The Money Trails of the Pandemic Planning Racket
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | July 30, 2023
The Justice Department has dismissed all charges related to campaign finance leveled against Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and CEO of the Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX. The grounds were a bit unusual. Officials in the Bahamas said that such charges were not the basis of the extradition. “The Bahamas did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count,” said the Justice Department. “Accordingly, in keeping with its treaty obligations to the Bahamas, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count.”
And just like that, charges are gone. What’s strange is that this claim jumps out in the financial trail of FTX. Indeed, it seems obvious. It was an impressive caper. FTX said it practiced “effective altruism” and so intended to give away $1 billion to charity. It raised venture funding from many sources that wanted to pay off politicians but were restricted from doing so by law. FTX classified this as investment and then altruistically gave money to many charities involved in “pandemic planning” but many were not real charities. They were 501c4s that fund political campaigns. With just a few hops in the money trail, this mechanism allowed vast funding of mostly Democratic political interests in advance of the 2020 election.
Once you have a look at the details and players (and we have done so in two articles here and here), it becomes clear that “effective altruism” was simply a cover for a politically driven money scheme. FTX was founded and then went into bankruptcy exactly in keeping with this purpose. It remains possible that SBF will face trouble over claims of wire fraud but that could be plea-bargained away. We shall see. What’s striking is that the most obvious issues have been swept away on a legal technicality.
Central to the charity of FTX was the issue of pandemic planning, or so they said. SBF’s brother ran a pandemic organization. Linda Fried, Sam’s aunt on his mother’s side, was Dean of the School of Public Health at Columbia University and on the board of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Aging. SBF’s girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s mother is a professor of economics at MIT with a research specialization in the pharmaceutical industry while her father has written at least four papers on epidemiological modeling.
The “Together Trial” was a trial of therapeutics that ended up inveighing against Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine and was generously funded by FTX together with the Koch Foundation. The head of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, received $150,000 from FTX to write SBF’s autobiography. HelixNano, a vaccine company that claims to be developing mutation-resistant vaccines, received $10M in funding from FTX Future Fund. And Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: This institution ran the Event 201 lockdown tabletop exercise in 2019, and received at least $175,000 for a single employee, from FTX coffers.
This barely scratches the surface and we would like to know more. It would be glorious if the New York Times or some other big media organ would assign 50 reporters to dig deeper, as they did with the supposed Trump-Russia connection that turned up nothing after years of high dudgeon. But nope: all we get is silence. In contrast, the national media mostly treats SBF as a confused genius who got in over his head because his wonderful company achieved too much too fast.
How the national media treats money trails entirely depends on the political drive behind the effort. In the second term of the Reagan administration, the executive branch became involved in an effort to fund the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua in the name of fighting the spread of Soviet influence and winning the Cold War. Congress had specifically stopped these funding efforts so the Reaganites turned to the usual suite of shell companies, friendly governments, intelligence agencies, and secure money-movers to get the cash to those who wanted it.
The result was many years of intense investigation. Every center-left and left-wing outfit was all over the Iran-Contra money scandal, seeking receipts and subjecting the major players like Oliver North to sworn Congressional testimony. There was nothing wrong with this and everything right: in the American system, the executive branch cannot fund global projects without the approval of Congress. The search to ferret out the scandals seemed like part of the effort to clean up government.
Here we are nearly 40 years later and the Biden administration is embroiled in an astonishing version of something similar, with familial connections, shell companies, cash moving here and there, foreign governments like Ukraine, and intelligence agencies serving as essential tools of covering it all up. It was the Hunter Biden laptop that provided the clues and that led to more receipts of an amazing nature. This week I received a call from a man who was instrumental in discovering the laptop who explained many of the funding connections but after about 15 minutes of detail I could not keep up even though he went on for another 30 minutes. It was all mind-boggling. This one makes the Iran-Contra scandal seem like the age of innocence.
How deep does this rabbit hole go? Consider the attacks on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the attempt to close the primary such that only Biden can win it? The effort is primarily funded by Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook which itself cooperated very closely with the federal government in suppressing contrary opinions on lockdowns and vaccines. Liam Sturgess explains:
The group behind the campaign is the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee (PAC) that has been described as “the largest voter contact organization in the country.” It has a series of sub-organizations operating under different names, two of which are also engaged in the BAN RFK petition: Stop Republicans and Progressive Takeover. … Using the most recent publicly-available data from OpenSecrets, we discovered that the single largest donation to the PTP came from Dustin Moskovitz.
Moskovitz also co-founded a project management application called Asana in 2008. Between these two massively profitable companies, Moskovitz generated so much wealth that he was identified by Forbes in 2011 as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, even beating out Zuckerberg.
After earning his fortune in Big Tech, Moskovitz and his future wife, Cari Tuna, signed on to “The Giving Pledge,” committing to give away the vast majority of their money before the end of their lives. The Giving Pledge was the creation of mega-millionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, with co-signatories including Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, George Lucas, David Rockefeller, and Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the recently-collapsed FTX cryptocurrency trading platform.
To accomplish their goal, Moskovitz and Tuna embraced a philosophy of “effective altruism.” According to its proponents, effective altruists seek to direct funding towards the people and organizations most likely to accomplish a given intended outcome for the betterment of humanity and the planet —often focusing on topics such as artificial intelligence, natural disasters, and combating “misinformation/disinformation.”
With effective altruism as their anchor, Moskovitz and Tuna started the Good Ventures Foundation in 2011. The focus of their philanthropy was to include biomedical research, pandemics and bioterrorism, education, food security, foreign aid, geoengineering, global health and development, immigration, nanotechnology and treatment of animals. Good Ventures also partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to co-fund research related to infectious diseases in Africa.
In August 2014, Good Ventures partnered with a similar organization called GiveWell to launch the Open Philanthropy Project, which would recommend grants for Good Ventures to fulfill (paid for by Moskovitz).
In the years leading up to COVID-19, Moskovitz used Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures to provide significant funding toward pandemic preparedness and biosecurity. Open Philanthropy is also listed as the primary sponsor of a series of tabletop pandemic “war games,” during which world leaders practice how they might respond to various scenarios involving outbreaks of novel viruses, whether man-made or of natural origin. Some examples include Clade X (May 2018); A Spreading Plague (February 2019); and of course, the infamous Event 201 (October 2019).
If you have followed this article carefully, you see that we have come full circle, from the effort to silence and stop Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., back to Sam Bankman-Fried, the phony crypto exchange FTX, and the money trails through pandemic planning straight to political control of people by a single political party that tolerates no competition. One might suppose these connections would launch a thousand investigations and calls for reform. They should.
Instead, the charges were dismissed, by the very regime that stands to lose all credibility in light of all these strange money trails. And now we see major banks canceling accounts by major medical dissidents, as a warning to others.
Let there be no mystery as to why the public has lost trust in government, public health, media, and virtually every other official institution. Even as Americans have been pillaged and had their foundational rights violated by governments, the people on the inside have done very well for themselves within this tangled web of graft and corruption. They have every intention to forever block curious journalists from knowing more.
RFK Jr. Says Biden DHS Won’t Provide Secret Service Protection
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | July 29, 2023
RFK Jr., whose father was assassinated on the presidential campaign trail in 1968, says the Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied his request for Secret Service protection.
“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me,” Kennedy tweeted.
“Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.”
A misleading community note was added to the tweet, which suggests that candidates will only be protected within 120 days of the general election…
The Secret Service’s website suggests the same:
The actual text of the law, however, makes clear that the 120-day guidance is for spouses.
“Major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general Presidential election, the spouses of such candidates.“
Punctuation matters.
Meanwhile, an argument for why Kennedy should receive SS protection:
(continued, emphasis ours)
The law authorizes Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of the general presidential election. However, the evolution of the protective detail is based upon actual threats and acts of aggression against both the highest public office in the land and those who seek the position.
History shows there is precedent for candidates receiving protection >120 days ahead of the general election.
Donald Trump & Ben Carson were provided Secret Service protection 365 days before Election Day in 2015
Barack Obama was provided Secret Service protection 551 days before Election Day in 2007
RFK Jr is within the time range of the precedent set by the candidates above (465 days from Election Day) and is arguably under even greater threat given the Kennedy family’s tragic history of assassinations.
The Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas) has the discretion and the ability to approve or deny Secret Service coverage to presidential candidates at any point in the campaign.
Given that the Biden Administration began to censor RFK Jr within days of getting into the White House and is continuing that censorship even through last week’s censorship hearing, it is not surprising that a Biden appointee has denied a political opponent’s request for Secret Service protection.
Bill to Allow Whole Milk in Schools Supported by Science, Experts Say
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 25, 2023
For years, children at public schools have been offered only nonfat and 1% milk — but that may soon change, thanks to a bill that aims to put whole milk back on kids’ lunch trays.
The “Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2023” would override the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) current guidelines on milk by amending the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to allow school cafeterias to offer unflavored and flavored whole milk.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce on June 30 advanced the bill, which has been scheduled for a floor vote. The date of the vote is not yet publicly available.
According to the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.), “Bad federal policy has kept whole milk out of our school cafeterias for too long. … Milk is the number one source of 13 essential nutrients.”
The bill would bypass the USDA and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advisory committee, which determine U.S. dietary guidelines — which in turn determines what foods schools can serve.
Whole milk banned in public schools since 2012
In what they said was an effort to curb childhood obesity, lawmakers passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which revamped the National School Lunch Program to conform to the standing dietary guidelines recommending reduced saturated fat in children’s diets.
The National School Lunch Program provides low-cost or free lunches to roughly 30 million children in nearly 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools, as well as residential childcare institutions.
This led two years later to a ban of 2% and whole milk at participating schools.
Since then, schools have served non-fat and low-fat milk, including sweetened flavored varieties.
This experiment was “clearly a failure,” said Dr. Michelle Perro, “as rates of obesity continued to rise, now affecting 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 children.”
Perro, an integrative pediatrician with more than 38 years of experience, applauded Thompson’s “recognition that food policies can be revisited and changed,” telling The Defender:
“Fat is good for children. It is one of the three macronutrients the body needs for growth, nervous system health, hormone production, prostaglandins, etc. Additionally, fat in the diet helps with the absorbable and key vitamins A, D, E, and K, and are a concentrated energy source.”
The Nutrition Coalition, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group that “aims to improve health in America by ensuring that the public receives evidence-based nutritional advice,” last month sent a letter to Thompson in support of the legislation.
The group noted that whole milk was removed from schools in 2010 “due to longtime fears that saturated fats cause heart disease” — but “those fears are now outdated, as they are not supported by the current science.”
Health writer James Capon tweeted his support for the amendment:
Drinking less milk – particularly less whole milk, has not helped slow increasing rates of obesity and diabesity in the US.
Why still ban its consumption in US schools? Are things about to change? (graph from @bigfatsurprise). pic.twitter.com/Mjfky7LiwP— Fat is our Friend (@fatisourfriend) July 12, 2023
‘We got it wrong on saturated fats’
According to the Nutrition Coalition, an “authoritative 2020 ‘State of the Art Review’” in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that there is “no robust evidence that current population-wide arbitrary upper limits on saturated fat consumption in the United States will prevent CVD [cardiovascular disease] or reduce Mortality.’”
“More than 20 other review papers by independent teams of scientists around the world have concluded the same,” the Nutrition Coalition added.
USDA’s 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) found that the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease was “strong.” However, a 2021 peer-reviewed investigation by outside scientists showed 88% of the studies reviewed by the DGA committee did not support that conclusion.
The scientists noted that of the 39 studies the DGA committee reviewed, 25 had null or negative findings — meaning saturated fats were found either to have no effect on cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease, or were associated with lower risk.
Additionally, the DGA committee looked at 11 studies on saturated fatty acids and stroke. Of those 11 studies, 8 had null findings and 3 reported higher intake of saturated fatty acids was associated with a lower risk of stroke, the scientists pointed out.
Despite those findings, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), an independent consumer advocacy organization, on June 6 issued a statement against bringing whole milk back into schools, calling it “troublesome” that most U.S. children exceed the recommended limits on saturated fat and claiming that “too much saturated fat is linked to raises in LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol, a known cause of heart disease.”
Science journalist, author and founder of the Nutrition Coalition Nina Teicholz on June 12 pushed back against CSPI’s statement, noting that the committee for the current U.S. Dietary Guidelines found that there was “‘insufficient evidence’ to show that restricting saturated fats in childhood could prevent heart-disease or mortality in adulthood.”
Teicholz — who in her 2014 book, “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” reviewed thousands of scientific studies and argued that the saturated fats in animal foods have been unfairly maligned based on weak, inconclusive evidence — said in a recent Substack post:
“Over the past 13 years, nearly 25 systematic reviews and meta-analyses, of both clinical trial and observational data, by independent teams of scientists have been published, and nearly all concluded that we got it wrong on saturated fats.
“The most rigorous clinical trial data show that these fats do not cause cardiovascular mortality or total mortality. Mortality (death) data is definitive. That should be the last word.”
Nonetheless, the USDA and the American Heart Association managed “simply to ignore these findings on mortality,” Teicholz said, “even when presented personally with these data by top scientists in the field … as reported in the BMJ.”
Meanwhile, the CSPI — which says it values “independence, scientific rigor, and transparency” — depicts the fight to get whole milk into schools as being led by “Big Dairy.”
But according to Teicholz, this claim lacks evidence:
“Interestingly, I’ve discovered that dairy behemoths like Danone make more money by skimming the fat off the milk and charging for it in other products, like ice cream, rather than selling the whole milk itself. These multinationals have shown themselves to be dis-interested in promoting whole milk.
“From what I can see, whole-milk advocacy seems mainly to be driven by people concerned about child health and farmers from the rapidly diminishing number of dairy farms in the U.S., 95% of which are family-owned.”
Teicholz questioned why CSPI would go to such lengths to keep whole milk out of schools. Part of the answer, she said, likely is that the group for decades has adamantly opposed saturated fats, so they are slow to acknowledge that current science no longer supports their stance:
“CSPI was so much against saturated fats that in the late 1980s, the group ran a major campaign in favor of replacing these harmful fats with trans fats, billed by the group’s newsletter as ‘healthy’ and ‘not a bad bargain’ for combatting heart disease (whoops! trans fats turned out to be even more of a heart-disease threat than saturated fats and were ultimately banned from the food supply).”
Studies ‘build the case for possible benefits’ of dairy fat
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in November 2019 featured three peer-reviewed studies that called into question the narrative that the saturated fat in whole milk is harmful to people’s health.
The first study examined dairy fat consumption and the onset of diabetes in three cohorts of U.S. health professionals and found that higher dairy fat intake — when compared with calories from carbohydrates intake — was associated with lower diabetes risk in one cohort and not significantly associated with diabetes in the other two cohorts.
In an editorial about the study, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean emeritus and distinguished professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston, wrote that the findings added to a “growing body of literature which call into question the soundness of conventional dietary recommendations to avoid dairy fat.”
The second study reported reductions in Type 2 diabetes were correlated with yogurt consumption and increases in cheese consumption, but could not form a conclusion on whole milk because few people in their study reported drinking it.
The third study looked at dairy consumption and death from cancer, cardiovascular disease and all causes in Italy.
The researchers found that compared with no milk consumption, moderate milk intake (≤200g or ∼6.5 ounces per day) was associated with around 25% lower mortality overall and 50% lower cardiovascular mortality. However, higher levels of milk consumption — either low-fat or whole milk — were not associated with lower mortality risk.
The three studies together, Mozaffarian said, provide “little support” for the notion that consuming dairy, or dairy fat, is “harmful,” but rather, “They continue to build the case for possible benefits.”
Americans more obese, unhealthy after push for low-fat diets
According to pediatrician Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, “Low-fat diets have been pushed by the health, medical and food industries for many decades.”
He said:
“Fat was demonized as a health hazard, and, as low-fat or non-fat items were pushed into American society, Americans became more overweight, obese and unhealthy. Why?
“Polyunsaturated fats (more inflammatory omega-6 seed, vegetable, corn and soybean oils than healthy anti-inflammatory omega-3 oils) were substituted for saturated fats, and processed bleached white sugars and high fructose corn syrup sugars were added to low-fat and non-fat foods to make them more palatable.
“These changes, all in what we were told were in the best interests of our health, only made Americans sicker and more overweight.”
Perro, too, believes the attack on fat and promotion of carbs stems from industry advocacy. The USDA food pyramid — originally designed by former USDA Director of Dietary Guidance and Nutrition Education Research Luise Light — was “hijacked and thwarted by the wheat and corn industries,” according to Perro.
Palevsky said he is not afraid of saturated fats in the diet. “What I do fear is the consumption of saturated fats from animal sources that are poorly fed with inappropriate and toxic diets, and those animals that are abused and poorly cared for in concentrated animal feed operations.”
These inappropriate diets and toxic exposures and living conditions, he said, make consuming the fat of the animals unhealthy:
“Most people are unaware that toxins are stored in animal fat tissue and that is what makes the saturated fats unhealthy for us when we consume milks and products from these animals.
“When animals are grass-fed and pasture-raised, and allowed to live in the wild, and we choose to cook them in a way that doesn’t destroy the quality of the fat, these saturated fats will generally not harm us. In fact, we may gain many benefits from consuming them.”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
1,700+ demand retraction of influential COVID-19 origins paper after emails reveal authors doubted their own conclusions
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 26, 2023
More than 1,700 people have signed a petition calling for the retraction of the seminal scientific correspondence paper, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” that claimed COVID-19 was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
The paper — sometimes referred to as the “Proximal Origins” paper or the “Nature Medicine paper” — was published March 17, 2020, in Nature Medicine journal.
It was used by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, and other federal public health officials in 2020 and beyond to dismiss the possibility of a lab leak.
Biosafety Now — a nongovernmental organization that “advocates for reducing numbers of high-level biocontainment laboratories and for strengthening biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management for research on pathogens” — on July 19 launched the petition, stating, “It is imperative that this clearly fraudulent and clearly damaging paper be removed from the scientific literature.”
Biosafety’s leadership team includes 27 experts in biomedicine, mathematics, public health, public policy, public advocacy, law and social science.
Fraudulent paper ‘played an influential role’ in driving official narrative
Bryce Nickels, Ph.D., co-founder of Biosafety Now and professor of genetics at Rutgers University, said the petition seeks “to expose a clear case of scientific fraud and misconduct that has had a major impact on public opinion and policy.”
Nickels told The Defender :
“The removal of ‘Proximal Origins’ from the scientific literature is the first step in a long process needed to repair the damage this paper has caused to public trust in science.”
According to the petition, “This paper played an influential role — indeed, the central role — in communicating the false narrative that science established that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans through natural spillover, and not through research-related spillover.”
The petition continues:
“Email messages and direct messages via the messaging program Slack among authors of the paper obtained under FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] or by the U.S. Congress and publicly released in full in July 2023 … show, incontrovertibly, that the authors did not believe the conclusions of the paper at the time the paper was written, at the time the paper was submitted for publication, and at the time the paper was published.”
The recently-released internal communications show the paper “was, and is, the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct,” the petition said.
Commenting on the petition, investigative journalist Paul Thacker said:
“The thing that’s really the most troubling, which is why it should be retracted … [is] the ghostwriting and the undue influence [of federal public health officials on the drafting of the paper], which we know from the emails by Francis Collins, by Anthony Fauci, and from Jeremy Farrar.”
Thacker — who noted that within only a few days the petition had already garnered more than 1,300 signatures and set the hashtag #RetractProximalOrigins trending on Twitter — told The Defender :
“These guys basically ordered up a piece of science — or some sort of publication — that they could then point to, which they all did afterwards, as definitive proof that this thing could not have come from the lab.
“The whole thing was orchestrated for political purposes. It has nothing to do with science.”
Little more than a ‘political piece of propaganda’
Thacker is a former fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University whose investigative writing has appeared in The New York Times, The BMJ, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Washington Post.
He explained that weeks prior to the paper’s publication, Kristian Andersen, Ph.D. — one of the co-authors of the “Proximal Origins” paper — emailed Fauci and Collins a draft of the manuscript, thanking them for their “advice and leadership” on the paper.
Andersen also invited Fauci and Collins to comment and offer suggestions about the paper — but neither are mentioned in the acknowledgments section of the final version published by Nature Medicine. According to Thacker:
“Both Collins and Fauci then promoted the Nature Medicine paper as evidence of ‘independent science’ pointing against a possible lab accident — Collins in a post for the NIH Director’s blog that alleged the study left ‘little room’ for argument in favor of a lab accident, and Anthony Fauci in a White House press briefing.
“In both cases, neither Collins nor Fauci disclosed their involvement in orchestrating Andersen’s study. This last March, Congress released further emails showing that Fauci helped to orchestrate the Nature Medicine paper.”
Thacker pointed out that the paper — which “has been called everything from ‘research paper’ to ‘analysis’ to ‘study’” — was “really just correspondence” that was later turned into a “political piece of propaganda that people could then reference, which they did.”
Describing the recent about-face regarding the paper’s importance, Thacker said:
“Now the editor-in-chief of Nature Medicine is saying, ‘Oh, well, it was just a viewpoint … like he’s trying to dismiss what it was when they [federal public officials] used it for completely different purposes. They used it as some definitive piece of scientific research that put to rest any idea this thing could have come from a lab.
“Then we find out internally that none of them who wrote it believed that in the first place. … Quite frankly, from the very beginning, none of the scientific evidence in any direction means anything about how this pandemic started. It’s always been the internal documents and the money that have mattered more.”
Thacker added, “This entire drama and discussion has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with corruption and a coverup.”
On July 25 Thacker tweeted:
Writers Curtis Schube and Gary Lawkowski in a July 24 op-ed for The Hill pointed out that when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded to the FOIA request to release Fauci’s “explosive” email showing his involvement with the Nature Medicine paper, the agency completely redacted the email.
Moreover, Thacker alleged that Andersen submitted false testimony at the July 11 hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which is investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Andersen’s allegation that Fauci and Collins were provided the paper only after it had been “accepted” and was in “proof” is false, Thacker said. “Emails impeach this portion of Andersen’s testimony,” he added.
Thacker also pointed out that The Intercept last week published newly revealed documents showing Andersen and his co-author — Tulane virologist Robert Garry, Ph.D. — both lied to Congress during the House hearing. The alleged lies covered the fact that both had pending federal grants controlled by Fauci — money that could have been used to influence their positions on the lab-leak theory.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest book, “The Wuhan Cover-up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19,” is due out in September. The book is available now for preorder. Kennedy is the founder and chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
There’s No Need to Ban These Vaccines
By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | July 28, 2023
Individual sovereignty means that people can make their own choices, based on their own assessment of risk. It means that others can advise them, but not compel them. It is a basis for modern human rights and natural law.
Public health practitioners like to voice support for these principles, but also really feel good about telling people what to do, based on their expertise and superior knowledge. This is why fascism tends to have a strong healthcare component.
Covid Vaccines are Part of Life
Health bureaucrats have really found their feet during the Covid years, prohibiting children from going to school, families and friends from meeting, and people walking in more than one direction in supermarket aisles or sitting alone on park benches. They banned the use of safe repurposed medicines, claiming they were fit only for animals whilst continuing to use them for other human diseases. Then they mandated injections with novel pharmaceutical products, banning people from working or traveling without them. They have benefitted their sponsors but impoverish the majority with virtual impunity. They rightly feel important, the guardians of society.
But all is not well. While medical fascism has paid well for three years, the public are starting to show signs of lack of trust – perhaps they are sick of being told what is best for them. They may be starting to think they are best placed to assess their own risks and priorities, and act accordingly.
Growing mistrust may stem from a realization that few of the Covid response measures seem to have brought much benefit. They successfully promoted poverty whilst transferring wealth upwards, disproportionately benefiting those promoting the response. They had old people locked up in solitary confinement, so they died alone rather than with family. They declared that those calling for informed consent are a threat to society, and children a threat to adults. Perhaps mistrust is justified.
Now many are proposing a ban on Covid-19 vaccines. They are convinced, on reasonable evidence, that these novel pharmaceuticals probably do net harm overall. They note the unprecedented rate of adverse events associated with the vaccines, from rising mortality to falling birth rates. They worry about mRNA vaccines concentrating in ovaries and adrenal glands, and crossing the placenta to unborn babies, with no long-term data on safety. Many who were standing for freedom of choice regarding ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine are now backing this movement.
Understanding safety and effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines is complicated, as the initial randomized clinical trials were damaged by evidence of incompetence and lack of transparency. The manufacturers themselves were unable to show all-cause benefits. Trials for carcinogenicity and genotoxicity, normally mandatory for the genetic therapeutic class to which these substances belong, were also avoided simply by changing the name from genetic therapeutic to ‘vaccine.’ This renaming had required a broadening of the definition of vaccine, as mRNA must co-opt the person’s cellular machinery, like a medicine, in order to eventually stimulate an immune response.
Pharma in general, including these vaccine manufacturers, have appalling histories of fraud. This is shaky ground for trusting a new class of pharmaceuticals, and considerable propaganda and censorship have been required to project a positive image.
However, for better or worse, Covid-19 vaccines do now exist. Lots of people have had them and lots of people, for reasons best known to themselves, continue to request boosters. The vast majority are clearly not dying. People also skydive, go rock climbing and base jumping, risky activities but with generally non-mortal outcomes. While a marketed pharmaceutical is not quite equivalent to a cliff face, both carry inherent risk and theoretical benefits. Anyone partaking of them should be fully aware of the risks and provide informed consent.
The Right to Choose
Truly informed consent is one of the most unpopular ideas in medicine. The idea that the health professional is there merely to inform a patient’s sovereign, independent decision is difficult for a self-entitled profession to accept. Most believe they have a right to limit the public’s freedom when they deem it necessary. While many on both sides of the Covid vaccine debate act with good intent (and sometimes switch sides accordingly), their positions on mandates or bans require that governments use authoritarian approaches to implement public health policy.
As this article will upset well-meaning people, my argument needs further explanation. A belief common to those for and against the Covid response holds that people need to be protected from toxic substances and from malfeasance by doctors or pharmaceutical companies. It assumes that health professionals have a special place in society, shielding the public from areas where they lack knowledge and therefore cannot make sound judgment.
These arguments are reasonable, and in a world where all people live by high standards of integrity and ethics they might represent the safest approach. Unfortunately none of us seem able to infallibly uphold such standards. As 1930s Germany showed, and the Covid response reiterated, the public health establishment is particularly vulnerable to influence and abuse by political or corporate sponsors.
While a penchant for authoritarianism is well-established within medicine, the inclination to ban pharmaceuticals is relatively new. The doctor-patient relationship previously determined use based on context and history, informed (one hoped) by an honest regulatory system. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would have been managed similarly to occasionally deadly penicillin; available at the doctor’s discretion with the patient’s agreement.
Many in the West are getting fat on carbohydrates. However, we don’t ban sugar, but we do encourage the public to eat less, because it’s slowly killing them. We ban smoking where it directly affects others, but don’t ban people from taking risks when alone or among those who consent. Some would like to, but there are always people who wish to ban books, limit free speech, and impose their preferences on others. Decent societies should tolerate them but not indulge them.
Who Should be in Charge?
The primacy of decision-making within the doctor-patient relationship was based on recognition that illness is not just about a virus. It is the result of these within a body with particular genetic makeup, past exposure history, and underlying immune competence. Its severity further depends on the cultural context and value system of the sick person. Lastly but most importantly, it was based on the principle that the patient is a free, independent being, with primary rights over their own body. A doctor could refuse to perform a requested service, but could not force one. Insanity was the only exception. This is fundamental to medical ethics.
Medical practice also traditionally assumed that the doctor has a responsibility to help the patient, or a requirement to cause no harm. This requires expertise and may involve refusal to do all that a patient requests; the doctor is an advisor of the individual and not their subordinate. For this relationship to work, it must be free of conflict of interest and provided with reliable evidence and opinion. Various professional governing boards are supposed to support this process, so these boards and regulators must also be free of conflict of interest.
Public health should be no different – public health practitioners have a role in providing evidence-based guidance to help populations make decisions on health in their own interest. But in the end, the population’s values – cultural and religious – and its weighing of this advice against other priorities it faces, will determine the response. Within this community response, each sovereign individual has a right to decide their participation and actions.
The Nuremberg Code was written to address the harm caused when these principles are abrogated, even if ‘for the greater good.’ Opposing them requires a belief that one person should have rights over another. This may manifest as preventing those considered less desirable from giving birth, destroying an ethnic group considered inferior, studying untreated disease outcomes at Tuskegee, or coercing vaccination as a criteria to earn a living. Like any other group, the health professions simply have no right to impose their will on others. The historic results of ignoring this are obvious.
Market Forces are Preferable to Self-Entitlement
Here we are in 2023 with the Covid vaccines established on the market, amidst allegations of fraud and misrepresentation of data, poor safety and efficacy, and a lack of clear overall benefit. Their target illness is confined in severity to a small segment of the population, nearly all of whom now have good post-infection immunity. The vaccines do not stop or substantially reduce transmission, and may over time increase it.
Mass vaccination in this context is obviously a flawed policy. Mandating a non-transmission blocking vaccine for immune people at minimal intrinsic risk could only be driven by gross ignorance or corporate profit. The use of behavioral psychology to instill fear and the use of coercion are clearly unethical by any modern ethical standard. The many people who have lost their jobs and homes, and were publicly vilified for standing on principle and refusing to submit to such practice, have a clear right to redress. Those who committed fraud should have to answer for it. Those who abandoned the precautionary principle and informed consent should be required to justify their actions and their right to continue to practice.
None of this should remove the right of the public to make their own decisions on accessing these new genetic vaccines as a currently marketed commodity. Where expected harm clearly outweighs benefit, no medical practitioner should offer it, just as it would be inappropriate to offer Thalidomide to a pregnant woman with nausea. Where there are plausible grounds for overall benefit, if should be available as an option. These individuals can decide, based on the information available. While this group of potential beneficiaries appears diminishingly small, it remains conceivable that elderly obese diabetics with no prior Covid infection may benefit. Market forces can then decide whether the product is viable, rather than authoritarian dictates.
In the meantime, the Covid vaccines must pass full regulatory approval as a valid, reasonably safe product. This opens a can of worms, as most were only accepted under emergency use authorization (EUA) and the companies aborted their Phase 3 clinical trials, normally required for approval, by vaccinating the control arms. Valid approval would require submission of data at least confirming overall benefit in people who remain at high risk for Covid. Large trials involving non-immune people would now seem impossible.
A Way Out
To fix the health and societal disaster of the past three years, the public does not need more dictates from the self-appointed medical guardians who caused it. Too many have proven unworthy and incompetent. The problem is deeper than the availability or withdrawal of a vaccine. Public health professionals have forgotten the primacy of individual freedom – of the right of each person to set their own priorities and manage their own bodies. The public are sovereign, not the doctors who wish to lead or mislead them.
With reducing interest in vaccine boosters, it appears the public may solve the vaccine access issue themselves. A free flow of information and genuine informed consent will probably accelerate this. So would a responsible attitude from medical journals and regulatory agencies, if they can emerge from the yoke of their sponsors.
These are problems caused by the public health establishment. This establishment should reform itself, and never again presume it has the right, or the character, to dictate to others. The public will make mistakes, but these will pale beside the mess the health professions have already created.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
Never investigate what you don’t want to ‘confirm’
This maxim pretty much explains everything in our New Normal
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JULY 27, 2023
(Part 1 of 2)
I quickly formulated a maxim that pretty much explains why all the authorized Covid narratives took hold. This also explains why non-authorized narratives never had a chance.
This maxim is:Never investigate that which you don’t want to “confirm.”
As far as I can tell, this narrative-control tactic works every time.
If officials don’t want any revelations to debunk their preferred narrative, they just don’t investigate it. This way it’s almost impossible for anyone to “confirm” these trusted officials and truth-seeking scientists have been telling whoppers longer than Pinocchio.
FWIW, the intentional creation of bogus narratives satisfies the correct definitions of “disinformation” and “malinformation.”
As journalists are supposed to give examples to support our maxims, I’ve included several examples, a few which reveal my own futile efforts to learn or expose taboo truths.
Solution to protect said False Narrative: Make sure most people don’t know that the average age of a Covid victim is a couple of years over the average life expectancy.
For example, from my research for this article, I learned that in Europe the average age of a Covid victim was around 82.4 (where average life expectancy is about 79.4).
It’s hard to debunk/reject the all-important authorized narrative (“Covid is a threat to everyone”) if hardly any citizen reads that just about the only people dying from Covid were the elderly (almost all of whom had multiple co-morbid health conditions). Given the parameters established by this information template, the false narrative might as well be “confirmed.”
Narrative protection technique: Make sure no journalist ever writes a story that mentions that zero college or pro athletes ever died from Covid.
If officials and journalists did “confirm” the fact that no college or pro athlete has died from Covid, this information wouldn’t exactly promote the official bogus narrative.
Officials and journalists have never “confirmed” that zero athletes have died from Covid … because they never bothered to “investigate” this.
For reporters or researchers, confirming facts entails “investigative” effort. A bonus for journalists employing this narrative-control technique is they don’t have to do any investigative work. This actually makes their jobs much easier. One could even say this feature of their job rewards laziness.
Early in official Covid, I wrote a letter to the editor for al.com, showing that at the University of Alabama in the flu season of 2017-2018 – in just a few few weeks – at least 863 UA students students went to the college infirmary with flu symptoms.
From further research, I showed that at just one college in our state, five times as many college students had been “sick” from a flu outbreak that spanned approximately 40 days than had been “sick from COVID-19 in our entire state … in approximately 200 days.
I knew this because one journalist at al.com wrote a story on September 16, 2020 that provided several nuggets of eye-opening information.
For example, more than six weeks after students returned to Tuscaloosa in the summer of 2020, no UA student had been hospitalized due to Covid.
Per this article, Dr. Ricky Friend, the dean of UA’s College of Community Health Sciences, said: “I can also tell you very few students in quarantine and isolation are experiencing significant symptoms.”
Also from the same article (more about the real source of this info later): “Friend … said one in every four or five students tested on campus is showing symptoms. The rest are asymptomatic.This is very much in line with data and trends we are seeing across the country.”
Re-stated: 75 to 80 percent of college students who were classified as a Covid “case” at Alabama (and around the country) were “asymptomatic,” meaning they weren’t sick at all.
In late summer 2020 at the University of Alabama (after a month of non-stop student testing), exactly zero UA students had been hospitalized from Covid, none had died, “very few” students forced to live “in isolation” were “experiencing any significant symptoms” and, 75 to 80 percent of “positive” students experienced no Covid symptoms.
In other words, the flu of two years earlier had made far more UA students sick than Covid did.
And the 863 “sick” flu students identified in the news report of a Birmingham TV station were just those who went to the UA infirmary. Many sick students might have gone to another healthcare provider, or never gone to the doctor … or these students became sick while they were home on Christmas holidays.
Many thousands of UA students had no doubt become “sick” during this particular flu outbreak.
Which brings me to my main point: Life at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa did not stop in January 2018. No classes were cancelled; nobody was ordered to wear a mask; basketball season was not cancelled; Students didn’t have to take on-line courses from their dorm rooms or apartments. Nobody freaked out at all.
I pointed all of this out in a letter I submitted to al.com. In the letter, I reported that “far more UA students were sick a couple of years ago from the flu than have been sick since Alabama’s first “confirmed” case in March.
But, alas, al.com wouldn’t publish my essay.
I did get to argue my case with the the news organization’s op-ed editor (K. A. Turner). Ms. Turner was decent enough to call and talk to me about my piece. I’ll never forget what she told me:
“Bill, we can’t allow you to compare Covid to the flu.”
For a few moments, I was speechless.
Did I hear this news editor right? The leading news organization in our state would “not allow” me to publish a true and important statement, one backed up by quantifiable published data?
What happened to American newspapers?
It didn’t take me long to figure out what’d happened. People like myself – using elementary critical thinking skills – were not going to be “allowed” to debunk any authorized narrative about Covid.
The point I was seeking to “confirm” with good, old-fashioned facts …. would not be allowed.
I still think the dean’s admission that up to 80 percent of “Covid cases” at UA were asymptomatic should have been national news.
At the time, students across the country were returning to campuses after several months of lockdowns. Every college in America was testing students; newspapers were filled with stories about “new cases” and “outbreaks” at colleges.
But one dean obviously messed up and said that no students were hospitalized, very few students had significant symptoms, nobody had died and, indeed, the overwhelming majority of “cases” were as “sick” as I am right now.
That is, the dean blew up an important, albeit false, fear-mongering narrative.
Of course no other news organizations picked up on this accidental revelation, which was a bummer … because I was the person who’d sent several emails to the reporter asking this journalist to ask a UA official this very question.
The journalist was Michael Cassagrande, who normally covers sports for al.com, but expanded his journalist duties during the first months of Covid (probably because there were no sporting events to cover).
I kept emailing Michael a reader suggestion: Ask some UA official how many of these positive cases are asymptomatic.
And damn if he didn’t do it. The info the dean revealed about no student hospitalizations and all the students in isolation being fine was unexpected bonus Covid info.
So we have a lesson here: If you keep bugging a few sports reporters, one of them might ask questions “news” reporters would never ask.
I’m also a journalist (although, at the time, I was a freelance journalist who could never get any of my taboo Covid stories published).
Still, several months later, I asked the director of the University of Alabama’s Media Affairs the same questions Michael asked. I knew UA never stopped testing students so I wanted to know if the “asymptomatic” rate was STILL 80 percent.
However, the director (who used to be a journalism professor) wouldn’t answer my questions.
Nor would she arrange an interview with the dean who’d previously answered Michael’s questions (actually my questions) several months earlier.
I also wanted to know what percentage of athletes at Alabama who were testing positive were asymptomatic. She wouldn’t answer that either.
So I asked the media affairs staffers at the SEC the same question. (Testing of all student-athletes was mandatory for many months, with most athletes having to get a swab pushed up their noses three or four times a week.)
The SEC’s media affairs director said he couldn’t answer that question. He told me maybe I could go straight to the university and get that information. I told him I had: no dice.
I didn’t stop with the SEC. I asked all the media affairs people at all the big Division I conferences (Big-10, Pac-12, ACC, etc.), the same questions:
How many student athletes who tested positive via a PCR test were asymptomatic?
How many athletes have been hospitalized with Covid?
My answers were “we can’t answer those questions” … or no “media affairs” helpers replied to the questions of this media reporter.
Do these conference officials simply not know these answers or did they know the answers and simply didn’t want the public to know?
I don’t know … Oh, who am I kidding? I didn’t fall off a turnip truck yesterday …. I know the answer.
They know the answers … they just don’t want to “confirm” them. Or they know that it’s best to NOT do any investigations that would “confirm” that Covid is and always has been a nothing burger to college students and college athletes.
They know an important part of their jobs is to protect all the authorized narratives, especially the ones that are false.
Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham team up to tackle “cyberbullying,” “physical, emotional, developmental” online harms
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 28, 2023
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have jointly proposed a strategy to rein in Big Tech companies, reignite competition, and curb the spread of what they call “harmful” online content.
“Our legislation would guarantee common-sense safeguards for everyone who uses tech platforms. Families would have the right to protect their children from sexual exploitation, cyberbullying, and deadly drugs. Certain digital platforms have promoted the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders or done precious little to combat these evils; our bill would require Big Tech to mitigate such harms and allow families to seek redress if they do not,” the senators wrote in a New York Times opinion piece.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The senators aim to establish a new federal agency tasked with cracking down on what they call potential harms originating from tech behemoths, such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and beyond, encompassing everything from social media to ecommerce and artificial intelligence.
Warren and Graham’s collaborative venture comes in response to mounting concerns about the overreach of Big Tech, which they argue have shown a pattern of flouting privacy, threatening national security, and exterminating competition.
“For too long, giant tech companies have exploited consumers’ data, invaded Americans’ privacy, threatened our national security, and stomped out competition in our economy,” stated Warren.
The proposed federal watchdog, however, raises concerns about potential censorship and individual free speech infringement. Industry advocates worry that authoritative regulation could enable government manipulation and compromise the essence of an open, unbiased digital ecosystem that advances innovation and public discourse, particularly when the senators refer to “harms” such as “cyberbullying.”
“A covered entity shall mitigate the heightened risks of physical, emotional, developmental, or material harms posed by materials on, or engagement with, any platform owned or controlled by the covered entity,” the bill states.
The proposal, titled the Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act, delineates the power of this new agency to initiate lawsuits against platforms for their potential harms, establish industry regulations, investigate alleged wrongdoings, and enforce compliance. For significant violators, the commission could have the power to revoke operating licenses, marking a move towards directing the course of the digital era.
In addition to these sweeping powers, the legislation would also prescribe outright bans on certain practices. For instance, Google would be restrained from privileging its own applications in search results. The data mining practices of these companies would also be scrutinized, restricting their ability to use personal data for targeted advertising.
Moreover, the proposal addresses the increasing national security anxieties tied to dominant tech platforms like TikTok. The legislation would require such platforms to be based in the United States or be controlled by US citizens and would curb their ability to store data in designated countries.
Senator Elizabeth Warren stated the congruity of this proposed tech-focused commission with the Federal Communications Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which specifically regulate different sectors. However, clarity regarding potential collaboration or synergy with existing agencies such as the FTC and the Department of Justice remains to be seen, fostering doubt about potential jurisdictional conflicts.
In their New York Times op-ed, Senator Graham and Warren claimed, “Enough is enough. It’s time to rein in Big Tech.” Despite this, while there is some need to curb Big Tech practices, critics call for caution over measures that could undermine free expression and technological innovation in an era where they seem more intertwined than ever before. Free speech, not censorship should be promoted.
Arms Experts Blast Biden For Not Sending Russia Proposal to Curb Nuke Deployments
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | July 29, 2023
The last nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia continues hanging in the balance. Already key aspects to the New START treaty have been rolled back by both sides, such as mutual inspections of nuclear arsenals, but this week it’s emerged that the White House is withholding an expected proposal that was due to be given to Russia on nuclear limitations.
Arms control experts have denounced President’s Biden’s failure to submit the proposal to Moscow, arguing it puts both superpowers on a further collision course which may eventually have catastrophic nuclear consequences.
According to Reuters, “Russia’s apparent rejection of the plan last week and what several arms control experts say was a White House failure to formally convey it to Moscow have fueled concerns about whether there would be enough time to reach a new pact.”
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) watch group, said “There is no excuse that the administration has delayed for nearly two months the formal communication of this proposal to the Kremlin.”
He explained that these negotiations would be “difficult in good times and extraordinarily difficult so long as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues”—strongly suggesting that New START is slipping away.
As for the Russian side, it has blamed Washington’s “hostile” actions related to the Ukraine war. This as last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov confirmed that Moscow had yet to receive any proposals from the Biden administration on resuming arms control talks.
“I would like to say that we are not ready to and will not conduct this dialogue based on what the Americans are now proposing, as they ignore several key points in this entire configuration,” Ryabkov said.
“We must first and foremost make sure that the US policy, which is fundamentally hostile toward Russia, is changing for the better for us,” he added. “That is far from happening now and, I would rather say that the opposite is going on.”
In March 2021 the two sides renewed New START for a period of five years, and it will expire in February 2026 if it’s not continued – an increasing possibility given US-Russia relations have deteriorated so fast over the Ukraine war they are near complete breaking point.
The treaty is intended to limit and reduce nuclear arms on either side, setting a limit of no more than 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 missiles. START I began in 1991, with New START signed under the Obama and Medvedev administrations in 2010 as a successor agreement. Time is running out at a moment the Ukraine proxy war keeps sliding towards escalation.
US mulling multi-front offensive in Syria in collaboration with Takfiri terrorists
By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | July 29, 2023
The US military is readying approximately 2,500 service members for deployment in the West Asian region, as its proxy forces in Syria’s northeast and al-Tanf areas seek potential alliances with Takfiri terrorists in the northwestern Idlib province.
With tensions boiling between the Syrian government-aligned forces and the US occupation troops in the war-ravaged Arab country, it might be a sign of more violence on the way, observers believe.
According to a report published in New York local media in mid-July, some 2,500 10th Mountain Division soldiers were being sent “off to combat” in Iraq and Syria.
It is not exactly clear how many soldiers from the light-infantry division will be dispatched for operations in the two West Asian countries.
However, the number of forces being sent rings true with a report from the Turkish newspaper, Yeni Safak, that claimed Washington was preparing to send 2,500 troops to northeast Syria.
The US currently maintains, at least publicly, that it has around 900 active-duty service members deployed to Syria, a number which is speculated to be much higher.
If the US is indeed sending additional forces to the region, it could indicate that its objectives have slightly changed in the northeast of the country.
At this time, the Americans occupy roughly a third of Syrian territory and do so without any congressional approval, through its occupation – which it uses the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to maintain – it holds hostage the most fertile agricultural lands and roughly 90 percent of Syria’s natural gas from the Damascus government.
Over the past years, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies based in the Deir Ezzor province, have grown tired of continued US troop presence inside their territory.
On March 23, the US Department of Defense (DoD) announced “retaliatory strikes” against targets in Deir Ezzor, following a UAV strike against its forces in al-Hasakah.
“Earlier today, a US contractor was killed and five US service members and one additional US contractor were wounded after a one-way unmanned aerial vehicle struck a maintenance facility on a coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria at approximately 1:38 p.m. local time,” stated the announcement.
The US coalition airstrikes triggered an unusually extensive response from the SAA and its allies, which fired back and inflicted six traumatic brain injuries, according to the US reports.
At the time, back in March, a Syrian political source told me that the recent move by Syria and its allies was a “direct response” to a wave of Israeli escalation against the country that began last year.
“If you remember in August of 2022, there was a similar stand-off between the Americans and resistance forces in northeastern Syria,” he said, pleading anonymity.
I was also informed by a second source that an order had been given at the time to directly target Americans and not just fire warning shots. However, no further details were divulged.
In mid-July, the US began fortifying its occupation bases surrounding the Conoco and al-Omar oil and gas fields, with forces belonging to their SDF proxies.
According to an Al-Mayadeen source at the time, Washington informed the SDF and its affiliated militias “to prepare for any attack on the region from the Western banks of the Euphrates River” and the US “tasked the Free Syrian Army to mobilize, to face any attack on the 55-kilometer area in Al-Tanf”.
Reports that surfaced on pro-opposition ‘Syria TV’ indicated that the Idlib province-based terrorist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, had hosted several SDF delegations from northeast Syria over the span of months.
The two parties had allegedly concluded agreements on the transport of fuel from Syria’s north-east to Idlib, which appears to have come after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham began facing mounting pressure from Turkiye in northern Aleppo.
The talks between the dominant Idlib Takfiri terrorist group and the SDF apparently explored the possibility of a joint Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-SDF civilian administration with the SDF reportedly claiming that the US supports the idea of unifying the two militant strongholds.
A source who has intimate knowledge of the current security situation in Syria, and who chose to remain anonymous, told the Press TV website that “these moves are complicating, even if this does not amount to an offensive, the only thing that will change the current scenario is a Turkiye-Syria normalization and a possible anti-SDF operation”.
What is also of interest to these developments is that US-Russia relations inside Syria are also deteriorating, with Washington accusing a Russian fighter jet of damaging a US drone on July 23; allegedly using flares to cause the damage.
The terrorist stronghold of Idlib and the US proxies in both northeastern Syria and al-Tanf are seemingly coming together, at a time when American troops are being deployed to the area amid tensions between their occupying forces and the Syrian government’s military.
A possible way forward, in the event that the US carries out a new offensive strategy against the SAA and its allies in Syria, is through the possible normalization of ties between Ankara and Damascus, according to observers.
Despite there being no breakthrough between Turkiye and Syria, the two states are engaged in a dialogue that is aimed at a restoration of ties between them.
Experts say the reason why this is so crucial to combating any potential American plots against the Syrian government and its allies is that Ankara’s cooperation with Damascus could bring an end to many of the various territorial issues in the country.
Turkiye currently occupies two small pockets in the north of Syria, while it actively threatens an offensive against the Kurdish SDF, which it accuses of being run by the YPG and hence a terrorist threat on its border.
If Turkiye forces an incursion into northeastern Syria, dealing another significant blow to the Kurdish armed groups there, it will also force the US to again abandon its SDF proxies, as happened in 2018 and 2019.
If the US withdraws temporarily, this would provide the perfect opportunity for the SAA and its allies to cross the Euphrates River and liberate their oil fields, which the SDF would not likely be capable of holding by themselves.
This is why, in the event that Washington is implementing a new strategy to further punish Syria and its people, a Turkish military offensive may be the simplest way to quickly put an end to it.
Qatar to provide Ukraine $100mln as war profits soar
The Cradle | July 29, 2023
Qatar will provide Ukraine with $100 million in humanitarian aid, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on 28 July following the visit of Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani to Kiev.
“This money will be channeled for reconstruction in the health and education sectors, humanitarian de-mining, and other important social and humanitarian projects,” Shmyhal told a briefing.
Sheikh Mohammad also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss global food security and the expired Black Sea grain deal in his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the war with Russia last year.
“We appreciate this visit and consider it an important manifestation of Qatar’s support and solidarity with our country. We are sincerely grateful for all the assistance received from Qatar,” Zelensky said.
The grain deal, brokered by Turkiye and the UN in July 2022, ensured that Ukrainian grain could still be exported from its southern Black Sea ports, despite the fighting and that Russian grain and fertilizers could still be exported despite western-imposed sanctions.
The deal came amid fears that a disruption in Russian and Ukrainian grain exports would cause price increases in world food markets, leading to humanitarian disasters in poor countries.
Russia withdrew from the agreement on July 17, claiming Ukraine and the UN had not lived up to their end of the deal.
Sheikh Mohammad and Zelensky’s talks also focused on the Ukrainian Peace Formula and the Ukraine Recovery Plan. Zelensky emphasized the opportunities for Qatari investment funds and business circles to participate in Ukrainian reconstruction, according to the Office of the Presidency of Ukraine.
Qatar has benefited significantly from the war in Ukraine. US and EU sanctions cut off Russian natural gas supplies to Europe, causing prices to skyrocket and allowing Qatar to emerge as an important alternative natural gas supplier.
In late November, QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips signed agreements to export 2 million tons of liquified natural gas yearly to Germany for at least 15 years, starting in 2026.
Europe’s newfound need for Qatari liquefied natural gas comes after Qatar started a $30 billion project to boost its exports by 60 percent by 2027.
Before the start of the Ukraine war, some analysts doubted there would be enough natural gas demand to justify the expansion plan, Bloomberg noted.
US warns allies of potential isolation from deals over links to Iran, Russia
Brian Nelson, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
Press TV – July 29, 2023
The administration of US President Joe Biden has warned that Washington’s allies will face a “reputation risk” and potential isolation from lucrative deals in case of having links to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia.
Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, raised the alarm in a meeting with Kenya’s President William Ruto on Friday.
He claimed that Iran and Russia were “isolated economically.”
“What we see is again of course Iran and Russia are isolated economically and either they are looking for partners and they are looking for new channels to have economic relationships,” Nelson claimed.
“From our perspective, that potentially creates a reputation risk and creates also a financial risk such that we are having a direct conversation about those risks that are associated with the expansion of economic relationship, which is a conversation not only are we having here but with countries around the world and we know that clearly is what Russia and Iran are seeking,” he added.
In what is construed as Washington’s direct interference in its allies’ affairs, Nelson warned them to be wary of the two countries’ economic reputation.
The warning comes as Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi embarked on an African tour earlier in the month, which took him to Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe at the official invitation of his counterparts from the three host countries.
Heading a high-ranking delegation, Raeisi forged new alliances and discussed possible avenues for the improvement of trade and political ties.
Raeisi stressed the need for enhancing relations with African countries, saying that the states are gifted with abundant natural resources and mines, and enjoy many potentials and areas for closer cooperation.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kana’ani described Raeisi’s continental tour as “a new turning point” which could bolster economic and trade ties with African nations.
A total of 21 documents on cooperation in different areas were signed during the three-state tour to Africa.
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From the Archives
Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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Aletho News- Iranians Want Revenge /Sulaiman Ahmed
- ‘Israel’ bombs Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, killing 5
- The beginning of the end: Israel at the heart of America’s political civil war
- US-Israeli war on Iran cost Persian Gulf states nearly $1T in damage, lost growth: Report
- Congress probe could put ‘Israel’ in dock over Iran war: Israeli media
- Spanish public prosecutor backs US demand to extradite pro-Palestine philanthropist Fergie Chambers
- Zelensky spent over 740 days outside Ukraine while West serves as his real home
- Indian captain of Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker faces 10-year jail term in UK
- Europe, US face higher heating bills amid Iran war fallout
- The Leak That Arrived Right on Cue
- If Americans Knew
- These Democrats Are Bringing a Christian Case Against Israel’s War to Congress
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- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
