Critics love Fauci’s new documentary, but audience hate it and accuse Rotten Tomatoes of ‘hiding’ low score
RT | October 11, 2021
Critics have almost universally praised the new documentary on Dr. Anthony Fauci, but audiences have seemingly hated it, even accusing review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes of trying to hide the movie’s unpopularity.
National Geographic’s ‘Fauci’ has been playing in select cinemas since September 10 and premiered on the Disney Plus streaming service last week. Trailers for the film focus heavily on Fauci and his work combating Covid-19, during which time he has become one of the more controversial figures in American politics.
The film, however, takes a positive look at Fauci and focuses more on tales about the health figure from his family, as well as public figures the infectious disease expert has worked with in the past, such as U2 frontman Bono and former President George W. Bush.
On Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews from selected critics and then gives a ‘rotten’ or ‘fresh’ score, the film holds a 91% positive rating, based on 30 positive reviews and three negative. The rating from audience members, however, was conspicuously missing from the website until Monday. As of Sunday, only one review, which was negative, had been posted despite the film being out for weeks.
The site was accused of ‘hiding’ the audience score in an effort to spin the movie’s increasingly negative coverage.
On Monday, an audience score did appear, and it showed valleys of difference in opinion from critics to the audience, with users awarding the film a 2% average from over 250 ratings (though it began with a 4% rating that has continually dropped). Despite the average now showing, there is still a lack of actual user reviews on the site, though many users may have chosen to simply drop a rating instead of writing a review.
“Two Americas,” writer Josh Jordan tweeted, including a screenshot of the ‘Tomatometer’ for ‘Fauci’ along with the recently-released comedy special from Dave Chappelle, which has been labeled transphobic by critics, but has been a popular title on Netflix. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a ‘rotten’ score of 33% while audiences awarded a near perfect score.
Fauci critics were quick to mock the film’s near-universal panning from audience members.
The Rotten Tomatoes score for ‘Fauci’ is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to negative reviews. On IMDB, the movie has a 1.5 rating from over 6000 users.
Trailers for the movie on YouTube haven’t fared much better. One posted by National Geographic has over 100,000 ‘dislikes’ and less than 8000 ‘likes’, as of this writing.
A Disney Plus trailer, on the other hand, has just over 1000 ‘likes’ and over 20,000 ‘dislikes’.
Rotten Tomatoes has been accused of bias in the past, and the company has often chalked up near-universal negative reactions from audiences to trolls’ review-bombing.
In 2019, the company disabled pre-release comments and removed their ‘Want to See’ function – which allowed ratings based on how excited users were for a film – in response to early backlash against franchise pictures accused by critics of going ‘woke’, such as ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and ‘Captain Marvel’.
Two years before that decision, debate around Rotten Tomatoes and the political influence the audience can have was still a heated debate. Outspoken liberal and comedian Amy Schumer claimed in 2017 that her comedy special ‘The Leather Special’ was review-bombed by the “alt-right” over her comments on Donald Trump and other Republicans (50% critic rating/4% audience). At the time, the site responded again by limiting user functions by removing a five-star system in favor of a positive or negative rating from audiences.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, conservative artists have often pointed to the fact that films aimed at right-leaning audiences often score much lower with critics than audiences as proof the company is more open to ‘certifying’ liberal critics than right-of-center or conservative ones.
Producer John Aglialoro blamed near-universal bad reviews from “hateful” critics on Rotten Tomatoes for his 2011 film ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part I’ struggling to find an audience in theaters (he would go on to produce two sequels covering the last two thirds of Ayn Rand’s influential novel).
Southwest airlines cancellations continue, as “unforeseen crew issues” halt trains and industry accross U.S.
RT | October 11, 2021
Hundreds more Southwest flights have been canceled or delayed, as rumors of a staff “sickout” in protest over Covid-19 vaccine mandates persist. SouthWest’s union says no such action is taking place, but others aren’t convinced.
Some 355 Southwest Airlines flights were canceled and 571 delayed as of Monday morning, according to data from FlightAware. The cancellations and delays came after the airline, known for its budget fares, canceled around 2,000 flights over the weekend, leaving passengers stranded at airports throughout the US.
Rumors suggested that the cancellations were a result of employees calling in sick en masse to protest against the company’s recently announced vaccine mandate, which gives employees until December 8 to get immunized against Covid-19 or face unemployment. The mandate was issued to comply with orders from the Biden administration.
The airline, however, blamed the weekend’s delays on “[air traffic control] issues and disruptive weather,” and the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) – a union representing some 10,000 Southwest pilots – said on Sunday that “there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise.” The union said that it would not authorize such action, and sided with the airline in blaming “staffing at Jacksonville Center,” the country’s fourth-busiest area control center which oversees air traffic in parts of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
The union said that while other airlines were relatively unaffected by the supposed staffing issue in Jacksonville Center, Southwest’s “operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure.”
A number of aviation journalists reported over the weekend that there was indeed a “sickout” at Jacksonville Center. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dismissed these reports, and Jacksonville Aviation Authority COO Tony Cugno told the JAA board of directors that staffing shortages were the result of a number of employees taking annual leave, coupled with others staying at home immediately after receiving their Covid-19 vaccination.
Unverified reports suggest, however, that some air traffic control employees are bunking off work to protest against the mandates.
The explanations from Southwest and the authorities in Jacksonville haven’t tamped down rumors of discontent within the airline. For one thing, the SWAPA is suing the airline over its vaccine mandate, and filed a motion on Friday to have the mandate blocked. The union’s release also did not mention anything about anti-vaccine staff taking time off by using up vacation days, as some commentators online have suggested they’re doing.
Passengers affected by the weekend’s cancellations also reported that not only were flights not taking off, but Southwest’s airport desks were unstaffed. The airline has not yet explained this shortage of ground staff.
What’s happening at Southwest is still unclear. However, walkouts have been reported in a number of other critical industries in recent days. Shipbuilders in Newport News – who are also required to get vaccinated by December 8 – staged a protest on Friday, and “unforeseen crew issues” have halted trains in the Northeast, though information in the mainstream media remains thin on the ground.
“The mainstream media is doing its best to keep a lid on the expanding rebellion against the vaccine mandates,” former US senator Ron Paul wrote on Monday, adding that strikes and walkouts threaten “to completely derail an already crumbling economy and to obliterate a deeply unpopular US president and administration.”
SouthWest Airlines cancels 1,800 flights in 2 days amid rumours of employee ‘sickout’ due to Covid-19 vaccine mandate
RT | October 10, 2021
Thousands of passengers that booked Southwest Airlines flights for their weekend travel have been stranded in the US airports after the airline cancelled the flights amid reports of a protest against the vaccine mandate.
SouthWest, known for its relatively low prices, cancelled at least 1,018 flights on Sunday, that is in addition to 808 flights that were cancelled on Saturday, US Today reported, citing flight tracking data.
In a statement on Saturday, SouthWest blamed the abnormal rate of cancellations on air traffic control issues and “disruptive weather,” adding that they were working to “recover” the operation.
However, the situation appeared to have only worsened on Sunday, with SouthWest account on Twitter being inundated by complaints from the disgruntled passengers claiming that flights had been cancelled out of the blue and that the airline’s employees were nowhere to be seen.
“Flight cancelled out of nowhere and now NO ONE is seen at the front desks to assist customers,” actor Kevin Michael Martin complained.
Another passenger, who has been apparently stranded at a Dallas, Texas, airport, posted a photo of a long line of people, tweeting: “Ticket agent counter before security is a mess,” to which SouthWest responded by insisting that the chaos was merely a result of “ATC issue and disruptive weather.” “Thanks for hanging in there with us today,” SouthWest said.
Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), which represents some 10,000 pilots, also poured cold water on the speculations of an ongoing strike, saying on Sunday that the group was “focused on the safety of our crews, passengers, and overcoming operational challenges, not unofficial job actions.”
However, media citing “airline sources” have reported that air traffic controllers were staging a mass “sickout” or walkout at the federal air traffic control center in Hilliard, Florida, over mandatory vaccinations. The reported protest caused “ripple effect” paralyzing SouthWest operations, Leland Vittert, national correspondent for NewsNation, reported on Twitter.
Responding to the rumours of a mass walkout on Sunday afternoon, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dismissed the report, insisting that “no FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday.” “Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training and limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center,” the agency said.
Jacksonville Aviation Authority Chief Operating Officer Tony Cugno reportedly sent an email to the JAA board of directors, pinning the blame for the havoc on some of the employees taking their “normal approved leaves” and controllers having to stay at home for 48 hours after receiving their Covid-19 vaccine shot.
The email was reported by Action News Jax anchor Ben Becker.
SouthWest Airlines became one of the last major US air carriers to introduce a vaccine mandate for its employees last Monday after the company was reportedly pressured by White House coronavirus adviser Jeffrey Zients to comply with President Joe Biden’s vaccination order. Some 56,000 SouthWest employees have until December 8 to get vaccinated if they want to keep their jobs.
Biden’s order states that companies with over 100 employees must either require the workers to get the Covid-19 jab or to test weekly for the virus.
Firefighters Say They’re Seeing ‘Large Numbers’ of Vaccine Complications
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 10, 2021
Firefighters in Orange County, Florida, say they are responding to calls from large numbers of people with COVID-19 vaccine injuries, but central Florida hospitals say that’s not true.
So who is telling the truth? A local TV station decided to follow up after listening to firefighters’ comments in a county commission meeting.
“On a daily basis, dispatch receives an excessive amount of 911 calls regarding vaccine reactions,” firefighter Jason Wheat told the commissioners. Another first responder, Wendy Williams, added, “I transport more people, more Central Florida brothers and sisters, that are vaccinated with issues, adverse reactions or with COVID than I do unvaccinated.”
Yet, when asked about it, Dr. Tim Hendrix with AdventHealth Centra Care said it’s “a very safe vaccine” and denied seeing increased reactions or visits to the emergency room. Orlando Health, on the other hand, refused to answer the question directly, instead giving a generic comment supporting the use of the vaccine.
When the TV station asked to see 911 call records, they were told they were not available because they don’t classify incoming calls.
A Message To Fauci: You Are In No Position To Dictate The “Greater Good”
By Brandon Smith | Alt-Market | October 6, 2021
How does a fraud like Anthony Fauci find himself in the highest paid position in US bureaucracy? Well, Fauci’s career is a rather shocking testament to the reality of our government and our era – The more corrupt you are the more favors and promotions you will receive.
Fauci is well known as a shameless opportunist among many within the medical research community. For example, the creator of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Test, Kary Mullis, had nothing but disdain for Fauci. Mullis was an interesting figure who valued scientific honesty above all else. He often warned that his PCR test could be exploited to inflate infection numbers by identifying remnants of a virus in a person’s body without distinguishing whether or not they are actually “infected” (sick). Sadly, his test is now being used in this exact manner today to exaggerate infection rates of the covid-19 virus.
In interviews Mullis has referred to Anthony Fauci as a “liar”, arguing that he is a bureaucrat that “doesn’t know anything about anything”. Mullis noted that people like Fauci have an agenda that is outside of the public good, and that they have no problem misrepresenting the science to the populace to achieve their goals. It should also be noted that YouTube has made it their mission to consistently erase any traces of the Mullis interviews mentioning Fauci from their website.
It is also not surprising that Fauci’s rampant fear mongering over AIDS in the 1980’s has gone mostly unmentioned by the mainstream media. His claim that 1 in 5 heterosexual Americans would be dead from AIDS by 1990 has been summarily memory-holed and the guy is treated like a scientific genius by the journalistic community in 2021.
If there is any justice in this world then Fauci should really go down in history as one of the primary initiators of the Covid pandemic, being that he was a director of the NIAD and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) while overseeing the funding of Gain of Function research on corona-viruses at the Wuhan Lab in China. This is the same research that Fauci blatantly lied about to congress on multiple occasions. And, the Wuhan lab is the same lab that evidence suggests was the ground zero source of the Covid-19 outbreak.
It is important to note that it was Fauci and the NIH that LIFTED the ban on gain of function research on deadly viruses in 2017, and it was well known around this time that the Level 4 Wuhan lab in China was not secure.
If anyone is responsible for global covid deaths, it is Fauci, the Chinese government and anyone else involved in that gain of function research which is primarily used to WEAPONIZE viruses under the guise of creating “therapeutics.” Gain of function research was originally banned under the Biological Weapons Convention which went into effect in 1975, unless it was being used for therapeutics. Now ALL gain of function research that is revealed publicly is labeled as therapeutics even if it is actually designed to produce biological weapons. This is sometimes referred to as “dual use research.”
The prevailing narrative continues to be that even if the virus came from the Wuhan lab then it was surely an accident. I continue to believe according to the available evidence that Covid-19 was deliberately released in order to create a global crisis which could then be exploited by the establishment to introduce extreme controls over the populace to the point of medical totalitarianism. But of course, there is no smoking gun to prove this, only common sense.
If we take the notorious Event 201 into account things get a little weird. Event 201 was a war game held by the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its claimed purpose was to simulate the effects of a deadly coronavirus pandemic “spread by animals” to humans and to develop the policies governments and their corporate partners should employ to deal with it. Interestingly, this simulation was held in October of 2019, only two months before the REAL THING happened. Nearly every policy suggested by the participants of Event 201 has now been adopted by most governments, including the social media censorship campaign against anyone that questions the origins of the virus and the safety of the experimental mRNA vaccines.
Anthony Fauci and friends….
WEF founder Klaus Schwab was quick to announce at the start of the pandemic that Covid-19 was the “perfect opportunity” to launch the “Great Reset”, which is a globalist plan to completely erase free market systems and replace them with a highly centralized socialist framework. The WEF envisions a world in which carbon related power is banned, all financial transactions become digital and are monitored and controlled by central authorities, and they have even suggested that one day people will “own nothing and be happy”. This is a reference to the so-called “shared economy” of the future, where the concept of personal property is abolished and all people will live in communal housing collectives where necessities are rationed or rented out to them by the government.
Something must have went wrong with covid, however, because the Event 201 death estimates for such a virus were around 65 million within the first year of the outbreak. This of course never happened with Covid-19. So, the resistance to the mandates has been high, or much higher apparently than the globalists expected. They have been forced to engage in an endless fear campaign for the past 18 months over a virus with a mere 0.26% median death rate. It is a virus that well over 99.7% of all people will survive and it has an extremely low chance of long term effects on those who do actually end up hospitalized. In the majority of states the hospitalization rates are between 10-35 people for every 100,000 people infected.
These numbers come from the CDC and the medical establishment at large, yet they are ignored by propagandists like Fauci, just as Fauci has continued to ignore natural immunity as a factor in covid mandates. It might seem bizarre to almost any scientist, doctor and virologist not paid by the government, but Fauci has argued that natural immunity should be ignored when compared to vaccination. Multiple studies from around the world now show that natural immunity is up to 27 times more effective at preventing covid infection than the vaccines, but those with natural immunity are considered a threat to others under the new mandates unless they are also vaxxed.
This simply makes no sense from a scientific perspective until you realize that the mandates are not about science, they are about authoritarianism. Fauci is the US front man for a campaign of medical tyranny being imposed in every nation; this is why he does not care about natural immunity. The idea of it is inconvenient to his narrative, so he pretends it is inconsequential.
It is perhaps ironic that Fauci himself is becoming inconsequential as he is slowly fading away from the media limelight. I have noticed that ever since the NIH gain of function information was released to the public Fauci has been in the media less prominently. A documentary produced by National Geographic and soon to be distributed by Disney+ portrays the conman as a misunderstood savior and is sure to be a trash fire. That said, it does represent a clear last-ditch effort to save the man’s false reputation.
There is a good reason for all of this. Fauci’s distaste for personal freedom has been well documented and is making him extremely unpopular. He even recently argued on CNN in favor of vaccine mandates using this perverse position:
“There comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society.”
Fauci and his globalist ilk can be distilled down to this single mantra: Do as you are told for the greater good. But who gets to determine what the “greater good” is? Isn’t it disturbing that it’s always the same elitists that end up in that position? I know that leftists in particular love the idea of the vaccine mandates and worship Fauci, and they say we skeptics should “listen to the science”, but Fauci is not a scientist, he’s a door-to-door salesman, and as I’ve noted above the REAL science does not support the arguments for forced vaccinations or lockdowns.
Hell, I keep asking the same questions on the mandates in these articles and not a single leftist or pro-vax proponent has come up with a valid or logical response, but out of morbid curiosity I would love to see Fauci give his answers:
1) Covid has a median death rate of only 0.26%, so why should we take ANY risk on an experimental mRNA vaccine with no long term testing to prove its safety?
2) Why not give support to the 0.26% of people actually at risk from dying due to covid instead of spending billions of dollars on Big Pharma producing a rushed vaccine that you plan to force on the 99.7% of people who are not at risk?
3) In majority vaccinated countries like Israel, over 60% of covid hospitalizations are fully vaccinated people. The exponential rise of fully vaccinated patients in multiple nations suggests that the vaccines do not work. Why should we take a vaccine that has been proven not to be effective?
4) If you believe the vaccines actually do work despite all evidence to the contrary, then why should vaccinated people fear anything from unvaccinated people? How are we a threat to them?
5) If the vaccines don’t work, then doesn’t this mean the mandates are pointless and the people that are most safe are the people with natural immunity? Shouldn’t we be applauding the naturally immune and encouraging treatment instead of useless vaccination?
6) Since the vaccines actually don’t work according to the data, isn’t it time to stop blindly dismissing treatments like Ivermectin and focus on trials and studies that research these alternatives? Why the vitriolic propaganda campaign to label Ivermectin nothing more than “horse paste” when it is actually a long used Nobel Prize winning treatment for human ailments? Is it because the experimental covid vaccines would lose their emergency authorization status under the FDA if effective treatments exist?
7) Why are government funded scientists so keen on defending Big Pharma to the point of ignoring all data that contradicts their claims? Are you just embarrassed of being wrong, or are you corrupt?
8) Who decided you are qualified to determine what constitutes the “greater good?”
Globalists and errand boys like Fauci will never be able to answer these questions without twisting the narrative. They will say “What about the 700,000 dead in the US?” to play on the idea that the freedom minded lack empathy for their fellow man. Of course, around 40% of those deaths are patients from nursing homes with preexisting conditions, so we have no idea if they died from covid or from their previous ailments. Also, millions of people die every year from a plethora of communicable diseases including the flu and pneumonia, and we never tried to lock down the entire country and crush people’s civil rights because of this.
If we maintained a running tally of flu and pneumonia deaths year after year as we are doing with covid, then the ever increasing number of bodies would seem just as forbidding. Society cannot function when it is preoccupied with death.
Yes, around 0.26% of people die from covid, but life goes on for everyone else. Our freedoms are more important than your irrational fears. Our freedoms are more important than globalist agendas for centralization. Our freedoms ARE the greater good. Without them our society dies, and as our society dies millions more people will die from the inevitable collapse and tyranny that will follow; far more than will ever die from covid.
This is why nothing Fauci says has any relevance to us. He is so transparent in his corruption that he might as well be invisible. We will continue to ignore his declarations and admonitions and we will continue to fight back against the vaccine passports and restrictions. When all is said and done, if Fauci, Biden and other globalist puppets try to use force to impose their agenda upon us then there will come a day very soon when they will be held accountable for their crimes against humanity, and then they will wish they were invisible.
You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com
Merck’s COVID ‘Super Drug’ Poses Serious Health Risks, Scientists Warn
“Proceed With Caution At Your Own Peril”
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 9, 2021
As it turns out, all the scientists and doctors who insisted that Merck’s “revolutionary” COVID drug molnupiravir is extremely safe weren’t faithfully adhering to “the science” after all. Because according to a report published Thursday by Barron’s, some scientists are worried that the drug – which purportedly cut hospitalizations in half during a study that was cut short – could cause cancer or birth defects.
So much for having a “strong safety profile,” as Dr. Scott Gottlieb claimed in an interview on the day Merck first publicized the research.
It’s perfectly understandable why Merck might choose to play down this safety risk: assuming it’s approved, the drug is widely expected to be one of “the most lucrative drugs ever” – which is one reason why Merck’s shares soared into double-digit territory after the announcement.
As we reported earlier this week, Merck and its “partner” Ridgeback Biotherapeutics will profit immensely by charging customers up to 40x what it costs to make the drug, which Ridgeback originally licensed from Emory University for an “undisclosed sum”. The drug was developed with funding from the federal government.
According to Barron’s, some scientists who have studied the drug believe that its method of suppressing the virus could potentially run amok within the body.
Some scientists who have studied the drug warn, however, that the method it uses to kill the virus that causes Covid-19 carries potential dangers that could limit the drug’s usefulness.
Molnupiravir works by incorporating itself into the genetic material of the virus, and then causing a huge number of mutations as the virus replicates, effectively killing it. In some lab tests, the drug has also shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.
If that were to happen in the cells of a patient being treated with molnupiravir, it could theoretically lead to cancer or birth defects.
In particular, Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of biochemical pharmacology at Emory who studied the drug while it was being developed, and published a number of papers on NHC, the compound that’s the active ingredient in the drug. He published a paper that showed the drug can produce a reaction like the one described above, and insisted it shouldn’t be given to young people – especially pregnant women – without more data.
Schinazi told Barron’s that he did not believe that molnupiravir should be given to pregnant women, or to young people of reproductive age, until more data is available. Merck’s trials of molnupiravir have excluded pregnant women; the scientists running the trial asked male participants to “abstain from heterosexual intercourse” while taking the drug, according to the federal government website that tracks clinical trials.
Barron’s even shared a paper published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in May by Schinazi and scientists at the University of North Carolina which reported that NHC can cause mutations in animal cell cultures in a lab test designed to detect such mutations – something Merck claims it has tested for. The paper’s authors concluded that the risks for molnupiravir “may not be zero”.
Merck told Barron’s that it has run “extensive tests” on animals which it says show that this shouldn’t be an issue. “The totality of the data from these studies indicates that molnupiravir is not mutagenic or genotoxic in in-vivo mammalian systems,” a Merck spokesman said.
Still, scientists and doctors who have studied NHC say that Merck needs to “be careful,” and it’s not just Schinazi warning about the drug’s potential risks.
Dr. Shuntai Zhou, a scientist at the Swanstrom Lab at UNC, said “there is a concern that this will cause long-term mutation effects, even cancer.”
Zhou says that he is certain that the drug will integrate itself into the DNA of mammalian hosts. “Biochemistry won’t lie,” he says. “This drug will be incorporated in the DNA.”
Merck hasn’t yet released any data from its animal studies, but the scientists believe that it would take long-term studies to show that the drug is truly totally safe.
“Proceed with caution and at your own peril,” wrote Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of the division of biochemical pharmacology at the Emory University School of Medicine, who has studied NHC for decades, in an email to Barron’s.
Analysts are already warning that these questions about the drug’s safety suggest the reaction in Merck’s shares was a little “overblown”, to say the least. Investors apparently were so eager for a new “pandemic panacea” (now that the mRNA jabs have proven to be much less effective than advertised) that they didn’t ask too many questions about safety, or even question the paucity of data. One analyst for SVB Leerink Dr. Geoffrey Porges described investors’ reaction from Friday as “wishful thinking”.
Even once the FDA authorizes the drug, Dr. Porges believes it will come with strict limitations on who can and can’t use it. “I think it is effectively going to be a controlled substance”, Dr. Porges said, adding that the risks to pregnant women, or women who may soon become pregnant, could present thorny problems for the FDA’s advisory committee reviewing the drug.
Given that the safety risks of the drug seem well-documented already, Wall Street’s gushing about the drug’s prospects – “it really is THAT good”, one analyst insisted – seems like an idiotic blunder in retrospect. The product of what one might call “magical thinking”.
Biden signs ‘Havana Syndrome’ law, Berlin police report new ‘cases’ blamed on mystery weapons scientists say don’t exist
RT | October 8, 2021
As President Joe Biden signed a law funding the treatment of 200-plus US officials who claim to have been affected by so-called Havana Syndrome, German police said they were looking into more possible cases.
Berlin police confirmed on Friday they were investigating an “alleged sonic weapon attack on employees of the US Embassy,” in response to reporting by the tabloid Der Spiegel. The embassy declined to comment on the investigation.
Meanwhile in Washington, Biden signed into law the Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks (HAVANA) Act, passed unanimously by Congress last month, providing money for the treatment of more than 200 government employees who claim to have been affected by the mystery syndrome.
“Civil servants, intelligence officers, diplomats, and military personnel all around the world have been affected by anomalous health incidents,” Biden said in a statement. “Some are struggling with debilitating brain injuries that have curtailed their careers of service to our nation. Addressing these incidents has been a top priority for my administration.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the US government is “determined to get to the bottom as quickly as possible of the attribution and cause of these incidents,” with the intelligence community “in the lead on that.”
“They’re actively examining a range of hypotheses, but they have not made a determination about the cause of these incidents or who is responsible.”
US media and many members of Congress, however, seem convinced that the symptoms – which were first reported at the US Embassy in Cuba in 2016 – were the work of some kind of weapon, and have pointed the finger at Russia. About half of the Americans who claim to have been affected are employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
CIA Director William Burns said in July that there was a “very strong possibility” the symptoms were caused deliberately, and pointed to a study by a National Academy of Sciences panel from December 2020 that listed “directed energy” beams as a plausible cause.
Last month, however, the State Department released a redacted version of the classified 2018 report by JASON, a scientific advisory group, that ruled out microwave or ultrasound energy, saying that the power requirements were prohibitive and pointing out that electronics were not affected.
The JASON report said that a third of the original reports were “most likely” caused by the noise made by a specific species of cricket – a conclusion a US Berkeley scientist reached independently in early 2019 – while others may have been of psychological origin.
UC Irvine Director Of Medical Ethics Placed On ‘Investigatory Leave’ Over Challenge To Vaccine Mandate
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 7, 2021
The University of California, Irvine has placed their Director of Medical Ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, on ‘investigatory leave’ after he challenged the constitutionality of the UC’s vaccine mandate in regards to individuals who have recovered from Covid and have naturally-acquired immunity.
Last month Kheriaty, also a Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine, filed a suit in Federal court over the mandate.
“Natural immunity following Covid infection is equal to (indeed, superior to) vaccine-mediated immunity. Thus, forcing those with natural immunity to be vaccinated introduces unnecessary risks without commensurate benefits—either to individuals or to the population as a whole—and violates their equal protection rights guaranteed under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment,” Kheriaty wrote in a Sep. 21 blog post.
“Expert witness declarations in support of our case include, among others, a declaration from distinguished UC School of Medicine faculty members from infectious disease, microbiology/immunology, cardiology, endocrinology, pediatrics, OB/Gyn, and psychiatry,” the post continues (click here to read the rest).
…there is now considerable evidence that Covid recovered individuals may be at higher risk of vaccine adverse effects compared to those not previously infected (as seen in studies here, here, and here, among others). -Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
In a Wednesday update, Kheriaty writes that he’s been placed on ‘investigatory leave’ over his failure to comply with the mandate:
Here is the latest move by the University of California in response to my lawsuit in Federal court challenging their vaccine mandate on behalf of Covid-recovered individuals with natural immunity. Last Thursday Sept 30th at 5:03 PM I received this letter from the University informing me that, as of the following morning, I was being placed on “Investigatory Leave” for my failure to comply with the vaccine mandate. I was given no opportunity to contact my patients, students, residents, or colleagues and let them know I would disappear for a month. Rather than waiting for the court to make a ruling on my case, the University has taken preemptive action:
You might be thinking, a month of paid leave doesn’t sound so bad. But the language is misleading here, since half of my income from the University comes from clinical revenues generated from seeing my patients, supervising resident clinics, and engaging in weekend and holiday on-call duties. So while on leave my salary is significantly cut. Furthermore, my contract stipulates that I am not able to conduct any patient care outside the University: to see my current patients, or to recoup my losses by moonlighting as a physician elsewhere, would violate the terms of my contract.
It came as no surprise that, since my request for a preliminary injunction was not granted by the court, the University would immediately begin procedures to dismiss me. However, in the complicated legal game of three-dimensional chess I did not anticipate this particular development: the current administrative designation, where I am neither able to work at the University nor permitted to pursue work elsewhere, was not a development I had anticipated. The University may be hoping this pressure will lead me to resign “voluntarily,” which would remove grounds for my lawsuit: if I resign prior to being terminated by the University, I have no legal claim of harm.
I have no intention at this time of resigning, withdrawing my lawsuit, or having an unnecessary medical intervention forced on me, in spite of these challenging circumstances. You may be wondering about the CA Department of Public Health vaccine mandate mentioned in the University’s letter above: yes, I am subject to two mandates, the UC mandate as a faculty member and the CA State mandate as a healthcare provider. Regarding the latter mandate, I filed a similar lawsuit in Federal court last Friday against the State Public Health Department. I will post more later on that case as it develops.
Although this is a challenging time for me and my family, at this time I remain convinced that this course of action is worthwhile. I am grateful for your ongoing encouragement, prayers, and support. I want my readers to know that am taking legal action not primarily for myself, but for all those who have no voice and whose Constitutional rights are being steamrolled by these mandates. As I wrote in my first post:
In my position, I came to see the importance of representing those whose voices were silenced, and to insist upon the right of informed consent and informed refusal. I have nothing personal to gain by this lawsuit and a lot to lose professionally. In the end, my decision to challenge these mandates came down to this question: How can I continue to call myself a medical ethicist if I fail to do what I am convinced is morally right under pressure?
Many of you have asked how you can support me and my efforts to challenge coercive mandates. My first answer is to consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter if you are not already, and share this newsletter with others who are interested in following these issues. In the coming weeks I will be expanding my work on this Substack platform with live podcasts and audience Q&A for paid subscribers.
For those who may wish to contribute more: I serve as Senior Fellow and Director of the Program in Health & Human Flourishing at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto, California. For the foreseeable future, the Program I direct there will focus on gathering and supporting experts, scholars, and leaders who are questioning various aspects of our response to this pandemic, and who are offering more effective solutions to the challenges we are facing. You can contribute to my work at the Zephyr Institute by making a donation HERE and specifying that you want your gift to support “Dr. Kheriaty’s work in the Health and Human Flourishing Program.”
This legal fight is important not only to set appropriate limits to vaccine mandates. It is also important for the future that—now in this crucial moment—we refuse to allow our institutions to set dangerous and unjust precedents. Today’s precedents could later facilitate even more coercive mandates and infringements on civil liberties by unelected officials, done during a declared “state of exception” or emergency that has no defined terminus—a dangerous precedent for a democratic society.
I want to thank all of you for being a part of this movement and for engaging with and encouraging my work on this issue. I could not do this without you.
* * *
Kheriaty’s situation is similar to that of Canadian ethics professor, Dr. Julie Ponesse, who made headlines last month after filming a now-viral tear-filled statement before she was fired by Huron University College in Ontario.
Uyghur Tribunal: US Lawfare at its Lowest
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 07.10.2021
The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” is promoted across the Western media as an “independent” tribunal. AP claims that it seeks to lay out evidence that will “compel international action to tackle growing concerns about alleged abuses in Xinjiang.”
The tribunal – having no legal basis or enforcement mechanism – will clearly be used to help bolster calls for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic games and may serve to help pressure nations around the globe to roll back ties with China and aid the US in imposing additional sanctions and boycotts.
An “Independent” Tribunal Funded by the US Government
Media platforms like the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia in articles have claimed the tribunal has “no state backing.” The abovementioned AP article only claims the tribunal “does not have UK government backing.”
Yet the Uyghur Tribunal’s official website, under a section titled, “About,” admits (emphasis added):
In June 2020 Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress formally requested that Sir Geoffrey Nice QC establish and chair an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations.
It also claims on a second page about funding that:
A crowdfunder page has raised nearly £250 000, with an initial amount of around $115 000 dollars donated by the Uyghur diaspora through the World Uyghur Congress.
What isn’t mentioned is that the World Uyghur Congress, along with many of the supposed experts and witnesses providing statements during the supposed tribunal, are funded by the United States government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
This includes the president of WUC himself, Dolkun Isa, who provided a statement on June 4, 2021. Other members of US NED-funded organizations participating in the so-called tribunal included Muetter Illiqud of the NED-funded Uyghur Transitional Justice Database (UTJD), Rushan Abbas and Julie Millsap of the NED-funded Campaign for Uyghurs, Bahram Sintash and Elise Anderson of the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project and Laura Harth of Safeguard Defenders, formerly known as the NED-funded China Action organization.
WUC is listed by name along with the UHRP, Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Refugee Relief Fund on the official US NED website under “Xinjiang/East Turkestan 2020.” On another NED page titled, “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act Builds on Work of NED Grantees,” the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project is also listed as receiving money from the US funding arm.
Also participating in the supposed tribunal was Adrian Zenz of the US government-funded Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), Shohret Hosur who works for the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia, Mihrigul Tursun who was awarded the NED-affiliated “Citizen Power Award in 2018, Sayragul Sauytbay who received the 2020 US State Department’s Women of Courage Award, and IPVM which is a video surveillance information service previously commissioned by the US government in regards to Chinese government surveillance programs in Xinjiang.
There was also Sean Robert who was a senior advisor to the USAID mission to Central Asia from 1998-2006 – the very region and time period Uyghur separatism was being organized from beyond China’s borders. Robert has been active in promoting US-funded propaganda regarding Xinjiang for years alongside other mainstays like Rushan Abbas and Louisa Greve.
Nearly every other “witness” brought before the so-called tribunal has a long-established history of participating in the US government-funded propaganda campaign aimed at China and its alleged abuses in Xinjiang. This includes Omir Bekali who was previously invited to testify in front of the US Congress in 2018, Asiye Abdulahed who claims to be the alleged source of the so-called “China Files,” Zumret Dawut whose allegations were used by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in attacks aimed at China, and Tursunay Ziyawudun who spoke in front of Congress in 2021.
There were also Westerners representing corporate-funded think tanks long engaged in a propaganda war with China including Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Darren Byler and Jessica Batke of “ChileFile” – a subsidiary of Asia Society funded by the Australian and Japanese governments as well as Open Society, and Charles Parton of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) funded by the US State Department, the EU, Canada, Qatar, the UK, Japan, Australia, as well as arms manufacturers like BAE, Airbus, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.
Only a handful of participants appeared to be relatively new faces, perhaps drawn from lesser corners of the global Uyghur diaspora being cultivated by the US as a political weapon.
Tedious, Holes-Filled Testimony
The testimony itself was tedious and lengthy with a total of nearly 80 hours recorded and uploaded to the Uyghur Tribunal’s YouTube channel. However, spot checking any of the testimony reveals massive discrepancies.
For example, on the first day of hearings, Muetter Illiqud of the abovementioned US government-funded UTJD provided conflicting total numbers of Uyghurs allegedly interned as well as conflicting accounts regarding Chinese government restrictions on the number of children permitted in cities and in rural villages. Illiqud failed to explain the discrepancies and was invited by Geoffrey Nice, chair of the tribunal, to return in September with the discrepancies fixed.
Another alleged witness, Gulzire Alwuqanqizi who spoke with an NED-affiliated “ChinaAid” banner behind her, claimed in her written statement that she was forced to work in a factory for a month and a half (approximately 45 days) where she claims she made a total of 2,000 gloves. Yet in her spoken statement she claims she was never able to meet the daily quota of 20 gloves and instead made only 10-12. If that is true, she would have only produced at most 540 gloves. She was never asked to clarify this discrepancy.
Also in her written statement, she claims she was caught sending photos of the factory to her husband. She claims:
One day, I took a picture of the factory and sent it to him. From there it became public. Following this, I was interrogated, they asked the same questions they had always asked, all night long, but eventually they let me go.
Yet in her spoken statement, she claimed:
At the factory where we were producing the gloves, I sent a photo and as punishment I was put in something like a ditch, a 20 meter deep well. They threw some electric currents at me, they poured water on me, and kept me there for 24 hours.
No comment was made by the panel interviewing her regarding this glaring inconsistency either.
Another witness, Tursunay Ziyawudun, claimed in her written statement to have been detained upon entering China after living in Kazakhstan from 2011 to 2016.
She inferred that she was being asked questions about the US NED-funded World Uyghur Congress during an interrogation, and claimed:
I didn’t even know what World Uyghur Congresses were at that time. We don’t have access to this information in China.
Yet clearly, while living in Kazakhstan for 5 years prior to returning to China, she did have access to this information. It is yet another inconsistency left unchallenged by the so-called tribunal.
Out of about 80 hours of proceedings, there are always bound to be inconsistencies, yet when the panel observed these, it took no action at all, skipping past them, excusing them, or allowing witnesses to alter their claims at a later date to iron out obvious inconsistencies. All of this further calls into question the professionalism, objectivity, and integrity of the entire “tribunal.”
Of course, no one in the public will likely watch any of the testimony first hand, let alone cross examine the spoken statements with their written statements. The general public will instead rely on the Western media’s interpretations of the so-called tribunal consisting of cherry-picked highlights designed to prey on the public’s emotions.
The “Uyghur Tribunal” – a Bad Sequel to the “China Tribunal”
The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” unfolds as a sort of sequel to the 2019 “China Tribunal.” The China Tribunal and the Uyghur Tribunal following it were both chaired by Geoffrey Nice and included Hamid Sabi, Nicholas Vetch, and Aarif Abraham as participants. Both were initiated and funded by US government-funded organizations.
While the WUC organized the Uyghur Tribunal, the so-called International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) was the organization behind the “China Tribunal.” ETAC’s own webpage does not disclose its funding, but provides a list of names on its “international advisory committee.” They include Louisa Greve who was part of the NED’s senior leadership for 24 years before shifting over to the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project. Ethan Gutmann is also listed. His book, “The Slaughter,” regarding alleged human organ harvesting in China, was launched at an NED event in Washington D.C. There is also Benedict Rogers, an advisor to the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress.
In other words, both tribunals were not tribunals at all, but instead an exhibition put on by a US government-funded troupe of activists deeply invested in maligning China and helping advance US foreign policy objectives versus Beijing.
It is merely a larger, more elaborate version of a literal exhibition funded by the US government and organized by the World Uyghur Congress in Geneva Switzerland also this year. A September 2021 Reuters article titled, “China accuses Washington of ‘low political tricks’ over Uyghur exhibit,” would note:
A US-backed Uyghur photo exhibit of dozens of people who are missing or alleged to be held in camps in Xinjiang, China, opened in Switzerland on Thursday, prompting Beijing to issue a furious statement accusing Washington of “low political tricks”.
The article also claimed:
The United States gave a financial grant for the exhibit, which will later travel to Brussels and Berlin, the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters. Earlier this week, the US mission in Geneva displayed it at a diplomatic reception, according to sources who attended.
“We are committed to placing human rights at the center of our China policy, and we will continue to highlight the grave human rights abuses we see the PRC committing across China, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and elsewhere,” a US mission spokesperson said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The US, guilty of the very worst crimes against humanity of the 21st century, only claims to put human rights at the center of its foreign policy when politically convenient. No mention is made of the US’ decades of supporting violent separatism in China including in Tibet and Xinjiang – creating the very real terrorism China’s security measures were put in place to combat.
No mention or note is made in articles about the “Uyghur Tribunal” regarding the constant use of the term “East Turkestan” instead of Xinjiang or the fact that most of the people speaking at the tribunal are separatists and at least partly responsible for the violence and instability that seized Xinjiang before Beijing intervened.
No mention is made about the constant presence of East Turkestan separatist flags in the backgrounds as witnesses provide testimony. At one point in the proceedings, pro-separatist Arslan Hidayat was seen interpreting for at least two witnesses. Hidayat has repeatedly called for Xinjiang to be ethnically cleansed of Han Chinese.
As China reacted to the violence the US fuelled – the US used accusations of human rights abuses to hamstring and undermine Chinese efforts to restore peace and stability. The US uses the sword of state-sponsored terrorism to strike at China, and the shield of feigned rights advocacy to defend US-sponsored separatists from justice.
The “Uyghur Tribunal” is merely the latest and perhaps grandest iteration of this strategy of striking and defending. The tribunal’s final “ruling” will be read in December 2021, just ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and a concerted US-led media campaign to call for the world’s boycott of the games. Beyond that, further sanctions could be leveled against China – all in the wake of a clearly US-engineered show tribunal dishonestly presented to the public as “justice” and “human rights advocacy.”
The harsh irony is that the US seeks to blunt China’s rise specifically so it can continue acting on the global stage with impunity, and continue carrying out the verified, very real campaign of death, destruction, and genocide it has led since the turn of the century.
Fully Vaccinated Countries Had Highest Number of New COVID Cases, Study Shows
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | October 7, 2021
A study published Sept. 30, in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Epidemiology Vaccines found “no discernible relationship” between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases.
In fact, the study found the most fully vaccinated nations had the highest number of new COVID cases, based on the researchers’ analysis of emerging data during a seven-day period in September.
The authors said the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences “needs to be re-examined,” especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants.
They wrote:
“Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines.”
As part of the study, researchers investigated the relationship between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases across 68 countries and 2,947 U.S. counties that had second dose vaccine, and available COVID case data.
For seven days preceding Sept. 3, researchers computed COVID cases per one million people for each country, as well as the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.
Relationship between cases per 1 million people (last 7 days) and percentage of population fully vaccinated across 68 countries as of September 3, 2021
Notably, Israel with more than 60% of its population fully vaccinated, had the highest COVID cases per 1 million people during the seven-day period.
Iceland and Portugal, with more than 75% of their populations fully vaccinated, had more COVID cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa, where only about 10% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Across U.S. counties, the median new COVID cases per 100,000 people during the seven-day period was similar across the categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated.
Percentage of counties that had an increase of cases between two consecutive 7-day time periods by percentage of population fully vaccinated across 2947 counties as of Sept. 2, 2021
The researchers found a substantial county variation in new COVID cases within categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated. There also appeared to be no significant signaling of COVID cases decreasing in counties where a higher percentages of the population was fully vaccinated.
Of the top five counties with the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9% – 84.3%), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified four as “high” transmission counties.
Three of the four counties classified as “high” transmission had fully vaccinated rates of 90% or higher. Conversely, of the 57 counties classified as “low” transmission by the CDC, 15 had fully vaccinated rates of 20% or lower.
The findings also showed no discernible association between COVID cases and fully vaccinated rates when a one-month lag was considered, to account for the 14-day period it takes for a vaccine to be considered effective.
The authors suggested a correction to the policy narrative is warranted, as increasing vaccination rates is not enough. “Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines,” they wrote.
The authors cited data from the Ministry of Health in Israel showing the effectiveness of two doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine against preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported to be 39% — substantially lower than the reported trial efficacy of 96%.
Emerging research also shows immunity derived from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine may not be as strong as natural immunity acquired through infection.
A substantial decline in immunity from mRNA vaccines six months post immunization has also been reported along with an increasing number of breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated, the researchers said.
The authors said stigmatizing populations over vaccines can do more harm than good, and non-pharmacological prevention efforts need to be renewed in order to learn to live with COVID “in the same manner we continue to live 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.”
Breakthrough cases significantly underreported as FDA reviews booster data
The number of vaccinated people testing positive for COVID is on the rise, and doctors in Ohio are reporting more breakthrough cases across hospital systems.
However, only certain types of COVID breakthrough cases are reported at both the state and federal level, leaving patients with mild cases underreported.
“We estimate anywhere from two to 10 times as many positives that are being reported is the real situation,” said Dr. David Margolius, division director of internal medicine at MetroHealth in Cleveland.
“It’s still rare, but I get a dozen COVID positive cases a day in my basket, and usually three or four of them have been vaccinated,” said Margolius.
The Ohio Department of Health and the CDC only report breakthrough cases in patients requiring hospital admission, or cases that resulted in death.
The CDC said it made the change in May in order to “maximize the quality of data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public importance.”
As of Sept. 27, the CDC had received reports from 50 U.S. states and territories of 22,115 patients with COVID vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.
The CDC said the number of COVID vaccine breakthrough infections reported to the agency are an undercount of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons, especially of asymptomatic or mild infections.
In addition, national surveillance relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data are not complete or representative, according to the CDC.
Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported nearly 4,000 new breakthrough cases over the past week, and 46 more deaths, according to NBC Boston.
In the last week, 3,741 new breakthrough cases were reported, with 125 more vaccinated people hospitalized.
This brings the total number of breakthrough cases in Massachusetts to 40,464 — out of 4.63 million vaccinated people — and the death toll among people with breakthrough infections to 300.
According to the Vermont Daily Chronicle, which cited statistics from Vermont’s Department of Health, 76% of the state’s COVID fatalities in September were breakthrough cases, with just eight of the 33 Vermonters who died being unvaccinated.
As of Tuesday, 88% of all eligible Vermonters age 12 and over had been vaccinated with at least one shot.
Health Department spokesperson Ben Truman said most of the vaccine “breakthrough” fatalities were elderly. Because they were among the first vaccinated, Vermont’s elderly “have had more time to potentially become a vaccine breakthrough case,” he said.
According to The Washington Post, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said Tuesday updated data might make a strong case in support of everyone 18 and older being eligible for COVID vaccine boosters, but the agency will have to see whether its outside advisers agree.
The remarks from Marks came during a webinar as the FDA prepares to meet Oct. 14 and 15 with its outside advisers to discuss authorizing Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID booster shots.
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.
© 2021 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.
How much do we REALLY know about the background of Facebook ‘whistleblower’ Frances Haugen?
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | October 7, 2021
Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.
Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.
Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.
Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.
Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.
A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.
Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.
Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.
A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.
It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.
Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.
The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.
Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.
Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.
At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.
One can’t help but be reminded of 15-year-old Kuwaiti citizen Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥa tearfully addressing the US Congress’ Human Rights Caucus in the lead up to the Gulf War.
“I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital… While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators,” she attested. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
Her words travelled the world over, were repeated endlessly on all major Western news networks, endorsed by Amnesty International, and cited repeatedly by US lawmakers and President George H. W. Bush as a rationale for waging war on Iraq, which occurred three months later.
It would not be until 1992 that Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and her story to be completely untrue. Her Congressional appearance was a publicity stunt organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, run by US propaganda merchants Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
It’s been said that if Nayirah’s lies had been exposed for what they were at the time, it might’ve prompted the public, journalists and politicians to consider whether they were being manipulated into supporting military action. Given the degree to which Haugen is preaching to the converted, even such a discrediting, debilitating exposure surely won’t hamper the US national security state’s inexorable push to take over the internet for good.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
The Washington Post and the JFK Records Deadline
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 7, 2021
In my blog post yesterday entitled “Mainstream Press Silence on the JFK Deadline, I took the mainstream media to task for remaining steadfastly silent about the upcoming October 26 deadline for the release of the CIA’s long-secret JFK assassination-related records. Instead, I pointed out, the mainstream media simply continues reveling in labeling people who question the official lone-nut theory of the assassination as “conspiracy theorists.”
Well, who would have thunk it? Yesterday — the very same day I wrote my article and just three weeks before that October 26 deadline — the Washington Post published a super-snazzy article entitled “Will You Fall into the Conspiracy Theory Rabbit Hole? Take Our Quiz and Find Out.”
No, the article did not even mention the upcoming October 26 deadline. It remained steadfastly silent on it, just as I pointed out in my article. The two authors of the article — Post staffers David Byler and Yan Wu — labeled those who question the official lone-nut theory of the assassination as “conspiracy theorists,” predictably lumping them in with all sorts of other conspiracy theories in the process.
However, in doing this, Byler and Wu made an intriguing point, one that isn’t often found in mainstream articles on the Kennedy assassination. They wrote:
The Reagan administration acted secretly and illegally in the Iran-contra affair, and the FBI did spy on King. But the key difference is that these real incidents are backed up by evidence, facts and witnesses. Conspiracy theories are different. They’re just theories. Most have no evidence to support them. They often connect unrelated facts to create an impression of plausibility.
Okay, we might now be getting somewhere. So, the question is: Is there evidence to support the fact that the national-security establishment orchestrated and carried out a highly sophisticated regime-change operation against President Kennedy, ostensibly to protect the nation from Kennedy’s policies, which were deemed to be a grave threat to national security?
As I have repeatedly emphasized in my articles, speeches, and in my two books, The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2, the U.S. national-security state conducted a fraudulent autopsy on the body of President Kennedy on the very evening of the assassination.
Why is that an important piece of evidence? The answer is simple and profound: There is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with one. No one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy conducted just a few hours after the assassination equals criminal culpability in the assassination itself.
Yes, it’s that simple. Once one arrives at the conclusion that the military-intelligence establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy, there is but one conclusion that can reasonably be drawn: the assassination was carried out by the same entity that conducted the fraudulent autopsy — i.e., the national-security establishment.
Keep in mind, after all, that there is at least one undisputed fact that exists in the Kennedy assassination: It was the national-security establishment that conducted the autopsy. Not the Soviet Union. Not communist Cuba. Not the Mafia. Not space aliens. One and only one entity conducted the fraudulent autopsy: The U.S. military-intelligence establishment.
Consider just one piece of evidence: The two brain exams that were conducted in the Kennedy autopsy. Now, you might say that two different brain exams conducted in one autopsy is not unusual, but actually it is, especially when the military pathologists who conducted the two brain exams lied about it by falsely claiming that there was only one brain exam.
Of course, everyone has become so accustomed to lying by the military-intelligence establishment (the forever war in Afghanistan being just the latest example) that it’s considered no big deal when they are caught lying. But actually it is a big deal, especially when it involves the assassination of a U.S. president.
For some 30 years, the national-security establishment had gotten away with its lie regarding the two brain exams that were being falsely and fraudulently conflated into one brain exam. But then the JFK Records Act came into existence in 1992, after Oliver Stone’s movie JFK came out. In that movie, which posited that the Kennedy assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation, Stone let people know that the CIA, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, and other national-security entities were still keeping their assassination-related records secret from the American people, on grounds of “national security” of course. The JFK Records Act mandated that the military-intelligence establishment release its assassination-related records to the public.
The Assassination Records Review Board was brought into existence to enforce the law, which, not surprisingly, was resisted by the military-intelligence establishment. In fact, that’s what that October 26 deadline is all about. The CIA and other national-security agencies refused to comply with the law thirty years ago and are still asking for continued secrecy some six decades after the assassination.
In the course of its work, the ARRB staff discovered the fraud behind the two brain exams. First, they discovered that the pathologists were lying about having conducted only one brain exam. Second, they realized that the second brain exam could not possibly have been an examination of the president’s brain. That’s because the brain at the first brain exam had been “sectioned” — i.e., cut like a loaf of bread. The brain at the second brain exam involved a fully intact brain. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, a brain that has been sectioned cannot be put back together.
What’s interesting is that The Washington Post knows about this. How do I know that? Because it published an article about it. It is entitled “Archive Photos Not of JFK’s Brain, Concludes Aide to Review Board” by Washington Post staff writer George Lardner Jr.
Do Byler and Wu know about that article? I don’t know, but as Washington Post staffers, they certainly should know about it. Even if they don’t, why didn’t they use their article yesterday to demand that President Biden enforce the upcoming October 26 deadline for releasing the CIA’s long-secret assassination-related records? Even if they really subscribe to the official lone-nut theory of the assassination, why the steadfast silence on releasing those long-secret records?
Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, someone slipped a provision in the JFK Records Act that prohibited the ARRB from investigating any aspect of the Kennedy assassination. Thus, when the ARRB staff learned about the fraudulent brain exams, they were prohibited from investigating the matter.
But the JFK Records Act didn’t prohibit the Washington Post or any other mainstream newspaper from investigating the matter. Did the Post do a follow-up investigation into the matter? If it did, I am not aware of it.
The same holds true for other evidence that came out in the 1990s establishing a fraudulent autopsy. For example, former Marine Sergeant Roger Boyajian delivered to the ARRB a copy of his after-action report that he had filed with his superiors immediately after the weekend of the assassination. The report stated that the president’s body had been brought into the Bethesda morgue almost 1 1/2 hours before the official entry time of 8 p.m.
At the risk of again belaboring the obvious, when national-security state officials are surreptitiously sneaking a president’s body into the morgue and then lying about it, you know right away that they are up to no good.
Boyajian’s statement was corroborated by other evidence: (1) statements by members of the Navy team that carried the president’s body into the morgue in a shipping casket rather than the heavy, ornate casket in which the body had been placed in Dallas; (2) a memo by Gawler’s Funeral Home, which conducted the Kennedy funeral; (3) statements by military enlisted men who were helping with the x-rays of the president’s body before the official 8 pm entry time of the body into the morgue; and (4) statements by Col. Pierre Finck, one of the three pathologists who conducted the autopsy, which confirmed that x-rays had been taken of the president’s body before the official 8 p.m. entry time into the morgue.
Oh, if that’s not enough, how about the sworn testimony of U.S. Navy Petty Officer Saundra Spencer, who worked in the Navy’s photographic center on the weekend of the assassination and worked closely with the White House on both classified and unclassified photos? On the weekend of the assassination, she was asked, on a top-secret basis, to develop the photographs of the Kennedy autopsy. When asked to look at the official autopsy photograph in the record showing the back of Kennedy’s head to be intact, she told the ARRB that that was not the photograph she developed. The one she developed showed a massive exit-sized wound in the back of Kennedy’s head, which just happened to match what the physicians at Parkland Hospital and other witnesses had stated 30 years before.
How’s all that for evidence, facts, and witnesses, Mr. Byler and Ms. Wu? If that’s not enough for you, then I would recommend my two books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2, which detail even more evidence of a fraudulent autopsy. Better yet, I would recommend Douglas P. Horne’s massive five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. Or just watch Horne’s video presentations for The Future of Freedom Foundation: here, here, and here. Horne served on the staff of the ARRB.
Does all this evidence establish a criminal conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination? Interestingly enough, under U.S. national-security law, it doesn’t. That’s because under U.S. national-security law, a state-sponsored assassination does not constitute a criminal conspiracy. Instead, it’s simply considered an act of state, one based on protecting “national security.”
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From the Archives
Left-leaning despisers of 9/11 Truth movement: Do you really believe in miracles?
David Ray Griffin | Global Research | 06 Jul 2010
An Open Letter to Terry Allen, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, Chris Hayes, George Monbiot, Matthew Rothschild, and Matt Taibbi.
[1]According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles. … Full article
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