Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Doctors Sue FDA, Allege Crusade Against Ivermectin ‘Unlawfully Interfered’ With Their Ability to Treat Patients

The Defender | June 6, 2022

Three physicians are suing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for launching what they allege is a “crusade” against ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 that “unlawfully interfered” with the doctors’ ability to practice medicine.

In a lawsuit filed June 2, Drs. Robert L. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden and Paul E. Marik argued the FDA acted outside of its authority by directing the public, including health professionals and patients, to not use ivermectin — even though the drug is fully approved by the FDA for human use.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division, also names the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Robert Califf, acting FDA commissioner.

According to the complaint:

“The FDA generally cannot ban particular uses of human drugs once they are otherwise approved and admitted to the market, even if such use differs from the labeling — commonly referred to as ‘off-label’ use.

“The FDA also can not advise whether a patient should take an approved drug for a particular purpose. Those decisions fall within the scope of the doctor-patient relationship.

“Attempts by the FDA to influence or intervene in the doctor-patient relationship amount to interference with the practice of medicine, the regulation of which is — and always has been — reserved to states.”

The plaintiffs said their lawsuit isn’t about whether ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19. It’s about who determines the appropriate treatment for each unique patient and whether the FDA can interfere with that process.

In their complaint, they site an FDA publication, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19,” and tweets from the FDA — including one implying that ivermectin is intended only for animals — among examples of the FDA discouraging the use of ivermectin.

The plaintiffs also argued if the FDA is allowed to interfere with the practice of medicine now, using the pandemic as a cover, “this interference will metastasize to other circumstances, destroying the carefully constructed statutory wall between federal and state regulatory powers, and between the FDA and the professional judgment of health professionals.”

“This lawsuit, brought by three eminently qualified physicians, is a welcome development,” said Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense president and general counsel.

Holland told The Defender :

“These doctors rightfully assert that the FDA, assisted by corporate media, have unlawfully interfered in the doctor-patient relationship and the appropriate treatment for individual patients. Regulating the doctor-patient relationship is an area of well-established state, not federal, law.

“I hope these plaintiffs will enjoin the FDA from continuing to restrict access to ivermectin and from penalizing healthcare practitioners who use this licensed drug for their patients.”

The plaintiffs: well-respected in their field, high success rate treating COVID patients

Apter, who is licensed to practice medicine in Arizona and Washington and has a COVID-19 patient survival rate of more than 99.98%, was referred to the Washington Medical Commission and Arizona Medical Board for disciplinary proceedings for prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

In a press release, Apter said, “If doctors are freed to treat patients according to their best judgment and unprejudiced evaluation of the medical literature, many thousands more deaths and serious disabilities will be averted.”

Apter said the FDA’s pronouncements against the use of ivermectin “have been the basis for disciplinary actions against doctors, interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, and have had a severe chilling effect on the use of life-saving medication for a deadly disease.”

In the lawsuit, Apter argued that government pressure, “largely through the FDA,” also led pharmacies — especially in large corporate chains — to refuse to fill ivermectin prescriptions for COVID-19, because that position is supported by the FDA.

Bowden, who according to the lawsuit has 40 years of experience in emergency medicine, began recommending ivermectin to treat COVID-19 in early 2020. She treated more than 3,900 patients for COVID-19, with a success rate of over 99.97%.

She said the FDA’s actions regarding ivermectin, specifically its directives to stop using the drug to treat COVID-19, harmed Bowden’s ability to practice medicine and treat patients.

Bowden’s employer, Houston Methodist Hospital, last year forced her to resign by suspending her privileges for spreading “COVID misinformation.”

Bowden said she is “fighting back — the public needs to understand what the FDA has done is illegal, and I hope this suit will prevent them from continuing to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship.”

In an interview earlier this year with The Defender, Bowden said she was all for the COVID vaccines when they first came out — it was only when she started seeing what was happening with all the breakthrough cases that she wondered, “Why am I seeing so many COVID cases among the fully vaccinated?”

Then her patients began having adverse reactions. “If I hadn’t seen that firsthand, I would still think the vaccine was the way to go,” she said.

As the pandemic evolved, Bowden developed protocols for preventing and treating COVID patients. She said she’s seen excellent results.

“The basis of it is ivermectin,” she said. “And also vitamins C and D, quercetin and zinc, and black seed oil. It’s nothing complicated — and it’s just like with anything in medicine — not one size fits all — protocols are guidelines.”

The controversy over prescribing ivermectin was initially “intimidating and isolating,” she said. “I thought I was a little bitty island in a huge ocean, and now I realize that I’m part of at least half a continent.”

Marik, author of more than 750 publications, was professor of medicine and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk, Virginia, from 2009 through 2021. He also served as a director of the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

He developed a protocol for EVMS for treating COVID-19, called the EVMS COVID-19 Management Protocol, which included the MATH+ Protocol.

However, according to the lawsuit, Marik was forced to resign from his positions at EVMS and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital for promoting the use of ivermectin — “as well as other safe, cheap, and effective off-label FDA-approved drugs” — to treat COVID-19 following the FDA’s attempts to stop use of those drugs for that purpose.

Marik alleged in the lawsuit that refusing to allow patients to receive effective early treatment for COVID-19 “led to innumerable hospitalizations and deaths, and caused extreme distress for patients, their families, and health professionals.”

Boyden, Gray & Associates, a Washington, DC-based law firm, is representing the plaintiffs.

Ivermectin was developed in the 1970s as a veterinary medicine to treat parasitic diseases in livestock, but a decade or so later was hailed as a “wonder drug” and received approval for human use as a therapeutic against diseases such as river blindness — or onchocerciasis — and lymphatic filariasis, according to Newsmax.

Since 1987, it has been used safely in 3.7 billion doses worldwide. William Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on the drug.

Studies show ivermectin is associated with lower COVID-19 death rates, but the FDA — with help from mainstream media — continues to state the drug is ineffective for treating COVID.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

June 8, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s attempt to reshape the world economy

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 8, 2022

Starting on 31 May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked on a tour of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where he visited Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among others. Lavrov’s main objective of these visits is to strengthen ties between Russia and GCC nations amid a global race for geopolitical dominance.

The Middle East, especially the Gulf region, is vital for the current global economic order and is equally critical for any future reshaping of that order. If Moscow succeeds in redefining the role of Arab economies vis-à-vis the global economy, it would most likely succeed in ensuring that a multipolar economic world takes form.

The geopolitical reordering of the world cannot simply be achieved through war or challenging the West’s political influence in its various global domains. The economic component is possibly the most significant of the ongoing tug of war between Russia and its Western detractors.

Prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, any conversation on the need to challenge or redefine globalisation was largely confined to academic circles. The war made that theoretical conversation a tangible, urgent one. The US, European and Western support for Kyiv has little to do with Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence and everything to do with the real anxiety that a Russian success will demolish or, at least, seriously damage the current version of economic globalisation as envisaged by the US and its allies.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the world was no longer a contested space between two military superpowers – NATO vs Warsaw Pact – and two massive economic camps – US vs USSR. We often speak about the US invasion of Panama (1989) and the war in Iraq (1990) to demarcate the uncontested US ascendency in global affairs. What we often omit is that the military and geopolitical component of this war was accompanied by an economic one.

As Panama and Iraq were meant to demonstrate US military dominance, the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1994-5 was meant to illustrate Washington’s economic outlook in this new world order.

Though unprecedented in their scale and ferocity, the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 seemed like a desperate attempt to reverse the alarming trend in the world’s economic affairs. Though successful in demonstrating the power of civil society at work, the protests failed to produce any real, lasting outcomes. In the US/Western-centred definition of globalisation, smaller countries had little bargaining power.

While rich countries successfully negotiated many privileges for their own industries, much of the Global South was left with no option but to play by the West’s rules. The US spoke of free trade and open markets while maintaining a protectionist agenda over what it perceived to be key industries. Globalisation was branded a success story for freedom and democracy, while, in essence, it was a cheap reproduction of France’s 18th century “laissez-faire” economic doctrine.

It is easy to criticise poor countries for failing to challenge US/Western dominance. In fact, they tried, and the result was economic sanctions, regime change and war. The only silver lining is that this predatory form of capitalism encouraged small countries in the Global South to formulate their own economic blocks so that they may negotiate with greater leverage. However, even that was not enough to influence, let alone dismantle, the skewed global paradigm.

Large economies, like China, were allowed to benefit from globalisation as long as their massive growth served the interests of the global economy, namely the West. Things began changing, however, when China’s political and geopolitical outreach started to match its economic influence. Former US Republican President Donald Trump dedicated much rhetoric and eventually declared economic war on the so-called “China threat”. The current Democratic administration of Joe Biden is hardly different. Though busy countering Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, Washington remains dedicated to its anti-Chinese rhetoric.

The Marrakesh Agreement in 1994, the treaty upon which the WTO was established, was reached to replace the geopolitically defunct General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades of 1948. Note how each of these global economic treaties resulted from their unique global geopolitical orders, the latter following World War II and the former following the collapse of the Socialist camp. Though Russia and its allies are now mostly focused on claiming some kind of victory in Ukraine, their ultimate goal is to sow the seeds for a different economic balance, with the hope that it will ultimately force a renegotiation of today’s globalisation, therefore the West’s economic hegemony.

Russia is clearly invested in a new global economic system, but without isolating itself in the process. On the other hand, the West is torn. It wants to drop on Russia the Iron Curtain of the past, but without hurting its own economies in the process. This equation is simply unsolvable, at least for the next few years.

In a speech at the Eurasian Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that trying to isolate Russia is: “Impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world.” His words accentuate Russia’s full awareness of the West’s objectives and Lavrov’s busy itinerary, especially in the Global South, and is Moscow’s own way of animating an alternative global economic system in which Russia is not isolated. The outcome of all these efforts will not only redefine the world from a geopolitical perspective, but will redefine the very concept of globalisation for generations to come.

June 8, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

“WHAT IS A WOMAN” FULL DOCUMENTARY

MATT WALSH | JUNE 3, 2022

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Ghost Shot: Pfizer quietly admits it will never manufacture original FDA approved COVID vaccines

Company claims it is manufacturing Comirnaty product with new formula

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | June 3, 2022

The August 23, 2021 FDA approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine was a cause for celebration. Marked as a turning point in the battle against COVID19, the announcement was highly publicized by the Biden Administration with the clear intention to extinguish “vaccine hesitancy” and boost uptake.

It was celebrated as a cause for national relief, and many Americans arrived at their local pharmacies under the impression, via government and pharmaceutical propaganda, that they were receiving an FDA-approved COVID vaccine. Yet that legally distinct product, as we know it, never existed. And now we know, via Pfizer, that it will never exist.

For the uninitiated:

Comirnaty is a legally distinct product from the emergency use authorization (EUA) shots, and It has never made its way to market. For months on end, no such vaccine has ever become available. Those who received the “Pfizer shot(s)” have been injected with the emergency use authorization (EUA) version of the shots. See my piece in The Dossier for more info:

Shell Game? There remains no FDA approved COVID vaccine in the United States

The information operation succeeded. There was indeed an FDA approved vaccine, at least on paper, but you couldn’t get it.

When originally confronted with this ordeal, Pfizer labeled this issue an inventory question that had nothing to do with the legal distinction between an experimental EUA product and an FDA-approved vaccine. Up until just weeks ago, this was the statement up on the CDC website via Pfizer:

“Pfizer received FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY).  At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename.

At present, Pfizer does not plan to produce any product with these new NDCs and labels over the next few months while EUA authorized product is still available and being made available for U.S. distribution.  As such, the CDC, AMA, and drug compendia may not publish these new codes until Pfizer has determined when the product will be produced with the BLA labels.”

In May, Pfizer updated its statement to mention a December 2021 licensed Comirnaty product, which was granted a license four months after the highly-publicized August FDA press release.

And just last week, Pfizer finally acknowledged that its original licensed product will never be distributed. In an unreported update on the CDC website, Pfizer told the agency:

“Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured. Only NDCs for the subsequently BLA approved tris-sucrose formulation will be produced.”

The key distinction between the originally approved formulation and the tris-sucrose formulation is that — according to manufacturers — the latter can be held for a much longer period of time outside of an ultra cold freezer. These freezers cost over $10,000 a piece and each unit uses as much energy per day as an average American household. Improper storage can render the mRNA unstable.

Notably, the clinical trials for the Pfizer shot were conducted without the modified tris-sucrose ingredient. Given the partisan nature of Pfizer, the corporate media, government health bureaucracies, and your correspondent’s lack of expertise in this area, it is unclear whether this is significant.

Another notable thing to look out for in the coming days and weeks is the possibility that the subsequently FDA approved product finally becomes available in the United States. In recent days, the CDC removed the language of “not orderable at this time” above the description of both Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax.

Additionally, as reported by Uncover DC, the Defense Department appears to be in the early stages of ordering what it has interpreted as a legally required minimum of Comirnaty in order to continue its mRNA mandate of American service members.

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Fauci’s COVID origins coverup spook has resurfaced to misdirect us about the origin of money pox

By Meryl Nass, MD | June 7, 2022

Andrew Rambaut (pronounced Rambo—and like Rambo, he is still in the ring, fighting for the globalists, when he should have taken his toys and slunk away long ago—after being beaten up as one of the stooges who produced the fake Nature Medicine paper on COVID’s origins) has long been associated with a group of virology spooks in Tony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar’s network. The field of evolutionary biology is supposed to tell you where new viruses have come from. But of course, it has been kidnapped to provide specious explanations when the biowarriors need to try and explain their concoctions as having natural origins.

Rambaut was also used to dispute the origins of HIV (as described in my friend Ed Hooper’s book The River ) while teamed up with Eddie Holmes, another Fauci flunkie, more than 20 years ago.

Republican members of Congress want to know what Fauci and his henchmen were up to when they concocted a fake natural origin for COVID, as revealed in the Fauci emails.

Rambaut was one of the 5 authors of that paper, and the paper was highly effective for a bit over one year at keeping a lid on COVID’s lab origin. As the members of Congress wrote:

Andersen and three other doctors on this teleconference [including Rambaut] later published a paper titled “the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020. This paper was highly influential in shaping our nation’s response to the pandemic. In the paper, the doctors concluded that “…we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”[11]

… The Andersen paper led the narrative away from COVID-19’s potential lab origins. As Americans, we are deeply concerned by the appearance of discrepancies that largely influenced our understanding and approach to this virus. As Representatives of the American people, we owe it to them to seek and expose the truth about this virus’ origins wherever those efforts may lead.

Now Rambaut has popped up again, like a jack-in-the-box, to explain how the unexplainable 50 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP mutations) could have happened naturally. He has another bold theory! There was an evolutionary jump!

And Rambaut proffered yet another theory: the virus has been spreading in humans for years; we just didn’t notice it.

Below is a paper published by Portuguese researchers discusing the newly discovered mutations in money pox. They mention Rambaut’s theory, and Rambaut himself provides the first comment below the paper.

Spooks like Dr. Rambaut don’t do this dirty work for nothing. Just last month, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society.

From Wikipedia:

Science reported on 11 January 2020 that Rambaut was the first to publish the genome of the COVID-19 coronavirus after it was sent to him by Edward C. Holmes.[11][12] Holmes has said that it “took 52 minutes from receiving the code [from his Chinese colleague Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang] to publishing” on Virological.[13][14] The BBC Horizon episode The Vaccine stated: “When Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of a mystery new virus on January 10th 2020, vaccine scientists around the world immediately sprang into action”.[15]

Rambaut was one of the authors of the scientific paper The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,[16] which concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus”.

Rambaut is an attendee of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).[17]

Perhaps someone else can look up his recent research grants. Were they from NIH or Wellcome? Being rewarded royally with other peoples’ money is another characteristic of the virology spook group.

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Israeli regime openly calls on IAEA to censure Iran

Press TV – June 7, 2022

The Israeli regime is openly putting pressure on the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog to censure Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program.

“We expect the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency’s) Board of Governors to place a clear warning light in front of the regime in Tehran, and make it clear that if it continues in its defiant nuclear policy, it will pay a heavy price,” the regime’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday, addressing the Knesset (Israeli parliament), The Times of Israel reported.

The comments came a day after the board started a five-day meeting in Vienna.

The event is set to adopt an anti-Iran resolution, drafted by Britain, France, Germany, and the United States to accuse the Islamic Republic of withholding cooperation with the agency.

Various media reports and official sources have warned about the existence of the Israeli regime’s footprints across the process that has led to the emergence of the draft resolution.

Raising even more suspicion was a Friday flying visit to the occupied territories by the IAEA’s Secretary-General Rafael Grossi, and his meeting there with Bennett, with some reports even sounding the alarm about the watchdog and Tel Aviv’s “collusion” against Iran.

“He (Grossi) arrived for a snap visit in Israel, and I made Israel’s stance clear — that we are operating and will continue to maintain our freedom of action to act against Iran’s nuclear program as long as necessary… nothing ties our hands,” Bennet said.

The Israeli regime has, over years, conducted several sabotage operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinated at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists.

The regime’s vicious anti-Iran campaign comes while Tel Aviv, itself, continues to be the sole possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East region, with a stockpile of hundreds of atomic warheads. Due to the cover provided by the US and Europeans, however, the regime has refused to open up its nuclear sites to the IAEA’s inspectors and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“When it comes to nuclear weapons, we live in a world of double standards,” Frank N. von Hippel, an American physicist, who is a professor and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, told Press TV.

“This unequal situation cannot persist indefinitely: Either we get rid of nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons will get rid of us,” he added.

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Rocks the Middle East

Partitioning Syria may be on the way

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 7, 2022

That dwindling band of observers that continues to express concern over the catastrophe that constitutes United States foreign policy under President Joe Biden have come to realize how the Ukraine situation is being used as cover for interventions and other similar mischief in other parts of the world. Recent reporting, for example, reveals that the Biden Administration has decided “to reestablish a persistent US military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab” in spite of the fact that “there is absolutely no constitutional authority for President Biden to send troops into Somalia or drop bombs on Somalia.” Nor does al-Shabaab represent a threat to Americans or American interests.

To be sure, the emphasis on Ukraine has a certain cogency as it is particularly dangerous and could lead to nuclear devastation in a situation where intervention by the United States was not only unwarranted but also unresponsive to any actual national interest of threat. And escalate it will if the White House continues on its current path. Ukrainian government sources are now stating that the United States is preparing to destroy the Russian Black Sea fleet to end the blockade of Ukraine’s ports. The commander of US forces in Europe General Christopher Cavoli seems to be confirming that report when he refers to the preparation of “military options” to help export Ukrainian grain.

One might suggest that such a move could just be enough to start World War III and World War III would almost certainly turn nuclear very quickly. Some might consider that taking a deliberate step that would inevitably escalate into destruction of the entire planet as we know it just might be a foreign policy mistake on the part of the President Joe Biden Administration but I’m sure the chairborne warriors down at Foggy Bottom would disagree, pointing out that nothing would make old Vladimir Putin run and hide faster than a barrage of harpoon missiles imbibed with his breakfast tea.

And, of course, there’s more. There’s always more. The focus on Ukraine in the US and international media combined with a stream of befuddling malapropisms coming out of the White House has obscured what is going on in other corners in the world, where Washington is also flexing its biceps in full knowledge that a manageable war or two will surely help one’s favorability rating come elections in November.

And there is always Israel. The Israeli army and police have recently been shooting dead Palestinian teenagers on a nearly daily basis, and that comes on top of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh a month ago. Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz was in Washington two weeks ago to meet and greet and one might suspect that he just might have been in town inter alia to express some apology for his army’s assassination of Abu Akleh, but that would be to misunderstand the bilateral relationship. In reality, when Israel shouts “jump” the Biden Administration responds “how high, sir?”

Also in the Middle East and also related to Israel, the US State Department has gone into a hissy fit over the May 26th Iraqi parliament’s unanimous vote to make illegal all “normalization” ties with Israel. State was quick to react, in contrast to its torpor dealing with most issues, but it was Israel involved, not just “most issues.” A statement was issued saying “The United States is deeply disturbed by the Iraqi Parliament’s passage of legislation that criminalizes normalization of relations with Israel [while also] jeopardizing freedom of expression and promoting an environment of antisemitism…” Ah yes, the old anti-semitism canard surfaces yet again!

There are also several interesting stories relating to Syria, which continues to be a hotspot because Israel wants to maintain its ability to freely bomb targets that it describes as “terroristic” or connected to arch enemy Iran. The bombing has continued regularly since the Ukraine situation started and has hardly ever been reported in the US media. And, yet again, there is more to the story in terms of US involvement. First of all, Russia reacted to the lukewarm Israeli support for its invasion of Ukraine. An Israeli attack on targets in Syria last week was met by a S-300 missile fired by Russian army manned air defenses. Up until now, Moscow has refrained from attempting to shoot down Israeli warplanes, but the missile was clearly a warning of what might be coming if Israel persists in its attacks.

Also relating to Syria, it is ironic that the US has accused Russia of war crimes over its intervention in Ukraine while at the same time continuing its own illegal occupation of Syria. And it has its own war crimes record. Last week the Pentagon announced that it had completed its investigation into an attack in Syria on March 18, 2019 that killed some presumed ISIS guerrillas as well as four civilians while wounding fifteen others. The Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the Defense Department had determined that that the airstrike “did not violate the laws of warfare or the rules of engagement. Neither the ground forces commander nor anyone involved in carrying out the airstrike ‘acted inappropriately or acted with malicious intent’ or ‘deliberately wanted to and sought out to kill civilians.’” In an earlier investigation concluded last December, the Pentagon said “it would not hold anyone accountable for a drone strike also in Syria in late-August that killed 10 civilians, including seven children. A review of the strike concluded it was a ‘tragic mistake’ that was the result of ‘execution errors.’”

And there are also credible reports that the United States is preparing to de facto partition Syria, to create a separate state run by its Kurdish allies in the country’s northeast that would be under Washington’s protection and would include a garrison of American troops. Such a move would, of course, be completely illegal and is in fact eerily reminiscent of the alleged “war crimes” that the US is claiming regarding Russia for its attempted partition of Ukraine. Interestingly, the planning has not been reported in the mainstream media, yet another instance of the Ukraine crisis serving as cover to drown out all background noise and provide the US with opportunities to increase its meddling in places like the Middle East on behalf of feckless allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, when the United States initially intervened in Syria, it claimed to do so to fight the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria (ISIS). Subsequently, it cooperated with an al-Qaeda affiliate while close ally Israel had a similar arrangement with ISIS itself. The Kurds and both ISIS and al-Qaeda are all believed to be involved in the theft and sale of Syrian oil. Now the US, which also has been stealing the oil, is seeking something like a permanent presence to solidify its control over Syrian resources.

Interestingly, the planning by Washington to create a sub-state or autonomous region in the north east of Syria was revealed by no less than State Department number three Victoria Nuland at a recent conference held in Morocco. Nuland, who was the driving force behind regime change in Ukraine in 2014, described the Syria development as a “stabilization” activity. The new entity would include Syria’s major oil producing region, which is currently being exploited by Washington and its “allies,” as well as much of the country’s arable land.

Washington has already applied unprecedented punitive sanctions on the parts of Syria controlled by the Russians and President Bashar al-Assad, to include the so-called Caesar Syrian Civil Protection Act’s secondary sanctions that punish anyone trying to avoid the restrictions placed by Washington. Former US Ambassador to Syria James Jeffrey put it this way “And of course, we’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad, we’ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the country’s desperate for it. You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy….” He also added “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

To circumvent the existing sanctions, the new mini-state would therefore be granted economic viability by making it sanction free as an inducement for foreign investment and development of settlements largely inhabited by Kurds associated with the United States. A “general license” will be issued to facilitate investment and other economic activity. The US will commit $350 million to the project, which is being carried out with the cooperation of the Turkish authorities controlling their own militias along the border. By securing the north east of Syria, Washington would also be able to maintain and protect the illegal US Al-Tanf military base in the south-east of the country bordering Jordan. Al-Tanf blocks the creation of a contiguous “Resistance Axis” from Iran to Lebanon and ultimately to Palestine, thereby maintaining “Israeli security” in the region. As is all too frequently the case, Israeli interests always come first in the minds of Washington politicians.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The American Heart Association Renders Itself Obsolete With Long-Refuted Dietary Advice

This article was previously published July 5, 2017, and has been updated with new information.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | June 6, 2022

For well over half-century, a majority of health care officials and media have warned that saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to obesity, high cholesterol and heart disease. The American Heart Association (AHA) began encouraging Americans to limit dietary fat in general and saturated fats in particular as far back as 1961.

Like its previously revised version, the current version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid, called “MyPlate,”1 more or less eliminates fats altogether, with the exception of a small amount of low-fat or no-fat dairy. According to MyPlate, the food groups are fruits, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy — not the three biological building blocks known as carbohydrates (fruits, vegetables, grains), protein and fats.

All the while, studies have repeatedly refuted the wisdom of these low- to no-fat recommendations. Even so, the AHA has spent the past decade issuing warnings reminiscent of the 1960s all over again.

If you’ve followed the news, you’ve seen bold headlines declaring coconut oil dangerous, and that you should switch from butter to margarine to protect your heart health! How is this even possible? It’s akin to the flat Earth theory that inexplicably gained traction despite clear and indisputable proof that we indeed live on a planetary sphere.

Many have expressed confusion and bewilderment in response to the AHA’s margarine push, and no wonder. Let’s not forget that creating doubt is a core strategy used by industry to delay change. This margarine-promotion also happens to conveniently sync up with news about a vaccine to lower cholesterol2,3 — a strategy that would be unnecessary if people were to just eat healthy saturated fats like coconut oil and butter, and eliminate processed foods and sugar.

The vaccine first made news in 2015,4 but nearly seven years later, in October 2021, researchers were lamenting that the vaccine was still in trials, and that although significant reductions in LDL were observed in mouse studies, there were still concerns about the cost, limitations of shelf-life and safety that were holding it back.5

AHA Sends Out Warning to Cardiologists Around the World

According to the AHA,6 saturated fats such as butter and coconut oil should be avoided to cut your risk of heart disease. Replacing these fats with polyunsaturated fats such as margarine and vegetable oil might cut heart disease risk by as much as 30%, about the same as statins, the AHA claims.

This “Presidential Advisory” was sent out to cardiologists around the world, not just to those in the U.S. Overall, the AHA recommends limiting your daily saturated fat intake to 5 to 6% of daily calories or less.7 According to The Daily Mail :8

“The scientists analyzed all available evidence on the subject and found saturated fat — such as that found in butter, whole milk, cream, palm oil, coconut oil, beef and pork — was linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

Replacing this with polyunsaturated fat — found in spreads and vegetable oils — or monounsaturated oils found in olive oil, avocados and nuts — cuts the risk of heart problems. The study … bolsters NHS advice that saturated fat should be lowered in the diet.

Lead author professor Frank Sacks, of Harvard School of Public Health, said: ‘We want to set the record straight on why well-conducted scientific research overwhelmingly supports limiting saturated fat in the diet to prevent diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Saturated fat increases LDL — bad cholesterol — which is a major cause of artery-clogging plaque and cardiovascular disease’ …

The authors, however, warned that not all margarines and spreads are healthy. They found that some forms of margarine which use ‘trans fats’ — a type of fat which improves shelf life — actually raise the risk of heart disease.”

Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, also made sure to note that “lifestyle change should go hand in hand with taking any medication prescribed by your doctor; it shouldn’t be seen as one or the other.” In other words, don’t think you can avoid statins simply by eating right.

Then, referencing coconut oil specifically, the AHA added: “Because coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, a cause of CVD [cardiovascular disease], and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil.”9 USA Today announced that advisory with a June 16, 2017, nonsensical headline, “Coconut Oil Is About as Healthy as Beef Fat or Butter.”10

Why, yes, it is! But what they were trying to claim was that all of these are unhealthy, which is altogether backward and upside-down. It didn’t take long for USA Today to realize its faus pax, though, so it changed the headline June 21, 2017, to “Coconut Oil Isn’t Healthy. It’s Never Been Healthy.”11

While the newspaper noted the “correction” on its webpage, all references to the original headline have been scrubbed from the internet archive, Wayback.12 So much for transparency in newspaper reporting.

On What Evidence Does AHA Base Their Recommendation?

How did the AHA come to the conclusion that they were right about saturated fat 60 years ago and have been right all along? In short, by cherry-picking the data that supported their outdated view. As noted by American science writer Gary Taubes in his extensive rebuttal to the AHA’s advisory:13

“The history of science is littered with failed hypotheses based on selective interpretation of the evidence … Today’s Presidential Advisory … may be the most egregious example of Bing Crosby epidemiology [‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative’] that I’ve ever seen … [T]hey methodically eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive until they can make the case that they are surely, clearly and unequivocally right …

[T] he AHA concludes that only four clinical trials have ever been done with sufficiently reliable methodology to allow them to assess the value of replacing SFAs with PUFAs (in practice replacing animal fats [with] vegetable oils) and concludes that this replacement will reduce heart attacks by 30 percent …

These four trials are the ones that are left after the AHA experts have systematically picked through the others and found reasons to reject all that didn’t find such a large positive effect, including a significant number that happened to suggest the opposite …

They do this for every trial but the four, including among the rejections the largest trials ever done: the Minnesota Coronary Survey, the Sydney Heart Study and, most notably, the Women’s Health Initiative, which was the single largest and most expensive clinical trial ever done. All of these resulted in evidence that refuted the hypothesis. All are rejected from the analysis.”

Taubes, an investigative science and health journalist who has written several books on obesity and diet, points out that this advisory document actually reveals the AHA’s longstanding prejudice and the method by which it reaches its conclusions.

In 2013, the AHA released a report14 claiming “the strongest possible evidence” supported the recommendation to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs). This, despite the fact that several meta-analyses, produced by independent researchers, concluded the evidence for restricting saturated fats was weak or lacking.

The advisory document reveals how the AHA could conclude they had the “strongest possible evidence.” Then, as now, they methodically came up with justifications to simply exclude the contrary evidence. All that was left — then and now — were a small number of studies that support their preconceived view of what they think the truth should be.

AHA’s Referenced Studies Are Based on Outdated Science

Would it surprise you to find out that the four studies that made the cut all date from the 1960s and early 1970s? It makes sense, doesn’t it, since those are the eras when the low-fat myth was born and grew to take hold. The problem is nutritional science has made significant strides since then.

As noted by Taubes, one of the studies included was the Oslo Diet-Heart Study,15 published in 1970, in which 412 patients who’d had a heart attack or were at high risk of heart disease were randomized into two groups: One group got a low-saturated fat, high-PUFA diet along with ongoing, long-term “instruction and supervision” while the other group ate whatever they wanted and received no nutritional counseling whatsoever.

“This is technically called performance bias and it’s the equivalent of doing an unblinded drug trial without a placebo. It is literally an uncontrolled trial, despite the randomization. (… [A]ll the physicians involved also knew whether their patients were assigned to the intervention group or the control, which makes investigator bias all that much more likely.)

We would never accept such a trial as a valid test of a drug. Why do it for diet? Well, maybe because it can be used to support our preconceptions,” Taubes writes.

Taubes goes on to state that he was so curious about this Oslo study he bought a monograph published by the original author. In it, the author describes in more detail how he went about conducting his trial. Interestingly, this monograph reveals that the sugar consumption in the treatment group was only about 50 grams a day — an amount Taubes estimates may be about half the per capita consumption in Norway at that time, based on extrapolated data.16

“In this trial, the variable that’s supposed to be different is the [saturated fat]/PUFA ratio, but the performance bias introduces another one. One group gets continuous counseling to eat healthy, one group doesn’t. Now how can that continuous counseling influence health status?

One way is that apparently, the group that got it decided to eat a hell of lot less sugar. This unintended consequence now gives another possible explanation for why these folks had so many fewer heart attacks. I don’t know if this is true. The point is neither did Leren.

And neither do our AHA authorities,” Taubes writes. “All of the four studies used to support the 30 percent number had significant flaws, often this very same performance bias. Reason to reject them.”

Dangerous Advice

Dr. Cate Shanahan,17 a family physician and author of “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food,” emailed me an even stronger rebuttal, saying, “This message from the AHA is not only false, it is dangerous,” noting that the AHA is actually making false claims since none of the four studies they included in their analysis involved coconut oil.

As an explanatory side note, most of the early studies on coconut oil that found less than favorable results used partially hydrogenated coconut oil, not unrefined virgin coconut oil.18 As always, the devil’s in the details, and hydrogenated oil is not the same as unrefined oil, even when you’re talking about something as healthy as coconut. This little detail is what led to the undeserved vilification of coconut oil in the first place. That said, let’s look at what else Shanahan has to say on the matter:

“Most doctors don’t notice that the medical leadership is making unfounded claims, and the reason they don’t notice is because … articles asserting the existence of human clinical trial evidence against coconut as well as all other foods high in saturated fat, conflate the sources of saturated fat with the saturated fat itself.

Saturated fat does not actually exist in the food chain; what they’re talking about are saturated fatty acids, the components of triglyceride fat, the substance chefs call simply ‘fat.’ We often say things like ‘coconut oil is a saturated fat’ and ‘butter is a saturated fat.’ But it would be more correct to say ‘coconut oil is high in saturated fatty acids.’

Coconut oil, butter, lard, tallow and every other animal fat also contain monounsaturated and even some polyunsaturated fatty acids in addition to saturated fatty acids … The idea is foods contain blends of fatty acids in varying proportion.”

Put another way, most foods contain a blend of fatty acids, not just one. Margarine and shortening also contain saturated fatty acids, yet the AHA makes no mention of this. The harder the margarine, the more saturated fat it tends to contain, in some cases more than butter or lard.

“So, when people eat margarine and shortening, in addition to toxic trans fatty acids they’re also eating saturated fatty acids. And that means that when a study says it’s swapping out saturated fat for vegetable oils, that does not equate to swapping out butter and lard. It could very well be the case that margarine and shortenings were among the foods that got eliminated,” Shanahan says.

“And because most doctors don’t realize that margarine and shortenings contain saturated fatty acids, they also don’t consider it particularly important to wonder whether or not studies like the four core citations mentioned in the Advisory are actually confounded by the fact that the baseline, high-saturated fat diet included a significant amount of margarines and shortenings that contain toxic trans fat.

Because if they did, then that means whatever health benefits were observed in the studies may have nothing to do with the reductions in saturated fat. It’s cutting back on trans fat that makes the difference to health.”

Non-Saturated Fat Recommendations Have Been Followed With Disastrous Results

Since the 1950s, when vegetable oils began being promoted over saturated fats like butter, Americans have dutifully followed this advice, dramatically increasing consumption of vegetable oil. Soy oil, for example, rose by 600% (10,000% from 1900) while butter, tallow and lard consumption halved.

We’ve also dramatically increased sugar consumption, with more than half of Americans consuming over 17 teaspoons a sugar a day in 2021.19 That’s down from the 25 teaspoons a day they were consuming in 2014,20 but it’s still more than the maximum 12 teaspoons recommended by the CDC.

Alas, rather than becoming healthier than ever, Americans have only gotten fatter and sicker. Heart disease rates have not improved even though people have been eating what the AHA suggests is a heart-healthy diet. Common sense tells us if the AHA’s advice hasn’t worked in the last 65 years, it’s not likely to start working now.

As noted by Shanahan, technology that allows us to study molecular reactions is relatively recent, and certainly was not available back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Modern research is just now starting to reveal what actually happens at the molecular level when you consume vegetable oil and margarine, and it’s not good.

For example, Dr. Sanjoy Ghosh,21 a biologist at the University of British Columbia, has shown your mitochondria cannot easily use polyunsaturated fats for fuel due to the fats’ unique molecular structure.

Other researchers have shown the PUFA linoleic acid can cause cell death in addition to hindering mitochondrial function.22 PUFAs are also not readily stored in subcutaneous fat. Instead, these tend to get deposited in your liver, where they contribute to fatty liver disease, and in your arteries, where they contribute to atherosclerosis.

According to Frances Sladek,23 Ph.D., a toxicologist and professor of cell biology at UC Riverside, PUFAs behave like a toxin that builds up in tissues because your body cannot easily rid itself of it. When vegetable oils like sunflower oil and corn oil are heated, cancer-causing chemicals like aldehydes are also produced.24

Source: The Telegraph November 7, 2015

Not surprisingly, fried foods are linked to an increased risk of death. In fact, eating fried potatoes more than twice a week was found to double a person’s risk of death compared to never eating fried potatoes.25 Animal and human research has also found vegetable oils promote:

  • Obesity and fatty liver26
  • Lethargy and prediabetic symptoms27
  • Chronic pain/idiopathic pain syndromes (meaning pain with no discernible cause)28
  • Migraines29
  • Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis30

Biochemistry Versus Statistics

According to Shanahan, the idea that PUFAs are healthier than saturated fats falls flat when you enter the field of biochemistry, because it’s “biochemically implausible.” In other words, the molecular structure of PUFA is such that it’s prone to react with oxygen, and these reactions disrupt cellular activity and cause inflammation.31 Oxidative stress and inflammation, in turn, are hallmarks not only of heart disease and heart attacks but of most chronic diseases.32

“Meanwhile, the folks at the AHA claim saturated fat is pro-inflammatory and causes arterial plaque and heart attacks — but there is no biochemically plausible explanation for their argument. Saturated fat is very stable, and will not react with oxygen the way PUFA fat does, not until the fundamental laws of the universe are altered,” Shanahan writes.

“Our bodies do need some PUFA fat, but we need it to come from food like walnuts and salmon or gently processed (as in cold pressed, unrefined) oils like flax and artisanal grapeseed, not from vegetable oils because these are refined, bleached and deodorized, and the PUFA fats are molecularly mangled into toxins our body cannot use.”

The Cholesterol Argument

Researchers have also laid waste to the notion that having high cholesterol is a primary contributor to heart disease in the first place. This is the basic premise upon which the AHA builds its conclusion that saturated fats are bad for you. The idea is that saturated fats raise your cholesterol level, thus raising your risk for heart disease. But again, they use too broad a brush and ignore the details. For example:

•A recent study33 published in The BMJ reanalyzed data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (MCE) that took place between 1968 and 1973, after gaining access to previously unpublished data. This was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial to test whether replacing saturated fat with vegetable oil (high in linoleic acid) would lower cholesterol levels, thus reducing heart disease and related deaths.

Interestingly, while the treatment group did significantly lower their cholesterol, no mortality benefit could be found. In fact, for each 30 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) reduction in serum cholesterol, the risk of death increased by 22%. Swapping saturated fat for vegetable oil also had no effect on atherosclerosis rates or heart attacks. As noted by the authors:

“Available evidence … shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings … add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils …”

•The AHA also does not take LDL particle number into consideration. There are large, fluffy LDL particles and small, dense ones. We didn’t have this information in the 1960s, but we sure have it now.

This is yet another crucial detail that makes all the difference in the world, as large LDL particles have been shown to be harmless and do not raise your risk for heart disease. And guess what? Sugar promotes harmful small, dense LDLs while saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil promotes harmless large, fluffy LDLs.34

Is Coconut Oil Healthy or Not?

The short answer is yes, coconut oil is healthy. It’s been a dietary staple for millennia, providing you with high-quality fat that is important for optimal health. It supports thyroid function, normalizes insulin and leptin function, boosts metabolism and provides excellent and readily available fuel for your body in lieu of carbohydrates (which you need to avoid if you want to lose weight).

A really important benefit of coconut oil is related to the fact that the ketones your liver creates from it are the preferred fuel for your body, especially your heart and brain, and may be key for the prevention of heart disease and Alzheimer’s. It truly is a healthy staple that belongs in everyone’s kitchen.

Coconut oil contains medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), and their smaller particle size helps them penetrate your cell membranes more easily. However, MCT oil has a far higher concentration of these shorter chain fats that are more efficiently converted to ketones; C8 or caprylic acid has the best ability to convert to ketones.

MCTs do not require special enzymes and they can be utilized more effectively by your body, thus putting less strain on your digestive system. Normally, a fat taken into your body must be emulsified with bile from your gallbladder before it can be broken down and properly absorbed. Long chain fats therefore frequently end up being stored in your fat cells.

However, your body treats MCTs differently. MCTs bypass the bile and fat storage process and go directly to your liver, where they are converted into ketones. Your liver quickly releases the ketones into your bloodstream where they are transported around your body to be used as fuel. By being immediately converted into energy rather than being stored as fat, MCTs stimulate your body’s metabolism and help promote weight loss.

Coconut Oil Promotes Thyroid Health

Part of coconut oil’s health benefits also relate to its beneficial impact on your thyroid. Unlike many other oils, coconut oil does not interfere with T4 to T3 conversion, and T4 must be converted to T3 in order to create the enzymes needed to convert fats to energy.

Part of what makes processed vegetable oils so damaging to the thyroid is that they oxidize quickly and become rancid, which prevents the fatty acids from being deposited into your cells, thereby impairing the conversion of T4 to T3. This is symptomatic of hypothyroidism. Coconut oil is a saturated fat and therefore very stable and not susceptible to oxidation.

The fact that coconut oil doesn’t go rancid helps boost your thyroid function. Eliminating processed vegetable oils from your diet and replacing them with coconut oil can, over time, help rebuild cell membranes in your liver (where much of the thyroid hormone conversion occurs) and increase enzyme production. This will assist in promoting the conversion of T4 to T3 hormones.

The most common fat in coconut oil is lauric acid, often considered a “miracle” fat because of its unique health-promoting properties. Your body converts lauric acid into monolaurin, which has antiviral, antibacterial and antiprotozoal properties.

Thyroid problems can often be traced back to chronic inflammation, which the lauric acid in coconut oil can help suppress. To obtain the full range of coconut oil’s health and weight loss benefits, I typically recommend 2 to 3 1/2 tablespoons per day for adults.

That said, there is at least one instance where coconut oil is contraindicated due to its lauric acid content. In his book, “The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in ‘Healthy’ Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain,” Dr. Steven Gundry explains how coconut oil may be problematic if you have leaky gut, which is almost universal in individuals who are not paying attention to their lectin intake.

As it turns out, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin, attaches to lauric acid, facilitating its transport past your gut lining into your blood stream. Interestingly, MCT oil does not do this. So, if you have leaky gut, or unless you’re healthy and eating a lectin-free diet, it may be best to avoid coconut oil and use MCT oil instead. Caprylic acid would be best, but neither of these will allow LPS to piggyback into your blood stream. You can learn more about lectins in my interview with Gundry.

Who Pays the AHA?

Science has revealed the low-fat diet to be corporate-promoted misinformation, yet the AHA keeps insisting it’s the heart-healthy choice. Why? As noted by cardiologist Dr. Barbara Roberts in an article in The Daily Beast in 2014,35 “The quick answer: money, honey.” Roberts points out that one of the reasons the AHA clings to “recommendations that fly in the face of scientific evidence” is because of its ties to Big Food.

One of its primary revenue streams is its Heart Check Food Certification Program, which is updated monthly.36 Foods bearing this certification mark are supposed to make it easier for consumers to select products to include in a heart-healthy diet. Companies pay about $700,000 annually for the right to use this mark on their packaging.37

As of May 2022, the AHA endorsed hundreds of foods as heart-healthy, including breads, cereals, pastas and pasta sauces, potatoes, egg substitutes, dried and canned fruits and processed meats.38

In other words, a whole bunch of stuff you really shouldn’t eat if you care about your health in general and your heart in particular is on the list. Processed meats, for example, have been deemed so hazardous there’s no safe limit.39 The AHA also has endorsed Subway sandwiches40 and Cheerios41 in the past and accepts hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from a long list of drug companies.42 As noted by Roberts:43

“Even more problematic are the foods containing added sugar … The AHA recommends that women consume less than 6 teaspoons (100 calories) of sugar a day and less than 9 teaspoons (150 calories) for men.

Yet there are items that get the nod of approval from the Heart Check program despite being near or at the sugar limit, like Bruce’s Yams Candied Sweet Potatoes … Indeed, until 2010, the Heart Check imprimatur was stamped on a drink called Chocolate Moose Attack, which contained more sugar per ounce than regular Pepsi. And until [2014], Heart Check approved many foods with trans fats …”

AHA Was Wrong in the 1960s and Is Still Wrong

Heart disease is primarily caused by chronic inflammation, which is caused by excessive amounts of omega-6 (unbalanced omega-6 to omega-3), dangerous trans fats, processed vegetable oils and excessive sugar in the diet. Saturated fats, on the other hand, have been repeatedly exonerated, with studies showing they do not contribute to heart disease and are in fact a very important source of fuel for your body.

Granted, it’s tough to admit you’ve been wrong for 65-plus years. Such an admission can mar an organization’s reputation. But in trying to turn back the clock to 1960 and promote margarine and vegetable oils over butter and coconut oil, the AHA is proving itself obsolete.

This recommendation is, in my view, professionally irresponsible. It’s completely irrational in the face of modern nutritional science. With it, the AHA has painted itself into a corner from which it cannot extract itself without turning the entire organization upside-down. As noted by Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof.com :44

“The AHA campaign is backfiring because of the millions of people who already know that adding undamaged saturated fats into their diets makes them feel better. They can feel the difference in their energy, see it in the mirror, and measure it in their blood work …

These anti-coconut oil AHA guidelines are an orchestrated PR campaign aimed at changing what we eat to match what is in the interests of the AHA’s corporate sponsors, regardless of what recent research suggests.

As the U.S. population gets more educated about the benefits of saturated fats and the harm posed by processed seed and vegetable oils, processed food manufacturers are looking for ways to trick us into eating the cheap, high profit, damaging ‘food’ they create and sell.

That appears to be why they sponsor the [AHA]. These new recommendations are from an industry special interest group that promotes low-fat, high-sugar diets that kill people and has the audacity to label them as ‘heart healthy.’ In fact, the AHA executive leading the charge against coconut oil is the same guy that used to run marketing for Kentucky Fried Chicken and other fast-food chains.”

Sources and References

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Grading the uses of the Defense Production Act during COVID Mania

By Jordan Schachtel | June 6, 2022

With President Biden beginning this week by invoking the Defense Production Act (this time, to build solar panels) we figured it’s time to take a look at what happened to the DPA during COVID Mania, and explore how it has been used (abused) since March of 2020.

For starters:

The Defense Production Act is a federal law that was enacted in 1950 after the commencement of the Korean War.

The explanation of the bill, via Congress, goes as follows:

“To establish a system of priorities and allocations for materials and facilities, authorize the requisitioning thereof, provide financial assistance for expansion of productive capacity and supply, provide for price and wage stabilization, provide for the settlement of labor disputes, strengthen controls over credit, and by these measures facilitate the production of goods and services necessary for the national security, and for other purposes.”

In short, these are emergency powers granted to the executive with a precedent for being enacted during an actual war. These powers allow the president to compel private companies to work with the government on developing material goods that are supposed to be used for national security purposes.

During COVID Mania, the DPA has been routinely abused for our manufactured national emergency.

Let’s take a look at how the DPA has been utilized to “fight the virus.”

  • March 27, 2020: President Trump defines ventilators and PPE as “essential to the national defense,” and orders GM to start producing ventilators. The move came with bipartisan insistence. We later discovered that ventilators were possibly killing COVID patients.
    Grade: F
  • April 2, 2020: President Trump invokes the DPA to compel several American companies to produce N95 masks. Masks don’t work, though.
    Grade: Hysteria Sells
  • April 28, 2020: President Trump issues an executive order via the DPA to combat food insecurity and “to ensure a continued supply of protein to Americans.”
    Grade: Shrug Emoji
  • January 21, 2021: President Biden invokes the DPA to pursue a “sustainable public health supply chain.”
    Grade: Total Scam
  • March 2, 2021: Biden uses the DPA to give money to Merck so that they can produce more Johnson & Johnson COVID injections
    Grade: Facepalm Emoji
  • September 2021: Biden invokes the DPA to supply fire hose materials to California, citing the climate hoax, because Gavin Newsom’s regime did not effectively manage California’s forests.
    Grade: Avoidable Crisis
  • May 18, 2022: Biden uses the DPA to import baby formula from overseas because American supply became catastrophically short.
    Grade: Cringeworthy 
  • June 6, 2022: Biden issues DPA to advance the climate hoax narrative and give government funds to solar panel companies that otherwise would go bankrupt due to the unproductive nature of their businesses.
    Grade: Boondoggle

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | | Leave a comment

Biden declares US energy emergency

Samizdat | June 6, 2022

President Joe Biden has blamed Russia for another crisis, saying the US might not be able to generate enough electricity to meet consumer demand partly because of Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine.

The president declared an energy emergency on Monday, saying national security and quality of life are jeopardized by potential shortfalls in power supplies. He invoked the Defense Production Act – originally part of an industrial mobilization effort in response to the Korean War – to spur domestic production of solar panels and other forms of “clean” energy to boost power supplies.

“Multiple factors are threatening the ability of the United States to provide sufficient electricity generation to serve expected customer demand,” Biden said in his emergency declaration. “These factors include disruptions of energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.”

Increased reliance on renewable energy sources has been blamed for disruptions to power service in such states as California and Texas. Solar and wind power are intermittent, so periods of high demand aren’t always matched by supplies. For instance, wind turbines froze up during an historic winter freeze last year in Texas, contributing to blackouts that caused 246 deaths and at least $195 billion in damage.

Biden’s emergency declaration included a two-year exemption from tariffs on solar panels from four Southeast Asian countries. The proposed tariffs had been blamed for delaying major solar projects in the US. About three-fourths of the solar modules installed in the US are imported from Southeast Asia.

The president has blamed Russia for record US fuel prices and a surge in inflation to a 40-year high. He’s also attributed a looming global food crisis to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

US may lift ban on Iranian oil – Vitol

Samizdat | June 6, 2022

The Biden administration might let more sanctioned Iranian oil flow into the global markets in an attempt to rein in fuel prices at home amid the run-up to the midterm elections in the US, according to a major independent crude trader.

“If the midterms are dominated by the need to get gas prices lower in America, turning a somewhat greater blind eye to the sanctioned barrels flowing out is probably something you might expect to see,” Mike Muller, the head of Asia at Vitol Group, told Dubai-based Gulf Intelligence on Sunday.

Gasoline prices have doubled in the US since President Joe Biden was inaugurated in January last year, according to last week’s data from the non-profit American Automobile Association (AAA). Global crude prices have been rallying in recent months, fueled by restrictions on Russian exports. On Monday, crude hit $120 a barrel as Saudi Arabia hiked prices for Asia.

The Trump administration reimposed sanctions on Iran’s oil, petrochemicals, shipping and other sectors in 2018 due to concerns over the country’s nuclear program. Talks between Tehran and world powers stalled in March and, according to Muller, the window of opportunity for the Biden administration to reach an agreement with Tehran has almost closed, but it could allow the transportation of Iranian crude anyway. In April, the US seized Iranian oil carried by a Russian tanker. Iran currently exports most of its oil to China.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Iranian nuclear chief: IAEA’s Grossi lacks serious will to find Tehran’s ‘accurate’ answers convincing

Press TV | June 6, 2022

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) says Tehran has given accurate answers to questions posed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but the Agency bases its reports on the information provided to it by the enemies of Iran.

In an interview with Al Jazeera network on Monday, Mohammad Eslami said the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, lacks serious will to describe Iran’s answers to the Agency’s queries as convincing.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency relies on the intelligence reports [provided by] our enemies, topped by Israel,” Iran’s nuclear chief said.

Eslami made the remarks after the IAEA chief, in his introductory statement to the Board of Governors’ meeting on Monday, once again repeated his anti-Iran rhetoric, alleging that since February 23, 2021, the Agency’s “activities have been seriously affected by Iran’s decision to stop the implementation of its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, including the Additional Protocol.”

Grossi claimed, “Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations in Iran.” Grossi’s allegation, however, came after his meeting with Eslami and the adoption of the two sides’ joint statement on March 5, 2022.

The AEOI and the IAEA agreed, in continuation of their cooperation as stated in the Joint Statement of August 26, 2020, to accelerate and strengthen their cooperation and dialogue aimed at the resolution of the issues, read part of the joint statement.

Grossi’s remarks came despite frequent warnings by Iran that in case the Agency drifts away from its technical nature and makes a politicized decision related to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, the country will respond in kind.

Elsewhere in his interview, Eslami pointed to the possible adoption of an anti-Iran resolution during the ongoing meeting of IAEA’s Board of Governors and said even if adopted, such a resolution would not create a new situation.

Advising the UN nuclear watchdog to block political influence on its decisions and abide by its own regulations, the AEOI’s head said, “The IAEA has not condemned attacks on our [nuclear] facilities and this is a big question mark.”

Over the past years and amid lack of sensitivity and proper attention on the part of the IAEA towards performing a responsible role in the area of protection of various countries’ peaceful nuclear activities, some malign activities, for which the Zionist regime has implicitly accepted responsibility, have afflicted some damage to our country’s nuclear facilities.

Although these activities have never had a decisive effect on the progress of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, given the sensitivity that is inherent to the nature of nuclear work, adoption of new strategies in the structural, hardware, and software aspects have found a place on the AEOI authorities’ agenda so the nuclear facilities’ security can be completely ensured.

Eslami also rejected allegations that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons, saying, “Nuclear weapons have no place in our strategies” and that all such allegations are nothing but spiteful accusations.

Asked about the IAEA’s access to information recorded by monitoring cameras it has installed in Iran’s nuclear facilities, Eslami said this issue depends on the fate of the ongoing talks in the Austrian capital on the revival of the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“If other parties commit to all articles of that agreement, we are ready for full compliance with the accord,” Iran’s nuclear chief said.

Under the JCPOA, Iran accepted certain caps on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of international sanctions.

The US, however, unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018 and re-imposed crippling sanctions despite Tehran’s full compliance with its share of obligations.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »