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Washington’s Clueless Ambassadors: Damaging American Interests Is Their Legacy

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 12, 2021

Whenever one gets into discussions about the decline of America’s ability to positively influence developments around the world a number of issues tend to surface. First is the hubristic claim by successive presidents that the United States is somehow “exceptional” as a polity while also serving as the world’s only superpower and also the anointed Leader of the Free World, whatever that is supposed to mean. Some critics of the status quo also have been willing to look a bit deeper, recognizing that it is the policies being pursued by the White House and Congress that are out of sync with what is actually happening in Asia, Africa and Latin America, being more driven by establishing acceptable narratives than by genuine interests.

The problem starts at the top. One can hardly have a great deal of respect for presidents who appointed neocon or neoliberal ideologues Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Mike Pompeo or current incumbent Tony Blinken as Secretaries of State, but when all is said and done the area where the U.S. fails most egregiously is in the personnel it actually sends overseas. It has far more non-professional ambassadors than any other country in the world. Does the American public know, for example, that fully 44% of American Ambassadors sent overseas under Donald Trump were political appointees, whose sole distinction in many cases is that they contributed large sums of money to the Republican National Committee? Though such individuals can sometimes turn out to be surprisingly effective, many frequently know nothing of the country that they have been assigned to and do not speak the local language. To cite my own experience, in my 21 years as an intelligence officer spent mostly in Europe I did not once work for an ambassador who was a Foreign Service Officer career diplomat and few of the political appointees I knew ever bothered to learn the local language.

Part of the problem is that many U.S. ambassadors do not know what their job consists of. Ambassadors have existed since the time of the ancient Greeks. They were from the beginning granted a special immunity which enabled them to talk to enemy spokesmen to attempt to resolve issues without resort to arms. In the modern context, Ambassadors are sent to reside in foreign capitals to provide some measure of protection for traveling citizens and also to defend other perceived national interests. Ambassadors are not soldiers, nor are they necessarily the parties of government that ultimately make decisions on what to do when dealing with a foreign nation. They are there to provide a mechanism for exchanging views to create a dialogue while at the same time working with foreign governments to avoid conflict, whether over trade or politics. They should be bridge-builders who explain how American politics function, how the American government works, and at the same time educate Americans on how the country they are based in sees the United States.

By all these metrics, the U.S. diplomatic effort has been a failure and, at the end of the day, the United States taxpayer spends astonishing sums of money to support its global representational and security structures that provide little in return, rarely experiencing any notable successes and watching the reputation of the U.S. decline due to sheer ineptness. In my experience, the worst U.S. Ambassadors tend to be academics, which brings us to Michael McFaul, who served as Ambassador to Russia under Barack Obama from 2012-2014.

To be sure, viewing Russia as an enemy is a bipartisan impulse among the Washington political class. The neoconservatives and their neoliberal allies have both long been dreaming of regime change for Moscow, either because it is perceived as a threat or as an unacceptable autocracy. Given that, the appointment of Stanford Academic and Russia expert McFaul as Ambassador was intended to “reset” the bilateral relationship while also pushing the democracy promotion agenda and confronting various aspects of the domestic policies of the Vladimir Putin government that were considered unacceptable, to include the treatment of homosexuals. Pursuing that end, McFaul made a point of openly meeting with the political opposition in Russia. He thereby antagonized the officials in the government that he should have been working with to bring about acceptable change to such an extent that his term of office became untenable and he was an embarrassing failure.

But now McFaul has turned the usual Washington trick, converting failure into personal success. He is a regular go-to guy when Democrats either in Congress or in the White House need expert testimony on Russia and he is reliably a passionate supporter of the largely unsustainable Russiagate tale and all that implies. He is again a tenured professor at Stanford, where another top government failure Condi Rice, she of “mushroom cloud” fame, serves as Director of the Hoover Institution.

McFaul was recently bothered by what he described as an anonymous presumed “Russian troll” attack on twitter which had referred to his failure as Ambassador to Russia. This is how he responded: “I have a job for life at the best university in the world. I live in a giant house in paradise. I make close to a million dollars a year. I have adoring fans on tv and half a million followers on twitter 99% who also admire me. I’m doing just fine without a damn visa from Russia. And I am not afraid to tweet under my own name. I feel sorry for people like you who aren’t brave enough to do so.”

Not surprisingly, McFaul’s message, which was replayed in a number of places on the internet, struck many as a bit over the top, dripping with entitlement and self-esteem coming from someone who had been given an important government job and had only succeeded in making matters worse. He responded to the criticism by tweeting an addendum: “I wrote than[t] message in a private channel. I did not expect it to be published. But it was still a mistake, I apologize. It was arrogant and idiotic. A swarm of Russian trolls was accusing me of failure, and I responded in a most unprofessional way. Explanation, not excuse.”

Well, it’s nice to hear an apology for a change from anyone associated with the United States government, but the point is that McFaul is symptomatic of much of what is wrong in terms of how the White House makes policy impulsively and appoints poorly informed ideologues to implement what has been decided. McFaul is not unique. President Donald Trump certainly set a precedent in providing a whole group of incompetents to support the clueless Mike Pompeo at State, to include Nikki Haley at the United Nations, Rick Grenell in Germany, David Friedman in Israel, and the ubiquitous John Bolton at the National Security Council. It is almost as if in the area of foreign policy, the United States government as it is currently configured is designed to fail.

The solution is obvious. The United States desperately needs a foreign policy that is based on genuine national interests. It needs to stop rewarding political donors and needs also to send people as Ambassadors who are sensitive to the culture and red lines existing in the countries where they are posted. That doesn’t mean approving what others do, but it does mean listening to what they have to say. If one wants to restore America’s credibility and its reputation, examining the McFaul experience in Russia should be an excellent learning tool and taking steps so as not to repeat that failure would be a good place to start.

August 12, 2021 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Delta Variants, PCR Tests and Cognitive Dissonance

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.08.2021

To paraphrase a famous quip from then Presidential candidate Bill Clinton in a debate with his Republican opponent in 1992, “It’s the vaccine, stupid!” The daily mainstream media and government narrative we are being inundated all over the world with is confusing to most, to put it mildly. So-called Delta or “Indian” variant is spreading like chicken pox we are told, but not what that “spreading” means. Unvaccinated are accused of spreading COVID-19 to those supposedly vaccinated. The USA, UK and EU are leading this confusing and deadly narrative.

Children are told by political appointees to get the jab despite official recommendation from WHO and national medical authorities such as STIKO in Germany to wait. PCR tests that define policy, but which do not tell anything about a person’s having a specific virus, are treated as a “Gold Standard” of infection. Yet as of this writing not one lab has successfully isolated purified samples of the alleged SARS-CoV-2 virus said to cause the COVID-19 disease. How can PCR tests be calibrated if the claimed pathogen is not clear? If we take a step back it becomes clear that we are being subjected to a deliberate worldwide operation in cognitive dissonance whose intended consequences for the future of our civilization are not being told to us.

Resolving dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a term in psychology for a person’s experience of two contradictory or inconsistent experiences whose inconsistency causes them great stress. The stress is resolved in the brain by the person playing unconscious tricks to resolve the contradiction. The Stockholm Syndrome comes to mind. In this case it is the traditional trust in Authority—governments, WHO, CDC, RKI, Bill Gates and other self-appointed epidemiological experts, in many cases with no medical degree. These authorities are imposing draconian lockdowns, masking and travel restraints and what is rapidly becoming de facto forced vaccination with untested jabs whose adverse effects now number in the millions in the EU and USA.

The ordinary brain says, “Why would the authorities want to harm us? Don’t they want the best for us and the country or the world?” The real experiences of the past 18 months since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic over an alleged virus first proclaimed in Wuhan China suggest that either politicians and health officials across the world have lost their minds, are deliberately evil, or willfully destructive or simply corrupt. To resolve that frightening contradiction, millions of us take an experimental concoction known as mRNA genetically-edited substance assuming then they are protected against infection or severe illness from an alleged deadly pathogen called COVID-19. Some even attack those around them who view the dissonance differently and who refuse a vaccine out of distrust and caution. Yet even the ever-present Dr. Fauci in Washington admits the novel mRNA vaccines do not prevent getting the alleged disease or being infectious, only maybe helps lessen its impact. That is not a vaccine, but rather something else.

Delta Variant?

At this point it is useful to look at several demonstrated facts around this coronavirus and its apparently unlimited “variants.” The current scare in the UK and EU as well as the USA is a so-called Delta variant of the coronavirus. The only problem is that we are not being told by the relevant authorities anything useful about that variant.

Since the alleged Delta variant of an alleged but nowhere scientifically proven Wuhan novel coronavirus is being used to justify a new round of draconian lockdowns and pressure to vaccinate, it is worth looking into the test to determine if a Delta variant is present in a tested person tested with the standard WHO-recommended PCR test.

The Delta Variant back in May was originally called the Indian variant. It was soon blamed for up to 90% of new COVID-19 positive tests in the UK, which also has a significant Indian population. What is not being told is that in just two months the alleged Delta positives in India dropped dramatically from 400,000 daily in May to 40,000 in July. Symptoms were said to be suspiciously like that for ordinary hay fever, so the WHO quickly renamed it the Delta variant according to the Greek alphabet just to muddy the waters more. Similar Delta declines came in the UK. “Experts” claimed it was because terrified Indians stayed at home as only a tiny 1-3% of the population had been vaccinated. In UK experts there claimed it was because so many had been vaccinated that Delta cases plunged. If you get the impression they are just inventing explanations to feed the vaccine narrative, you are not alone.

It gets worse. Virtually no one in the UK, India the EU or the USA who is claimed to have been tested positive for Delta has had a specific Delta variant test as such a direct variant test does not exist. Complex and very costly tests are claimed to exist, but no proof is offered that they are being used to claim such things as “90% of UK cases are Delta…” Labs around the world simply do the standard, highly inaccurate PCR tests and health authorities declare it is “Delta.” There is no simple test for Delta or any other variant. If that were not true, the CDC or WHO or other health institutes should explain in detail those tests. They haven’t. Ask relevant health “experts” how they prove presence of a Delta variant virus. They cannot. Testing labs in the USA admit that they do not test for any variants.

Worthless PCR Tests

Even the PCR test itself is not a test for any virus or disease. The scientist who won a Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test, Dr. Kary Mullis, went on TV to attack by name NIAID head Tony Fauci as incompetent for claiming the PCR tests could detect any pathogen or disease. It was not designed for that, but rather as a laboratory analytical tool for research. PCR tests cannot determine an acute infection, ongoing infectiousness, nor actual disease. The PCR test is not actually designed to identify active infectious disease, instead, it identifies genetic material, be it partial, alive, or even dead.

A January 21, 2020 published paper by two Germans, Corman and Drosten, was used to create the PCR test immediately adopted by the WHO to be the world standard to detect cases of the novel coronavirus from Wuhan. At that point a mere six persons had been identified having the novel coronavirus. In November 2020 a group of scientific external peers reviewed the Drosten paper and found an incredible number of major scientific flaws as well as brazen conflict of interest by Drosten and colleagues. The scientists noted the Drosten PCR design and paper suffered from, “numerous technical and scientific errors, including insufficient primer design, a problematic and insufficient RT-qPCR protocol, and the absence of an accurate test validation. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself fulfils the requirements for an acceptable scientific publication. Further, serious conflicts of interest of the authors are not mentioned. Finally… a systematic peer review process was either not performed here, or of problematic poor quality.” Yet the Drosten PCR design was immediately recommended by the WHO as the world corona test.

The PCR amplifies genetic material by using cycles of amplification until it reaches what is called Cycle threshold (Ct), the number of amplifications to detect genetic material before the sample becomes worthless. Mullis once said if you amplify by enough cycles you can pretty much find anything in anybody as our bodies carry huge numbers of different viruses and bacteria, most harmless. Even Dr. Fauci in a 2020 interviews stated that a CT at 35 or above is worthless. Yet the CDC is believed to recommend testing labs to use a CT of 37 to 40! At that level perhaps 97% of COVID positives are likely false.

Neither the CDC nor the WHO makes public their Ct recommendations, but reports are that the CDC now recommends a lower Ct threshold for testing vaccinated so as to minimize COVID positives in the vaccinated, while recommending a Ct above 35 for the unvaccinated, a criminal manipulation if it is true.

For those interested in the evolution of perverting the PCR tests to supposedly diagnose specific presence of a disease, look into the sordid history beginning in the 1980s of Fauci and his underling then, Dr Robert Gallo, at NIAID, using Mullis’ PCR technology to wrongly claim a person is HIV-positive, a criminal enterprise that resulted in unnecessary deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

Notably nearly every prominent COVID vaccine advocate from Fauci to WHO head Tedros have come out of the HIV/AIDS swamp and its fake PCR testing. The entire panic measures imposed since 2020 around the world are based on the false premise that “Positive” RT-PCR test means being sick or infected with COVID. The COVID-19 scare that emanated from Wuhan, China in December of 2019 is a pandemic of testing as many doctors have pointed out. There is no proof that a pathogenic virus is being detected by the test. Nor is there a proven reference value, or “gold standard” to determine positive. It is purely arbitrary. Do the research and you will find it.

Pushing Experimental Vaccines

If it is the case that we have destroyed trillions of dollars in the world economy since early 2020 and ruined countless lives based on worthless PCR tests and now the same fraud extends the insanity for an alleged Delta variant, the clear conclusion is that some very influential actors are using that fear to drive experimental genetic vaccines never before tested on humans nor extensively on animals.

Yet the vaccine-related official death toll in the EU and USA continue to break records. As of this writing, according to the official EU database for recording vaccine injuries, EduraVigilance, by August 2 a total of 20,595 deaths had been reported of people who previously received the experimental genetic mRNA jabs! Such numbers have never before been seen. In addition there have been reported 1,960,607 injuries and 50% of them serious including blood clots, heart attacks, menstrual irregularities, paralysis, all following COVID-19 mRNA injections. The USA data at the CDC VAERS database is being manipulated openly, but even they show more than 11,000 post-mRNA vaccine deaths. The major news media never mention this.

Authorities and politicians reply that there is no evidence the deaths or injuries were vaccine related. But they cannot prove that they were not because they prohibit doctors from doing any autopsy. If we are told to follow science, why are doctors being told by health officials to not do autopsies on patients who died AFTER receiving two mRNA vaccines? After thousands of vaccine-related deaths only one autopsy has been reported, that in Germany, and the findings were horrific. The mRNA spike protein had spread through the entire body. The CDC stopped monitoring non-severe COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people in May. That hides the alarming number of vaccinated who get seriously ill.

Something is terribly wrong when respected experienced medical experts are being banned for suggesting alternative hypotheses to the entire COVID drama. When other scientists adhering to the official line call for any criticism of Tony Fauci or other mainstream COVID doctors, they are to be labelled as doing a “Hate Crime.” Or when cheap and proven remedials are prohibited in favor of the costly deadly mRNA vaccines in which Fauci’s NIAID holds a financial interest.

Already vaccine advocates such as Fauci are speaking of the need for booster mRNA shots and warning of yet a new “Lambda variant” looming. How will they test for that? Or are we to take it on faith because he or she is said by CNN or BBC to be a “respected authority”? How far will sane citizens allow this cognitive dissonance to destroy our lives?

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University.

August 12, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Mt. Vernon School Board Meeting – Dr. Dan Stock MD

Indiana | August 9, 2021

Dr. Dan Stock explains how the current measures to combat Covid do not work. Dr. Stock spoke at the Mt. Vernon school board meeting.

August 12, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

White House Press Secretary Claims the Shots Have Saved ‘Tens of Millions of People’s Lives’

Preposterous Coronavirus Vaccine Hype

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | August 11, 2021

Last week President Joe Biden told the coronavirus vaccines propaganda whopper that about 350 million Americans had taken shots of the experimental coronavirus vaccines. That number, of course, is greater than the United States population. Not content to leave the extreme overcounting of supposed vaccination success to her boss, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in a Wednesday press briefing, claimed that we have “seen tens of millions of people’s lives saved who have gotten the vaccine; that data is clear across the country.”

Hmmm. Even the US government’s coronavirus death count, which is inflated by, among other things, the inclusion of people who died with coronavirus instead just people who died from it, shows well less than one million deaths since records began being kept early last year. We are supposed to believe that the giving of experimental coronavirus shots that only started rolling out in a limited fashion in December, and that tens of millions of Americans have chosen not to receive, has prevented many multiples of those deaths? Not a chance. We are not seeing that kind of coronavirus death rate anywhere in the world, including countries where comparatively very few people have taken experimental coronavirus vaccine shots.

Sure, Biden and Psaki may have just misspoken in providing these outrageously inflated numbers for people who have received or been saved by the shots. But, what do you expect? While they say to “trust the science,” what they dish out day after day is puffery dressed up as science. For example, Biden routinely touts the experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, as being safe and effective for everyone, despite the reality being the shots can be both dangerous and ineffective. When people routinely say things so divorced from reality, they are bound to on occasion become carried away and make preposterous statements that can be exposed as indisputably false by the application of simple math.

When listening to politicians and their spokesmen hyping coronavirus danger and their grand plans for countering that danger, it is a good idea to keep in mind an old joke: How can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.

August 11, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden never mentioned ‘quarantine camps’ for Covid ‘high-risk’ individuals… but last year the CDC did

By Robert Bridge | RT | August 11, 2021

As a number of politicians push for ‘vaccine passports’ amid fears that a new brand of medical apartheid is coming, a re-surfaced CDC publication advocating internment camps for the ‘high-risk’ has some people fearing the worst.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a paper that floated the totally not suspicious idea of relocating “high-risk” individuals into green zone “camps.” While the proposal didn’t attract much attention at the time, as draconian anti-Covid measures are beginning to ramp up, and basic human rights and liberties are coming under attack, the document has attracted newfound attention. And not without reason, it seems.

The very first line of the document discusses the implementation of a “shielding approach in humanitarian settings… focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings.” Essentially, and this will be important later on, ‘humanitarian settings’ is just another way of saying ‘camps’. Many people are quick to associate the idea of camps with the containment of refugees, for example, or illegal aliens who have breached the border. Yet the only time the word ‘refugee’ is mentioned in the paper is in reference to a camp in Kenya. At the same time, ‘camp’ and ‘camps’ are referred to about 20 times.

There is another ambiguous thing about this document, and that involves its description of “high-risk” individuals and the “general population.”

The paper reads: “In most humanitarian settings [i.e. camps], older population groups make up a small percentage of the total population. For this reason, the shielding approach suggests physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population to prioritize the use of the limited available resources and avoid implementing long-term containment measures among the general population.”

In other words, the CDC is saying that older people being held in camps (humanitarian settings), because they are in the ‘high-risk’ category, should be separated from the ‘general population’ in these facilities so as to reduce the ‘containment measures’. OK, fine. But the document never explains who makes up the general population inside the camps, and why these ‘low-risk’ individuals are being held in these humanitarian ‘green zones’ in the first place.

Either due to a careless lack of clarity or deliberate deceptiveness on the part of the CDC, it is not difficult to see how some people could interpret the inclusion of high-risk groups into these ‘humanitarian settings’ to mean the unvaccinated. But even if there is no evil intent to intern the anti-vax crowd in camps, the conditions set down for these humanitarian settings leave much to be desired. Indeed, to be avoided at all costs.

In one passage, it is stated that “monitoring includes both adherence to protocols and potential adverse effects or outcomes due to isolation and stigma. It may be necessary to assign someone within the green zone, if feasible, to minimize movement in/out of green zones.”

Would that ‘someone’ by any chance be the local police or even the US military? The document offers no clues. However, several lines later, the CDC advises that “isolation/separation from family members, loss of freedom and personal interactions may require additional psychosocial support structures/systems.”

Admitting that confinement in these settings would entail “the loss of freedom and personal interactions” strongly suggests that these individuals are being held in these facilities against their will. In fact, reading through the document, one might get the impression the CDC is talking about a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane.

Anyone who thinks being detained in one of these facilities for the ‘high-risk’ would be all fun and games may wish to take particular heed from this line, which warns: “this shielding approach may have an important psychological impact and may lead to significant emotional distress, exacerbate existing mental illness or contribute to anxiety, depression, helplessness, grief, substance abuse, or thoughts of suicide among those who are separated or have been left behind.”

Left behind? Left behind from what, exactly? The Rapture?

Finally, the authors of this document seem fully aware that their warm and cuddly humanitarian setting, which seems to more resemble a gulag than a health retreat, will not be welcomed by all members of the general population. Gee, I wonder why.

“While the shielding approach is not meant to be coercive, it may appear forced or be misunderstood in humanitarian settings,” advises the CDC, which appears overly concerned about public perceptions. “As with many community interventions meant to decrease COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, compliance and behavior change… are difficult in developed, stable settings; thus, they may be particularly challenging in humanitarian settings which bring their own set of multi-faceted challenges that need to be taken into account.”

The CDC paper references heavily from a March 2020 study authored by one Caroline Favas, entitled ‘Guidance for the Prevention of COVID-19 Infections among High-Risk Individuals in Camps and Camp-like Settings.’ Once again, any hope for clarity is dashed, as this paper, which mentions the words ‘camp’ and ‘camps’ 73 times, is written for “the displaced community itself, humanitarian actors and camp coordination/management authorities.” Few details are given as to who the ‘displaced community’ may be.

(Note: The Favas study provides a broad definition of ‘camp’ or ‘camp-like settings’ as “forcibly displaced population, including refugees and internally displaced living in high density formal or unformal settlements, under collective or individual shelters”).

What follows in the Favas study, which was published by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, occasionally comes off as one of those jargon-riddled medical tracts that are almost as painful to read as a doctor’s handwritten medical prescription. Yet, just as with the CDC paper, the Favas study is crystal clear when it acknowledges that these camps will be viewed negatively by many members of the population.

“Conversely, it is likely that the approach will not be successful if it is perceived as coercive, misunderstood or used by authorities as a pretext for forms of oppression.”

So, who will get to determine who is at high risk of Covid infection and who is not? On this tricky point, Favas, as well as the CDC, wash their hands of the process, leaving it up to ‘community members’ to decide who should be detained in these ‘humanitarian settings’.

“Identification of high-risk community members should be a community-led process, which supports and promotes community ownership of the approach,” Favas avers. “The purpose of the shielding approach and the inclusion criteria should be clearly communicated and explained to the community, so that each household can identify who among them is at risk and should be shielded, on a voluntary basis.”

Favas provides some options for how the detainees could be isolated from their families and communities, none of them terribly comforting. The first involves providing a green zone at the household level. While it may not seem so bad keeping grandma confined to a back room, the author describes the “household shelter” as either a “single shelter” or a “multi-shelter compound.”

The next type of facility is a group of shelters (with maximum 5-10 households), within a small camp area.

Finally, there are the full blown “sector” camps that would accommodate 15,000 or more people. It would be difficult to imagine a camp of such scale that would not require a high police presence, as well as virtually all of the rules and regulations of a prison.

Many people would probably scoff at the thought of Covid camps, dismissing them as the fevered dream of a ‘conspiracy theorist’. And perhaps they would be right. After all, just last month, the Associated Press debunked the claim floated in a satirical publication that Joe Biden was planning to send the unvaccinated to quarantine camps until they agreed to take the shot. Yet the increasingly befuddled US leader has made false claims in the past, like promising that Americans would be free from their mask bondage if they agreed to be vaccinated. That promise evaporated last month as the CDC backtracked, mandating mask wearing in places experiencing spikes in Covid levels, even among the vaccinated.

While some may find it irrelevant to discuss a paper that was released by the CDC last year, they may want to ask why the CDC and Caroline Favas were already discussing the possibility of ‘humanitarian settings’, i.e. camps for high-risk individuals, in early 2020, when the outbreak was still in its early stages. Some might say that was jumping the gun.

In any case, now that the CDC document has made a splash one year after its release, it would be a good time for an explanation regarding some of its more ambiguous and even outrageous suggestions. At a time when a feeling of general distrust and even paranoia of Covid measures is sweeping the globe, people need assurances that their real enemy is not the very people they elected to protect them.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

August 11, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US has NO mandate to keep troops in Syria & it’s interpretation of international law is ‘ridiculous’: Russian ambassador

By Jonny Tickle | RT | August 10, 2021

Washington has no legal mandate to keep its armed forces in Syria, and the presence of American soldiers in the country contradicts the 2015 UN Security Council resolution that called for a ceasefire and a political settlement.

That’s according to the Russian embassy in Washington, which responded to a tweet by Wayne Marotto, the official military spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the American campaign in the Middle East to defeat ISIS.

Writing on social media, Marotto said that the US has a “clear mandate under international law” to keep boots on the ground in Syria.

On Monday night, the Russian Embassy publicly disagreed.

“It’s a matter of fact that US armed forces have no legal mandate to stay in Syria. Your interpretation of UNSCR 2254 is just ridiculous. Please, read the document thoroughly,” the diplomatic mission said, including a link to the text.

Passed in 2015, UNSCR 2254 calls for all parties to immediately end attacks against civilian targets but allows offensives against groups determined to be “terrorists” by the UN Security Council, such as ISIS. It also planned to create a Syrian-led political transition with free and fair elections.

As things stand, both Moscow and Washington have troops on the ground in Syria. The Russian operation began in 2015, after Syrian President Bashar Assad requested military aid from the Kremlin, in a legal move. However, according to international law, the US military presence is an illegal occupation, because the American troops entered the country without an invitation from the government.

August 10, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

The big question: Why should someone who has had Covid need the vaccine?

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | August 10, 2021

LAST week TCW Defending Freedom writer Frederick Edward tweeted this eminently reasonable question: If the purpose of vaccination is to give antibodies, then why should he, as someone who’s already had Covid, have the vaccine?

Of course there is no rational or reasonable explanation. Nor is it explicable why, given the levels of testing to which the government is subjecting the population, it does not add antibody testing to the mix.

It is unreasonable and Todd Zywicki, an American law professor, is determined to demonstrate this. In an article for the Wall Street Journal he explains why he is suing his employer, the highly rated George Mason University in Virginia, a state institution which is mandating Covid vaccines. In sum, it is that since he already has natural immunity, there can be no justification for a coercive violation of his bodily autonomy. 

He explains that although vaccination is unnecessary and potentially risky, the only other options open to him are to teach remotely or to seek a medical exemption that would require him to wear a mask, remain socially distanced from faculty or students during, say, office hours, and submit to weekly testing. In which case, he writes:

‘It would be impossible for me to perform my duties to the best of my ability under such conditions. The administration has threatened those who don’t submit with disciplinary action, including termination of employment. This week the public-interest lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed suit on my behalf, challenging the university’s mandatory vaccination requirement for those with naturally acquired immunity. This coercive mandate violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason.’

He cites clinical studies from Israel, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, England and elsewhere that ‘have demonstrated beyond a doubt that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 provides robust and durable protection against reinfection comparable to or better than that provided by the most effective vaccines’ and goes on to question the approval of vaccines with less efficacy than natural immunity, referencing the World Health Organisation conclusion: ‘Current evidence points to most individuals developing strong protective immune responses following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2.’

Even more interesting is the centering of his case around the danger of vaccination to those who have previously contracted and recovered from Covid:

‘It isn’t merely unnecessary for me to get the shot. It’s potentially dangerous. Covid-recovered individuals have been mostly excluded from the vaccine clinical trials, rendering any claims about the purported safety for this group largely speculative. Moreover, clinical evidence has suggested that Covid survivors suffer more frequent and more serious side effects from vaccination than those who have never been infected.

‘The onslaught of the Delta variant in recent weeks has reinforced the lessons about the robust protection afforded by natural immunity. Unlike the current vaccines, which are designed to target the spike protein of the virus, natural immunity recognizes the entire complement of SARS-CoV-2 proteins and thus protects against a greater array of variants.

‘Thus even as vaccine breakthrough infections multiply around the world, natural immunity is robust to the Delta and other variants. With respect to the Gamma variant, a recent analysis of an outbreak among a small group of mine workers in French Guiana found that 60 per cent of fully vaccinated miners suffered breakthrough infections compared with zero among those with natural immunity.

‘And whereas the vaccine’s protection may wane faster than expected, the latest estimates on the durability of natural immunity stretch to at least 11 months, the duration of most follow-up studies. Some 16 months after contracting Covid I am still testing positive for antibodies. In fact, researchers have discovered that the antibodies produced by natural infection continue to evolve to generate “increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations” compared with the more static “antibodies elicited by vaccination”.’

We will follow his case with interest.

The new assumption that only by vaccination can herd immunity can be achieved is a false one – it is not science. It needs to be challenged in the courts here too.

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Kansas City Hospital Counters Media’s False Narrative That They’re Overwhelmed With Child Covid Cases

By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | August 9, 2021

Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City pushed back against the media’s hysterical narrative that their hospital had “hit capacity” due to child covid cases by pointing out that most of their child patients have respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), not covid, and they have “plenty of capacity” to see kids in outpatient settings.

“Children’s Mercy hits capacity as COVID cases continue rising in KC Metro,” blared a headline from the Kansas City Star on July 27.

“As you may have heard, we are currently experiencing high patient volumes in the hospital, but we continue to be able to meet the needs of our patients requiring hospitalization,” Children’s Mercy responded in a statement posted to Facebook on July 28. “We also want to emphasize we have plenty of capacity to see your child in all of our outpatient settings.”

“While we continue to see COVID-19 cases increase in our community and in our hospital, the increase in children we are treating as in-patients is mainly due to respiratory illnesses, like RSV,” Children’s Mercy continued. “We encourage all families to keep their scheduled clinic appointments.”

Children’s Mercy, which has 367-beds, said Thursday that they had 19 hospitalized child covid patients in total.

There has been a significant surge of RSV cases among children throughout our country since July.

“So we’re all clear: when you read those worrying stories about a respiratory virus filling children’s hospitals, you are reading about RSV,” Alex Berenson said Saturday on Twitter. “And the likely reason this is happening now is because lockdowns prevented normal exposure, so 18 months of cases are happening at once.”

From WATE, “East Tennessee Children’s Hospital reports more RSV cases in July than first half of 2021”:

East Tennessee Children’s Hospital said they have treated more cases of Respiratory Syncytial Disease, or RSV, in July than the first six months of 2021 combined.

There have been a total of 303 RSV cases at the Knoxville hospital in the month of July, two more cases than reported in the first six months of 2021 combined.

RSV is a contagious virus in children and can cause respiratory infections that can lead to more serious illnesses such as pneumonia. In June, the Centers for Disease Control issued a health advisory after seeing an increase in RSV cases across the southern United States.

“Due to reduced circulation of RSV during the winter months of 2020–2021, older infants and toddlers might now be at increased risk of severe RSV-associated illness since they have likely not had typical levels of exposure to RSV during the past 15 months,” a release from the CDC said.

We have still yet to see the full extent of the damage caused by our government’s disastrous lockdown policies.

Some states are looking at yet more lockdowns come fall and winter and public health authorities working together with the media have gone into fearmongering overdrive outright terrorizing the population that we’re all going to die if every last person doesn’t take Big Pharma’s increasingly-ineffective mRNA injections.

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

CDC has a plan to stick the “high risk” in special camps, which will most likely enhance transmission of Covid

Green Zones or Concentration Camps? 

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 9, 2021

For people who still think that public health dictates are intended for our benefit, will you still think so when the public health police decide to remove granny from her home to a high risk camp, where latrines will be provided? And hopefully food and medical care, all based on the refugee model? This was updated a year ago, so it has probably changed in the interim.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/shielding-approach-humanitarian.html

The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data. Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available. Please check the CDC website periodically for updates.

What is the Shielding Approach? 1

The shielding approach aims to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (“high-risk”) and the general population (“low-risk”). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector or community level depending on the context and setting.1,2 They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.

Operational Considerations

The shielding approach requires several prerequisites for effective implementation. Several are addressed, including access to healthcare and provision of food. However, there are several prerequisites which require additional considerations. Table 2 presents the prerequisites or suggestions as stated in the shielding guidance document (column 1) and CDC presents additional questions and considerations alongside these prerequisites (column 2).

Table 2: Suggested Prerequisites per the shielding documents and CDC’s Operational Considerations for Implementation

Suggested Prerequisites

*As stated in the shielding document*

  • Each green zone has a dedicated latrine/bathing facility for high-risk individuals
  • To minimize external contact, each green zone should include able-bodied high-risk individuals capable of caring for residents who have disabilities or are less mobile
  • Otherwise, designate low-risk individuals for these tasks, preferably who have recovered from confirmed COVID-19 and are assumed to be immune.
  • The green zone and living areas for high-risk residents should be aligned with minimum humanitarian (SPHERE) standards.6

Considerations as suggested by CDC

  • The shielding approach advises against any new facility construction to establish green zones; however, few settings will have existing shelters or communal facilities with designated latrines/bathing facilities to accommodate high-risk individuals. In these settings, most latrines used by HHs are located outside the home and often shared by multiple HHs.
  • If dedicated facilities are available, ensure safety measures such as proper lighting, handwashing/hygiene infrastructure, maintenance and disinfection of latrines.
  • Ensure facilities can accommodate high-risk individuals with disabilities, children and separate genders at the neighborhood/camp-level.
  • This may be difficult to sustain, especially if the caregivers are also high risk. As caregivers may often will be family members, ensure that this strategy is socially or culturally acceptable.
  • Currently, we do not know if prior infection confers immunity.
  • The shielding approach requires strict adherence to infection, prevention and control (IPC) measures. They require, uninterrupted availability of soap, water, hygiene/cleaning supplies, masks or cloth face coverings, etc. for all individuals in green zones. Thus, it is necessary to ensure minimum public health standards6 are maintained and possibly supplemented to decrease the risk of other outbreaks outside of COVID-19. Attaining and maintaining minimum SPHERE6 standards is difficult in these settings for the general population.8,9,10 Users should consider that provision of services and supplies to high risk individuals could be at the expense of low-risk residents, putting them at increased risk for other outbreaks.

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Taliban capture 6th provincial capital weeks after rejecting reports of a ceasefire, amid US withdrawal

RT | August 9, 2021

The Taliban have seized control of its sixth provincial capital in Afghanistan within a matter of days, according to a spokesperson for the group, as the militants continue to secure territory after America’s military withdrawal.

The military victory for the Taliban was confirmed by the deputy governor of Samangan Province, home to the city of Aibak. Speaking to AFP, Afghanistan official Sefatullah Samangani declared that “the Taliban have captured the city of Aibak and have complete control over it.”

The Taliban formally took control of the city on Monday, after a “senator surrendered” and asked Afghanistan to withdraw its forces from the area to avoid further conflict.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid declared on Twitter that the city center was completely under its control, while the governor, the police chief, the intelligence department, and all its affiliates were cleared.

The capture of Aibak comes days after Taliban militants seized control of the provincial capital of Sar-e Pul and the region’s fifth-largest city. All major government buildings in the two locations have been secured by Taliban fighters, although Afghan soldiers were reportedly trying to retain control of the Kunduz airport.

The continued military advance of the Taliban throughout Afghanistan follows the group’s rejection of reports that a ceasefire deal had been reached with the country’s government in return for the release of 7,000 prisoners.

Since America’s withdrawal from the region earlier this year, the Taliban claims to have secured 85% of the territory in Afghanistan. Afghan officials dispute this figure, however, claiming it has been exaggerated by the group.

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Is Ashli Babbit’s Killer Guilty of Murder?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 9, 2021

There are those who think that the so-called riot or so-called insurrection in the Capitol last January justified the killing of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot dead by a still-unidentified Capitol police officer during the melee. 

Not so! The power to use deadly force is strictly limited, even if the event was in fact a “riot” or an “insurrection” rather than simply a protest that got out of hand. 

The killer’s lawyer, Mark Schamel, understands that, even if journalists within the mainstream media do not. He stated, “Lethal force is appropriate if the situation puts you or others in fear of imminent bodily harm.”

Well, except for the fact that what Schamel stated is not correct. The test for the use of deadly force is not whether the police officer is in fear of imminent bodily harm. The test is whether the officer reasonably believes that the subject poses a significant threat of serious bodily injury or death to the officer or others. 

In other words, just because a police officer is scared that someone might do harm to him is not enough, under the law, to justify his killing the person. The police officer must reasonably believe that he is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death. 

It is undisputed that Ashli Babbit was unarmed. In fact, it is also undisputed that during this so-called riot or so-called insurrection, none of the Capitol protestors were shooting anyone. 

Light jail sentences

Federal Judge Randolph Moss seems to get that. That’s got to be the reason he meted out an 8-month jail sentence to Paul Hodgins, another Capitol protestor, for participating in the melee. Isn’t that a rather light sentence for someone who participated in what the mainstream media continues to call a “riot,” an “insurrection,” and a “grave assault on democracy”? Don’t some people who get convicted of DUI receive higher jail sentences than that? 

Why, even federal prosecutors were recommending to the judge to give Hodgins no more than a 15-21 month sentence. Interestingly, at sentencing federal prosecutors compared Hodgins’ conduct to that of a “domestic terrorist.” Yet, there was a problem with that theory: They didn’t charge him with domestic terrorism. Did they just forget to do so?

According to the CBSNews.com, “So far, nearly 20 Capitol rioters have entered guilty pleas, and two have been sentenced for misdemeanor crimes:  one, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, was sentenced to three years probation and no jail time, and another, Michael Curzio, was sentenced to six months imprisonment, although the courts credited him for the nearly six months he had already spent incarcerated as he waited for the courts to hear his case.”

What? How in the world can participating in a “riot” (or an “insurrection” or a “grave assault on democracy) be only a misdemeanor rather than a felony? How can “rioters” and “insurrectionists” and “grave assaulters on democracy” be receiving probation or extremely light jail sentences?

Where is Robert Mueller when we need him? He clearly should be summoned out of retirement to help these federal prosecutors and federal judges understand how serious this “riot,” “insurrection,” and “grave assault on democracy” really was.

Secrecy vs transparency

A video of the Ashli Babbitt killing proves that the protestors weren’t killing anyone. In fact, there were Capitol police on the protestors’ side of the door who were guarding the door that the protestors were trying to bash down. No one touched those police officers. Since the door was made of glass, it is a virtual certainty that Ashli Babbitt’s killer saw those police officers and the fact that Babbitt and the other protestors were doing nothing to harm them. 

So, what caused that still-unidentified Capitol police officer to kill Ashli Babbitt? Did he mistakenly think he saw a gun in her hand? Given that she hadn’t even broken through the door, what caused him to think that he was in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death? Did he simply get scared and decide to shoot? What was his level of training? Was he a newbie Capitol police officer? Had he received adequate training on the use of deadly force? Did he have a misunderstanding with respect to when he was authorized to use deadly force?

We don’t know the answers to these questions because the killer’s version of events is still shrouded in secrecy. We know that federal prosecutors have exonerated him but that’s no big surprise. What’s necessary is transparency. For one thing, there is absolutely no reason to keep the killer’s identity secret. Just because a police officer might be scared of retaliation for killing a citizen is no reason to keep his identity and his version of events secret. The criminal justice system doesn’t operate like that. Police work is inherently dangerous business. If people don’t want to incur that danger, then they shouldn’t become police officers. To use danger surrounding police work to shroud a police killing of a citizen in secrecy is totally illegitimate. Justice demands full transparency of all matters relating to Ashli Babbitt’s killing.

As more facts have come out about Ashli Babbitt and her life, one thing has become painfully clear: This 35-year-old wife and mother would never have threatened that still-unidentified police officer or anyone else with serious bodily injury or death. Therefore, the obvious question arises: What caused that still-unidentified police officer to kill Ashli Babbitt? Her family has a right to know. So do the American people.

August 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Taliban overruns most of Kunduz as Afghan military clings to strategic city’s airport – reports

RT | August 8, 2021

Taliban militants have captured another provincial capital, Sar-e Pul, and most of the fifth-largest city of Kunduz, according to local officials. Afghan special forces have been deployed in a bid to re-take the latter.

The militants seized all the key government buildings in the two cities overnight, pushing the government troops to military installations on their outskirts. The troops are currently clinging onto the airport in Kunduz, in the north of the country.

“Heavy clashes started yesterday afternoon. All government headquarters are in the control of the Taliban. Only the army base and the airport is with ANDSF [Afghan security forces] from where they are resisting the Taliban,” provincial lawmaker Amruddin Wali told Reuters.

Footage circulating online shows the militants roaming the city streets en masse, with the group’s flags hoisted on multiple military vehicles.

Kunduz’s market was destroyed in the fighting, with disturbing footage purporting to show the whole location on fire. It was not immediately clear how exactly the market was obliterated, with some reports suggesting it was targeted by American warplanes supporting the Afghan troops. On Saturday, the US military launched airstrikes against the Taliban in a bid to halt its offensive, sending in B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships.

https://twitter.com/NaseebKhanZ/status/1424274123824508928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1424274123824508928%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fnews%2F531470-taliban-overruns-kunduz-afghanistan%2F

Although the Taliban claimed it was in full control of Kunduz, the government said it had re-deployed special forces units to the city and was trying to push back the militants. A short video released by Afghan military spokesperson Fawad Aman shows special forces troops advancing through the streets, firing at unseen adversaries.

The situation in the northwestern city of Sar-e Pul appears to be similar to that in Kunduz. Its key locations have been overrun by the militants, with government forces retreating to a military base on its fringes.

“Government headquarters, including the governor’s house, police command, and the National Directorate of Security compound, are captured by the Taliban,” Mohammad Noor Rahmani, a Sar-e Pul provincial council member, told Reuters.

Over the past few days, the Taliban has put the government troops under heavy pressure, apparently switching the focus of its offensive from rural areas to major cities. Two provincial capitals, Zaranj in the southwest and Sheberghan in the north, have already fallen into the hands of the militant group.

August 8, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

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