You would assume that if the CDC was going to crush the civil and individual rights of those with natural immunity by having them expelled from school, fired from their jobs, separated from the military, and worse, the CDC would have proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual. If you thought this, you would be wrong.
My firm, on behalf of ICAN, asked the CDC for precisely this proof (see below). ICAN wanted to see proof of any instance in which someone who previously had COVID-19 became reinfected with and transmitted the virus to someone else. The CDC’s incredible response is that it does not have a single document reflecting that this has ever occurred. Not one. (See below.)
In contrast, there are endless documents reflecting cases of vaccinated individuals becoming infected with and transmitting the virus to others. Such as this study. And this study. And this study. And this study. It goes on and on…
But it gets worse. The CDC’s excuse for not having a shred of evidence of the naturally immune transmitting the virus is that “this information is not collected.” What?! No proof! But yet the CDC is actively crushing the rights of millions of naturally immune individuals in this country if they do not get the vaccine on the assumption they can transmit the virus. But despite clear proof the vaccinated spread the virus, the CDC lifts restrictions on the vaccinated?! That is dystopian.
The facts about natural immunity are simple. Every single peer reviewed study has found that the naturally immune have far greater than 99% protection from having COVID-19, and this immunity does not wane. In contrast, the COVID-19 vaccine provides, at best, 95% protection and this immunity wanes rapidly. I am no mathematician, but a constant 99% seems preferable to a 95% that quickly drops. And, while the vaccinated readily transmit the virus, not so for the naturally immune.
The lesson yet again is not that health authorities should never make mistakes. They will. It happens. The lesson is that civil and individual rights should never be contingent upon a medical procedure. Everyone, the naturally immune or otherwise, who wants to get vaccinated and boosted should be free to do so. But nobody should be coerced by the government to partake in any medical procedure.
In a week when the UK has seen a prominent academic forced from her post by an activist mob, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has published a new paper that describes the 15-year hounding of environmental studies professor, Roger Pielke Jr.
Professor Pielke, one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, has been a vocal supporter of decarbonisation efforts, but this has not prevented green activists from engaging in an extraordinary campaign to silence him because he refuses to support claims that extreme weather is worsening.
And he is still being hounded today, with the University of Colorado Boulder launching and then dropping an investigation of his conduct, and forcing Pielke – their most senior environmental studies professor – to move to a tiny windowless office.
The paper’s author, civil liberties journalist Donna Laframboise said:
“The hounding of Roger Pielke has been abhorrent. It is time that university administrations stood up to cancel culture and the outrage mobs.”
And Laframboise points to this week’s announcement of a new university in Austin Texas, dedicated to the cause of academic freedom:
“Universities that behave this way will lose their best people to new and independent institutions that protect free thinking.”
GWPF Director Dr Benny Peiser said:
“The witch-hunt against Roger Pielke Jr. is symptomatic of a problem that we are seeing in universities across the developed world, with activists trying to silence dissenting opinions, and with the tacit, and in many case the active, support of administrators.
“Universities need to take great care – if the public lose faith in the system, public funding and generous donations from alumni can dry up very quickly.”
Libya’s much-hailed first female Foreign Minister, Najla Mangoush, has been suspended by the country’s Presidential Council. The decision on 6 November concluded that the minister had been “acting unilaterally and without consultation” with the council as required by the political agreement of 9 November 2020 that divided authority between the Council of Ministers and the Presidential Council. The suspension decree also said that Mangoush is to be investigated by two experts who will submit their findings to the council within the next two weeks.
However, the real reason for the suspension and investigation is a comment in her interview with the BBC. The minister said that her government is “open” to the possibility of extraditing a Libyan citizen wanted by the United States in connection with the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. On the 32nd anniversary of the bombing on 21 December last year, the then US Attorney General William Barr accused a former Libyan intelligence officer, Abu Agila Mohammed Masud, of involvement in the atrocity. Despite what Mangoush told the BBC, though, it is unlikely that Masud will be extradited.
Two hundred and seventy people, mostly US citizens, were killed on that fateful night, including 11 people on the ground, when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. A Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Baset Ali Al-Megrahi, was convicted of the atrocity and sentenced to life imprisonment in a 2001 trial. He was released in 2009 for health reasons — he was suffering from prostate cancer — and died in his Tripoli home in 2012.
Al-Megrahi protested his innocence to the end and his family launched a posthumous appeal to clear his name. The third appeal is now being considered by the UK Supreme Court in London after it was rejected by Scotland’s Court of Appeal in January.
His Glasgow-based lawyer, Aamer Anwar, was outraged by Mangoush’s comments. In a statement shared with MEMO he wrote, “Shame on you [Najla Mangoush] for broadcasting to the world, the words ‘positive outcomes’ are coming.” When asked about the possibility of extraditing Masud to the US the minster had used that phrase, implying that the issue is being discussed among ministers and a decision to collaborate with the US has already been made.
Anwar went on to question her motives by asking, “What reward are you expecting from the United States, a country that has bombed, humiliated and sanctioned your people?” He accused the minister of breaking Libyan law, which bans the extradition of Libyan citizens to be tried abroad.
Faced with a wave of public outrage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation denied on 7 November what was attributed to the minister in the BBC interview. It insisted that Mangoush “never mentioned” Masud. It’s true that she did not refer to him by name, but the context of the interview clearly refers to him. The BBC released a clip of the interview in which Mangoush answered a question about extraditing Masud to the US and she said: “I don’t know but I think we, as a government, are very open in terms of collaboration in this matter.”
Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh came out quickly in her support, and said that the Presidential Council does not have the authority to suspend the foreign minister. Citing the political agreement that paved the way for the current government and council to share power, Dbeibeh said that the latter “has limited power” which does not include appointing or suspending ministers.
A top Libyan Supreme Court judge, Ali Al-Zuraiqi, confirmed in a televised interview said it is “illegal to extradite a Libyan citizen” to be tried in another country. He added that such a matter is in any case “for the judiciary in Libya to decide.”
Libyan commentators overwhelmingly rejected Mangoush’s statement, accusing her of reopening the Lockerbie case which, many say, has long since been closed. Indeed, in 2008 the US and Libya signed what is known as a Claims Settlement Agreement that ended all claims in connection, not only with the Lockerbie bombing, but also many others that involve violence and acts of terror committed before 2006.
Former Foreign Minister Mohamed Sayala was asked about his successor’s comments. “The Lockerbie case was completely closed,” he pointed out, “[and] its revival opens hell’s door” to Libya, particularly, in terms of financial compensation for the victims’ families. In the 2008 agreement with the US, Libya agreed to pay a total of $2.7 billion to victims’ family in order to “buy the peace”, as its then Prime Minister, Shukri Ghanem, described it.
Libya has never accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie tragedy and “mounting evidence” since the 2001 trial has pointed to Al-Megrahi’s innocence. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed on board the doomed flight, is certain that Al-Megrahi is a “victim of a miscarriage of justice.” Swire is one of the campaigners pushing for his conviction to be overturned.
Ferial El-Ayeb, a consultant to Al-Megrahi’s defence team in Scotland, told MEMO that such comments by Foreign Minister Mangoush are “outrageous and insulting to us in the defence team.” She added that Libya is in “a weak situation now” and the kind of comments heard from the minister “will increase US pressure on the country to hand over Masud.”
A source in the foreign ministry, speaking anonymously, told MEMO yesterday that Mangoush was in her office despite the Presidential Council’s decision. The source added that she is expected to take part in tomorrow’s conference on Libya hosted by the French in Paris.
The only certainty, the source concluded, is that the “negative public backlash against [Mangoush] will act as a ‘deterrent’ to her and other officials to be careful when discussing sensitive issues.”
Two Lowell Graded School parents demanding their second-grade daughter be taught in the classroom without a mask were warned by a state trooper Thursday, Nov. 4 to take her home or risk arrest for trespass or loss of custody of their child.
The live Facebook video was recorded by the girl’s father, Andre “Mike” Desautels. In March, a Vermont judge sided with Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan and ordered Desautels to require his employees to wear masks.
As the video opens, Desautels explains he and wife Amy have a note from a doctor exempting his daughter from wearing a mask. However, the parents have been told that a doctor’s note isn’t enough and that the school needs to see a formal medical diagnosis in order to develop a 504 plan. Such plans are intended to ensure that a child who has a disability identified under the law and is attending an elementary or secondary educational institution receives the necessary accommodations.
“We did not agree to this as she did not need any special accommodations from anyone,” Amy Desautels explained via social media. “We had provided the doctor’s note which is what was stated on the NCSU guidelines for what they required and it did not specify what needed to be on the note.”
As seen on the video, Vermont State Trooper Andrew Jensen talked briefly with the couple, took a phone call, and then returned and then politely but firmly gave them three options.
“Your options are: Take your child, go home, fight this through the courts, through your lawyer, whatever,” Jensen said. “Option B: We escort your child out here, you refuse to take her home, and you refuse to leave. Therefore we place both of you under arrest for trespassing. Option C: you leave, but leave your child here, we contact DCF, possibly placing her in state custody for abandonment.”
“I cannot believe that you guys would get involved, especially because we have done everything required with our paperwork. And you’re going by what he (Castle) is telling you,” Desautels responded. He also said a child in Walden – another Northeast Kingdom town – is attending mask-free.
The school has the right to make the rules,” Jensen said.
“But we’re following the rules,” Desautels said.
“But not exactly,” Jensen said.
Given those options, the couple elected to take their child home that day.
* * * * * *
Earlier in the day, Castle answered Vermont Daily Chronicle questions about school policies on masking.
Chronicle: What are the options for parents who do not want their children to wear masks in school?
Castle: “A parent may obtain an exemption to having their child wear a mask if they have a certified diagnosis from a physician of a medical reason for not wearing a mask or from a physician or mental health provider for a psychological reason. The school would need to review the medical information within a formal IEP or 504 process to determine if the accommodation is necessary to ensure the child is able to access their education.”
Chronicle: Please describe the reasoning behind removing a child from school for not wearing a mask.
Castle: “Schools that have established a mask requirement are doing so to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 in the interest of public health for students and staff. Allowing staff or students without a legitimate exemption to not wear a mask would result in many individuals opting out and thus increasing the risk of transmission. A student’s non-compliance with a mask requirement is considered unsafe and in violation of school procedures.”
this winter when hospitals are having “weather disruptions” like american and southwest airlines because the winds of “i do not wish to be vaccinated against my will” among health workers are reaching gale force, just remember:
this is not covid.
this is bad policy.
this is literally an attempt by health officials to:
“make hospitals and assisted living facilities safe by preventing doctors and nurses from making healthcare choices.”
no sane public health official would do this.
this has NOTHING to do with a virus. if it did, you’d trust acquired immunity and the medical judgement of doctors.
these people are wreckers.
they WANT these systems to break. they want a hospital crisis because that will create “an emergency” that allows them to step in and regulate or grab control or nationalize.
do NOT fall for this. this is a game of chicken and the doctors who want to have their own bodies be their own choice are in the right.
support health workers as they strike and stand up for themselves.
they were there for us. be there for them.
not only is this the morally correct thing to do, but it’s also in your own self-interest if you ever again want to be able to have your own medical choices be between you and your chosen physician.
can you seriously believe that a system that will not allow doctors to make THEIR OWN healthcare choices can be trusted to let them help you make YOURS?
this is not about your health, it’s about their power. their regulatory edifice seeks to subsume all of healthcare and to do it, they’re seeking to BREAK all healthcare.
this will not be market failure.
this will be market sabotage.
be sure you blame the right people.
and be sure you repay wreckers with being wrecked in return.
This article defines a more effective public health strategy for the current COVID pandemic.
The core issue is that there is a huge array of reactions to both COVID infections and vaccines based on diverse biology, genetics and medical conditions of individuals. Missing from current policy is recognition and support of personalized medical methods.
First, medical history tells us the wisdom of making the medicine fit the person. This is the cornerstone of what is called personalized or individualized medicine. Good physicians also find the combination of drugs to best address an illness or disease. This contrasts with mass use of off-the-shelf, one-size-fits all drugs. Proposed here is an approach to tailor or fine tune medical solutions to individual biologic and genetic characteristics, and personal medical needs and circumstances.
As an example of how trying to get the public to accept a mass medicine is the case of seasonal flu vaccines. A large fraction of the public does not take them. During the 2019-2020 season, 63.8 percent of children between six months and 17 years got a flu shot. Among adults, just 48.4 percent of people got flu shots.
Why is this? Because it is common knowledge that their efficacy rate is relatively low. On average, people who get the flu shot are between 40 and 60 percent less likely to catch the virus than unvaccinated individuals. The truth is that the annual flu vaccine does not fit every individual. Even though there is little medical evidence that taking a flu vaccine poses significant health risks. But people know that the flu infection fatality rate is relatively low.
Many individuals make a sensible risk/benefit analysis, concluding that there are insufficient benefits. Others, especially older people with serious medical conditions and possibly weak immune systems get annual flu shots. The public health system has allowed a personalized approach to seasonal flu vaccines.
And it turns out, based on government data, that low risk is also the case for the current COVID pandemic. For the vast majority of people getting coronavirus infection either means no symptoms or only mild ones not much different than the flu or a very bad cold, and which pass in relatively few days. Here is the reported truth about low coronavirus death risks for healthy people:
“CDC showed that 94 percent of the reported deaths had multiple comorbidities, thereby reducing the CDC’s numbers attributed strictly to COVID-19 to about 35,000 for all age groups.”
This stands in contrast to the widely reported total of over 730,000 COVID related deaths. What this shows is the huge variations in how people respond to COVID infections because of their innate differences.
What COVID infected people do get is natural immunity to this virus that abundant medical research and clinical studies have shown is better than vaccine immunity. The latter declines in about six months, whereas natural immunity lasts longer and better defends against new variants.
Combination Of Medicines
Besides making the medicine fit the patient is established clinical wisdom for using a combination of drugs. And often, in this pandemic, some doctors use a combination that includes more than several generic medicines and, especially in hospitals, government approved drugs. Also widely used are vitamins and supplements. The eminent Dr. Peter McCollough has been the leading proponent of using individualized combinations to treat and prevent COVID infection disease. All this is an alternative to the strategy of mass vaccination for everyone.
Today, anyone without too much effort can find a host of combination protocols to treat and prevent COVID.
The Missed Opportunity Discussed Early In The Pandemic
Between the early 2020 months of the pandemic and the roll out of mass vaccination in late 2020 there was interest in applying the personalized medicine approach to managing the pandemic.
Consider what the Mayo Center for Individualized Medicine said for the COVID-19 response. The document detailed a number of initiatives Mayo was pursuing to address the pandemic by obtaining medical data that could lead to personalized pandemic solutions. This is what Mayo wanted to do:
“When COVID-19 spread across the U.S. in March 2020, the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine urgently responded to accelerate research, development, translation and implementation of novel tests, lifesaving treatments and diagnostics. Now, collaborative teams of scientists are continuing to unravel the mysteries of the novel virus, including using advanced genetic sequencing technologies to investigate how the virus can infiltrate a person’s immune system and wreak havoc on organs, tissue and blood vessels, leaving some patients with long-term effects.”
A September 2020 article had the intriguing title “How to use precision medicine to personalize COVID-19 treatment according to the patient’s genes.” Here are excerpts:
“In recent years, a gene-centric approach to precision medicine has been promoted as the future of medicine. It underlies the massive effort funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to collect over a million DNA samples under the “All of Us” initiative that began in 2015.
But the imagined future did not include COVID-19. In the rush to find a COVID-19 vaccine and effective therapies, precision medicine has been insignificant. Why is this? And what are its potential contributions?
If precision medicine is the future of medicine, then its application to pandemics generally, and COVID-19 in particular, may yet prove to be highly significant. But its role so far has been limited. Precision medicine must consider more than just genetics. It requires an integrative “omic” approach that must collect information from multiple sources – beyond just genes – and at scales ranging from molecules to society.
The situation becomes yet more complicated for infectious diseases. Viruses and bacteria have their own genomes that interact in complex ways with the cells in the people they infect. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 underlying COVID-19 has been extensively sequenced. Its mutations are identified and traced worldwide, helping epidemiologists understand the spread of the virus. However, the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 RNA and human DNA, and the effect on people of the virus’s mutations, remain unknown.”
… there is an opportunity to begin gathering the kinds of data that would allow for a more comprehensive precision medicine approach – one that is fully aware of the complex interactions between genomes and social behavior.
The NIH has said: “The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program has announced a significant increase in the COVID-19 data available in its precision medicine database, adding survey responses from more than 37,000 additional participants, and virus-related diagnosis and treatment data from the nearly 215,000 participant electronic health records (EHRs) that are currently available.”
The specialty germane to a personalized pandemic strategy is called pharmacogenomics. It is the study of the role of the genome in drug response. It combines pharmacology and genomics to discover how the genetic makeup of an individual affects their response to drugs, including vaccines.
It deals with the influence of acquired and inherited genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating genetic factors of an individual with drug or vaccine absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination. It deals with the effects of multiple genes on drug and vaccine response.
The central goal of pharmacogenomics is to develop rational means to optimize drug therapy, including vaccination, with respect to the patients’ genotype, to ensure maximum efficiency with minimal adverse effects.
By using pharmacogenomics, the goal is that pharmaceutical drug treatments, including vaccination, can replace or at least complement what is dubbed as the “one-drug-fits-all” approach. Pharmacogenomics also attempts to eliminate the trial-and-error method of prescribing, allowing physicians to take into consideration their patient’s genes, the functionality of these genes, and how this may affect the efficacy of the patient’s current or future treatments (and where applicable, provide an explanation for the failure of past treatments).
An August 2020 journal article was titled “Pharmacogenomics of COVID-19 therapies.” Here are its optimistic views and findings:
“Pharmacogenomics may allow individualization of these drugs thereby improving efficacy and safety. … Pharmacogenomics may help clinicians to choose proper first-line agents and initial dosing that would be most likely achieve adequate drug exposure among critically ill patients; those who cannot afford a failure of ineffective therapy. It is also important to minimize the risks of toxicity because COVID-19 particularly affects those with comorbidities on other drug therapies.
We found evidence that several genetic variants may alter the pharmacokinetics of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, ribavirin, lopinavir/ritonavir and possibly tocilizumab, which hypothetically may affect clinical response and toxicity in the treatment of COVID-19. … These data support the collection of DNA samples for pharmacogenomic studies of the hundreds of currently ongoing clinical trials of COVID-19 therapies.
One of the biggest success stories in the field of pharmacogenomics was for a drug used to treat another, highly lethal, infectious disease: abacavir for HIV. … In an acute illness such as COVID-19, pharmacogenetics would only be useful if the genetic test results were already available (i.e., pre-emptive pharmacogenetic testing) or rapidly available (i.e., point-of-care genetic testing). …
In the face of unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborative efforts among the medical communities are more important than ever to improve the efficacy of these treatments and ensure safety. Some large national COVID-19 trials are evaluating pharmacogenomics, which will inform the role of pharmacogenomics markers for future clinical use.”
A July 2020 NPR show was titled “Research On Personalized Medicine May Help COVID-19 Treatments.” This was deemed newsworthy:
The nationwide All of Us Research Program aims to tailor medical treatments of all kinds, including treatments that may be developed for the new coronavirus. So far more than 271,000 people nationwide have signed up to share data with the initiative. All of Us started under President Barack Obama in 2018 [sic] and involves institutions across the country.
“This is an exciting opportunity for our participants to have a direct impact on COVID-19 research, watching how their participation in this historic effort is truly making a difference,” said Dr. Elizabeth Burnside. “This focused initiative could be especially important for members of communities that are often underrepresented in health research and who may question the overall and personal benefit of research participation.”
In sum, there was legitimate medical interest early in the pandemic to use personalized medicine, in which drugs and drug combinations are optimized for individuals or certain population demographics. The central goal is minimization of drug and vaccine toxicities and adverse reactions and deaths.
But one thing is now clear. The personalized approach to managing the COVID pandemic has not been aggressively pursued by public health agencies. They have placed their resources and hopes with mass vaccination, both encouraged, coerced and increasingly mandated. The hope that we can vaccinate ourselves out of this pandemic has lost credibility.
In contrast, an alternative personalized approach, used by hundreds of physicians, based on generic medicines, vitamins and supplements have been more blocked than supported by the public health establishment as detailed in Pandemic Blunder.
Proposed New Public Health Strategy
Part One: Individuals decide either on their own or with the advice of their personal physician to be vaccinated for COVID. And to accept what government officials have decided are the best COVID medical solutions for outpatients and inpatients.
Part Two: Individuals choose a preferred medical professional who, on the basis of their education, training, experience and successful clinical results, offers alternatives to vaccination and government promoted medical solutions for outpatients and inpatients. The medical professional uses the patient’s medical history, conditions, needs and unique personal biologic and genetic circumstances to reach the best personalized medical solution.
The new public health strategy is, therefore, twofold. Widely available vaccination becomes focused or finely tuned to meet the desires and needs of part of the population. Along with use of the second part there is no sacrifice of true public health protection in the pandemic.
Part Two of the strategy directly addresses the widespread resistance to COVID vaccination by some Americans.
This is a rational perspective consistent with the belief in medical freedom. If one believes that there are some certain medical benefits of COVID vaccines, then traditional medical practice supports use of them on an individual therapeutic basis. This is a free personal decision, perhaps in consultation with their physician to accept that COVID vaccine risks are outweighed by its benefits.
Risks and benefits may be based on personal research of available medical information on vaccines. Or on information from government agencies, often without advice from their doctor.
Not to be ignored is increasing negative information on COVID vaccines reaching the public. One recent example from a published medical research article is that “cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.”
From this same study: within “eight days post-inoculation (where day zero is the day of inoculation), sixty percent of all post-inoculation deaths are reported in VAERS.” This study concluded: “It is unclear why this mass inoculation for all groups is being done, being allowed, and being promoted.”
In seeking to implement the wisdom of fit the medicine to the person, requires accepting the science that no two people, medically, genetically and biologically speaking, are exactly the same; this cannot be disputed. This is why using pharmacogenomics has a role to play. Looking at average statistical vaccine outcomes ignores and disrespects individual biologics, medical conditions, concerns and needs. This is an overselling of vaccines.
Americans have always wanted to see themselves as unique individuals. This translates to medical actions. Mass vaccination for everyone ignores and devalues this traditional belief by Americans.
There are also legitimate concerns that giving informed consent to a shot has not been based on a full, easily understood presentation of data on risks for different kinds of people with various medical histories.
Those who are resisting vaccination have a right to question that government agencies have not strictly followed medical science, data and experience. For example, a vast literature concludes that stay-at-home mandates, lockdowns and masking have not been effective in controlling pandemic impacts.
And there is now considerable evidence that those who are vaccinated can get breakthrough infections and spread the virus. “We have data now through the first week of August from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, showing that… over 60 percent of seniors over the age of 65 in the hospital with Covid have been vaccinated,” noted the esteemed Dr. Peter McCullough recently.
This erodes the credibility of public health agencies and their medical authority and destroys public trust in federal agencies implementing pandemic policies.
The Fallacy Of Only One Medical Solution
If the government would let some part of the public choose personalized treatment to deal with COVID infection and another part to choose vaccination (and other government actions) why is that not an acceptable public health policy? The two-part strategy will become increasingly important as the government promotes or mandates regular booster shots over months or years.
Choice is rational if, indeed, there are personalized treatment options other than vaccination that can be obtained from some medical professionals. Indeed, there is now a vast medical literature on treatment protocols not only to cure but also to prevent COVID infection. They are being used very successfully by hundreds of American physicians.
And some information reaching the public like the very successful use of the generic ivermectin in India and Indonesia reinforces the inclination of some people to seek alternative medical solutions. Also, that 100 to 200 members of Congress have used this generic.
Moreover, now there is also a vast medical literature, increasingly known to the public, supporting the strong effectiveness of natural immunity obtained through previous COVID infection. It is a rational personal decision to conclude that one’s natural immunity is sufficient medical protection without taking on any vaccine risks. They have the right to seek a medical professional that agrees with that medical reality.
The only conceivable “loser” for this approach would be vaccine makers having a smaller market.
Physicians should have the freedom to advise their patients to either use a generic medicine treatment protocol or help document their natural immunity (with valid testing) to allow patients to embrace personalized medical action rather than be vaccinated.
In this two-part policy approach, of promoting a choice between personalized medical protection versus mass vaccination, the entire population could be fully protected without sacrificing medical freedom and without various forms of vaccine mandates. Public health does not require totalpublic acceptance of one medical solution.
This strategy is consistent with what many physicians said early in the pandemic. Namely that vaccination should be targeted on those with the highest risks of serious COVID impacts, not the entire population. It is widely known by the public and accepted by the medical establishment that this pandemic does not pose a serious threat of either illness or death for people below the age of about 70, unless they have serious comorbidities or serious illnesses. Infection fatality rates for most of the public do not argue for vaccination.
Much of the public wants and deserves the choice to use something other than a vaccine shot to protect themselves. That choice becomes operational only if the government allows and supports medical professionals to offer their patients alternatives to vaccines.
Here is the ethical and medical truth: Protecting individual health trumps protecting public health but is not antithetical to protecting public health. Overly coercive public health actions, such as vaccine mandates, are antithetical to protecting individual health for many people who fear even low probability negative reactions to vaccines.
Here is the ultimate medical truth: When all available medical science and means are fully used then the result is safely protecting public health without sacrificing medical freedom of both physicians and individuals.
The Current Strategy Has Failed
As we approach two years of dealing with this pandemic there is abundant evidence that the emphasis on mass vaccination has largely failed. The US has the highest number of COVID deaths on the planet. Even now, after wide use of the mass vaccination approach, recent 2,000 daily deaths are related to COVID infection. Every week more people are counted as COVID deaths than the 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 disaster.
Not to be ignored is the widely cited journal study titled “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.”
Breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated are mounting. Because after about six months vaccines lose much of their effectiveness, especially against variants. And fully vaccinated people can and do carry and transmit the coronavirus.
If one wants first-hand accounts of how US physicians have documented their own negative impacts of COVID vaccines as well as those of their patients, then read a number of their affidavits.
Conclusions
A new public health strategy that no longer adheres to single-minded mass vaccination can obtain broad public support. Now is the time to endorse and support personalized medicine applied to the pandemic.
Much of the public may not yet know this. But missing from the new CDC definition of vaccine as of September 1, 2021 are these key phrases: “protecting the person from that disease” and “to produce immunity.” The new vaccine definition should reduce public confidence in current COVID vaccines. In fact, these changes reflect what is now known about the limitations of these vaccines. Fully vaccinated people can still get COVID disease and really do not have long lasting effective immunity to it.
Promoting choice is a far better public health approach than wide use of authoritarian pandemic controls that have devastated lives and produced mental stress and many collateral deaths.
On that last point, CDC has now recognized mood disorders put people at high risk for severe COVID cases. Compare pre-pandemic 2019 to 2020 when there were 53 million new cases of depression globally, a 28 percent increase, as reported in The Lancet. Surely, promoting more medical choice for addressing COVID would help people stay both mentally and physically healthy.
Resistance to vaccine mandates should not be seen as unpatriotic or as creating harm for others. Supporting personalized medicine is a way to avoid negative impacts on the American economy because of rigid, inflexible vaccine mandates that compel many Americans to accept job loss that in many ways imperil public safety.
Lastly, staying alive and safe surely is the presumed goal of all people. We have more tools than vaccines to help people meet their goal. Now we need the public health establishment to let all the tools be freely chosen.
Joel S. Hirschhorn’s new book Pandemic Blunder here: amazon.com
Allegations he was secretly a Russian-backed Manchurian candidate haunted former US President Donald Trump’s time in office. Now, though, long after he left the White House, the claims have gone from farce to clear falsification.
The indictment of Igor Danchenko on Thursday is the latest development in the painfully slow unravelling of the conspiracy behind the Russiagate hoax. At the same time, however, it is also a new window into the workings of the so-called ‘deep state’ forces that bought into the lies and wielded them like weapons against Trump’s presidency.
The scandal began, all accounts show, when Democratic contender Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired a private research firm, Fusion GPS, to dig up dirt on its political rival – then-Republican presidential contender Trump. Fusion GPS contracted the work out to former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
They didn’t get value for money, it seems. The subsequent Steele Dossier has since been exposed as a complete fraud – and one that wasn’t even well put together. Its damning ‘evidence’ referred to payments from the Russian consulate in Miami, despite there being no Russian consulate in Miami. Stories of secret servers, Trump staffers meeting with Moscow’s agents in Prague, and with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, secret pee-pee tapes: the list was never-ending. All have been proven false.
What’s almost worse is that US intelligence knew it all boiled down to gossip and fraud, with then-CIA Director John Brennan warning President Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was effectively fabricating a Russia-Trump conspiracy theory.
The Russiagate accusations and investigations didn’t lead anywhere in terms of proving a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin. But the smears were successful in terms of delegitimising Trump, casting him as a Russian agent throughout his presidency and preventing any rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. Russiagate undermined key American institutions and intensified confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Probing the conspiracy theorists
The tables appear to be turning against the Russiagate hoaxers and their media enablers as new investigations explore how the greatest scandal in US history – a foreign agent in the White House – turned out to be one big deception.
FBI Director James Comey gave Congressional testimony in December 2018, explaining how he came to give credibility to the obviously fraudulent Steele Dossier. Comey managed to say he “can’t remember,” “can’t recall,” and “doesn’t know” no fewer than 245 times. It has also been revealed that the DNC never gave the FBI access to its servers, allegedly hacked by Russians, and instead outsourced the investigation to the private corporation CrowdStrike.
The president of CrowdStrike, ex-FBI official Shawn Henry, had already admitted in a testimony in December 2017 that there was no evidence of Russian hacking. This testimony was not made public until May 2020, and in the intervening time House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff continued to maintain there was evidence of Russian hacking.
The first indictment went out against cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann in September 2021. Sussmann reported to the FBI that be had uncovered a secret server linking the Trump organisation to Russia’s Alfa-Bank, which was treated by the media as a smoking gun. Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI because he presented himself as an independent cyber expert when he peddled the false server story, when in reality he was hired by the Clinton campaign.
Danchenko and Brookings Institution
Special Council John Durham has now arrested and indicted Igor Danchenko, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. Danchenko was the primary source behind the infamous Steele Dossier ordered by Hillary Clinton. He has been indicted for lying to the FBI, as he claimed the information later featured in the dodgy dossier came from a phone call and meeting in New York with the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce’s president at the time, Sergey Millian.
Millian insists that no such conversation ever took place, either by phone or in person. The FBI investigation concluded that the phone call was made up, and Danchenko had repeatedly emailed Millian but never received a response. Danchenko’s trip to New York did not involve a meeting with Millian, and Danchenko was actually with his family at Bronx Zoo when the meeting was supposed to have taken place.
Danchenko worked for several years for Fiona Hill, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an anti-Russian hawk, and perhaps the most devastating witness against Trump in the impeachment hearings of 2019. Hill assisted in advancing Danchenko’s career and introduced him to Christopher Steele and Democratic Party operative Chuck Dolan. The latter contact is important, as Danchenko is also indicted for lying to the FBI about speaking to him.
The Brookings Institution is one of the oldest and influential think tanks in Washington, of the kind initially envisioned as an intermediary to connect politicians with academics so the decision-maker could make informed decisions. However, this world of influence has since become a billion-dollar industry due to the development of a business model in which policy gets put up for sale. The Brookings Institution is now seemingly involved in the largest political fraud in US history.
The deep state on trial?
The term ‘deep state’ can easily be dismissed as a conspiracy theory of a hidden government, although in reality it merely denotes a bureaucracy that can act autonomously and pursue independent policies. Officials often, out of choice or necessity, operate to some extent independently from the elected officials they are supposed to serve.
For example, NATO’s 30 member states keep co-operating irrespective of the constant cycles of elections that rotate new defence ministers around the table. Some things happen regardless of who is in charge.
The bureaucracy can lean on everything from think tanks, intelligence agencies, and a myriad of institutions who inform the politicians and implement their decision-makers. The undemocratic bureaucracy acting under the democratic institutions can be considered a deep state – a government within a government that ensures continuity of the status quo.
When the status quo is disrupted, the deep state may act independently against the policies of the democratic institutions. Russiagate revealed that the election of Trump, with the stated intention of “getting along with Russia,” triggered the bureaucracy to act independently of democratic institutions. Intelligence agencies laundered gossip and smears by presenting them as credible; investigations were initiated on deeply flawed evidence to undermine the legitimacy of an elected representative; military leaders bragged about withholding information from the president; the media acted as soldiers in an information war by uncritically pushing bizarre narratives; and one of Washington’s major think tanks is now involved in the fabrication of the entire Russiagate scandal.
The status quo of anti-Russian policies and narratives usually enjoys bipartisan consensus and therefore goes on without criticism or fanfare. However, the mistake made by Russiagaters was to turn hysteria over Moscow into a political weapon, which one side had to defend against. Now it is coming undone; the recriminations are likely to go beyond the journalists, politicians, and imaginative analysts who backed it, and shine a light on the darkest recesses of the American state.
Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal.
It seems like no matter where you go ‘free’ smart interactive kiosks are being installed in cities everywhere.
It appears politicians across America can’t stop boasting about IKE’s free “Smart City” kiosks.
Smart interactive kiosks like IKE boast about offering free advertising to local businesses during the pandemic, so how do they make any money?
IKE’s website does a great job of painting itself as a ‘free’ interactive kiosk service to the public. In fact they do such a great job of obscuring how they collect users personal information, that I didn’t think there was much of a story here.
After clicking on IKE’s four tabs “About, Technology, Applications and Team” I thought maybe they really were using advertising dollars to pay for their rapid expansion. But then I struck paydirt after I clicked on their privacy policies at the bottom of their website.
IKE tells users that they will collect information on each user’s interactions with the Kiosk. “We may share this information without restriction with the city where the Kiosk is located and its agencies…”
The types of information their kiosks collect becomes a little clearer in IKE’s interactive section.
IKE reveals that users accessing their QR codes can be personally identified.
“The QR code will anonymously link your mobile device to the applications. If your mobile device is not capable of accessing the applications by scanning the QR code, you may access these features by providing the information requested by the Kiosk, some of which may personally identify you.”
IKE claims that they will not share or sell users personal information to third parties but then the next paragraph they say the exact opposite.
“[I]n choosing to engage these features, you agree that we can provide the information you give to a Kiosk, including any information that may personally identify you, to that Third-Party Partner: (a) 311; (b) Get Around; and (c) Photo Booth.”
Basically, what IKE is saying is that anyone who uses IKE’s kiosks agrees to give their personally identifiable information (PII) to them and third parties. So much for respecting users privacy.
IKE goes on to explain that 311 user information is stored by Third-Party Partners.
“With respect to any feature operated by a Third-Party Partner, the Kiosk will only store the information you provide long enough to perform the service you request. After that, the information will no longer be retained by the Kiosk or IKE, but it may continue to be retained by the Third-Party Partner.”
IKE’s WiFi Service section says their kiosk’s might “share certain technical information with the internet service provider across the Wi-Fi signal.” But users shouldn’t worry because IKE deletes their personally identifiable information every 12 months.
This is nearly the exact same business model that “Smart City Kiosks” used in New York City three years ago, the only difference is that that IKE’s kiosks are not equipped with microphones.
So how does IKE make a profit? It appears that IKE makes money from letting Third-Party Partners pay for the right to collect users PII information.
Users of IKE kiosks should be concerned about two things.
Sharing certain technical information with an “internet service provider” is a slick way of saying IKE and Third-Party Partners are IDing every Bluetooth enabled device.
The second concern is third party internet service providers are under under no obligation to delete a user’s personal information every 12 months, or ever.
Things get a lot more disconcerting after reading IKE’s “Camera” section.
“Each Kiosk may be equipped with one or more cameras. The cameras capture images of the area surrounding the Kiosk, and those images may include you. We will not keep any footage captured by any camera for longer than 15 days, unless the footage is necessary to investigate an incident. Furthermore, we will not use ordisclose data collected by our cameras except to improve the functionality and ensure the security of the Kiosks, as necessary to address illegal activity on, associated with or perpetrated against the Kiosks or in the surrounding area, or if we believe the disclosure is required by law or in the interest of public safety.”
Everyone passing in front of an “IKE Smart City” kiosk will be recorded and have their images stored for at least 15 days. Except of course if IKE or law enforcement want to save the footage, then it is anyone’s guess how long they will retain the footage for.
IKE’s “disclosure of information” section is basically an indemnity clause against future lawsuits.
“In addition to the disclosures we have identified elsewhere in this policy, we may also disclose any and all information collected by us or that you provide to us via a Kiosk as described in this policy to our parents, subsidiaries and affiliates, and/or any entity who acquires, by any means, some or all of the assets or ownership interests of IKE Smart City, LLC.”
“We (IKE) may also disclose any and all information collected by us that you provided via a kiosk”? Was your phone’s Bluetooth enabled when you used or walked by an IKE kiosk[s]? Unless you just happened to click on their privacy policies at the bottom of their website, users’ would have no way of knowing how much PII is being collected and stored.
“We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in applicable law. Because any personal information you provide to us is not stored or maintained in databases owned or created by us, we will be unable to notify you as and when this Privacy Policy is updated.”
And to make matters worse, users must constantly check and make sure that IKE has not changed their privacy policy. Also, IKE’s kiosks are not supposed to be used by children under 13. Why? See above.
IKE’s surveillance camera kiosks popping up in cities everywhere have all the earmarks of a Big Brother surveillance network masquerading as a ‘free’ interactive kiosk network.
Welcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one’s technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, sees this digital universe—the metaverse—as the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.
Yet while Zuckerberg’s vision for this digital frontier has been met with a certain degree of skepticism, the truth—as journalist Antonio García Martínez concludes—is that we’re already living in the metaverse.
The metaverse is, in turn, a dystopian meritocracy, where freedom is a conditional construct based on one’s worthiness and compliance.
We are almost at that stage now.
Consider that in our present virtue-signaling world where fascism disguises itself as tolerance, the only way to enjoy even a semblance of freedom is by opting to voluntarily censor yourself, comply, conform and march in lockstep with whatever prevailing views dominate.
Fail to do so—by daring to espouse “dangerous” ideas or support unpopular political movements—and you will find yourself shut out of commerce, employment, and society: Facebook will ban you, Twitter will shut you down, Instagram will de-platform you, and your employer will issue ultimatums that force you to choose between your so-called freedoms and economic survival.
This is exactly how Corporate America plans to groom us for a world in which “we the people” are unthinking, unresistant, slavishly obedient automatons in bondage to a Deep State policed by computer algorithms.
Science fiction has become fact.
Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis’ iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.
We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.
Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.
This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, technological tyrants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies.
So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.
Yet it’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries.
As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.” For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street.
Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.
It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface.
As journalist Susan Fourtane explains, “Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.”
This is the metaverse, wrapped up in the siren-song of convenience and sold to us as the secret to success, entertainment and happiness.
It’s a false promise, a wicked trap to snare us, with a single objective: total control.
Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
A senior bioethicist who heads a research team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is taking the lead at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the debate over the ethics of COVID vaccine mandates.
Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at NIH, will argue against vaccine mandates during a Dec. 1 livestreamed roundtable session, which will be open to the public.
“There’s a lot of debate within the NIH about whether [a vaccine mandate] is appropriate,” David Wendler, a senior NIH bioethicist in charge of planning the session, told the WSJ. “It’s an important, hot topic.”
Memoli opposes mandates for the COVID vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., and has chosen not to be vaccinated.
Memoli sought a religious exemption from the mandatory vaccine requirements imposed by health authorities in the District of Columbia, where he is licensed to practice medicine.
Memoli said he is willing to risk his job and his license for the right not to receive a COVID vaccine. During the scheduled roundtable early next month, he will make the case against mandates.
“I think the way we are using the vaccines is wrong,” Memoli said in a July 30 email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID, and two of his lieutenants. Memoli called mandated vaccination “extraordinarily problematic.”
Memoli told the WSJone of Fauci’s colleagues thanked him for his email. Memoli said he supports COVID vaccines for high-risk populations including the elderly and obese, but said, “blanket vaccination of people at low risk of severe illness could hamper the development of more-robust immunity gained across a population from infection.”
Memoli, a 16-year veteran at the NIH was selected this month for a 2021 NIH director’s award — a top recognition from the head of the agency, for his supervision of a national study into undiagnosed COVID cases early in the pandemic.
Memoli said his children have received their childhood vaccines, and he will support the results of the ethics discussion regardless of the outcome.
“I do vaccine trials. I, in fact, help create vaccines,” Memoli told the WSJ. “Part of my career is to share my expert opinions, right or wrong … I mean, if they all end up saying I’m wrong, that’s fine. I want to have the discussion.”
Christine Grady, head of NIH’s Clinical Center bioethics department and Fauci’s wife, approved the Dec. 1 seminar — a session called “Grand Rounds.”
Grady said in an email she believes there is interest in the topic across the agency.
“Our hope is that the December Grand Rounds will be relevant to the debates that are going on around the country regarding vaccine mandates,” an agency spokeswoman said on Grady’s behalf.
Federal appeals court temporarily halts Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate for private employers
A federal appeals court on Saturday issued a stay temporarily halting the Biden administration’s private-employer COVID vaccine mandate, citing, “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the requirement.
“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate, the mandate is hereby stayed pending further action by this court,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in the order.
The case was brought by multiple businesses and several states, including Texas, Utah, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi. They argued the requirements exceed the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which will enforce the mandates, and amount to an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch by Congress.
The Biden administration on Monday asked the federal court to lift the order blocking the mandate for large private employers. The administration said the petitioners were not claiming a “major prospect of harm” from the rule, so the court should allow the mandate to proceed while the case makes its way through the system.
“Accordingly, there is no need to address petitioners’ stay motions now, and the court should lift its administrative stay and allow this matter to proceed under the process that Congress set forth for judicial review of OSHA standards,” lawyers for the administration argued.
The White House on Monday said businesses should move forward with Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses, despite a federal court order temporarily halting the rules, CNBC reported.
“People should not wait,” White House Deputy Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a press briefing. “They should continue to move forward and make sure they’re getting their workplace vaccinated.”
The OSHA regulation applies to employers with at least 100 workers, creating an emergency temporary rule that will require employers to mandate workers be vaccinated against COVID or submit to regular testing. A deadline for companies to comply with the regulation was set for Jan. 4.
More than two dozen states have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over the vaccine mandate for large private employers in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th and D.C. Circuits. Federal law dictates cases be consolidated and heard by one federal appeals court chosen by a lottery.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the lottery could take place on or around Nov. 16, and the case could make its way to the Supreme Court.
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
Back when the Soviet Union fell apart, there was much talk of a peace dividend — a big reduction in the United States government’s spending on militarism. The peace dividend did not arrive. Instead, the US government proceeded to spend big on the military and engage in a series of military actions across the world, including, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union proceeded, the US military’s first of two invasions of Iraq.
Now, about 30 years after the Soviet Union went away, US military members are still stationed across Europe, as well as aboard ships near Russia, ready to counter the ghost of red spread.
Special interests behind the scenes worked overtime in the 1990s to ensure that the money kept flowing to the military-industrial complex. Containment of the Soviet menace evaporated as an excuse, but people came up with new excuses.
Ron Paul explained the transition in his April of 2013 comments upon the founding of his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Paul stated:
The Cold War, as we now know, was itself largely hyped up by beneficiaries of the military build-up, but at the very least we should have expected at the end of the thousands of missiles pointed at us some sort of peace dividend. Instead, thanks to those whose careers and fortunes depended in some manner on the military industrial complex, we stumbled from the end of the war on communism to the war to control the world. This war has failed.
One big part of the US government’s “war to control the world” that has failed is the Afghanistan War. After a 20-years war with an estimated over two trillion dollars cost that wrought destruction to Afghan infrastructure and lives on a grand scale, the US military left Afghanistan. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had failed to achieve promoted “nation building” objectives such as the women’s liberation objective then-First Lady Laura Bush promoted for Afghanistan in a November of 2001 as a substitute for her husband in his weekly presidential radio address and the combatting corruption objective President Barak Obama promoted in a December of 2009 speech. As the US troops left, Afghanistan returned for the most part to its status from before the war began, only worsened by the devastation of war.
But, at least we can obtain some sort of peace dividend due to the ending of the US government’s longest war? Nope. It looks like President Joe Biden and the US Congress are intent on ensuring that the militarism spending continues to increase nonetheless. With the Afghanistan War in the rearview mirror, the Washington, DC politicians and the special interests who gain from foreign interventions, including war, are now focused on new “monsters to destroy,” just as the people running the show in DC were focused when the Cold War wound down.
In a Sunday Intercept article, Peter Maass provided details regarding how politicians in Washington, DC appear to be ensuring there again will be no peace dividend, with legislation making its way through Congress that directs military spending to increase next year despite the ending of the Afghanistan War.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has reappeared in public for the first time since October 27th, claiming he missed the Cop26 climate conference to go ‘trick-or-treating’ with his children.
Newsom spoke at the California Economic Summit, where he complained about the “treadmill” of work he had to plough through.
Fox News reports that Newsom’s children held an “intervention” during a family dinner because they “couldn’t believe I was going to miss Halloween.”
“He ultimately decided to stay home because the “knot” in his stomach was too much to bear,” according to the report.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollak wondered why Newsom had to miss the climate summit given that it is still ongoing and Halloween was 10 days ago.
“In addition to family, Newsom claims he has devoted the past two weeks to work — though he spent Saturday at the lavish wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty, with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) officiating the nuptial vows,” he writes.
Speculation had been raging as to why Newsom hadn’t appeared in the public eye for two weeks after receiving his COVID-19 booster shot.
Journalist Steve Kirsch previously claimed that Newsom had been out of sight since October 27 because he had a bad reaction to the jab.
“The explanation Gavin gave in the video (that he had a change of heart and wanted to spend Halloween with his kids) seems a bit odd since his press office said he was working in the Capitol,” writes Kirsch.
“I have a good friend who is politically well connected who spoke with Newsom’s former staffers and they all thought it was a really weird explanation,” he added.
Kirsch says he showed the before and after videos of Newsom to a neurologist, who claims the Governor is “100%” recovering from Bell’s palsy due to lingering “telltale” signs.
“She had a dermatologist review as well who said the same thing,” claims Kirsch. “She said most people wouldn’t be able to tell, but this is her “bread and butter” so she knows exactly what to look for.”
… Most American adults of voting age don’t appear willing to reject the applicability of international law to Israel’s ongoing colonization of occupied territories in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights. … Full article
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Two Lowell Graded School parents demanding their second-grade daughter be taught in the classroom without a mask were warned by a state trooper Thursday, Nov. 4 to take her home or risk arrest for trespass or loss of custody of their child.
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