Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years.
There are two ways to be over Covid.
One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons.
Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.
Rationality is back! In that sense, it’s good to forget about Covid if it means living life normally and behaving with clarity about what does and does not work to mitigate a virus. The Democrats decided that the hyper-restrictionist ways were risking political fortunes. Hence, the line and the talking points needed to change.
Another way to get over Covid is to forget completely about the last two years, especially the astonishing failures of compulsory pandemic controls. Forget about the school closures that cost a generation two years of learning. Forget that the hospitals were largely closed to people without a Covid-related malady. Forget about the preventable nursing-home deaths. Forget that dentistry was practically abolished for a few months, or that one could not even get a haircut.
Forget the stay-at-home orders, the church and business closures, the playground and gym closures, the bankruptcies, the travel restrictions, the firings, the crazed advice for everyone to mask up and physically separate, the record drug-related deaths, the mass depression, the segregation, the brutalization of small business, the labor-force dropouts, the forced stoppages of art and culture, and the capacity limits on venues that forced weddings and funerals to be on Zoom.
Forget about a closer look at the bogus mathematical models, vaccine trials, the circumstances behind the Emergency Use Authorizations, the adverse effects, the inaccuracies of the PCR test, and misclassification of deaths, the billions and trillions of misdirected funds, the division of all workers between essential and nonessential, and the millions who were forced to get jabs they did not want.
Forget about the possibility of a lab leak, the role of China, the deadly use of ventilators, the neglect of therapeutics, the near-banning of all talk of natural immunity, the overselling of the vaccine, the lost religious holidays, the lonely deaths due to the blocking of loved ones from hospitals, the censorship of science, the manipulated and hidden CDC data, the payments to the major media, the symbiotic relationship between government and Big Tech, the demonization of dissent, and the abuse of emergency powers.
Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!
Who precisely benefits from this method of being “over Covid?” The unrepentant hegemon that gave us this disaster to begin with. They want to be in the clear. They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia.
I don’t just mean the Democrats. This calamity all began under a Republican president who still retains folk-hero status. Plus all Republican governors except one (Kristi Noem of South Dakota) bought into the initial lockdowns. They don’t want to talk about it either.
There is a vast machine extant that desperately wants everyone to forget. Not even forgive, just forget. Don’t think about the old thing. Think about the new thing instead. Don’t learn lessons. Don’t change the system. Don’t uproot the bureaucracies or examine why the court system failed us so miserably until it was too late. Don’t seek more information. Don’t seek reforms. Don’t take away powers from the CDC and NIH, much less Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, we live amidst a crisis without precedent. It affects health, economics, law, culture, education, and science. Nothing has been left untouched. The end of travel augmented every preexisting international tension. The wild government spending and the monetary accommodation of the ballooning debt, in addition to supply chain breakages, are all directly responsible for record levels of inflation. It’s much easier to blame Putin than it is to look at the failed policies of the US and many other governments in the world.
There are so many remaining questions. My own estimate is that we know about 5% of what we need to know to make sense of this whole disaster. What precisely were Fauci, Collins, Farrar, Birx, and the whole gang doing in February 2020 when they weren’t looking for early treatments?
Why did so many prominent epidemiologists completely reverse their stated views on lockdowns? They flipped from being largely skeptical of coercive measures on March 2, 2020, to fully embracing the most egregious measures only a few weeks later. Moreover, there was clearly a conspiracy emanating from the top to smear dissenting scientists who later said that the lockdowns were causing vastly more harm than good. The people behind the Great Barrington Declaration were targeted by government and media for professional ruin.
When did the vaccine companies get rolled into the mix and under what terms? We need to know the when and why of the questioning and denial of natural immunity. Who was involved in this egregious and wholly inaccurate attempt to stigmatize those who rejected the vaccine? Where were the trials for generic therapeutics that the NIH is supposed to fund?
Why in general did an entire establishment choose panic, lockdown, and mandate over calm and the traditional practice of public health?
I have my own questions. What were the conditions and the messages that led the New York Times to use its podcasts and printed pages (February 27 and 28, 2020) to spread absolute panic? This institution had never done this before in any previous pandemic. Why did it choose this path even weeks before Fauci and Birx started lobbying Trump to pull the trigger?
To put a fine point on it: how much money was involved?
What we need is a full timeline with every detail for two years. We need reparations for the victims. We need to take powers away from hundreds and thousands of leading politicians, scientists, public health officials and media executives.
What changed pandemic panic to a new calm is the force of public opinion. God bless the protestors, polls, and truckers. That is a great improvement but there is a long way to go to rekindle the love of liberty that can protect us next time. It’s not about left and right. We need a new understanding of public health, bodily autonomy, and essential liberties.
Some people want global amnesia and otherwise no change in the regime, no follow-up, no investigations, no connecting dots, no justice, no answers to burning questions.
And consider this. If we are so over Covid, why are people still being fired for not being vaccinated, including people with superior natural immunity? Why have the fired not been rehired? Why the masks on planes, trains, and buses? Why the continued quarantine rules? Why the restrictions on international travel? Why are children still forced to cover their faces? Why must everyone who wants to see a Broadway play be forced to cover up their smiles?
The remnants of restrictions, mandates, and impositions are there to serve as a reminder of the prevailing ruling-class attitude toward their policy choices. There are no regrets. They have done everything right. And they still have their thumb on you.
That is intolerable. By all means, forget about Covid and live life as normally as possible in defiance of those who live to foster fear. But, never forget the disastrous Covid restrictions that created such destruction. We cannot let anyone off the hook, much less pretend that the policy disaster that created billions of personal tragedies never happened.
The world we live in today – with worse health, economic dislocations, demoralized and undereducated children and youth, segregations and censorships, the unquestioned ubiquity of rules manufactured by the undemocratic administrative state, the instability and fear that comes with no longer trusting the system – is a far cry from the one that existed only a few years ago. We need to know why, how, and who. There are millions of questions that cry out for answers. We must have them. And we need to work to recover, rebuild, and insure it will never happen again.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CDC, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, New York Times, NIH, United States |
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What was the need for all that happened in the period since mid-December when Russia transmitted to Washington its demands for security guarantee? This question will haunt US president Joe Biden long after he retires from public life. The foreign policy legacy of his presidency and the reputation of this much-vaunted 80-year old politician with a half-century’s record in public life, much of it supposedly in he domain of American foreign policy are in tatters — irreparable.
News has appeared that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded that he is willing to concede to the Russian demand that his country will not seek to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation! The announcement came in an interview with the ABC News where he revealed that he is no longer pressing for Ukraine’s Nato membership!
In fact, Zelensky lets the cat out of the bag by casually adding, “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that… Nato is not prepared to accept Ukraine.”
Zelensky explains why: “The alliance is afraid of controversial things, and confrontation with Russia.”
This comes after his earlier revelation that he is “open to compromise” on the sovereignty of the two breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the eastern Donbass region and on the status of Crimea.
The ABC News reportedly telecast the interview on Monday night Eastern Time. Since then, the duo in the Biden team who piloted the Ukraine strategy, those apocalyptic “sanctions from hell” and the demonisation of Vladimir Putin through the recent months — Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of State Victoria — are nowhere to be seen.
That duo of East European descent in the driving seat — Blinken driving and Nuland by his side navigating him — ought to offer an explanation for this charade playing out, which is virtually demolishing the American prestige as a superpower.
Questions are galore. Principally, if it is so easy to work out a compromise over Russia’s legitimate security demands, especially regarding Ukraine’s Nato membership and the alliance’s further expansion, why was Biden so very stubborn in his refusal to even discuss it, given the urgency of the matter?
Can it be that Biden was acting smart to create a fait accompli for Moscow by formalising Ukraine’s membership at the forthcoming Nato summit on June 29-30 in Madrid?
What’s the need to destabilise the European economies and rock the world oil market at a juncture when most economies are entering on a path of post-pandemic economic recovery?
What explains this unnatural obsession on the part of Biden over Ukraine’s regime?
Why such visceral hatred on Biden’s part toward Russia, something unworthy of an 80-year old world statesman?
Why is it that the economic war against Russia has become such a very personal affair for Biden, as his White House speech on Tuesday shows?
But such an ignominious end to this entire episode over Ukraine’s Nato membership was entirely to be anticipated. Fundamentally, this is an existential issue for Russia. Whereas, Biden, Blinken and Nuland are dilettantes sitting 10,000 kms away indulging in old neocon pastimes of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs, threatening them, disciplining them or punishing them for defying America’s diktat.
Even after Zelensky spoke, what has been Biden’s reaction? He scheduled a speech to announce that the US shall no longer import oil from Russia. Shouldn’t he have heaved a sigh of relief that this war in Ukraine is petering out?
Instead, he resorted to this strange toothless measure to impress the American audience that he is still on a winning streak promoting democracy in faraway lands. Isn’t such gimmick an insult to the gullible American public?
Biden took this new step after Europeans told him plainly that they are not interested in such a move against Russia, given their heavy reliance on Russian oil.
Second, Biden doesn’t seem to know or has pretended otherwise that America is actually shooting at its own feet. For, Russian prices are highly competitive and American companies will now have to pay much more to source heavy grade oil suitable for their refineries.
Biden already swallowed his pride and sent a team of officials to Venezuela, a country under crippling US sanctions, to beg for oil from President Nicolas Maduro (who was on CIA hit list not too long ago for being a socialist) to replace Russian oil.
Maduro sent them back suggesting a broader mutually beneficial relationship between Venezuela and America. All this drama took place in broad daylight witnessed by the entire Western Hemisphere. Wouldn’t they be laughing that America’s president is a man of straw?
Biden claims he is making sure that Putin won’t have money for his “war machine” if America stops buying oil from Russia. This is laughable, bordering on a lie.
The US was purchasing about 12% of Russia’s total oil exports. Alright, that’s a decent figure. But, it isn’t as if Russia won’t have any other buyers in a world market where oil price has soared to $130 per barrel (thanks to Biden’s “sanctions from hell” against Russia)?
Surely, any number of potential buyers would queue up if Russia were to offer competitive prices (as it had been doing for the US companies) to divert the extra stocks due to Biden’s boycott.
At any rate, Biden can’t be unaware that Russia’s current budget is balanced on the belief that oil prices would be around $40-45 per barrel. With the current level of oil price, Russia is actually making a fortune! And the funny part is, it is a gift from Biden’s sanctions!
Fundamentally, the problem today is that the American elite are delusional. While the rest of the world knows that in a multipolar world, the US’ capacity to force its will on other countries is inexorably in decline, the American elite shut their eyes to that reality. The present ridiculous situation happened only due to this arrogance and self-deception.
The strategic defeat that Washington has suffered will dent the US prestige worldwide, weaken its transatlantic leadership, unravel its Indo-Pacific strategy and accelerate the drain of American influence in the 21st century. Biden presidency will carry this heavy cross.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Joe Biden, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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‘Mandatory international inspections could keep US labs in check’
An international treaty banning bioweapons needs to be strengthened with a compliance verification mechanism, contrary to the US position on the issue, Moscow said on Wednesday. The call comes in the wake of the reported discovery of evidence that there were lethal pathogens at Pentagon-backed labs in Ukraine.
The Russian military reported this week that Ukrainian authorities had ordered the destruction of highly pathogenic samples that were stored at US-backed biological labs throughout the country.
The purported documents indicate that both Ukraine and the US breached the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which both nations signed and ratified, the Russian foreign ministry alleged on Wednesday. The order to destroy the samples was an attempt to cover up the violations of the treaty, it said.
“We stand for the resumption of the work on a legally binding Protocol to the Convention for an effective verification mechanism, which the US has been stonewalling since 2001,” the ministry said.
The BWC, which came into force in 1975, bans the development, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons. Unlike its counterpart for chemical weapons, the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the treaty lacks an international watchdog organization to verify compliance.
An attempt to establish such an organization took place in the 1990s. The VEREX ad hoc committee spent a decade formulating proposals for surveillance, inspections, information sharing and other confidence-building measures.
The effort ultimately failed due to objections from the George W Bush administration which, in 2001, rejected a 210-page draft protocol. Washington claimed that it would not have improved the BWC, if implemented, and would have hurt US national security and commercial interests.
John Bolton, then-Undersecretary of State, said at the time that Washington was focusing its anti-germ warfare interest on Iraq. The existence of Saddam Hussein’s bioweapons project was “beyond dispute,” he claimed at the time. Two years later the US invaded Iraq under the pretext that it needed to destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which was later proven to be false.
Russia has been voicing concerns for years over US military-funded labs hosted by some nations in its proximity, most notably Georgia. Moscow believes that Washington is conducting military research there that may pose a threat to Russia. The foreign ministry statement said activities held on foreign soil should be subjected to reporting under the BWC, just like domestic programs.
The proposed measures “would allow subjecting military-biological activities of the US and its allies … to international control and ensure full verifiable compliance with the BWC by member states,” Moscow said.
Following Russia’s claims about labs in Ukraine, China called on the Pentagon to publicly comment on bio research conducted in foreign nations with its funding. Beijing claimed the US military controlled “336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.”
The US denies that anything nefarious is being done in the labs, claiming they are used to monitor possible emerging infection threats around the world. US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland confirmed on Tuesday that her country was involved in Ukraine’s effort to destroy research materials so that Russia would not seize them.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Biological Weapons Convention, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that Ukrainian biolabs near Russia’s borders engaged in the development of components for biological weapons.
“In the past several days, long-standing fears which we have expressed repeatedly for years regarding the development of military biological materials by the United States on the territory of Ukraine under the auspices of the relevant US special services have been confirmed,” Zakharova said in a briefing Wednesday.
“This has been confirmed based not only on those materials and data which were obtained operationally on the territory of Ukraine, not just based on the statements of the relevant agencies in Ukraine, but confirmed directly in Washington during a speech by US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland,” Zakharova said.
The spokeswoman said the question of whether or not the biological weapons components being researched at these facilities have been destroyed or not remains to be answered, but pointed to the receipt of documents from employees of biolabs ordering the liquidation of dangerous pathogens dated 24 February.
Zakharova emphasized that there is now no doubt about the military nature of the research at these facilities, pointing to the Russian military’s revelations on the labs’ US Department of Defense funding, and the presence of US specialists instructing the Ukrainian side in conducting the relevant research.
The Russian diplomat, meanwhile said that the special operation does not include occupation, destruction of statehood or overthrow of Ukrainian Government.
Separately, in an interview with Radio Sputnik Wednesday, Zakharova suggested that the Russian military’s revelations about US-funded biolabs “completely changes the picture of US involvement in the fate of Ukraine.”
“It is not just an instrument of influence, it’s not just an an instrument of deterrence. Its an instrument of a direct threat to our country,” Zakharova said.
In testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Victoria Nuland admitted that Ukraine was home to biological research facilities, and told lawmakers that Washington was “quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of” these facilities and the “research materials” contained therein.
“So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach,” Nuland said.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland testifies before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine on March 8, 2022 © Getty Images/Kevin Dietsch
US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has confirmed that Washington has been involved in an effort to make sure no “materials” Ukraine keeps in its biolabs end up with the Russian military.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned… Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland said on Tuesday as she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“We’re working with Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach,” she added.
The Russian military previously claimed that the Ukrainian authorities have been hastily destroying dangerous materials, including highly pathogenic bacterial and viral agents they allegedly kept in laboratories linked to the Pentagon.
On Monday, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said the documents seen by the Russian military suggest that some of these laboratories worked with anthrax, among other things. Kirillov also claimed that the only reason Kiev reportedly moved to destroy the materials was out of concern that Russian experts “will highly likely prove Ukraine and the US have been in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” once they study the samples.
While Moscow has expressed concern over the alleged development of bioweapons in Ukraine, Nuland appeared to preemptively blame Russia for any potential release of hazardous materials amid the ongoing military conflict.
Nuland agreed with Senator Marco Rubio that if a chemical or biological “incident” or “attack” takes place in Ukraine, then Russia would be the culprit.
“There is no doubt in my mind, senator, and it is a classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves,” she said.
Kiev has denied it was designing bioweapons. The Pentagon said speculation about its involvement in these programs in former Soviet states is ‘Russian disinformation’.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Ukraine, United States |
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Last month, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) issued new developmental language standards for American children. The updated guidance states that a 2-and-a-half-year-old child is now expected to say only 50 words.
As an autism specialist and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association-certified speech-language pathologist, I am appalled the CDC would quietly lower long-held pediatric language expectations by normalizing significant language delays as “the new normal.”
I have worked in hospitals, schools and clinics, and have been the lead director in developing autism programs and centers in multiple states.
I am considered an expert in pediatric development of speech, language, communication, oral motor function and swallowing, and an expert in providing appropriate treatment approaches and protocols when such functions are “abnormal.”
For 25 years, I have been an advocate for early identification and treatment because research shows the earlier a child is identified, the better their treatment outcomes will be.
Now the CDC wants to normalize delayed speech and language skills in American children, depriving them of early identification and treatment.
This will inevitably adversely impact our children’s future successes in school, in relationships, in their communication and in their self-esteem, leaving them to possibly face years more of speech and language therapy and educational support.
What is “normal?”
Children over age 2 are expected to have huge verbal vocabularies. They should have a word for almost everything in their environment.
Two-and-a-half-year-olds are expected to be using multiple 2+word to 3+word phrases and even merging into full sentences.
If the CDC is seeing a significant decrease in pediatric language acquisition, agency officials need to be asking why — instead of simply changing the standard expectations.
Yet this isn’t new for the CDC. The CDC has been changing IQ standards and student testing outcomes for years. American children are getting dumber and dumber, with more learning disabilities, and more health issues (54% of American children suffer from a chronic disease … but I will save that for another article.)
The CDC needs to just stop with this nonsense of making abnormal = normal, and start looking into what is negatively affecting our children’s development.
Let’s start by asking: Why the sudden change in speech and language in 2021-2022?
We can only assume the national implementation of mask mandates for the past two years has much to do with our current situation.
I have been screaming from the rooftops for the last two years that masking is inappropriate and harmful.
The American Speech and Hearing Association wrote letters to the CDC expressing concern about the potential negative impact of masks on speech and language, but unfortunately, the CDC didn’t waiver.
Apparently, the CDC felt such harms didn’t outweigh the disinformation agenda that masks stop the spread of SARS-COV-2. (There are decades of scientific research demonstrating masks don’t stop the spread of aerosolized viral particles.)
Here is how mask-wearing affects speech and language development:
Seeing and hearing: Children learn through watching and hearing. Masking hinders both of these learning modalities. Children need to see the mouths of their parents, teachers and peers.
Furthermore, masked peers and teachers impede aural learning. Speech and language development is significantly impacted when a child cannot see or hear all of the speech sounds being muffled by mask wearers. The developmental speech and language window is vital in developing appropriate communication skills and can impact a child’s education for years.
Mouth breathing: Children under 5 are transitioning from a suckling swallowing pattern to an adult swallow. This swallowing transition is important and sets up a child to have functional and appropriate speech and swallowing and even influences the oral structures and growth of the jaw and mouth.
A mask may impede this transition in multiple ways. Masks reduce oxygen intake and often cause the wearer to breathe from the mouth instead of the nose in order to take in as much oxygen as possible. Mouth breathing in pediatric oral development is very problematic, and often speech-language pathologists spend years working with patients attempting to remedy this problem.
Mouth breathing leads to a low tongue resting position, which is the precursor to many speech, articulation and swallowing disorders. Mouth breathing can even cause jaw malformations and long-term oral and swallowing dysfunction that only surgical reconstruction can rectify.
Furthermore, children with special needs, as those with speech and swallowing disorders and dysfunction, are severely impeded with mask mandates and this could set them back for a lifetime of therapy and more aggressive and invasive therapies in their future.
Compliance: Developing toddlers and children typically do not have the self-awareness or discipline to safely don and doff a mask, nor keep from cross-contaminating the mask by touching surfaces and not touching their mask.
If the reason to wear a mask is to prevent cross-contamination of COVID-19, I believe the mere placement of a mask on a child will increase the likelihood of viral transmission. A mask is simply a prompt to have the child touch his or her face more frequently.
Hygiene: Young children are still developing proper oral resting postures and swallowing and therefore often drool. They also do not often blow their noses and their phlegm comes forward out of their nares (nostrils or nasal passages). These bodily fluids would quickly contaminate a mask.
Keeping a child in a moist, warm, contaminated mask is unhygienic and places the child at greater risk of bacterial and fungal infections, some of which can be contagious to others, such as impetigo, which can cause significant health risks.
Special Education and Disabilities: The harms on our special needs populations have been even more remarkable, setting these children up for longer recovery and treatments and potentially a lifetime loss of better outcomes.
On top of the harms mentioned above, requiring a child with sensory processing disorder or neurological deficits to wear a mask has created behavioral and emotional problems in many children and increased the burden on families and the child’s educational program.
Still to this day, children and families of special needs who are unable to tolerate a mask have been deprived of access to medical care and therapies, as well as travel in planes, trains, buses, subways or taxis.
The CDC’s mask mandates have severely affected an entire generation of American children and we are just now beginning to see the long-term consequences. Kids who were born in the era of COVID-19, have no idea what a world without masks is — we should expect to see even greater speech and language deficits in these children in the coming months and years.
Our kids need to see and hear their communication partners within vital developmental timeframes. They need to breathe freely and live without fear of germs or killing grandma.
Mask mandates on our population are inappropriate and unethical. Shame on the CDC for implementing such unscientific measures and then quietly changing pediatric language standards to cover the harms they have caused.
What else will the CDC soon be redefining as “normal”?
If your child is not using at least 50 words by 24 months, or cannot be understood by 3 years old, please consult a speech-language pathologist.
And please … take the mask off your child and their communication partners.
Maija C. Hahn is an advocate and activist for health reform, Christian values, American exceptionalism, constitutional freedoms and truth. She is the Westside Regional Director for Michigan for Vaccine Choice.
© 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.
March 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Covid-19, Human rights, United States |
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The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Poland, United States |
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The neocons and their allies might be making it happen
Well, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there is no easy way to encourage it to return. Thanks to a relentless flow of propaganda, the American public has become increasingly convinced that the United States “looks weak” and must stand up against Vladimir Putin. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations is now calling for “regime change” in Russia while Senator Robert Wicker and Congressman Adam Kinzinger as well as several former Joint Chiefs of Staff generals are demanding that the United States establish a “no fly zone” over Ukraine, which would require US destruction of Russia’s air defense capabilities and shooting down of Russian planes among other measures. If that were to occur the war could quickly turn nuclear. Other media and government “experts” are speculating that Russian President Vladimir Putin is insane with much of the other disinformation coming from Russia haters like Bill Browder and former Ambassador Michael McFaul. But FOX news commentator Sean Hannity possibly wins the hate race, calling for the assassination of Putin because has he has “forfeited his right to live,” a view also shared by Senator Lindsey Graham.
Former GOP Vice President Mike Pence has called for anyone supporting Russia to be kicked out of the party which will no doubt produce a purge of members who are reluctant to go to war on behalf of foreign country and no ally Ukraine. Meanwhile a completely deranged Senator Mitt Romney has described anyone speaking up for Russia as “almost treasonous,” suggesting that Romney would benefit from looking up the definition of “treason” in the US Constitution. And the completely looney-tunes televangelist Pat Robertson is warning that Russia attacked Ukraine but the real target is Israel, which will result in a great war and Armageddon leading to the “End Times” when the world will end and all true believers will be raptured up to heaven.
But other more stable folks are making two basic arguments to justify the increasing engagement of Washington in the fighting. The first is the vague claim that what Ukraine versus Russia is all about is the maintenance of “freedom and democracy” in Europe. That is generally how President Joe Biden and other politicians describe it since it does not require any further explanation or discussion. The other argument is rather an elaboration of that, claiming that there was some kind of post-Second World War consensus that aggressive war to acquire someone else’s land should be condemned by all nations and steps should be taken to contain and repress any such activity. This led to the creation of the United Nations.
The problem is that neither justification for involving the US in a conflict where it is not actually threatened requires something more substantial given the danger of escalation of the fighting to the point where the world’s two leading nuclear powers would find themselves going head-to-head. And there is the little matter of history to reckon with, which tells us that not everything taking place can be reduced to such simplistic terms to justify taking action. The status quo in eastern Europe is a consequence of the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991-2 and, beyond that, of the configuration of the Russian Empire of the Tsars that preceded communism. Ukraine itself has had its borders adjusted numerous times.
Currently, the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to broaden the conflict with Russia by attempting to join the European Union while also calling for weapons as well as direct military intervention from NATO. He has called for volunteers to join the fight as a “foreign legion” and has also contacted Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and suggested that Bennett persuade Putin to participate in peace talks in Jerusalem. There has also been a less conciliatory appeal to world Jewry to join in on the attack directed against Moscow’s economy. In a video circulated among Jewish international organizations Zelenskyy said “Don’t you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now. Nazism is born in silence.”
There is also more than a measure of hypocrisy in the Biden Administration taking the lead on punishing Russia for aggression. The United States has gone to war with a non-threatening Vietnam and has destroyed governments and engaged in completely illegal military occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Syria. It has assassinated senior officials from Iran. It has not been punished for any of those actions. Its ally Israel bombs Syria on nearly a daily basis, engages in assassinations, kills Palestinian children, and annexes Arab land that it has obtained by force on the Golan Heights and West Bank, dispossessing the original inhabitants. When that happens, the US Congress and White House look the other way. All the Israeli war crimes as well as those being carried out by the Saudis against Yemen’s Houthis have been endorsed by the successive Bush, Obama, Trump and now the Biden administrations.
Beyond that, Ukraine is no democracy. The nation’s current government came into power after the 2014 coup engineered by President Barack Obama’s State Department at an estimated cost of $5 billion. The regime change was driven by State Department Russophobe Victoria Nuland with a little help from international globalist George Soros. It removed the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych who was unfortunately for him a friend of Russia. Ukraine is reputedly both the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, witness the Hunter Biden saga. Zelenskyy who is Jewish and claims to have holocaust victims in his family tree is a former comedian who won election in 2019. He replaced another Jewish president Petro Poroshenko, after being heavily funded and promoted by yet another fellow Jew and Ukraine’s richest oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is also an Israeli citizen and lives in Israel. As an entertainer, one of Zelenskyy’s musical acts consisted of his playing a piano with his penis, suggesting that Ukrainian humor has some unique characteristics.
After the election of the post-coup new model Ukrainian government in 2014, opposition parties were declared illegal and some leaders were arrested for “treason,” the media was censored and the parliament outlawed Russian, the language of a third of the population, as an official language. Then the government declared war on the predominantly Russian Eastern provinces and, for past eight years, has killed 14,000 people.
I keep asking myself, why do Washington policymakers and the media who should know better give so much of a damn about Ukraine? It is of no strategic value to the United States and Russian demands were both reasonable and negotiable. So the claims that Ukraine’s defense is intended to keep Europe democratic and free is just so much window dressing to justify waging economic war on Russia. And, in any event, American hypocrisy is clearly visible regarding the Kremlin’s possible intention to annex a couple of heavily Russian Ukrainian regions. It is not in any way worse than what Israel has been doing in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and on the Golan Heights, all endorsed by successive US administrations. So what’s it all really about?
After considering the parallels with Israel, it then occurred to me that maybe there was the usual angle, meaning that it was all about “protecting” Jews, the argument that succeeds in Washington where all else fails and makes the Bidens, Blinkens, Pelosis and Schumers stand up and salute. Even a befuddled Donald Trump has seen the light and is now calling the Russian intervention a “holocaust” and is joking about false-flagging US F-22 fighter bombers as Chinese and “bombing the shit out of Russia.” The Jewish media is also showering Zelenskyy with praise, referring to him as a genuine “Jewish hero,” a modern Maccabee resisting oppression, a David versus Goliath. T-shirts bearing his image are being sold that read “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh” while the Jewish community in New York City is raising millions of dollars for Ukrainian aid.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that a “2020 demographic survey estimated that besides a ‘core’ population of 43,000 Jews, around 200,000 Ukrainians are technically eligible for Israeli citizenship, meaning that they have identifiable Jewish ancestry. The European Jewish Congress says that number could be as high as 400,000.” If that is true, it is one of the largest Jewish communities in the world and it includes at least 8,000 Israelis, many of whom are trying to return to Israel. Other Ukrainian Jews are also fleeing the country.
Israel, with close ties to both nations through the Jewish diaspora, has been attempting to play both sides, offering support to Ukraine while also not condemning Russia. Its Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is increasingly playing the role of mediator between the two adversaries, having met with Putin and spoken several times with Zelenskyy. Jews, some of whom have Israeli citizenship, are, in fact, disproportionately represented among the so-called oligarchs in both countries, controlling key sectors of the respective economies. Several Russian Jewish oligarchs have already fled on their superyachts to ports providing non-extradition in an attempt to preserve their assets from US and European sanctions directed against Moscow’s economy.
So there appears to be a Jewish/Israeli story that is part and parcel of what is going on in Ukraine. It has long been recognized by many that a particular antipathy directed against Russia permeates the neocon world view. Most neocons are Jewish and a number of them are running the State Department while also holding high level positions elsewhere in the Biden Administration as well as in the foreign policy think tanks, including Haass at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Likewise, the intensely Russophobic US and Western media and social networking sites are disproportionately Jewish in their ownership and staffing. As US-Russian negotiations leading up the current fighting were clearly designed to fail by the Biden Administration, one has to wonder if this war is largely a product of a long enduring ethno-religious hatred. I am speculating of course, but there is even some historical evidence to support such a view in the Iraq invasion and the hostility towards Iran, both of which have been and continue to be driven by Israeli interests, not those of the United States. Is Russia the enemy a similar contrivance? It has to be considered…
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.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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China’s foreign ministry has called on the US to disclose information on the Pentagon’s alleged biological laboratories in Ukraine “as soon as possible”.
On Monday, the Russian military said Ukrainian authorities had been destroying pathogens studied at its laboratories. Moscow claimed that 30 US-financed Ukrainian biolabs have been actively cooperating with the American military.
Kiev has denied developing bioweapons. According to the website of the US embassy in Kiev, the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program only “collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks” of infectious diseases. In 2020, the embassy called such theories about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine “disinformation.”
Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, however, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that, according to his country’s information, the laboratories in Ukraine are just “a tip of an iceberg” and that the US Department of Defense “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” This is done under the pretext of “cooperating to reduce biosecurity risks” and “strengthening global public health,” Zhao said.
It is the first time that Beijing has disclosed the alleged figure. Zhao said that according to data “released by the United States itself,” there are 26 US laboratories in Ukraine. In light of Russia’s military offensive in the country, he urged “all parties concerned” to ensure the safety of the labs.
“In particular, the United States, as the party which knows these laboratories best, should publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out,” he said.
He claimed the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism. Such behavior, Zhao said, “further aggravates the concerns of the international community.”
According to a report in The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26. However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.
“Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the program,” the Brazilian news outlet claimed.
Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.
US authorities are yet to comment on the latest claims.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Ukraine, United States |
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Some have asked for my thoughts on Ukraine.
Since 2014, the Ukraine has been experiencing a quiet civil war, between the Ukrainian majority in the west, and a Russian minority concentrated in the east. The ethnic Ukrainian side in this conflicted has been co-opted by the supranational global imperial monolith. This is the cadre of western elites that determines political, medical and cultural orthodoxy across the world. They control not only all major political parties in most western countries, but also global international consortia from the United Nations to the World Economic Forum to the European Union to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Their goal is to further squeeze Russia by turning Ukraine – including the Russian-speaking eastern regions – into another political constituent of American globalism.
To the Russians – many Russians – this is unacceptable. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the globalists descended upon Russia to rape and pillage. In the years after 2000, NATO expansion was used to hem in Russia along the Baltic. These were hard years, but Russia finally reasserted its sovereignty. Since then, the western globalists have considered unaligned Russia to be their enemy, and they have adopted Ukraine as a convenient proxy against her. Ukraine is useful for this purpose, because it has considerable strategic significance, whether as a gateway to Russia through the open Ukrainian plains, or as a staging ground for American missiles.
The same western globalists who hate Russia, also count us as their enemies, and my sincere advice is to take them seriously in this. They have a kind of myopia for internal political dissidents; we are the unaligned domestic element, Russia is the unaligned international element, and so when Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, this must be, for them, the result of Russian interference.
I keep calling these people American or western globalists, but that’s only one way to understand them. I don’t have anything against Americans; I lived there for many years and have a great many American friends. It is only an historical accident, probably, that America finds itself at the centre of this globalist excrescence, this post-political, post-national order.
Rolf Peter Sieferle, one of my favourite thinkers, wrote about the fundamental conflict, between the globalists on one hand, and the unaligned people like me and unaligned countries like Russia, in more abstract terms. For him, the clash is between “politics” and “system”:
Politics belongs to an older stratum of existence, ordered in terms of the state and of history, crystallised in statesmen, leaders and ideologues. It has programmes, values and goals. What is required are virtues and commitments directed towards a super-ordinate whole. The last resort of politics is war – the willingness of the individual to sacrifice himself for a higher cause, for his community.
System characterises newly emerging orders of higher complexity, which successively displace politics. Systems organise themselves without focus, without values, goals or programmes. Their only maxim is freedom and emancipation for individuals. Virtue and sacrifice are anachronisms. Wars are nothing but catastrophic conflicts that must be prevented through skilful management. Order is created by objective, autonomous constraints, not by a normative orientation. The structures of systems are as inescapable for individuals as a magnetic field is for iron filings. They do not “know” anything about it, but they conform to their predefined paths. The most important processes are not controlled and can hardly be grasped theoretically.
System has largely prevailed in advanced “western” countries. Yet the rest of the world in many ways still thinks politically. This strikes the West as anachronistic fundamentalism. …
The system-globalists don’t recognise the legitimacy of Russian strategic interests, or the legitimacy of anybody’s strategic interests. Globalists do not have security concerns in that way. Many of them even believe their own hollow rhetoric, that they are spreading freedom and democracy, even after these last two years of experimentation in forced vaccination and intermittent mass house arrest. Even if they don’t believe all of that about democracy, they nevertheless imagine that they are missionaries of light and goodness to all peoples everywhere, and that human potential will only be fully realised, when every last Russian is on Facebook and subscribed to Amazon Prime.
The global American empire doesn’t invade; that is not what systems do. It assimilates. It is basically a borg that imposes economic and political constraints on an ever expanding expanse of the globe, which progressively fatten, distract and deracinate populations, with a view towards blending them into the same shallow multinational consumerist soup. Their plan was to make Ukraine part of the borg, and in this way further encroach upon Russia. Russia responded in political fashion, by taking up arms. Because the western borg never knows when to stop, Ukraine will now be destroyed and probably partitioned, as a means of keeping it forever outside the western globalist fold.
However much the globalists like the idea of encircling Russia with NATO, in their saner moments they’re not actually willing to risk nuclear war to defend the easternmost reaches of Europe. For the globalists, Ukraine was just a pawn. After they finish throwing their tantrum, they’ll go pick another proxy fight somewhere else, and ruin some other country; and they’ll also continue to grind away at unaligned unassimilated internal dissidents within their borders too. They make no distinctions here.
Western media and politicians don’t want to explain the cause of the Ukrainian war, because it is a defeat that they brought upon themselves. This is why they have chosen instead to portray Putin as some kind of crazy lunatic, in the mould of a Kim Jong-un or a Saddam Hussein. That is precisely wrong: Those are unpredictable tin-pot dictators who command paper-tiger armies. The Russians are a nuclear-armed global force, and the Ukrainian war is not something that Putin himself dreamed up yesterday. It surely enjoys substantial support within the Russian political and military establishment.
So, now that I’ve angered some of you: Nothing in the above is at all original; a lot of people (from John Mearsheimer to Noam Chomsky to a late 1990s Joe Biden) have made similar observations. I think there is little room for original thought, when it comes to the major events of global politics. Most of what is happening becomes obvious, as soon as you step outside the crazy media framing and observe things as they are.
– From Sieferle, Finis Germania (2017) p. 40–41. My translation.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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High gas prices displayed at a Mobil station on March 7, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. © Mario Tama / Getty Images
US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on Russian oil and gas imports in response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine on Tuesday, a move that threatens to send global gas and oil prices even higher than the record-setting costs the commodities are already fetching.
The president called on the nation to use the events as an opportunity to transition to renewable energy, insisting that if “no one has to worry about the price at the gas pump in the future, tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations.”
Biden warned oil and gas companies against jacking up prices unnecessarily, declaring that while “Putin’s war against ukraine is causing gas prices to rise… it’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit the situation or American consumers.”
“Russia’s aggression is costing us all, and it’s no time for profiteering or price-gouging,” Biden said, hailing the blanket ban on all imports of Russian oil and gas as “another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.”
Americans will have to pay “the price of freedom” in the coming weeks as the sanctions are expected to send energy prices soaring worldwide, Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) told CNN on Tuesday ahead of the sanctions announcement.
The Democratic senator warned that the price of oil could very well double to $300 per barrel, with gas prices more than tripling to $10-$14 per gallon.
The repercussions from the price shock will be felt worldwide, he continued, as costs continue to surge. Acknowledging that “the strength of our sanctions, of the costs we’re imposing on Putin… are more successful and more sustainable when they’re coordinated,” he praised the administration for working together with Europe on the looming import ban instead of pushing ahead unilaterally.
“We have to realize that it’s a global integrated market, it is tough to just turn on the taps and increase production quickly – it’s not like phoning up Amazon,” he explained, cautioning “we are going to see increased gas prices here in the US, in Europe they will see dramatic increases in prices, that’s the cost of standing up for freedom and of standing alongside the Ukrainian people. We need to see the cost and benefit here.”
The senator also admitted the White House has been in negotiations with its once-sworn enemies in Venezuela and Iran, two major oil producers Washington is suddenly seeing in a new light for their potential to bail out countries soon to be running on empty in the absence of Russian energy supplies, but argued the focus should be on Canada first. However, he acknowledged Putin “had Western Europe over a barrel” – literally and figuratively – regarding the highly sought-after commodities.
Russia is the second-largest oil exporter in the world, while the US is the largest oil consumer. While Moscow supplies only about 7% of US oil, Europe is much more heavily reliant on the nation for its energy supplies.
Fresh polls claim that Americans are willing to pay more at the pump in order to stick it to Putin. A Quinnipiac survey conducted over the weekend, which found 71% of Americans supported a ban on Russian oil even if it led to higher gas prices. More than half of respondents (56%) even suggested the US hadn’t gone far enough with its sanctions and called for tougher moves.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | European Union, United States |
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There are a lot of words that could characterize “Public Health” in 2022.
Some that come to mind:
-Not credible
-Misleading
-Wrong-focused
-Myopic
The one word that sums up “Public Health” in 2022?
“Untrustworthy”
“Public Health” has suffered from increasing and now severe vaccine myopia since the “prevention” program rose to power in the CDC.
Their one-sided thinking was fairly restricted to pediatrics but now has infected allopathic medicine.
Why are they untrustworthy?
For me, it’s because they willfully ignore evidence that challenges their policy positions. Worse, they work to destroy it (targeting papers for retraction, and peoples’ reputations).
They lie to themselves.
Their disdain for evidence that runs counter to their narrative places them outside of the demarcation zone of Science.
Here’s an example:
In the UK, the triple vaccinated now account for the majority of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations & deaths (See DailyExpose.uk ).
This should be on the front page of Public Health England’s webpage. Oh, wait, that’s right, PHE was “Public Health England was replaced by UK Health Security Agency and Office for Health Improvement and Disparities”.
And they want us to accept school mandates in places like Washington State.
The public trusted public health with their lives and their livelihoods. There are still people in “Public Health” defending lock-downs.
And they want us to trust them and support them in their quest for a “Universal COVID Vaccine” – one that targets “all variants” – an impossible task given the rate of evolution of RNA and how widespread SARS-CoV-2 is across the globe (See: Washington Post ).
They are untrustworthy because have turned a blind eye to the full balance of the data.
Here are some synonymous that might help you in your communications today
Dishonest, deceitful, not to be trusted, double-dealing, treacherous, traitorous, two-faced, janus-faced, unfaithful, duplicitous, dishonorable, unprincipled, unscrupulous, corrupt, shady, shifty, underhanded.
See how many of the following characteristics apply to “Public Health” from an article on five characteristics of untrustworthy people from Inc.com (5 Ways to Tell if Someone Is Untrustworthy):
1. They lie to themselves
2. They project behaviors on you that are clearly not ones you are exhibiting
3. They breach confidentiality
4. They show a lack of empathy
5. Their emotional state is volatile, and they have a pattern of inconsistency and fickleness in their decisions
The byline of the Inc.com article reads “Trust is the superglue of relationships, but if you spot these behaviors, it’s time to find a new partner to do business with.”
Exactly.
March 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK, United States |
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