Driven by climate madness, the environmental movement has become the greatest advocate of destructive industrial development in history.
As Kant said: “To will the end is to will the means”. In this case the means to the phantom end of climate control have led environmentalists to abandon all of their principles. Solar and wind require environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale. Electrification requires the use of toxic chemicals on a similar scale. The hazardous waste stream is enormous.
Solar is the worst because the destruction of forests and open land is complete. Perhaps something lives under these vast solar slabs but not much and certainly nothing like what they destroy and displace.
As I pointed out in my recent article on Virginia’s ill-named Clean Economy Act, we are talking about hundreds of square miles of solar devastation today, for just one state.
To actually meet our need for electricity would require several thousand square miles of destruction just for Virginia. For the whole country the numbers are staggering, easily the biggest environmental disaster in our history.
Wind is environmentally destructive too, just in a different way.
Let me make this personal. I live in the mountains, in far eastern West Virginia. When I drive to the county seat I get a grand view of the big mountain to the west. It is called the Allegheny Front, the height of land between the Atlantic and Mississippi watersheds. My magnificent natural view is now being industrialized, dotted with windmills and more on the way.
I am sure natural vistas are everywhere threatened, because that is where the best wind is. Mind you we almost never get sustained winds strong enough for full power, but that just means they need more intrusive industrial wind machines to produce the juice.
Even worse, there is a viewpoint up on the Front called Bear Rocks, where crowds gather every fall to watch the hawk migration. Great numbers of hawks come by in swirling groups called kettles, working their way slowly southward down the Front. Surely significant numbers will be killed by the growing phalanx of giant chopping blades.
West Texas has something like 10,000 choppers and other states are rapidly going the same way. That the environmentalists can allow the killing of enormous numbers of protected birds is a clear abandonment of their principles. This is Silent Spring in real life, with entire species threatened.
Then too, environmentalists fight hard for roadless areas. Scattering giant wind machines around a mountain top requires a dense system of access roads, one to every tower. In rugged terrain these systems can be complex and so big, destructive land users.
At the other end of the wire we have chemicals, especially enormous numbers of big batteries.
First come the huge battery arrays needed to turn highly intermittent wind and solar power into reliable juice. Then come the myriad batteries needed to electrify our transportation system, which also requires a lot more solar and wind devastation. Note that a lot of juice will go through batteries twice on its way to use.
Minimizing the use of toxic chemicals has been a cornerstone environmental principle. That the movement should now opt for chemical energy as a central feature of our energy system is a complete abandonment of that principle.
Then there is solid waste, which has always been a central environmental concern. Compared to conventional power plants, wind blades and solar panels are short lived, batteries are ridiculously so. In a solar, wind and battery world we are likely talking about billions of tons of toxic waste.
I think just about every principle of environmentalism is violated by the proposed massive buildout of wind, solar and electrification. Why the environmentalists are not screaming and suing to stop this vast open land destroying, wildlife killing and chemically intensive action is beyond me. Clearly environmentalism has lost its way.
David Wojick contributes Posts at the CFACT site. He is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.
But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.
Even before Biden’s botched Build Back Better initiative, American progressives faced opposition to their wildly impractical claims about achieving “zero Covid” and “zero emissions”, confronting “systemic racism” by defunding the police, regulating speech, and redefining two biological sexes into a multiplicity.
Increasingly, the “march” has started to falter. Like the French generals in 1940 who thought they could defeat the Germans by perfecting World War One tactics, the progressive establishment has built its own impressive Maginot Line which may be difficult to breach, but can still be flanked.
That is not to deny the progressives’ limited successes. It has certainly developed a remarkable ability to besmirch even the most respected institutions, including the US military. But that is where its achievements stop.
While the Pentagon’s top brass focused on “domestic terrorists” and a progressive social agenda, it calamitously bungled its withdrawal from Afghanistan and appears utterly unprepared for Chinese or Russian competitors. And the effect of this progressive march is plain to see: the percentage of Americans who feel “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” has dropped in just three years to 45% from 70%.
This decline in trust in major institutions, so evident in America, is also rife across Europe and Australia. In Europe, for example, young people express less pride in their cultural and religious heritage, and are almost three times as likely as their elders to believe that democracy is failing.
The great paradox of progressivism is that nowhere are its shortcomings more evident than in its geographic heartland: the dense urban centre. Conventional wisdom has dictated that America’s high-tech economic future will be shaped in dense urban areas, where superstar companies stand the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.
But while the upper crust of the labour force continue to head to the dense urban cores, on the ground people are moving in the other direction. Across the high-income world, not only in America but Europe as well, the vast preponderance of growth has taken place in suburbs and exurbs. In the last decade over 90% of all US metropolitan population growth and 80% of job growth took place on the periphery. On the ground, then, the progressive dream is withering.
The pandemic has greatly enhanced these trends, with downtown neighbourhoods recovering far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. But even if these changes are not permanent, at least not entirely, city residents will still have to contend with another pitfall of the progressive agenda: rising crime. Twelve American cities have experienced record homicides this year; all are ruled by Democratic, often progressive, leaders, many of whom explain away crime and excused, even praised, the looting and mayhem caused by protestors in the summer of 2020.
Yet despite this visceral impact on urban neighbourhoods, it is in education that our new hegemony could have its most long-lasting impact. The West’s new educational mandarins, increasingly strident and increasingly influential, have no use for our liberal inheritance, which they consider little more than a screen for racists and misogynists.
In Canada, we have seen an instance of “flame purification” for everything from old encyclopaedias and maps to Depression-era cartoons. In America, the disconnect between the professoriate and the people also keeps growing, as conservatives head towards extinction on many campuses: on some well-regarded campuses such as Williams, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans reaches between 70 and 132 to 1.
These trends have long been evident in the fading humanities and social sciences, but now even the sciences are becoming politicised. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that universities are losing credibility even among some traditional Leftists, who marvel at how they burnish their progressive credentials while making huge profits off their endowments and seriously underpaying most of their employees.
And just as with the growing disaffection for the military, teachers, students and parents are starting to push back. A number of teachers who have been “cancelled” or otherwise threatened for dissenting are now fighting back in the courts. There’s also considerable criticism from parents and alumni, some of whom are now pledging not to contribute to their schools, and instead support well-publicised and well-funded efforts to start new initiatives, such as the recently announced University of Austin. Even more importantly, would-be students are also voting with their feet: after decades of rapid expansion, the number of college students enrolments fell by 5% last decade, and dropped an additional 6.5% since 2019.
Likewise, only one in three Americans have confidence in their public schools, where the education establishment’s goal seems to be to obliterate merit. In my adopted home state of California, this “post-colonial” approach includes deemphasising the importance of tests, excusing bad behaviour, and imposing ideology on often ill-educated students. The San Diego Unified School District, meanwhile, is busily getting rid of mandates for such things as knowing course material, taking tests, handing in work on time, or even showing up; all these, the district insists, are inherently “racist”. This in a state that ranked 49th in the performance of poor, largely minority students. (Still, the situation could be worse: neighbouring Oregon no longer requires any demonstrable proof of competence to graduate.)
In the past year, this blindness has incited considerable public outrage. Criticism of Critical Race Theory buoyed the Republican win in Virginia in November, and has become a rallying principle for parents around the country, including a recall drive against San Francisco school board members.
Other parents are trying to opt out of the public system altogether. The pandemic saw the departure of more than one million American students from public schools, while 1.2 million families switched to home-schooling last academic year, bringing the total number of home-schooled students to 3.1 million, roughly 11% of the total. According to the Census Bureau, Black and Hispanic families now have the highest estimated rates of home-schooling, at 16% and 12%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the mass media, particularly its legacy outlets, constitute another progressive bastion losing credibility. One recent survey found that barely one in three Americans trusts the media, including a majority of Democrats, while only 15% of Americans have confidence in newspapers. Part of this surely stems from their bias: although there remain some powerful conservative voices, notably on talk radio and Newscorp properties, the vast majority of journalistic power lies with the Left. It’s the same story with social media, which increasingly dominates news access and is also widely distrusted.
But the media’s Maginot Line may prove more vulnerable than expected, and this breach is certainly a far better prospect than those that came with the German flanking. There is a definite challenge not just from the traditional Right but a plethora of new publications which offer intelligent analysis outside the establishmentarian party line, as well as from Substack. Unless the media oligarchs find ways to repress these elements, a resurgence of free thinking may rescue journalism from progressive editors and journalism schools.
The shift in the media parallels that in mass culture. As late as the Fifties, mass culture was seen as largely neutral. But in recent decades, it shifted towards a more monochromatic look — one which a significant portion of the public are fed up with. Gender flipping may excite progressive creatives, but politically correct remakes of household favourites have proved box offices disasters. Indeed, it’s striking that openly conservative presenters, such as Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, now do better in ratings than their more established network rivals like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
Yet perhaps nothing is more ironic, and potentially dangerous, than the takeover of the corporate suite by progressive ideology. Traditionally, the dispersion of ownership and the conflicting views of entrepreneurs and inheritors fuelled the dynamism of democracy: you had far-Left businessmen like George Soros and doctrinaire Right-wingers like the Kochs in competition. They fought it out, and sometimes even aligned. But they came from diverse viewpoints.
Today this diversity of viewpoints is being obliterated by design, with corporate behaviour now married closely to the notion of the “great reset” and “de-growth”: an economy where improving conditions for the masses is replaced with lowering carbon emissions and diversity tokenism. Such standards, of course, do not apply to snotty private schools attended by their offspring, or areas that are home to their mansions.
The oligarchs may feel they deserve dispensation from the masses by their “good deeds”, but people are not as stupid or malleable as the ruling elites believe. Trust in major corporations, never too robust, is below 20%, less than one third that for small businesses. It is slowly becoming apparent that ‘woke capitalism’ will never solve divisions which are essentially economic. The key, notes Richard Parsons, former President of Citigroup, lies not with racial quotas or hiring transgender workers but the economic growth and opportunity. There will never be “unity”, he suggests, until people “feel it in their pockets”.
The question now is whether there will be sufficient pushback to turn the tide. Unlike local school boards, online magazines, and even alternative colleges, it’s difficult to replace or challenge an Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Morgan Stanley. Yet fortunately these institutions do not yet control all wealth. Big companies may have shamed themselves out of oil and gas, but investors are ramping up due to the soaring price of these assets.
So, here’s the good news. On what sometimes seems the inexorable course towards progressive capture, we can see multiple fronts of resistance, and the early congealing of independent-minded forces, from the rational Right to the traditional liberal-left. Our society may never regain the feistiness of previous eras, and our new elites might continue marching through our institutions. But as they become increasingly discredited, they would be unwise to forget that all long marches one day come to an end.
Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is now out from Encounter.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Build Back Better, Great Reset, United States |
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A huge new study has found the risk of serious heart problems called myocarditis in men under 40 soars with each dose of a Covid mRNA vaccine – and is sharply higher than the risk from a coronavirus infection itself.
The findings call into sharp question the efforts by American colleges and universities to make their students receive booster shots before returning to school this January – especially since other studies have shown that the risk of post-vaccine myocarditis is concentrated not merely in men under 40 but in those aged 16-25.
The study, which British researchers released in late December, showed that the risk of myocarditis almost doubled after the first Pfizer shot in men under 40. Then it doubled again after the second and doubled again after the third – to almost eight times the baseline risk.

For the Moderna vaccine, the risks were even higher, reaching 16-fold after the second shot. (The risk of a third Moderna shot could not be calculated because too few people received it.)
Because each Moderna shot contains 100 micrograms of mRNA, while each Pfizer shot contains 30, the findings suggest strongly that the heart risks are dose-related and likely to continue to rise with each additional shot.
The study also contained some evidence that post-vaccine myocarditis might be more dangerous than other forms of myocarditis. It showed a trend towards higher death rates in people hospitalized for myocarditis after vaccination compared to other myocarditis cases.
Both myocarditis and pericarditis are forms of heart inflammation that can be very serious, even deadly. In an appendix, the researchers reported that 263 Britons were hospitalized for myocarditis within four weeks of receiving a Pfizer shot; of those, 38, or 14 percent, died. Only about 9 percent of people hospitalized for myocarditis that did not follow an mRNA vaccination died.
The researchers did not look at other potential cardiovascular risks, such as heart attacks or irregular heartbeats, although American and European databases of post-vaccine side effects contain many reports of those as well.
The findings come even as many colleges and universities – including public schools like the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, large private schools such as Syracuse University, and Ivy League institutions such as Princeton University – demand that their students receive a booster Covid shot before returning to campus.
For nearly all these students, an mRNA shot is the only viable option, as the Johnson & Johnson shot is no longer in common use.
These colleges are likely subjecting their male students to a risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, a related illness, that is much higher than the overall risk of Covid, which is vanishingly small for healthy teenagers and young adults. Many larger universities are likely to have multiple cases of male students hospitalized for myocarditis as a result of the mandates.
The massive study was is based on data from 42 million Britons who received at least one Covid vaccine dose, including roughly 22 million who received the mRNA vaccines.
About half were given the mRNA vaccines, while the rest received AstraZeneca’s DNA/AAV vaccine, which is not available in the United States. The AstraZeneca vaccine, which works similarly to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, had a lower risk of myocarditis than mRNA vaccines.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK, United States |
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So it’s likely that 1 in 70 teenage boys are affected. That’s not rare. Why isn’t anyone speaking out about this? Is it fear? Of what?
I’ve written earlier about Monte Vista Christian school.
I just heard that there’s another case of myocarditis at the school, so now there are now 4 cases in 285 vaccinated boys (estimate), bringing the incidence rate to nearly 1 in 70, assuming all the cases are boys (285/4=71.25). This is not rare. This is a disaster.
Furthermore, these are just the cases we know about. There could be other cases that we simply don’t know about because the families decided not to tell anyone. And there could be sub-clinical cases where the damage is being done slowly over time.
Nikki Daniels, MVC’s Head of School, believes it is in the best interest of all parties to keep this information confidential so that nobody outside of the school will know. All the parents agree; they could speak out but choose not to say a word to anyone outside the community.
I disagree with that approach. There is nothing whatsoever to keep them from speaking out. They could save hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide if they spoke out and others followed their lead. It would destroy the credibility of the CDC and break people out of their hypnotic trance doing whatever the CDC says.
Instead, Monte Vista behaves just like every other school: keep your mouth shut and pretend that the kids aren’t being injured by the vaccine. Maybe it will all just go away if we don’t say anything.
This kind of behavior doesn’t save lives. It fuels the false narrative and costs lives.
Monte Vista is setting a horrible role model for students
Students learn that if you see people being injured or killed by your government, the right thing to do is to keep your mouth shut and look the other way.
I guess these are the new Christian values that they are teaching kids today.
January 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Dissecting the Treaty of Versailles’s “Big Four”
In a Daily News Bulletin issued February 4, 1924, by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish leaders across the nation publicly mourned the passing of former war-time president Woodrow Wilson, the self-described “staunch friend of the Jews.” The telegram goes on to commemorate Wilson’s “intense interest in Jewish questions” by reviewing his political deeds as president, appointing Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court Bench despite vigorous opposition from the Court itself and urging the approval of the British Mandate over Palestine following the Balfour Declaration.
Nearly a century later, this adulation of America’s twenty-eighth president continues to be echoed by prominent Jewish leaders and intellectuals. In Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg’s book, “Wilson,” this formidable Head of State has influenced the decision-making of each succeeding American president up to former President Donald Trump. Furthermore, Berg argues that Wilson is the most pro-Jewish president in US history. This is attributed to Wilson’s breakaway from American isolationism, which guided the nation’s political function on the world stage for a hundred and twenty-five years.
Six months after winning a second consecutive term as president on the Democratic ticket (the first time since Andrew Jackson’s second term), Wilson asked the legislature to declare war on Germany in an imperative speech to Congress on April 2, 1917. His justification was to answer the question of the role the United States would play in the world – it was America’s duty to ensure that “the world must be safe for democracy.” This rhetoric has been repeated repeatedly by American politicians at all levels in subsequent generations, followed by military action.
As Wilson plunged the nation into Europe’s devastating four-year war which wrought 17 million deaths and 25 million wounded, he often portrayed himself as the beacon of progressive ideals, a missionary of self-determination, democracy, and multilateralism to the world and, by involuntary extension after the First World War, its conquered colonies from the ashes of the defeated German and Ottoman Empires. The question is on whose behalf and if foreign elements were acting abroad, at home, or both.
For example, it is entirely plausible today to assert that the invasion of Iraq was contrived almost entirely by high-ranking Jewish Zionists in the Bush administration for the long-anticipated purpose of removing Israel’s arch-nemesis at the time—Saddam Hussein—in another mission to destroy the Jewish State’s Arab neighbors and assert dominion over the region.The catch was that Israel would not be fronting the 2 trillion dollar bill and sacrificing 190,000 lives; that was left to the Americans.
Eighty years prior, before the founding of modern Israel, this similarly established Zionist paradigm in America’s political institutions persuaded the Wilson administration to do the same. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of the public through unbridled war propaganda and an unprecedented national tragedy for the specific purpose of creating a homeland for Jews, a cooperative network of Zionists in Britain, Russia, and the United States worked towards this goal through the imperial hand of the idealistic Wilson.
Jews long held Woodrow Wilson in high regard for his liberal politics and inclination to address their requests. When the former governor of New Jersey first ran for president in 1912, Boston’s Jewish Advocate published a political ad, pressing readers to join with “practically all the great Jewish leaders throughout the country” in endorsing him.These leaders included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. At the time, beginning in 1906, the United States was faced with the difficult task of admitting roughly ten million immigrants, mainly from Eastern and Southern Europe.
This sudden influx overwhelmed several facets of the native populace, whereby the “restrictionists” emerged with literary test campaigns as a method by which to curtail subsequent waves of immigration. The American Jewish Committee was the most active and significant anti-restricionist lobby group in each of these battles through delay and outright blockage of the legislative passage. During his tenure as president, Wilson assisted by vetoing three restrictive measures he believed were aimed principally at Jews before being overridden by Congress. The AJC’s particular fixation on the plight of Russian-Jewish immigrants caused an extensive lobbying endeavor in America’s foreign policy.
This emerging conflict of interest was sidestepped upon the outbreak of the First World War. The intense pogroms and anti-Jewish sentiment of Czar Nicholas II caused the American Jewish community to side more with Germany than with Allied forces. Immigrant Jews even prayed that the “more civilized” Germans would liberate their suppressed brethren in Eastern Europe from Russian harassment. In the Yiddish press, the enemy was portrayed vividly as: “The Jews support Germany because Russia bathes in Jewish blood.” Who will dare say that it is a crime for Jews to hate their torturers, their oppressors and murderers?” The German Foreign Office took advantage of this position in order to maintain its favor in the Jewish community; in September, 1914, Dr. Isaac Straus was even sent to the United States to manage propaganda work among Jews for the German Information Bureau located in New York.
The German Information Bureau, despite official American neutrality, could not be more pleased following its meeting with the Jewish press. This came at a time when most Americans would rather side with French and British allies out of strong ancestral ties: “So far as our relations with the very influential Jewish press are concerned, they are in good shape, and will be carefully nourished. It is critical in this regard that all news pertaining to them elevate Jewish self-esteem; for example, the appointment of Jewish officers, the installation of Jewish professors, and honors bestowed upon Jewish professors should all be sent here.”
While war efforts were being bolstered in the Jewish press, American Zionist leaders adopted a policy of neutrality for the time being, stemming from Theodor Herzl’s stance on non-partisanship in a neutral country as war raged. During this time, it was Britain’s Grand Fleet that managed the naval blockade of supplies into Germany, starving 400,000 German civilians to death. For the first two years of the First World War, German war efforts nevertheless proved supreme thanks to their unexpected arsenal of submarines against the wealthier, more weaponized Allied Powers. Imperial German forces nearly captured Paris, expelled Russia from the war, and drove the French Army into mutiny, all before a Western Front victory was barely in their grasp by 1918. On three separate occasions throughout 1916, Germany pursued avenues to negotiate for peace, but both British and French resolve maintained that peace would only come about upon Germany’s defeat.
Zionist leaders eventually came to the realization that Allied victory meant Russia’s influence would be amplified in the Near East. In early 1915, a conditional Entente agreement even allocated Constantinople to Russia. This posed an issue as Constantinople rested in the possession of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany and Austro-Hungary. High-profile Zionists had their eyes eastbound on Palestine as a suitable place to lay the groundwork for a Jewish homeland. In 1896, the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, approached Sultan Abdul Hamid II and offered to pay off the Ottoman debt in exchange for a charter that permitted Zionists access to Palestine. The Sultan outright refused.
The prospect of a promised land for Jews never escaped one highly influential man’s attention — Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Through Brandeis, Zionist leadership “passed into American hands by default.” He was considered one of the men of “light and lead” on whom Wilson relied. Born in 1856 to secular Jewish immigrant parents from the present-day Czech Republic, he graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of 20 and settled in Boston to open a law firm focused on progressive social causes. In his early career, he was distinguished for his public advocacy against powerful corporations, mass consumerism, monopolies, and public corruption while advising methods to restrict the influence of big banks and money trusts in his collection of essays, Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.
These progressive positions would later be taken up by Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson on the larger question of the role of the national government and the future of the American economic system. By that time, Louis Brandeis was head of both the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zionist Movement after meeting the English-born Zionist leader and close associate of the late Herzl, Jacob de Haas. The prominent Jewish lawyer was converted into a staunch Zionist under the mentorship of leading Zionists during that time, such as Aaron Aaronsohn, Horace Kallen, Shmarya Levin, Bernard Rosenblatt, and Nahum Sokolow. From August 31, 1914, to October 1, 1916, Brandeis was also chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for general Zionist affairs.
The Brandeis-Wilson coalition was the start of a political partnership with far-reaching consequences on the international scene until Wilson’s death. The opportunity for career advancement presented itself so visibly that Brandeis switched parties and carried his advocacies, including Zionism, into American political institutions as a high-ranking political figure with direct access to the newly elected U.S. president.
Upon Wilson’s presidential win in November, he noted to Brandeis, “You were yourself a great part of the victory.” During Wilson’s first year as president, Brandeis was instrumental in the behind-the-scenes creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The ambitious president attempted to make Brandeis his Attorney General and later Secretary of Commerce, but intense resistance from corporate executives forced Wilson to rescind his plan to make the renowned radical part of his cabinet. Instead, he nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, and he was sworn in amid a public outcry.
At a time when correspondence between Zionist leaders and the American president was steadily rising, as the Great War intensified in its first year, Brandeis approached Wilson about Zionist plans, to which Wilson seemed receptive. By 1916, Brandeis established regular contact with the State Department on the future fate of the declining Turkish Empire following the war, with Hungarian-born leading Zionist and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in communication with Wilson’s chief adviser on European politics and diplomacy during the First World War, Edward Mandell “Colonel” House, on Zionist objectives. Specifically, Wise functioned as an intermediary between Wilson and House from 1916 to 1919. Wise began his Zionist career in the late 1890’s by assisting the movement’s ideological development and organization of its membership. Another acquaintance of Herzl’s, he served as American secretary of the World Zionist Movement and was instrumental in producing the aforementioned Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs.
Opposition to American entry into the First World War cut across political, racial, and economic lines. Various factions of society, including socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, pacifists, civil libertarians, Marxists, rural southerners, Canadian and Irish nationalists, and women’s groups, were just some of the small but vocal minorities opposing American militarism. International socialist groups, for example, were keenly aware of the capitalist mobilization the war promised to big business rivals. The working class fought, while the ruling class profited. This was America’s first debut as a global military power and pitted citizen against citizen until eventually the government itself grossly violated civil liberties under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
In 1916, Wilson reignited his bid for re-election through his continued commitment to progressive change by calling for legislation regulating work hours and a minimum wage. Democrats campaigned on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War,” insisting to voters that a Republican victory would mean war with Germany. Just four months after his second inauguration, Wilson reneged on his campaign promise of neutrality and officially declared war. By this time, public resistance to this betrayal was minute. The preceding years of preparedness campaigns, patriotic zeal, and heavily propagandized press cycles swayed the consensus into viewing the war as just and necessary. Thousands more dissenters continued to be jailed, silenced, and deported under newly solidified justification.
Shortly after the U.S. entered into the war, the British Foreign Minister, Arthur J. Balfour, arrived in Washington. In a cable, James Rothschild urged Brandeis to discuss Zionism with Balfour on the viability of an English Zionist program to recognize Palestine as the Jewish national homeland. “Unanimous opinion is the only satisfactory solution for Jewish Palestine under British protectorate,” Rothschild explained in a telegram. Russian Zionists fully approve. Public opinion and competent authorities here are favorable… It would greatly help if American Jews would suggest this scheme to their government.The charitable activity of the Zionist movement was over. Now an era of wielding political power has commenced to shift the tide of international conflict under the London-Moscow-New York axis.
Only one month after American entry into the war, Brandeis followed through with Rothschild’s request. Appealing to Wilson’s progressive vision for the globe, Brandeis explained that a Jewish Palestine would fulfill the conditions of the peace settlement Wilson desired; Turkish despotism would be swept aside for a democratic government where economic and cultural development would be undertaken by a historically suppressed people.In reaction to the Balfour Declaration, Wilson said, “The allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our government and people, agree that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth.”
Partnered with Brandeis in courting Wilson was the Austrian-born Jewish lawyer and professor, Felix Frankfurter, a lifelong committed Zionist and member of the Zionist Organization of America. Frankfurter became acquainted with Brandeis in the Parushim, a secret Zionist society, reform movement, and arguably the first modern militant Zionist organization in America. Found by their former mentor, Horace M. Kallento, Zionist purpose was “a group much like the Peace Corps, young men and women who saw the Utopian opportunity that existed for the Jewish people in Palestine and who were willing to devote themselves to an ideal.”
The ideological motivations for endorsing Zionism were personal for Wilson as well: “To think that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people.” With Wilson formally persuaded, Brandeis passed along the good news via urgent cables to Rothschild in London. Two weeks later, Jacob de Haas, now advisor to Brandeis, cabled Russian born-Zionist leader and future president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, not only outlining the plan for Palestine but to communicate “an accurate statement of the prevailing sentiment in the United States to be presented to the Allied Governments.”
President Wilson was later asked directly by the British government about the likelihood of issuing a declaration of sympathy for the Zionist movement. Wilson responded that the time was not ripe. A month later, Wilson placed his full backing behind the affirmation as pressure mounted against Germany’s Turkish ally to make dispensations to the Zionists. The topic of the Balfour Declaration was on the table between the two world powers. Colonel House complained to Wilson in a note: “The Jews from every tribe have descended in force, and they seem determined to break in with a jimmy if they are not let in.”
Brandeis’ influence over Wilson in regards to Zionist ambition could not be understated. Wilson once remarked that it was Brandeis to whom he owed his career. According to Frank Edward Manuel, Wilson’s interest in Zionism and including it as part of his foreign policy was “being slowly nurtured by Louis Brandeis, one of the men who stood closest to him in the early years of the administration and who became the key figure in future American intervention in Palestine.”
A roadblock in the way of the highly anticipated declaration was the Counselor to the State Department, Robert Lansing. Lansing was completely bypassed in House and Wilson’s correspondence on the Balfour Declaration. In response, Lansing argued in a letter to Wilson why America must decline Balfour’s promise, noting that, among several reasons, “many Christian sects and individuals would undoubtedly resent turning the Holy Land over to the absolute control of the race credited with the death of Christ,” a flagrant secession from the protracted Christian support for the prophetic restoration of Israel.
Lansing ordered Ambassador Walter Hines Page to investigate and report prudently the British reasons for the Balfour Declaration. In spite of political opposition within the State Department, the declaration was officially signed by Lord Balfour after a two-year process of edits by British and American Zionists and officials. Despite its official status as a British document, it was Brandeis who spearheaded its drafting and application through Wilson.
News rapidly spread worldwide upon the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, with heaps of telegrams addressed to Wilson expressing their gratitude for his contributions. Leaflets were dropped over German and Austrian territory announcing, “The hour of Jewish redemption has arrived…” The Allies are giving the land of Israel to the people of Israel… Will you join them and help to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Stop fighting the allies who are fighting for you, for all the Jews… An Allied victory means the Jewish people’s return to Zion.”
By the summer of 1918, Turkish resistance was waning and President Wilson took this time to formally announce his public endorsement of the Balfour Declaration in August. Three months later, Germany was the last of the Central Powers to sign an armistice agreement with the Allies. The war was over. The next battle would be held in Paris.
The ambitions of Wilson’s liberal internationalist foreign policy were outlined in the Fourteen Points and used as the basis of terms for Germany’s surrender at the Paris Peace Conference. The Peace Conference produced five treaties, one of which was the notorious Treaty of Versailles. There were a number of high-profile Jews present, not just in diplomatic positions but in many senior and important functions within the Allied delegations. This included Baron Sonnino for Italy, Edwin Montagu for Britain, Louis Klotz for France, and Paul Mantoux as the interpreter for the “Big Three”—United States, Britain, and France.
Wilson also endorsed Rabbi Wise to promote the Jewish program for Palestine in Paris. Another Zionist delegate was Frankfurter, who was among the nearly one hundred intellectuals that signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Free Nations Associations. This formally enacted Wilson’s mission to dispel isolationism in favor of increasing American participation in international affairs.
In the midst of empirical savagery slicing up Germany and parceling out Europe’s colonial holdings, the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was presented by a delegation of the Zionist Organization led by Weizmann. The terms of the newly established British Mandate involved promoting Jewish immigration and settlement, suggesting boundaries, self-government, and the assurance of religious liberty.
At the request of President Wilson, Jewish statesman and Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch attended the Paris Peace Conference as an advisor to negotiate a deal with the victorious Allied powers on the destiny of Germany. He served as a member of the American Delegation to the Preliminary Peace Conference and on the Committee on Form of Payments of Reparations. Baruch is credited with managing America’s economic mobilization in the First World War while chairman of the War Industries Board. While Baruch opposed the strenuous financial tenets of punishing Germany, he nonetheless attempted to assist the Senate in passing the Treaty of Versailles.
Baruch also played a significant role in securing France’s vote in favor of the Palestine Partition Plan. He swayed their vote by visiting France’s UN delegate and heavily suggesting that failure to support the resolution could result in America withholding desperately needed monetary support as the war devastated France’s financial market.
The renowned English economist, John Maynard Keynes, was also in attendance at the Peace Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury. Disgusted by the ravenous nature of the treaties, particularly the Versailles Treaty, Keynes publicized a negative portrayal of the treaties in his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In response, Baruch paid John Foster Dulles $10,000 to ghostwrite his own book, The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty, to counter Keynes by exalting the treaties.
The most significant of American Jewish attendees, however, was Justice Brandeis himself, whose task at the world’s peace tables was to assist Colonel House “in collecting peace data for President Wilson.” The task was clear: “Colonel House will devote his attention to problems concerning the war in the west, while Justice Brandeis will study the near eastern question.” Their work will form the basis for the country’s contention.”
For a liberal president known for endorsing and exporting democratic ideals even through coercion, its inconsistent implementation was noted during the peace talks and formally addressed on August 28, 1919, through the presentation of the King-Crane Commission. The commission argued that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would inevitably lead to an immediate violation of the right of the indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination and deemed the Zionist program incompatible.
The report also stated that meetings with Jewish representatives led them to conclude that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine through armed forces” and begged the Peace Conference to reject Zionist proposals. The findings of this report were suppressed for three years by Brandeis until after the Peace Accords were passed. Working diligently to ensure the stipulations of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated into the final arrangement was Frankfurter, who found the findings of the commission to “cheat Jewry of Palestine.”
As the dissolution of the former Ottoman Empire began via the Treaty of Sevres, the vehicle for colonizing Palestine as spelled out by the Balfour Declaration was put into effect under the Brandeis-guided Wilson. The Council of the League of Nations and the United States both approved the Mandate for Palestine in July of 1922. It was clear from the beginning that the flagrant denial of self-government for the Palestinian population would continue until the Jews were strong enough to take the reins of government in the region.
For four days in April 1922, Congress debated resolutions brought forth to reaffirm the colonial implications of the Balfour Declaration as urged by Zionists. One of the vocal participants of its opposition was Professor Edward Bliss Reed, who testified in a prophetic hearing before Congress about the outcome of what American support entailed: “If you indorse the Balfour declaration, you are caught absolutely in the mandate…” What I want to warn you against is getting caught up in the mandate in what I consider an impasse. It will devastate this country, Palestine. I want to prevent my country from doing something that will bring it untold trouble.”
Nevertheless, Congress was subjected to endless Zionist pressure and passed the Lodge-Fish Resolution endorsing the British Mandate for Palestine as laid out by the Balfour Declaration, which was signed by Wilson’s presidential successor, Warren G. Harding, on September 21, 1922.
When Wilson died two years later, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, Louis Lipsky, stated publicly, “Mr. Wilson followed with interest the progress of the Zionist movement even after he retired to private life.” In 1921, when informed that the Mandate for Palestine had been finally ratified, he telegraphed to the Zionist Organization of America: “I am proud that it should be thought that I have been of service to the Jewish people.”
The First World War was proclaimed to represent “the war to end all wars”, bringing about a golden future on the promise of self-determination, democracy, mutual security, and peace. The cost would only be the blood and ashes of young, idealistic men committed to the service of their nation. What resulted was the pervasive indifference and lack of cohesive understanding of the memory of the war in spite of its devastating cost. As Steven Trout tried to explain the lack of American consciousness toward the war, “What exactly should the nation recall about the war? Is neutrality failing? The bravery of the combat soldier? The futility of trench warfare? The racial discrimination that permeated the ranks? Are there domestic attacks on German Americans? The botched peace processes? ”
Not to mention the American public that had opposed entry into Europe’s war was forced to grapple with the casualties of 120,000 soldiers and the reintegration of 200,000 wounded men, crippled of mind and body. For Wilson, it was his lifelong and close political partnerships with notable Jewish Zionists fully entrenched in American institutions that prompted his breakaway from isolationism—to which the United States has never returned. More consequential was Wilson’s setting the pattern for amplifying and servicing the dominance of a foreign state as the costs continue to rise.
Footnotes
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, INC., “Leaders Pay Tribute To The Passing Of A Great Statesman,” Daily News Bulletin, last modified February 4, 1924, https://pdfs.jta.org/1924/02-04_025.pdf.
Galia Licht, “Who Was the Most Pro-Jewish U.S. President? Woodrow Wilson, Obviously, ” Haaretz.com, September 25, 2013, https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/premium-which-prez-was-most-pro-Jewish-1.5340052.
Casey Titus, “History’s Deceptive Buildup Against Saddam Hussein,” The Duran, accessed March 22, 2021, https://theduran.com/history/deceptive-buildup-against-Saddam-Hussein
Nathan Guttman, “Top White House posts go to Jews,” The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/top-white-house-posts-go-to-jews, last modified April 25, 2006.
Paulina Cachero, “According to reports, US taxpayers have paid an average of $8,000 per person and more than $2 trillion in total for the Iraq War alone.”Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-taxpayers-spent-8000-each-2-trillion-iraq-war-study-2020-2, last modified February 6, 2020.
Jonathan D. Sarna, “Woodrow Wilson: A Jewish Hero.”What Should We Do with His Racism? ” The Forward, November 15, 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/450092/woodrow-wilson-was-a-hero-to-jews-what-should-we-do-about-his-racism/?
Joseph Rappaport, “The American Yiddish Press and the European Conflict in 1914.” 113–28 in Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 3/4 (1957).http://www.jstor.org/stable/4465551.
Rappaport, page 116.
Jon Guttman, “Did the Germans Try to Make Peace in 1916?,” HistoryNet, https://www.historynet.com/did-the-germans-try-to-make-peace-in-1916.htm, last modified December 18, 2014.
Elis Gjevori, “How Theodor Herzl Failed to Convince the Ottomans to Sell Palestine,” https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-theodor-herzl-failed-to-convince-the-ottomans-to-sell-palestine-46991, last modified May 25, 2021.
Adler, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 303–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.
Jewish Virtual Library, “Louis D. Brandeis,” last modified January 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/louis-d-brandeis.
Jonathan D. Sarna, “Louis D. Brandeis: Zionist Leader,” Brandeis University, last updated in 1992, https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholar.
American Jewish Archives, “A Finding Aid to the Stephen S. Wise Collection, 1893-1969,” The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, accessed December 31, 2021, https://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0049/ms0049.htm
Catherine Gilchrist, “Socialist Opposition to World War I,” Dictionary of Sydney, last modified in 2014, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/socialist_opposition_to_world_war_i
Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann to Brandeis (cable), April 21, 1917 (received April 25), Zionist Archives, New York City, Jacob de Haas Archives.
Lebow, Richard Ned. “Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration.” The Journal of Modern History, 40, no. 4 (1968): 507 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1878450.
Jewish Virtual Library, “U.S. Presidential Quotes About Jewish Homeland & Israel,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/u-s-presidential-quotes-about-jewish-homeland-and-israel-jewish-virtual-library, accessed December 31, 2021.
Schmidt, Sarah. “The ‘Parushim’: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1975): 122. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23880453
De Haas Archives, Brandeis to Rothschild (cable), May 9, 1917.
Adle, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.
Ahmed, Hisham H. “From the Balfour Declaration to World War II: The U.S. Stand on Palestinian Self-Determination.” Arab Studies Quarterly 12, no. 1/2 (1990): 9–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41858937.
Brendan Devenney, “Chapter One—Zionism: The Beginning,” Medium, last modified November 2, 2021, https://medium.com/@dubhelloco/chapter-one-b8d8b77b38b8.
Levene, Mark. “Nationalism and Its Alternatives in the International Arena: The Jewish Question in Paris, 1919.” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 3 (1993): 522. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260644.
Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, 261.
“BERNARD BARUCH: A PUBLIC MAN’S PRIVATE LIFE,”https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/, n.d.https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/bernardbaruch/world-war-i/.
Saul J. Singer, “Bernard Baruch: ‘America First’,” The Jewish Press-Breaking News, Opinions, Analysis and More on Israel and the Jewish World | Last modified March 29, 2017, https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-Jewish-world/bernard-Baruch-America-first/2017/03/29/.
Gates Brown, “Baruch, Bernard Mannes | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1),” 1914-1918-Online. WW1 International Encyclopedia, last modified March 16, 2015, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/baruch_bernard_mannes.
Butler Citizen, “Zionist Louis Brandeis Takes Control of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference,” Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/35334878/zionists-louis-brandeis-takes-control/, last modified October 2, 1917.
Ahmed, 23,
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Sixty-seventh Congress, Second Session, on H. Con. Res. 52, Expressing Satisfaction with the Re-creation of Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish Race April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1922 (Kessinger Publishing, 1922), 23–24.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Jews Mourn the Death of Woodrow Wilson,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, https://www.jta.org/archive/jews-mourn-death-of-woodrow-wilson, last modified in 1921.
January 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Human rights, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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The founder and CEO of ‘revolutionary’ blood-testing health technology company Theranos, has been found guilty on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors, but not patients.
Elizabeth Holmes, 37, was found not guilty on four charges revolving around “wire fraud against Theranos paying patients,” and the jury in California also remained deadlocked on three other charges on Monday. But with a partially guilty verdict she could still face up to 20 years in prison for each count, although some observers believe she is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.
Theranos was once a $9 billion Silicon Valley wonder that promised to revolutionize blood testing. It was founded by Holmes in 2003, after she dropped out of Stanford University at age 19. The company’s board of directors at some point included former senators, future Defense Secretary James Mattis, as well as former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger.
Praised as a self-made billionaire and “future Steve Jobs” of biotechnology, Holmes would appear at events alongside former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, former President Bill Clinton and even then-Vice President Joe Biden, claiming that her company could offer blood tests for 240 diseases using just a few drops from a fingertip pin-prick instead of a needle or syringe.
The entire enterprise collapsed following a 2015 Wall Street Journal report by John Carreyrou, which exposed the fact that the company’s miracle technology did not actually work. This triggered an inquiry by federal agencies that led to indictments against Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh Balwani in 2018. Balwani is set to stand his own trial next month.
January 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Dec. 31, 2021, released new data showing a total of 1,000,229 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Dec. 24, 2021, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
The data included a total of 21,002 reports of deaths and 162,506 reports of serious injuries. Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 709,084 adverse events, including 9,623 deaths and 62,069 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Dec. 24, 2021.
Foreign reports are reports received by U.S. manufacturers from their foreign subsidiaries. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.
Of the 9,623 U.S. deaths reported as of Dec. 24, 20% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 25% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 61% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 499.7 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Dec. 23. This includes 291 million doses of Pfizer, 190 million doses of Moderna and 18 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Dec. 24, 2021, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Dec. 24, 2021, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
The most recent death involves a previously healthy 15-year-old girl from Wisconsin (VAERS I.D. 1963633), who experienced a cerebral and intraventricular hemorrhage secondary to a ruptured aneurysm. She also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 despite having been fully vaccinated.
- 61 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases
attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 579 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 568 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 146 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Dec. 10, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:
- 19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
- 54% of those who died were male, 41% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
- The average age of death was 72.3.
- As of Dec. 24, 4,692 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 1,487 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- Of the 3,358 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 51% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 41% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
- 815 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), with 41% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 29% to Moderna and 28% to J&J.
- 2,241 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
- 12,070 reports of blood clotting disorders in the U.S. Of those, 5,341 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 4,302 reports to Moderna and 2,275 reports to J&J.
- 3,405 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 2,379 cases attributed to Pfizer, 1,197 cases to Moderna and 152 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.
FDA clears Pfizer boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds, bypasses experts
The FDA today amended Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine expanding eligibility for boosters to children 12 through 15 years of age.
The agency did not consult its expert panel of vaccine advisors, who in September, overwhelmingly rejected boosters for healthy people 16 and older.
The FDA also shortened the time for both adolescents and adults to receive a booster from six months to five months after receiving a second dose and authorized a third shot for immunocompromised children aged 5 to 11.
Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, said in a statement the agency made its decision because a third dose “may help provide better protection against both the Delta and Omicron variants.”
The FDA said it reviewed real-world data from Israel of more than 6,300 individuals 12- to 15-years-old who received a booster at least five months after their second Pfizer dose and found no serious safety concerns.
Likewise, additional data showed no problems giving anyone eligible for a Pfizer booster an extra dose at five months instead of six, the Associated Press reported.
The FDA said it will continue to review the information and communicate with the public if data emerges suggesting booster doses are needed for the younger pediatric population.
Pediatrician weighs in on FDA decision: children aren’t ‘mini-adults’
Dr. Michelle Perro, pediatrician and co-author of “What’s Making Our Children Sick,” disagreed with the FDA’s decision, pointing out that “children are not mini-adults.” In an email to The Defender, Perro said children’s rapid growth, quick cellular turnover and less efficient detoxification pathways are factors that must be considered whenever any new therapeutics are being introduced.
Perro said:
“This newest immunomodulating therapy, the mRNA inoculation, has already been shown to have produced multisystem negative health outcomes in children garnered from the CDC’s own database.”
Perro outlined five reasons she believes this “experimental therapy” must be immediately withdrawn:
- Gene-edited injectables have not been adequately studied in children as per Pfizer’s own data, where they meshed childrens’ and adults’ data together.
- The injection utilizes nanotechnology which is now part of the emerging technology in vaccinology research. These nanoparticles are so small in size they can cross the blood-brain barrier which can adversely affect our already fragile population of children.
- The mRNA itself is unstable and is thus encapsulated in a lipid biosphere comprised of a polyethylene glycol shell which in itself is toxic.
- The number of children suffering from already documented irreparable side effects from the inoculations, such as those occurring in their hearts (myocarditis), is not only unacceptable but immoral.
- Children’s healthcare providers are neither educated or proactive in diagnosing and treating the effects from this experimental therapy.
Perro questioned the FDA’s motives, given that children suffer nearly zero morbidity and mortality from COVID infections.
She also said the FDA is “veering from” its own historical stance.
“When previous true vaccines were introduced historically (rotavirus vaccine), after just a few cases of adversity, they were immediately withdrawn,” Perro told The Defender. “The FDA must adhere to its own historical position regarding their assigned task of the protection and oversight of our country’s greatest asset: our children.”
Fauci says hospitalization numbers for kids with COVID are overcounted
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in an interview on MSNBC, said statistics for hospitalizations among children with COVID are overcounted, making clear the distinction between children hospitalized with COVID and children hospitalized “because of COVID.”
Speaking to MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin, who was filling in for Rachel Maddow on Dec. 29, about the rise in hospitalizations among children amid the Omicron variant, Fauci said the surge is due to two contributing factors — more children getting infected and the way COVID cases are counted.
“And what we mean by that — if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual,” Fauci said. “When in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s overcounting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.”
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January 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 7 will convene a special session to hear oral arguments in two cases related to the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandates.
The two cases pertain to the mandates imposed on private businesses with 100 or more employees, and healthcare facilities participating in the Medicare or Medicaid programs.
The Supreme Court announced Dec. 22, 2021, it would hold a special session to hear both cases, following a series of decisions in lower courts that successively implemented and lifted injunctions against the two mandates.
In both disputes, the formal legal question at hand pertains to whether the federal government can continue enforcing the mandates while legal challenges against them work their way through the judicial system.
In the first instance, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling Dec. 17, 2021, lifted an injunction against Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses previously issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The mandate is now set to come into force on Jan. 4, though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it will not begin enforcement of the rule until Jan. 10. The mandate, if and when it is enforced, will impact an estimated 84 million U.S. workers.
Immediately following the 6th Circuit Court ruling, 27 states and several business groups, companies and ministries submitted applications to the Supreme Court seeking an emergency stay.
Two of these requests, one filed by a trade group and the other by a group of states led by Ohio, were formally accepted for oral argument.
These groups were joined by more than 170 Republican lawmakers who on Dec. 30, 2021, jointly filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing OSHA has no legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate on private businesses.
The Supreme Court, via Justice Brett Kavanaugh — whose jurisdiction includes the 6th Circuit — asked the Biden administration to submit a response to the legal challenges by Dec. 30, 2021.
In its response, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued the Biden administration possesses the authority, under federal law, to impose the mandate and the Supreme Court should not block a program that will save thousands of lives.
The Supreme Court will also hear arguments pertaining to Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers at facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. This rule is estimated to impact more than 17 million workers across the U.S.
In this instance, it was the Biden administration that filed an emergency request with the court, requesting it be allowed to temporarily enforce the healthcare worker mandate, which is currently blocked in 24 states following a series of injunctions issued by lower courts.
A brief filed with the Supreme Court by 14 Republican-led states described the mandate as “plainly unlawful.”
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, which oversees the healthcare mandate, announced Dec. 29, 2021, it will begin enforcing the mandate in the 26 states where it is not blocked.
A modified enforcement timeline accompanied this announcement: Healthcare workers will now be required to receive the first dose of a COVID vaccine by Jan. 27, and the second dose by Feb. 28.
The Supreme Court’s move to hold oral arguments in deciding whether or not to issue an emergency stay is considered unusual. Typically, such cases are placed on the “shadow docket” and are decided without a full briefing or a presentation of oral arguments.
In this instance though, the Supreme Court may seek to alleviate the uncertainty which exists among employers and workers who remain unsure as to whether they are subject to a mandate or not.
It remains unclear whether a decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the injunctions against the healthcare worker mandate will impact all 50 states or only the 24 where the mandate is currently blocked.
Any emergency stay issued by the Supreme Court would not constitute a final ruling regarding either case, but would freeze the enforcement of the two mandates until legal challenges make their way through the federal appeals courts before, most likely, ending up in the Supreme Court for a full hearing.
Separate Biden administration mandates pertaining to such categories as federal contractors and military personnel also have been challenged legally.
In the most recent such example, Judge James “Wesley” Hendrix of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled against a mask and vaccine mandate for participants in federal Head Start programs. The rules were set to take effect by the end of January.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton described the ruling as “a win for the children of Texas.”
However, the Supreme Court will not examine any of these other Biden administration mandates in the Jan. 7 special session.
While the Supreme Court previously rejected requests for emergency stays against state-level vaccine mandates, the court is also viewed as one that is skeptical of the power of federal agencies to issue mandates relating to COVID countermeasures.
This stance was evident, for instance, when the court lifted a moratorium on evictions imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the basis it was outside the agency’s authority.
Notably, a well-known Supreme Court decision from 1905, Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, which, according to proponents of vaccine mandates, sets a legal precedent for their legality, actually pertains to state-level mandates.
This argument was made by the state of Arizona in its lawsuit against the OSHA mandate, as previously reported by The Defender.
The lack of a federal-level precedent may therefore weigh into the justices’ decision.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 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.
January 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Since pleas to CDC/FDA regarding serious COVID-19 vaccine injuries remain unaddressed, she has escalated her concerns to Congress
Back in October, I shared the story of the brave Dr. Patricia Lee, a fully vaccinated intensive care unit physician and surgeon, who stepped forward after witnessing numerous serious injuries in her patients following COVID-19 vaccination.
Since that story was published, Dr. Lee had a Zoom meeting with six federal health officials, including Dr. Peter Marks of the FDA and Dr. Tom Shimabukuro of the CDC. The meeting left Dr. Lee more frustrated than she had been prior to the meeting – the officials had no interest in the specific harms she detailed, even after hearing the heartbreaking and traumatic stories that Dr. Lee shared about her individual patients. Without asking a single question or reviewing any of the relevant medical records, Dr. Lee was effectively told that COVID-19 vaccines did not cause these injuries in her patients.
Given the lack of interest in understanding the harm to her patients, Dr. Lee made only one request. She asked that both the FDA and the CDC publicly announce that physicians should not be retaliated against for advocating for their injured patients, so that they would not fear reporting injuries from COVID-19 vaccinations. The individuals in the meeting indicated that they welcomed those reports and that they view physicians as partners in monitoring safety. However, to date, no such public statement has been made, even after a follow-up letter was sent requesting just that. Nor has any other action been taken.
Dr. Lee is not willing to let this go – as a physician, she has an ethical duty to her patients. And so she has now reached out to the oversight committees in Congress. You can read her letter to these committees below highlighting the federal health authorities’ refusal to even recognize vaccine injuries, let alone address this serious issue and those whose lives have been devastated by these injuries. Hopefully these elected officials do the right thing:
January 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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In 1969, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison brought a criminal prosecution against a man named Clay Shaw. In the trial, Garrison rejected the lone-nut theory of the assassination of President Kennedy. He alleged instead that Kennedy was assassinated in a highly sophisticated regime-change operation spearheaded by the U.S. national-security establishment. Garrison alleged that Shaw had played a role in that operation.

Although Shaw was quickly acquitted, Garrison’s prosecution later inspired Oliver Stone to come out with his movie JFK, whose theme was the same as Garrison’s — that Kennedy was assassinated by his enemies within the national-security establishment.
At the end of Stone’s movie was a blurb that informed people that official records relating to the assassination would continue to be kept secret until the year 2029. The inference was clear: The secrecy was designed to advance a cover-up of the national-security state’s regime-change operation against Kennedy.
That blurb produced such an outcry among the American people that Congress was effectively forced to enact the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the CIA, release their long-secret assassination-related records to the public. To enforce the law, Congress called into existence the Assassination Records Review Board, which operated from 1994 to 1998.
The ARRB’s enforcement of the JFK Records Act is how we learned that the national-security establishment had conducted a fraudulent autopsy on President Kennedy’s body on the very evening of the assassination. The nature of that fraudulent autopsy was detailed in my books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2.
That fraudulent autopsy is how we know that the national-security establishment orchestrated and carried out one of its patented regime-change operations against Kennedy. As I have repeatedly emphasized over the years, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. Once one concludes that the Kennedy autopsy was fraudulent, there is but one reasonable conclusion that he can reach: The national-security establishment, which conducted the fraudulent autopsy, orchestrated and carried out the assassination.
Thus, if it hadn’t been for Garrison’s prosecution of Shaw in 1969, it is a virtual certainty that we still wouldn’t know today that what occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas was a national-security state regime-change operation. That’s because Garrison’s prosecution led to Oliver Stone’s movie, which, in turn, led to the JFK Records Act and the ARRB, which led to the evidence that established a fraudulent autopsy.
Ever since the Garrison’s prosecution, however, defenders of the lone-nut theory of the Kennedy assassination have portrayed Clay Shaw as an innocent victim of an abusive criminal prosecution. As it turns out however, Shaw wasn’t as sweet and innocent as the lone-nut theorists have long claimed. He actually was a perjurer and a liar.
At his trial, Shaw testified in his own behalf and denied that he had played any role in the Kennedy assassination. During his testimony, which, of course, was under oath, the following transpired:
Q: Mr. Shaw, have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?
A: No, I have not.
After he was acquitted, Shaw was interviewed by Penthouse magazine. In the interview, he stated, “I have never had any connection with the CIA.”
On November 1, 2021, the National Archives released a CIA document that had been kept secret since February 1992. That date was several months before the JFK Records Act was signed into law in October 1992. It was clearly an assassination-related record that should have been disclosed during the term of the ARRB in the 1990s. Instead, it was kept secret under a loophole in the law that entitled the CIA and other federal agencies to continue keeping certain records secret for another 25 years, on grounds that their disclosure would reveal “sources” or “methods” or endanger “national security.”
If you read the document, you will see that there is no possibility that it falls within any of those categories. The CIA simply lied to the ARRB to ensure that the document would continue to remain secret for 25 more years. Then, when that 25-year deadline came due in 2017, the CIA again lied, this time to President Trump, to get even more time for continued secrecy of the document. Trump gave the CIA another five years of secrecy. When that deadline came due in 2021, the CIA persuaded President Biden to grant another extension of time for secrecy, this time to December 2022. For some unknown reason — perhaps even a screw-up — the National Archives released the document in November of 2021.
The document is a memo sent by J. Kenneth McDonald, the Chief of the CIA History Staff, to the Director of the CIA, with copies being sent to other CIA personnel. It pertains to how the CIA should handle the CIA’s records from the reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s.
In his memo, McDonald states the following: “These records do reveal, however, that Clay Shaw was a highly paid CIA contract source until 1965.”
Thus, by the CIA’s own admission, it turns out that Clay Shaw wasn’t the sweet, innocent man that lone-nut theorists in the Kennedy assassination have long portrayed him to be. At the very least, he was a perjurer and a liar, which, of course, taints his entire testimony at his trial.
Do you see why the CIA is loathe to disclose the 14,000 records that it continues to keep secret from the American people that related to the Kennedy assassination and why it continues to demand continued secrecy of such records?
January 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | JFK Assassination, United States |
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Alex Odeh with his daughters months before he was assassinated. Photo: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
In a report filed Saturday in Liberation magazine by Reem Zubaidi, the author explains that new information has come to light about the assassination of Alex Odeh, a Palestinian-American human rights activist killed in 1985 by a pipe bomb planted in his office.
Odeh’s murder was never solved – and he was one of a number of Palestinian and Arab activists targeted in the 1980s by anti-Arab terrorist groups operating in the United States.
Zubaidi writes: New information has come to light through a recent Los Angeles Times interview with a former Santa Ana police officer. The revelations prompted U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to call upon the FBI to “intensify its efforts to investigate the murder of Mr. Odeh and bring his killers to justice.”
On Oct. 11, 1985, Alex Odeh, 41, was killed in a premeditated attack upon opening the door to his Santa Ana office. Odeh’s office was broken into and the pipe bomb that killed him was planted the night before.
Odeh was a Palestinian activist and the west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, an organization that protects the civil rights of Arabs and Arab-Americans in the U.S. He was also a poet and father of three young daughters at the time of his murder 36 years ago. As of yet, no one has been charged for the murder despite strong evidence against suspects who fled to Israel following the attack.
The Arab-America Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said they welcome renewed interest in Odeh’s case, but want to put it in context. “While, understandably, we have focused on bringing Alex’s killers to justice, we also want to ensure that this attack is not viewed as an isolated incident. This was a deliberate attempt to silence an Arab-American civil rights icon and organization,” said Samer Khalaf, ADC National President, adding that ADC offices were also targeted in Boston and Washington, DC.
The attack occurred during a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria whipped up here by the media in response to international incidents where American lives were lost. Odeh was killed just hours after he appeared on two TV news shows defending the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), explaining that that the PLO had no role in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro ship.
The FBI classified the bombing as a terrorist attack. The assassination was condemned by President Ronald Reagan and even by Zionist organizations like the American Committee on Israel and the Anti-Defamation League. Two weeks after Odeh’s death, the FBI attributed the assassination — along with two other bombings —to the Jewish Defense League, a terrorist organization founded by fascist American-Israeli politician Martin Kahane. The national chair of the JDL, Irv Rubin, made a public statement after the bombing saying: “I have no tears for Mr. Odeh. He got exactly what he deserved.”
In response to the FBI’s statement linking the JDL to the attack, Rubin denied involvement. After facing backlash, the FBI went back on their original stance, saying instead that further investigation was needed before any final attribution was made, although the JDL was “probably” responsible for the attacks.
36 years later Justice Department still dragging its feet
For decades, the Justice Department has dragged its feet on bringing justice to Odeh and his family. During that time, evidence has continued to surface that further implicates the suspects of the murder, who were under surveillance at the time. A few years ago, retired law enforcement officers who were on the case at the time expressed frustration at the failure to make any arrests despite having named suspects: “We know who did it. We know where they lived. We know why they did it, how they did it.”
The suspects moved to Israel where two of them are still living freely in a West Bank settlement. Israeli officials continuously thwarted efforts to obtain information about the JDL’s movement between the U.S. and Israel despite the fact that organization and suspects were linked to several other attacks in the U.S. Extradition requests were previously denied until 1993 when one suspect was extradited to face charges in another murder after two years of extradition proceedings, but not for the attack that killed Odeh.
ADC Legal and Policy Director Abed Ayoub explained on Dec. 21, “To have a senior member of the Senate, Majority Whip and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee take a serious look at this case is welcoming, and long overdue. We hope that it brings some answers from the FBI about what’s taking so long in this case and why justice hasn’t been brought for those responsible for Odeh’s murder.”
Zubaidi writes in her piece in Liberation magazine that she believes Odeh’s murder and law enforcement’s failure to bring justice to him and his family decades later makes evident the fact that the U.S. government is a partner in silencing pro-Palestine activists.
She adds that she believes there is a double standard in how these cases are handled. For example, the U.S. government unjustly designated the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Islamic charity in the U.S., to be a “terrorist organization,” shut it down and even jailed its organizers and activists. Yet the U.S. supports Israeli NGOs that raise funds in the U.S. for illegal Zionist settlements and settler terrorism.
Most recently, on Dec. 15 the civil rights group the Council for American Islamic Relations revealed that informants there were recording and passing confidential information to an anti-Muslim hate group with links to the Israeli government. Yet there has been no media outcry or Justice Department investigation.
January 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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