolling up and down China’s coast. And that’s very provocative. Just imagine if China or Russia were doing that to us. How would we feel? That would be a very obvious threat. The Americans, when they read the mainstream news, they hear China’s being aggressive, China’s being a threat. China is not on our borders, that China’s not running battle groups up and down our coast. We’re doing it to them,” he said.
“And we say, well, we’re defending our allies in the Pacific. Our allies are not under threat. China’s not threatening Japan. China is not threatening South Korea, China is not even threatening Taiwan.”
We keep saying China intends to invade Taiwan: China’s very clear they’ve been saying the same thing now that they’ve been saying for 50 years, which is ‘We want peaceful reunification with Taiwan eventually, no time frame named, and that we would only consider use of force if Taiwan were to declare independence.’ The United States keeps trying to push that red line. And if you look at polls in Taiwan, the polls always say a majority of people in Taiwan want to maintain the status quo. And the status quo is working for both sides just fine right now. You know, there’s been billions of dollars in trade that goes back and forth each year between the mainland and Taiwan, there’s thousands of tourists and businesspeople that go back and forth every year, the economies are thriving on both sides. The status quo is working just fine. So the United States is the one that keeps pushing the red line and trying to provoke a war just like we did in Ukraine,” Wong said.
“There’s no need for this. The United States basically is trying to stop China from its peaceful economic rise because they don’t want a large segment of the world not being under the thumb of US domination. It’s basically exploitation and imperialism of the Third World, of which China is still a part.”
“The US elite, especially right now, is composed of people who have a very arrogant and unrealistic view of America and the world. They keep introducing new weapons systems into Ukraine and thinking that that’s going to turn the tide of war. And each time they’re proven wrong, because whatever they do, the Russians will counter it,” he said. “And they’re applying that same logic to China, that they can come up with some new gimmick that can somehow defeat China.”
“This magical thinking is very, very dangerous. You know, there’s always been talk about pushing the edge of nuclear escalation in Ukraine, and they’re doing the same thing with China, they’re pushing the edge, constantly, of escalation. They’re introducing new systems, they’re getting more and more desperate and they’re engaging in more and more magical thinking, which is extremely dangerous. And once we have all these AI killer robots running around the planet – because not just China, but, you know, many countries can develop them – we’ll have something that we don’t have control over. It almost looks like the ‘Terminator’ series of movies that Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in.”
August 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, United States |
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Apparently, the Ukrainian government wants to disguise the dictatorial aspect of the regime by pretending to be a democracy. According to information reported by Western media, Kiev plans to organize elections next year. The news is surprising, as the country has been under martial law since February 2022, which would legitimize the postponement of the elections. However, the aim is believed to be to increase Zelensky’s popularity and improve his public image.
The information was published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais on August 28th. Anonymous sources familiar with the matter were consulted by journalists and said that elections will strengthen Zelensky, thus motivating a circumvention of the norms imposed by martial law.
Until recently, Zelensky ruled out elections, but now there are signs that he and his team are changing the strategy. In an interview with local TV a few days ago, Zelensky said: “The logic is that if you are protecting democracy, you must also protect it during the war. And one way to protect it is elections”. In the same vein, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the head of the Ukrainian parliament, stated in July that updates to Ukrainian martial law “would take place soon” as “democracy cannot stop”. Some analysts believe he was commenting on the possibility of calling elections even in times of war.
There are some additional reasons why Kiev is planning these measures. First, it is necessary to remember that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime is not sovereign, and all its decisions are taken under the direct influence of foreign agents. And recently there has been pressure from some Americans for Ukraine to implement “more democratic” policies to justify Western support. American politicians have already expressed, including in a personal meeting with Zelensky, their desire to see elections in Ukraine next year, which explains Ukraine’s readiness to revise its martial law.
“After a meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv on Wednesday, two senators from the Democratic Party, Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, as well as Republican Lindsey Graham, stressed that they considered it necessary for Ukrainian democracy to hold elections despite the country being at war. The Democratic position has a lot to do with the upcoming presidential election in the United States, which will be held in November 2024. The Republican Party has numerous prominent members (including former President Donald Trump) who have criticized military support for Kyiv, and who, since last spring, have used the argument that Ukraine is not so different from Russia, since the country has suspended democracy under the pretext of war”, El Pais’ article reads.
However, some sources also believe that the main reason for Kiev to take this action is a matter of domestic politics. Zelensky’s popularity has fallen recently, not just because of the conflict, but also because the Ukrainian president has failed to fulfill his main promise during the previous election campaign: to fight corruption. So, instead of thinking about concrete solutions to the corruption problem, Zelensky apparently plans to regain his popularity through new elections. The Ukrainian political scenario does not allow for the existence of a solid opposition coalition, given that many parties were banned and opposing politicians arrested, so it could be “easy” for Zelensky to achieve victory.
In this regard, Mark Savchuk, a political commentator and adviser to the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Office, told journalists:
“Zelenskiy is a great public relations man, especially with the international community, and we are lucky for that, but if there is now talk of going to the polls it is because of Ukrainian internal issues that he does not want to be aired abroad (…) Only in the judiciary have there been improvements, but neither Zelenskiy nor his team are prepared [to fight corruption]. Ordinary Ukrainians see that this is still a corrupt country, they experience it on a daily basis and there are always new stories about it in the news (…) Their team is inept and corrupt. We have a serious corruption problem and they believe that their popularity will slip, so they want to take advantage of their charisma now electorally.”
However, it will not be so easy to organize elections in the midst of the conflict. There are many difficulties to be faced by Ukrainian citizens in an election scenario. In all regions affected by the hostilities it will be virtually impossible for citizens to vote, as the possibility of moving around is severely limited due to the intensity of the fighting. This will restrict the voting area to only some western regions of Ukraine, where the population is more influenced by pro-NATO media and tends to support the regime – despite growing criticism of Zelensky’s administrative ability.
In practice, there are two risks for Zelensky with the plan to hold a new election. One of them is Zelensky losing the dispute. Although the Ukrainian opposition has been practically neutralized by the regime’s dictatorial policies, it has become increasingly clear that Western sponsors plan to replace Zelensky, which makes it possible for Washington to create the necessary conditions for another candidate to win. The other risk is that, even if he wins, Zelensky remains unpopular, with his victory looking like a mere bureaucratic procedure, given the absence of relevant opponents. In this scenario, the plan to make Ukraine look “more democratic” would fail.
However, in either case, Ukraine’s real problem will not be solved: the country will continue to work as a proxy for the US and fight an unwinnable war against a much stronger enemy, causing unnecessary suffering for the Ukrainian population.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and a researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
August 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Ukraine, United States |
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In the new era of biosecurity totalitarianism when authorities actively seek to silence even the most qualified dissenting voices, perhaps nothing could be more corrosive to public confidence than finding that a leading research institute participated in a deliberate fraud. The scientific misconduct in question is the intentional selection of an inappropriate animal model for a pre-clinical study and its subsequent concealment. Intentional scientific misconduct for financial gain is fraud.The organisation in question is the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest public funder of biomedical and behavioural research in the world, which describes itself as ‘the driving force behind decades of advances that improve health, revolutionize science, and serve society more broadly’. In this case, the interests served were the NIH’s own finances and those of a private company, Moderna.
The NIH was implicated by Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, in an April 1, 2020 webcast hosted by MIT Sloan Business School Finance Professor Andrew Lo and co-hosted by the Laboratory for Financial Engineering. Bancel’s presentation, ‘Accelerating mRNA medicines to patients’, was about the company’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 developed jointly over the course of a pre-Davos January 2020 weekend with the NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), led by Dr Anthony Fauci. Investor interest in the company and its vaccine was high. Moderna was leading the race for a Covid-19 vaccine with the NIH not long having announced that it had dosed the first human volunteer with mRNA-1273 in a Phase 1 clinical trial expected to run for six weeks.
An excited Bancel said, ‘What I want to share with you is just one set of data, but I think it is important. It is data that we published in our S-3 in February. This is the pre-clinical data on a related coronavirus MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, that many of you will recall happened in the Middle East, in Saudi, a few years ago and a few years later again in South Korea. So what you see here is a rabbit model.’
Bancel showed his audience graphs of data from a pre-clinical study conducted on rabbits and concluded: ‘We are very excited to see this data that was realised with the NIH, with the team of Dr Tony Fauci.’
One of the graphs showed antibody levels over time in a placebo group injected with saline and in single and double dose vaccine groups. But the antibody levels induced by the vaccine doses should have been compared with the levels of antibodies produced by exposure to the MERS virus itself, as a vaccine response must be shown to be superior to antibody levels induced by natural infection to be beneficial. Alongside was a second graph showing viral loads in the nose, throat and lungs following a challenge test in which the animals were exposed to ‘much higher doses of virus’ than during a natural infection. A caption on the slide claimed ‘We observed an induction of neutralising antibodies (my italics) that reduced viral load in the nose, throat and lungs of vaccinated animals’.
The rabbit study was not intended to fool drug regulators, who require an explanation of the relevance of the chosen animal model to the human disease the vaccine is meant to be protecting against. Customarily, before drug regulators permit clinical trials to begin with human volunteers, the efficacy of the candidate vaccine in preventing symptomatic clinical disease and/or pathologies associated with the disease must be demonstrated in a suitable animal model. The induction of antibodies is evidence of immunogenicity but in and of itself is not evidence of efficacy. Antibodies can be either neutralising or non-neutralising, the latter meaning that they fail to prevent reinfection following exposure to the targeted virus.
The choice of animal model for pre-clinical trials is an important one and consequently animal models must be validated. The scientific evidence that rabbits are an unsuitable model for testing the efficacy of a MERS vaccine had been in the public domain for years. In July 2019, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) hosted a workshop and subsequently commissioned IAVI (International Aids Vaccine Initiative) to prepare a report, ‘MERS-CoV standards, assays and animal models vaccine development landscape analysis’, which was funded by the NIAID, NIH, and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). So far as rabbits are concerned it concluded: ‘Despite the fact that rabbits shed MERS-CoV from their URT [upper respiratory tract], it appears that the New Zealand white rabbit model is neither suitable to study MERS-CoV transmission, nor is the model appropriate for studying clinical disease progression, given that rabbits remained asymptomatic after MERS-CoV inoculation.’
The CEPI report states: ‘Since concerns over SARS-related pathology led to a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clinical hold on vaccine studies, investigation of MERS-CoV vaccine candidates to induce virus-enhancing antibodies and harmful immune response in animal models could be informative before human clinical trials are initiated.’
The FDA ‘hold’ followed the October 2014 gain of function research moratorium on SARs, MERS and influenza ordered by the US government. However some research on MERS continued. As some people were believed to have asymptomatic MERS infections and rabbits were known to be asymptomatic when infected with it, researchers from the NIAID studied the phenomenon in rabbits. The NIH declared the experiments ‘were determined by the NIH to be urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security and as such, were exempted from the US Government Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses.’
The results of this asymptomatic study were published in 2017. The findings were not positive: ‘The rabbits developed antibodies against viral proteins that lacked neutralizing activity and the animals were not protected from reinfection (my emphasis).’ Further, the study found that even without an increase in viral RNA titers, reinfection resulted in increased inflammation of the lungs. The researchers warned: ‘Our data from the rabbit model suggests that people exposed to MERS-CoV who fail to develop a neutralizing antibody response, or persons whose neutralizing antibody titers have waned, may be at risk for severe lung disease on re-exposure to MERS-CoV.’
Bancel told the webinar audience that mRNA mimics natural infection without introducing the actual virus. But if exposure to the virus itself does not produce antibodies that protect against reinfection, there is no mechanism by which artificially stimulated antibodies can, thus rendering the company’s specific claim that the MERS vaccine induced ‘neutralizing antibodies’ untrue. The company repeated the claim in the S-3 referred to by Bancel, which was a $500 million supplementary stock offer made in February 2020, where investors were told: ‘We have demonstrated the ability to induce neutralizing antibodies that confer protection against viral challenge with a related coronavirus, MERS.’
Bancel said that Fauci’s team at NIAID helped Moderna realise the data, raising the question of why NIAID would accept the use of a model their own researchers who conducted the 2017 study knew to be unsuitable?
The week before the Phase 1 human clinical trial started in March 2020, STAT News reported on Moderna’s pre-clinical animal studies. None of the interviewees mentioned the MERS rabbit study that Moderna presented to investors and the US Patent Office the previous month. STAT News reported that they had been told by NIAID by email that ‘Virologists at NIAID tried the new vaccine [mRNA-1273] on run-of-the-mill lab mice, on the same day that the [phase 1] trial began enrolling participants’. They quoted Dr Barney Graham, the now retired Director of the NIAID Vaccine Research Centre, as saying that those mice showed the same sort of immune response generated by a similar mRNA vaccine against MERS, another coronavirus. ‘That level of immune response was sufficient to protect mice from MERS CoV infection,’ he wrote. Graham also said that mice susceptible to SARS-CoV2 ‘are being bred so that the colony can be enlarged’ adding that they ‘will be available for experiments within the next few weeks’.
Humanised mice are a validated study model for MERS, whereas rabbits are not, so if data from a mouse study of the mRNA-MERS vaccine was available, as Graham claimed, why wasn’t it used in Moderna’s February prospectus and the patent application?
Under the Research Collaboration Agreement between Moderna and NIAID, which has an effective date of July 19, 2019, NIAID was to conduct immunogenicity studies on Moderna’s mRNA-MERS vaccine in animals. During 2020, Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, the NIAID researcher assigned to run these studies for Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine mRNA-1273, wrote two papers: a June 11, 2020 preprint article entitled ‘SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccine development enabled by prototype pathogen approach’ and a second peer reviewed paper published in the journal Nature on August 5, 2020 entitled ‘SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine Development Enabled by Prototype Pathogen Preparedness’. In addition to mice studies on mRNA-1273, both papers cite the mRNA-MERS mouse study that Graham told STAT News about. Neither mentions an mRNA-MERS rabbit study. Oddly, neither is the mRNA-MERS vaccine’s alpha-numeric identifier given.
Heavily redacted copies of Moderna’s contracts with NIAID were released following a freedom of information application by AXIOS News. On December 17, 2019, Moderna signed a material transfer agreement (MTA) transferring ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly owned by NIAID and Moderna’ to Dr Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), directing him to perform animal challenge studies. The research programme is redacted. More suspiciously, so is the animal model stipulated in paragraph 3. Dr Baric did not respond when he was asked by me if he was commissioned to run the mRNA-MERS rabbit study.
Dr Baric is widely regarded as the world’s leading coronavirus researcher. He was a member of the World Health Organization working group on animal models to accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics. So too was Dr Graham who signed the MTA on behalf of NIAID. Given their expertise, the selection of a suitable animal model should have been a straightforward matter rather than a contentious one requiring concealment. One possible explanation for why experts would choose an inappropriate model is that they were in a hurry and suitable mice were not available. As per a 2015 paper in Virology, the first transgenic mice for MERS research were bred by Dr Agarwal at the University of Texas. Laboratory mice specially bred such as those developed by Dr Baric for his research into the original SARS are not susceptible to MERS. Baric certainly has the expertise to breed his own, given sufficient time. In 2020, he filed an invention report with UNC-CH (UNC ref 18752) for a mouse adapted model to test SARS-CoV-2 countermeasures.
On December 16, 2019, the day before Moderna signed the Baric MTA for the jointly owned Moderna/NIAID mRNA coronavirus vaccines, the company signed an amendment to the July 2019 NIAID research collaboration agreement. This amendment was countersigned by Vincent Feliccia, the branch chief of NIAID Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office, on January 13, 2020, the day the design of Moderna’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was finalised.
Intentional scientific misconduct for financial gain is fraud. In addition to publishing the mRNA-MERS rabbit data in its supplementary stock offer, Moderna used it to apply for a patent for an mRNA-betacoronavirus vaccine on February 28, 2020. The same patent covers Spikevax, its Covid-19 vaccine. The US Patent Office is notoriously poor at detecting scientific fraud in patent applications even when it is in the public domain. In 2014 it astonishingly issued a patent to Dr Hwang Woo-suk for a technique to clone human embryos although the associated journal paper had been retracted in 2005 due to the data having been faked. Unlike drug regulators, the Patent Office apparently does not require the use of validated animal models, or a justification for the selection of a given model.
As was widely reported in 2021, Moderna and NIAID became embroiled in a dispute over the NIAID’s ownership interest in mRNA-1273. The company omitted to include Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, Dr Barney Graham and his boss, Dr John Mascola, when it filed for its patent. An NIH spokesperson told CBS news: ‘Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it.’
As of the end of February 2023, Moderna is reported to have earned $36billion from Spikevax. Despite the ongoing patent dispute with NIAID, following negotiations in December 2022 the company gave NIH a $400 million ‘catch-up royalty payment’.
Under the provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act, US government researchers are also entitled to receive up to $150,000 in royalties annually if their inventions are commercialised. Meanwhile, despite Bancel’s initial enthusiasm for sharing the mRNA-MERS rabbit data, it soon disappeared. Perhaps that’s because it’s hard to see how their indemnity shield under the US Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act stretches that far.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | NIAID, NIH, United States |
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For example, they can’t be sued for providing false or dishonest information
This is an extraordinarily important commentary!
The gist of a current court case that you’ve likely never heard of, is that three heroic doctors are suing the FDA about the loss of their jobs, about their careers being derailed, about the loss of their reputation — all because their professional, scientific opinion as to what was in the best interest of their patients, was different than the political agenda of the FDA. (Here is a bit of background.)
What is at stake here could not be more significant, and it applies across the board to EVERY federal agency. The question is: do federal agencies have the unsupervised right to replace Science with political science? Put another way: can they act dishonestly, incompetently, etc. with essentially no meaningful consequences?
Here is the doctors’ Complaint. Although it was filed a year ago, it is now being appealed this week — and some fascinating audio clips have emerged. There are three judges on a panel, asking the attorney representing the FDA some probing questions.
Five of these short audio clips (3-5 minutes each) are posted here. (The recording of the full proceeding is here.)
IMO some of the key takeaway revelations (so far) are:
1 – The FDA seems to claim that their published warnings are little more than offhand observations. For example, their slamming of Ivermectin was evidently just casual commentary (what the FDA calls “informational”).
Note the title here, on this FDA page which is STILL up! It says “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19”.
Note 1: This is a deceptive headline because that article is mostly saying: a) citizens should not self-medicate, and b) using any veterinary medications can be dangerous. Both of these are legitimate concerns. So, if the FDA was honestly trying to benefit the public their heading should be: “Why You Should Not Self-Medicate Using Veterinary-Grade Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19”. BIG DIFFERENCE!
Note 2: This FDA page has changed quite a bit over time. Here is the 2021 version.
Note 3: The current page makes outright false statements like: “Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications.” I’m one of the few people who has taken the time to put together a spreadsheet of ALL the studies on ALL the major COVID early treatment therapies: see it here.
There have now been 99 Ivermectin scientific studies, and the overall early treatment effectiveness is 62%. IVM’s extensive safety record is extraordinary, with adverse effects (e.g., see here) in the ballpark of only one in a million usages!
Now, also on my spreadsheet, compare what the FDA has approved for early treatment of COVID-19 therapy: Paxlovid = 32% effective with these adverse safety issues, and Molnupiravir = 16% effective with these problematic safety issues!
Despite these LARGE benefits of Ivermectin in effectiveness and safety, the FDA continues to say that “Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective” for early treatment of COVID-19. This is stunningly inaccurate.
Note 4: Even though the FDA now has access to 99 Ivermectin studies, their statement against Ivermectin is stronger now than when the page originally appeared in 2021! IMO this is what happens when a federal agency feels that there is no meaningful oversight, so effectively they can say anything they want.
2 – The FDA says that Courts have no business in reviewing anything they say or do!
Considering the above facts in #1, it’s obvious why this would be their self-serving position. Listen carefully to the second short audio clip, where the FDA’s attorney appears to say that the FDA’s communication to the public can be knowingly false, dishonest, etc. with no oversight or consequences — even when deaths result!
Regretfully, to date, the courts have played along with this game of charades. For example, the Chevron case is frequently cited by non-aggressive attorneys to say that courts will stay out of determining whether FDA processes, documents, and claims are legal, accurate, honest, warranted, etc.
However, that is an oversimplified opinion. Even the Chevron case states that the FDA’s actions must be “reasonable” — but that is rarely argued. BTW, the case we are discussing here would never have been filed if the doctors’ attorneys bought into the bogus idea that federal agencies have unlimited deference. Kudos to them that they did not accept that absurd argument!
Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but based on the judges’ questions and comments in these clips, it seems to me that this case might eventually upend Chevron. That would be EXTRAORDINARILY beneficial for US citizens, as it would apply to all national policies: from immigration to education, energy to climate change, etc.
3 – The FDA asserts that the only recourse that US citizens have about even egregious errors and deceptions by the FDA is through the “political process.” Astounding!
4 – The FDA indicated that the “political process” means that citizens need to elect a competent and attentive President, whose responsibility it is to see that the FDA acts responsibly — or else. The flip side is that when we do not have such a President, all federal agencies have a four-year time period to wreak whatever political havoc that suits them — again, across the board, and without real consequences to the guilty parties.
5 – The FDA’s attorney implied that there would be no compensation given for inaccurate or knowingly false FDA statements — including those that lead to Americans unnecessarily dying — other than an FDA person may lose their job.
6 – Based on these select audio clips, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans likely died needlessly due to the FDA’s COVID actions and inactions (see here), was not fully addressed. Hopefully, this will be brought up in this trial.
7 – In clip #3, the FDA attorney makes the startling claim that the FDA has the authority to give citizens medical advice! How is that possible when they know nothing of the medical history of any American citizen? Further, once they assert that right, how is a conflict resolved between what the FDA says and what a citizen’s medical provider says? That is one of the major issues in this important case.
8 – In clip #4, the FDA attorney acknowledges that doctors have lost their jobs, etc. due to their scientific conclusions on such matters as Ivermectin, and their science-based actions that they believed were in the best interest of their patients. However, the FDA attorney then stated that no losses, etc. were due to anything the FDA did. (!)
……….
Note that a lot of the bad behavior with the FDA (and CDC) would be reduced if the Medical Establishment refused to play politics and instead supported real Science for the public. Regretfully, that has not happened and the COVID-19 fiasco exposed this ugly underbelly. See my Report on the COVID failings of the Medical Establishment.
In another Report, I compared the FDA’s approval process for Remdesivir to Ivermectin. This appears to show stunning incompetence at the FDA.
I have made this point before, but it’s worth repeating. The war we are engaged in is that powerful Left-wing forces (exterior and from within) are trying to take America down. One of their primary strategies to do this is to replace Science with political science. That is what this case is about, as the FDA is specifically arguing that they have the right to scrap Science and substitute political science — with impunity!
Draw your own conclusions, but to me, this case is like a Molotov cocktail thrown into the Federal Government bureaucracy. Astoundingly, all three branches of our government are complicit with this nonsense.
Some obvious questions that need to be answered and fixed are: 1) How did Congress give pharmaceutical companies such broad protections against self-serving unscientific actions? 2) How did the Executive branch allow agencies like the FDA to be run by parties that they are supposed to regulate? 3) How did our Judicial system allow bad actor agencies to arrange to have no real legal oversight?
Considering that these failings are applicable to multiple federal agencies, is there any question why such things as COVID policies (and energy, and climate, and education, and immigration, and elections, etc., etc.) are a disaster?
Hopefully, this lawsuit will crack open the door to fixing this horrific mess…
……….
PS — What needs to be done now :
1) Competent attorneys should file friend of the court briefs to support this nationally important case. Overturning the Chevron precedent would have extraordinarily positive benefits for almost ALL US citizens.
2) Competent federal legislators should introduce a “Save America” bill (aka Agency Oversight Act). This legislation will rein in ALL federal agencies, by providing timely and meaningful oversight (plus real penalties) to them all.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | CDC, Covid-19, FDA, Ivermectin, United States |
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Election season will soon be in full swing. And so will censorship demands
An organization under the financial umbrella of outspoken billionaire George Soros is mounting a brazen bid to implement a perilous cap on free speech in America’s digital public square. Today, the battle lines are being drawn with Common Cause, a group bankrolled by Soros, gleefully trumpeting its success in nurturing a potent alliance with Big Tech to quash election “disinformation.”
Expounding on its tactics in a recent press release titled “Election Disinformation in 2022 and What We Learned for 2024,” Common Cause masterfully revealed its ironic contradiction: a group professing to be a champion of democracy while vigorously advocating for restrictions on free speech.
The last time social media platforms pushed for election related censorship, we all know how that turned out.
Proudly recounting its successful call for Big Tech to suppress political content it disagrees with, Common Cause outlined its anti-free speech strategy, stating that the “continuing threat of election disinformation” necessitated the silencing of certain voices via Twitter and Facebook.
The group proposed a timeline to moderate and downrank online discourse, especially focusing on the suppression of what they believe to be “false statements” two months ahead of an election, and showed glaring bias by repeatedly accusing Republicans of purveying election untruths.
In the document, the group points a finger at the January 6 event as evidence of misplaced election integrity concerns, attributing this to right-wing misinformation.
Common Cause detailed how it unilaterally flagged and removed alleged “election disinformation” across social media platforms, with no regard for the principle of open discourse.
While the boast is loud about influencing Big Tech’s actions for now, Common Cause ominously remarks that these platforms still need to increase their censorship efforts ahead of future elections, chillingly suggesting that the present censorship should be just the tip of the iceberg.
Elon Musk has pledged to initiate lawsuits against NGOs financed by philanthropist George Soros, claiming they violate free speech rights. This comes on the heels of Musk filing a legal case against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), alleging that the organization is spreading inaccurate and deceptive information about X content with the aim of driving away advertisers through a manipulative “fear campaign.”
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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In Washington, conning the American people is always considered a victimless crime. The latest DC shellshocker is the National Archives blocking release of 5,000+ emails Vice President Joe Biden wrote using a pseudonym to shroud Biden family graft.
In ancient Rome, the consul Scipio was accused of abusing his power. He stood in front of the Senate, pulled out the written records of his reign and tore them to pieces. Scipio’s reputation was so impeccable that the audience cheered him, regardless of his destruction of evidence.
Bizarrely, this is the same template the liberal media use to whitewash President Biden. Americans don’t need to know the facts of how Biden has used his power because his intentions are good.
But the only reason his intentions appear good is because we don’t have the facts.
Consider the latest wacky revelations on the nom de crook. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Archives admitted there are 5,400 emails Biden apparently sent under fake names including robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.
A few of those emails have trickled out from other sources, revealing messages tied to Hunter Biden’s Ukraine hustle. But the Archives is refusing to reveal thousands of other messages despite disclosure demands from the House Oversight Committee.
Biden declared in 2019 that there was “an absolute wall” between Biden family foreign schemes and his own role as vice president. Apparently, the “absolute wall” only applied to the specific name “Joe Biden.”
Did Biden take a class in law school on Incognito Influence Peddling or what?
This is the second Biden scandal recently exposed. In 2018, Biden bragged to a Council on Foreign Relations audience that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless that government immediately fired its chief prosecutor in December 2015.
Biden claimed the prosecutor was corrupt, yet State Department and other documents released last week reveal that the Ukrainian prosecutor had Washington’s trust. But that prosecutor was closing in on Burisma, threatening the million dollars a year in payoffs pocketed by Hunter Biden.
If those documents had surfaced during the first Trump impeachment case in late 2019, Donald Trump’s behavior would have appeared less conniving and Biden would have looked more conniving. (Both of them would still have looked like hell.)
Two years after Biden finagled that firing to purify the US ally, Ukraine was ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe except for Russia.
Biden owes his 2020 presidential election victory to pervasive, perpetual federal coverups. The Hunter Biden laptop coverup was only the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg.
How many other Biden scandals are scattered like unexploded cluster bombs throughout federal filing cabinets inside the Beltway?
How many other FBI memos exist on potential Biden bribes that we have not heard about?
How many Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports on massive wire transfers from squirrely foreign entities to Biden Inc. have not surfaced?
Are there other IRS investigations that were squelched without a trace?
Federal secrecy and coverups switched more votes in 2020 than Trump’s antics in Georgia and elsewhere ever could have flipped. Biden’s yammering about how his election was “the will of the people” looks more deranged with each new exposé of his pre-election abuses.
Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared in 2019, “If people don’t have the facts, democracy doesn’t work.” Why bother having a national election if the result merely reveals how many voters were hornswoggled by secrets the feds kept from them?
Politics has rarely been an honest business, but the combination of pervasive secrecy and perpetual deceit makes a mockery of every high-school civics-class lesson.
Will the National Archives go to the barricades to defend the privacy interest of Joe Biden’s imaginary friends? Will dogged investigators, congressional committees and whistleblowers obliterate the tattered remnants of Team Biden’s credibility? Will the liberal media cease invoking the president’s good intentions to expunge his crimes?
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | United States |
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The US proxy war against Russia is likely to become an open war within the next year, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Wednesday. The ruling Democrats need the war to keep power and too many Republicans are willing to go along, he added.
“They will do anything to win,” Carlson said in an hour-long interview with radio host Adam Carrolla. He argued that another coronavirus lockdown is unlikely, as too many people would refuse to comply, so “they’re going to go to war with Russia, that’s what they’re going to do.”
“There will be a hot war between the US and Russia in the next year,” Carlson said. “I don’t think we’ll win it.”
“We’re already at war with Russia, of course, we’re funding their enemies,” he added. The US has allocated over $130 billion for Kiev over the past 18 months for weapons, military equipment, ammunition, and the salaries of government officials.
“I think that could easily happen,” the former cable TV host continued. “I think we could ‘Tonkin Gulf’ our way into it, where all of a sudden missiles land in Poland, ‘The Russians did it! Our NATO ally has been attacked! We’re going to war’! I can see that happening very easily.”
In August 1964, the US fabricated an incident with the North Vietnamese navy in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext to deploy ground troops in South Vietnam. The scenario Carlson described already happened as well, when a Ukrainian air-defense missile struck a village across the Polish border last November, killing two local civilians. Warsaw and Washington were quick to debunk Kiev’s claim that it had been a Russian strike, however.
Carlson argued that the US could “force a peace in Ukraine tonight” by cutting off Kiev’s funding.
“Otherwise, and I would bet my house on it, we are going to war with Russia,” he said. “And, of course, the stakes are everything. Life on the planet. These are the two biggest nuclear arsenals in the world, facing off against each other.”
The US has “already lost control of the world – the American empire is in freefall right now – and we’re going to lose the US dollar, and when that happens we’re going to have real poverty here, like Great Depression-level poverty. And it comes from this war,” Carlson told Carolla. He added that most Americans may not be able to see that, but it’s “super obvious” when one leaves the US, even for a short while.
Moreover, he argued, the US “crushed” the German economy “when the Biden administration blew up Nord Stream” last September, and its Ukraine policies have done a lot to undermine Western Europe, Washington’s only real ally in the world.
Carlson has just returned from Hungary, where he took part in a conference and interviewed Prime Minister Viktor Orban for his new show on X, formerly Twitter. Carlson made Elon Musk’s social media platform his new home after Fox News canceled his top-rated evening show in April, for reasons that have never been made public.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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In the first 2024 Republican presidential debate last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted his time in Iraq. “I learned in the military, I was assigned with U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq, that you focus on the mission above all else, you can’t get distracted,” he declared. Later in the debate he stated, “I’m somebody that volunteered to serve, inspired by September 11 and I deployed to Iraq alongside U.S. Navy SEALs in places like Fallujah, Ramadi…”
Some viewers had the impression that DeSantis was a Seal, but he was actually a Harvard Law School graduate who was a Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) alongside the Seals. DeSantis was deployed to Iraq in 2007 and 2008, during President George W. Bush’s “surge” (intended to postpone the obvious failure of the war until after Bush’s second term ended).
The American troops that Bush sent to Iraq were injected into a conflict where it was often nearly impossible to distinguish friend from foe—what author Robert Jay Lifton labeled “atrocity-producing situations.” Invoking his time in Fallujah, DeSantis may be confident that few Americans recall the carnage that preceded his time there.
Fallujah was hammered by two U.S. assaults in 2004. The first attack was launched in April 2004 in retaliation for the killings of four contractors for Blackwater, a company that became renowned for killing innocent Iraqis. After their corpses were dragged through the street, the Bush administration demanded vengeance.
President Bush reportedly gave the order: “I want heads to roll.” He raved at Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez during a video conference, “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!…Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out!”
U.S. forces quickly placed the entire city under siege. The British Guardian reported;
“The U.S. soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or they would be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were stopped at the U.S. military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.”
The city was blasted by artillery barrages, F–16 jets, and AC–130 Spectre planes which pumped 4,000 rounds a minute into selected targets. Adam Kokesh, who fought in Fallujah as a Marine Corps sergeant, later commented: “During the siege of Fallujah, we changed rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear. At one point, we imposed a curfew on the city, and were told to fire at anything that moved in the dark.”
The Bush administration decided to crush the city—but not until after Bush was safely reelected. In the weeks after Election Day, U.S. Army soldiers and Marines smashed the city of Fallujah, Iraq, killing an unknown number of civilians and leaving the city a burnt-out ruin. Marine Col. Gary Brandl explained the U.S. holy mission: “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Fallujah and we’re going to destroy him.”
Up to 50,000 civilians remained in Fallujah at the time of the second U.S. assault. At a November 8, 2004 press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that “Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers said three days later that Fallujah “looks like a ghost town [because] the Iraqi government gave instructions to the citizens of Fallujah to stay indoors.”
Supposedly, Iraqi civilians would be safe even if when American troops went house to house “clearing” insurgents out. However, three years later, during the trials for killings elsewhere in Iraq, Marines continually invoked the Fallujah Rules of Engagement to justify their actions. Marine Corporal Justin Sharratt, who was indicted for murdering three civilians in Haditha (the charges were later dropped), explained in a 2007 interview with PBS:
“For the push of Fallujah, there [were no civilians]. We were told before we went in that if it moved, it dies… About a month before we went into the city of Fallujah, we sent out flyers… We let the population know that we were coming in on this date, and if you were left in the city, you were going to die.”
The interviewer asked, “Was the procedure for clearing a house in Fallujah different from other house clearing in Iraq?” Sharratt replied, “Yes. The difference between clearing houses in Fallujah was that the entire city was deemed hostile. So every house we went into, we prepped with frags and we went in shooting.” Thus, the Marines were preemptively justified in killing everyone inside—no questions asked. Former Congressman Duncan Hunter admitted in 2019, “I was an artillery officer, and we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians…probably killed women and children.”
The U.S. attack left much of Fallujah looking like a lunar landscape, with near-total destruction as far as the eye could see. Yet, regardless of how many rows of houses the United States flattened in the city, accusations that the United States killed noncombatants were false by definition. Because the U.S. government refused to count civilian casualties, they did not exist. And anyone who claimed to count them was slandering the United States and aiding the terrorists.
The carnage the U.S. forces inflicted on Fallujah was supposedly not massive retaliation but the well-disguised triumph of hope and freedom. Bush announced on December 1, “In Fallujah and elsewhere, our coalition and Iraqi forces are on the offensive, and we are delivering a message: Freedom, not oppression, is the future of Iraq… A long night of terror and tyranny in that region is ending, and a new day of freedom and hope and self-government is on the way.” But it is tricky for corpses to be hopeful.
During DeSantis’ first campaign to become Florida’s governor in 2018, his first words in his first televised advertisement were, “Ron DeSantis, Iraq War veteran.” The St. Augustine Record noted in 2018, “DeSantis was responsible for helping ensure that the missions of Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets in that wide swath of the Western Euphrates River Valley were planned according to the rule of law and that captured detainees were humanely treated.”
Most of the details of DeSantis’ time in Iraq have not been disclosed. But he was deployed into an area where stunning detainee abuses by the U.S. Army had previously been reported. In September 2005, Americans learned that three 82nd Airborne Division soldiers complained about Army cooks and other off-duty troops, for amusement and sport, routinely physically beating Iraqi detainees being held near Fallujah. One sergeant explained, “We would give [detainees] blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.” The sergeant said that there were no problems as long as no detainees “came up dead… We kept it to broken arms and legs.” Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne repeatedly sought to get guidance from superiors on the standards for lawful and humane treatment of detainees. He, like other officers, never received clear guidelines. Fishback publicly complained, “I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment.”
It would be most helpful to American voters to learn more about what exactly Ron DeSantis did during his time in Iraq. Prior to his time in Iraq, he volunteered to be a legal advisor at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In a 2018 interview for CBS Miami, he stated that one of his tasks was to clarify “the rules for force feeding detainees.” He also stated, “What I learned from [Gitmo] and I took to Iraq—they are using things like [false charges of] detainee abuse offensively against us—it was a tactic, technique, and procedure.” A Vice documentary that covered DeSantis’ role at Gitmo was scheduled for broadcast on Showtime but the May 28 air date was canceled on the day after DeSantis announced his presidential campaign.
The Pentagon’s records on DeSantis’ years as a JAG could help voters judge his candidacy for the presidency. But Americans would be damn fools to expect transparency from the feds or from most political candidates.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iraq, United States |
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President Vladimir Putin had brought up the possibility of Russia resuming nuclear tests as a message to the US, Russian diplomat Dmitry Glukhov told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
“I wish to underscore that the aforementioned statement by the Russian president about the hypothetical possibility of our country resuming nuclear tests, mentioned during his speech to the federal legislature, needs to be understood solely in the context of our response to the destructive actions of the US. It was a preventive signal to Washington,” said Glukhov.
“We will resort to such a step only if the US does it first,” the diplomat added.
Glukhov was responding to accusations aired by US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Bonnie Jenkins, who claimed that Putin’s speech from February amounted to a threat of renewed atomic testing.
Putin had told Russian lawmakers that Moscow had intelligence that the US was preparing to test new nuclear warheads, and instructed Rosatom and the Russian Defense Ministry to prepare for resumption of tests should the Americans do so.
In the same speech, Putin announced that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, accusing the US of blocking inspections while using Ukraine for a proxy war against Russia. Several Ukrainian drones had just attacked an airbase housing Russian strategic bombers.
The US was the only country to ever use nuclear weapons, leads the world in the number of nuclear tests, and is refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Glukhov reminded the General Assembly.
Russia has both signed and ratified the agreement, adopted by the UNGA in 1996. However, some Russian outlets reported earlier this month that Moscow was contemplating withdrawal from the treaty, in order to be on par with the US.
The Soviet Union carried out its last nuclear test in 1990, while the last US test of the kind was in 1992.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Russia, United States |
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Ep. 20 Hungary shares a border with Ukraine. We traveled to Budapest to speak with the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
August 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Russophobia | Hungary, Ukraine, United States |
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Kaiser Permanente and Lionsgate Studios in California reversed mask mandate policies last week, just a few days after imposing them.
Kaiser Permanente, the largest healthcare provider in California, on Aug. 22 announced it had “reintroduced a mask mandate for physicians, staff, patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area,” in a statement obtained by The Press Democrat.
Kaiser said the mandate was in response to an increase in the number of patients testing positive for COVID-19.
But just two days later, on Aug. 24, Kaiser officials told The Press Democrat the mask reinstatement applied only to physicians and staff, not to patients and visitors.
“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.
It also said, “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”
But Kaiser also confirmed to Becker’s Hospital Review on Aug. 23 that it had reintroduced the mask mandate.
The Press Democrat reported the reversal happened after people noticed many visitors to the hospital were not masking.
Local media reported that some Northern California residents supported the mask mandate policy when it was first announced, but others were skeptical and frustrated in response to the mandate announcement.
“I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020,” said Carmichael resident Craig Roberts.
Lionsgate also reverses mandate
Lionsgate on Friday also notified employees that the mask mandate it had imposed about a week prior for employees on the third and fifth floors of the studio’s five-story office building in Santa Monica was over, Deadline reported.
Lionsgate imposed the mandate after multiple people in its Santa Monica headquarters came down with COVID-19. The company told Deadline it imposed the mandate in compliance with rules set by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Lionsgate told The Wrap the health department informed the company it could lift the mask requirement after several days of no new infections.
The company also distanced itself from responsibility for the mandate, stating that:
“Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”
In addition to mandating “a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95),” every Lionsgate employee was required to perform a daily self-screening before coming to the office and was told to stay home if they exhibited any symptoms or had traveled internationally in the last 10 days.
Lionsgate was conducting contact tracing and providing at home COVID-19 test kits. It is unclear if those practices are still required.
Reversals come amid pushback and more evidence of mask failures
The mask policy reversals come amid pushback from critics after a growing number of businesses and hospitals in recent weeks reinstituted mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and a new report warned that broader mandates may be coming this fall.
Many doctors have also called for mask mandates to return to healthcare settings.
Meanwhile, documents recently released from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that public health officials privately questioned the effectiveness of masks and the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoting their use.
And an NIH study suggested surgical N95 masks, held up as the gold standard for COVID-19 protection, may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, the Daily Mail reported.
The study found the chemicals released by these masks had 8 times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds, which can cause symptoms ranging from headaches and nausea to organ damage and cancer, with prolonged use.
Since the original mandates ended, several studies concluded the mandate policies failed to achieve their promised results.
The Wall Street Journal on Monday published an op-ed criticizing mask mandates.
And dissenters have taken to X (formerly Twitter), calling on people not to comply with mandates.
“This is what can be done when people stand together against tyrannical, unscientific and dangerous so-called public health policies,” author and health freedom activist Meryl Dorey wrote in a Substack post reporting on the policy reversals.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
August 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | Covid-19, Human rights, United States |
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The Kyiv Post reported on Zelensky’s latest TV interview here, the highlights of which will be shared below and then analyzed in the larger context of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine:
* Zelensky is tacitly walking back his envisaged maximalist endgame by already declaring victory
– “It’s already clear that he [Putin] has not occupied us as he wanted. We did it, [we defended against his attack], this is already a great victory for the people.”
* He’s preparing the public for freezing the conflict along the lines of the Israeli-Palestinian one
– “We are ready to fight for a long time without losing people. It can be so. Minimize casualties following Israel’s example. You can live like that.”
* Ukraine believes that it’ll lose Western support if it invades Russia’s pre-2014 territory
– “There would be a big risk that we would be definitely left alone and on our own.”
* The “Israeli model” will likely characterize US-Ukrainian ties for the indefinite future
– “From the US, we probably have the Israeli model, where there are weapons, technologies, training, and financial aid.”
* Hard and soft security guarantees are actively being pursued
– “With the United States, it will be a more powerful bilateral treaty, with Britain – a strong one. There are states that simply do not have weapons, but they have finances, serious sanctions in case of repeated aggression.”
* An official NATO intervention could trigger World War III
– “We don’t need them, because it would be a NATO war, and that would mean the Third World War.”
* Ukraine might abandon military means for reconquering Crimea
– “I believe that it’s possible to politically push for the demilitarization of Russia on the territory of the Ukrainian Crimea. That would be better. Any combat would still have losses [casualties], wherever it is. Everything must be calculated.”
* Elections can be held next year if the West foots the bill and observers are sent to the trenches
– “If you [allies] are ready to give me 5 billion because I can’t just take 5 billion from the state budget. It seems to me that this is the amount needed to hold elections at a normal time. And in wartime, I don’t know what this amount is, that’s why I said – if the US and Europe give us financial support.
I’m sorry, I’m not asking for anything. I will not hold elections on credit. I will not take money from weapons and give it for elections either. The most important thing: let’s take risks together. The observers should then be in the trenches, they will need to be sent to the front line”
* Ukraine is now allegedly producing NATO weapon systems
– “We have domestic artillery on the battlefield today, using NATO-standard 155mm shells, which have never been seen before in Ukraine. We now have production and production of not one system, but several systems.”
These highlights show how drastically the conflict’s dynamics have shifted in the nearly three months since the counteroffensive began.
The first takeaway from Zelensky’s interview is that the counteroffensive failed, which is why he’s preparing the public for freezing the conflict. This is being achieved by already declaring victory, suggesting that Crimea can be reconquered through political means instead of military ones on the pretext of saving his soldiers’ lives, and referencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a future model. Ahead of that scenario, he wants to reassure his people that the West will still ensure their security.
To that end, he brought up the “Israeli model” as the likely way forward for US-Ukrainian relations together with a mix of hard and soft security guarantees from other NATO countries. Zelensky also appears aware of the Western public’s growing concerns that he’s leading everyone to World War III, which might be why he explicitly ruled out invading Russia’s pre-2014 territory together with denying that he has any interest in NATO formally intervening in his side’s support.
About that, it’s already involved in this conflict via the arms, intelligence, logistics, mercenary, training, and other forms of support that it’s provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but this is still below the level of dispatching uniformed troops to kill Russian soldiers. It also can’t be discounted that he’s worried about Poland unilaterally intervening in Western Ukraine, which readers can learn more about here and here, and that could be another reason why he warned that NATO troops could lead to World War III.
As for holding the now-delayed parliamentary elections sometime next year and not delaying the upcoming presidential ones that are scheduled for spring, this is a direct result of the pressure that Senator Lindsey Graham exerted on Zelensky during their meeting in Kiev last week. It’s the latest evidence that the failed counteroffensive is widening preexisting differences between the US and Ukraine all across the board, in this case over superficial commitments to “democracy”.
Readers can learn more about the latest difficulties in their ties by reviewing the following analyses:
* “A Vicious Blame Game Is Breaking Out After The Counteroffensive Predictably Failed”
* “US Policymakers Are Caught In A Dilemma Of Their Own Making After The Failed Counteroffensive”
* “The NYT & WSJ’s Critical Articles About Kiev’s Counteroffensive Explain Why It Failed”
In sum, both sides know that the counteroffensive failed, but neither wants to take responsibility for this.
A ceasefire of some sort therefore appears inevitable. The problem, however, is that freezing the conflict entails considerable reputational damage to the American and Ukrainian leaderships. Neither has yet to feel comfortable enough that their people fully blame the other for this debacle, hence why they remain reluctant to take the first step in what might then become a fast-moving process. It’s for this reason why they continue blaming each other and will likely continue doing so for the next few months at least.
President Putin made it clear on three occasions in mid-June that he was still interested in politically resolving the proxy war, but Zelensky’s latest claim that Ukraine is allegedly producing NATO weapon systems means that his reputation might also be damaged if he agrees to a ceasefire. After all, the special operation was partly commenced to demilitarize Ukraine and specifically eliminate the threat that NATO’s clandestine expansion there posed to Russia’s objective national security interests.
With Ukraine now openly producing NATO weapons systems, President Putin either has to ensure that these facilities are destroyed before agreeing to a ceasefire or informally freezing the conflict otherwise he stands to “lose face” among his domestic audience by tolerating this latent military threat. It might also be the case that Zelensky is just bluffing and could have lied about this just to make his Russian counterpart look bad in the event of a ceasefire, however, though nobody can really say for sure.
In any case, the Ukrainian leader’s latest TV interview drove home the point that the conflict’s dynamics have drastically shifted. Zelensky is clearly preparing his people for a ceasefire, but he’s also talking about security guarantees from NATO and his country’s alleged production of its weapon systems, both of which will rankle Russia. The US’ recent elections pressure on him is for purely soft power purposes, but it still shows that their differences on a host of issues are growing after the failed counteroffensive.
Looking forward, observers can expect the aforesaid to widen, but not to the point of rupturing their relations. The US-Ukrainian blame game will intensify during this period too as each side prepares their people for the seemingly inevitable scenario of freezing the conflict. As this is happening, Russia might also begin preparing its own people for the same, which could move the conflict towards the Israeli-Palestinian model by sometime next year unless something serious happens to derail this trajectory.
August 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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