Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 536
July 22, 2022
Robert Parry Exposed CIA Criminality and Set the Gold Standard for Investigative Journalism
By John Kiriakou
New Reader Featuring His Reporting Should be Assigned in College ClassroomsThere aren’t a lot of journalists that Americans can look up to these days, especially in the mainstream media. Edward R. Murrow and his “boys” are long gone. Americans don’t have a Walter Cronkite to set their minds at ease. Even the venerable 60 Minutes has had a carousel of unremarkable talking heads since the retirements of Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Harry Reasoner.
Instead, many (most, maybe?) Americans get their news from “news” channels that fall under the auspices of their networks’ entertainment divisions. They get their news from the likes of Ken Dilanian, the NBC News and MSNBC intelligence journalist who in 2014 was exposed sending his stories to the CIA for comment and clearance before he sent them to his own editor. (In one email exchange, a new CIA public affairs flack wrote, “I am looking forward to working with you, Ken!” Dilanian replied, “Hooray! Glad to have you guys.”
That’s what makes a new book by Nat Parry so welcome. “American Dispatches: A Robert Parry Reader,” is a compendium of the most impactful and important pieces of investigative journalism published by Nat Parry’s father Robert, the eminent reporter from the Associated Press, Newsweek, and PBS, and the founder of Consortium News.
Robert Parry is best known for breaking the news that the CIA had provided the Contra rebels in Nicaragua with a copy of their notorious “assassination manual” and that the CIA was helping the Contras send shipments of cocaine to the United States and then using the profits to buy weapons. Parry was a winner of the George Polk Award for his Contra stories, the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. He was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist
One of the things that made Bob Parry so successful as an investigative journalist was the fact that he spent so much time and energy cultivating sources. Unlike the Ken Dilanians of the world, he didn’t just write to or call the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs and then get a CIA press release. He sought out sources, established relationships with them, and then reported the truths that they provided him.
American Dispatches reminds us that he was one of the first journalists to report that the CIA was surreptitiously opening the mail of American citizens. That was without a warrant or any legal authority whatsoever, of course. Parry reported the story at the ripe old age of 26.
American Dispatches is like a walk through modern American history with a tour guide who really knows what he’s talking about, who cares about getting the history right, and who knows that his real role is that of a teacher. For nearly 700 pages, the reader gets a fresh, fact-based, unbiased, and apolitical view of what was happening as some of the most important events in modern history unfolded. Divided into four parts, it examines in depth issues as eclectic as busing, organized crime, drugs, politics, and the role of the media.
But for those readers who consider themselves students of the history of the CIA, there is a lot here. The book covers virtually the entire history of the CIA from the time of the Church Committee through the September 11 attacks, and the illegal torture, secret prisons, and rendition programs. Parry pulled no punches in his work.
There is coverage of the CIA and Iran, the CIA and the mujahedin, the CIA and drugs, the CIA and the Contras, and the CIA and Iraq. He writes about every CIA leader over the course of nearly two generations, the mistakes they made, the promises they failed to keep, and the crimes they committed in the name of the Americans they were supposed to be working for.
I sat down to skim this book and I finally put it down two days later having read it in its entirety. Dozens of the people Parry wrote about were former bosses or colleagues of mine at the CIA. Some had been friends. In every single case, Parry got to the core of who they were. For the most part, they were people who considered themselves to be patriots. But they were also sociopaths who couldn’t see the line between serving their country and committing crimes against humanity.
American Dispatches reminds me very much of “The Untold History of the United States,” a work of truth, even if that truth is uncomfortable and is not the way we’d like to remember it. I hope that in the coming months it finds its way into college political science classrooms across America.
[…]
July 23 is World Ivermectin Day
NZ Doctors Speaking Out With Science
Let’s get this treatment available to New Zealanders
We keep hearing about the daily covid-19 case numbers. Yesterday (21 July 2022) the government’s covid-19 website stated that New Zealand had over 10 000 new cases, with over 700 cases in hospital and over 65 000 active cases in the community. Almost two thousand “covid-19-related” deaths in total were noted with 34 having died in the last 6 days.
Cases are not defined. Deaths and hospitalisations are not specified regarding the extent to which covid-19 was responsible.
IvermectinLet’s take these numbers at face value and look at what we could achieve using Ivermectin. If everyone who tested positive for covid-19 received Ivermectin, how many hospitalisations and deaths could be prevented? These figures are based on the combined data from 88 studies for all outcomes and 46 studies for death.
All outcomes include death, ventilation, ICU admission, hospitalisation, recovery, cases and viral clearance. As we don’t know what the figures are for each of these outcomes, we have applied the improvement in all outcomes to hospitalisations. These figures are thus estimations only, however they are based on real data and not on modelling.
So Ivermectin could potentially have:
Saved 14-30 lives in the past six daysPrevented 290 to 617 of yesterday’s 744 hospitalisationsBroad-ranging Early TreatmentThe above figures may even be better if Ivermectin is used in combination with other medications and supplements at the first sign of infection. Early treatment has been shown to be up to 75% effective and a large part of this protocol is available without having to see doctor.
The government covid-19 website goes on to list anti-viral medicines that may soon be available from a pharmacist without a prescription – Paxlovid (Pfizer) and Molnupiravir (Merck Sharp & Dohme), as well as mentioning access to Remdesivir (Gilead) that is given intravenously.
Even the GP college is worried about the potential interactions with other medications – although its leadership led the fight to suppress Ivermectin, the acceptance of which would have meant the vaccine could not have had emergency approval status and been rolled out, in the face of a cheap, life-saving covid-19 treatment being available.
We ask why these expensive, possibly harmful and likely ineffective medicines are being offered to New Zealanders instead of cheap, safe alternatives.
We ask why when our hospitals and general practices are over-run, effective treatments are being ignored. NZDSOS has been lobbying the government about the benefits of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine since the start of this information becoming available.
How do these so-called medical leaders liver with themselves?
Join UsNew Zealand Event for World Ivermectin DayNZDSOS representatives along with The Health Forum NZ and Dr Naomi Dongelmans (Netherlands) will be joining Voices for Freedom for a round table discussion about Ivermectin in the New Zealand context.
Join us on Sunday the 24th of July @7pm. Register here.
Contact the Ministry of HealthEmail the Ministry of Health. We have composed a template you can use. Just go to this page and scroll down to the template letter. You can easily personalise and send this email directly.
[…]
Via https://nzdsos.com/?fluentcrm=1&route=email_preview&_e_hash=d38aca5c-82f8-4c41-a2e4-38b1ebb947d3
Dr. Birx Admits She And Fauci Made Up ‘The Science’ On Lockdowns, Social Distancing
Zero Hedge
President Trump’s former Covid-19 adviser Dr. Deborah Birx has made several stunning admissions of late – first telling the Daily Mail that Covid-19 “came out of the box ready to infect” when it hit Wuhan, China in 2019 – and that it may have been created by Chinese scientists who were “working on coronavirus vaccines.”
But it goes further than that.
As Fox News’ Jesse Waters lays out, Birx admitted in her new book that she and Dr. Anthony Fauci were essentially shooting from the hip when it came to national directives such as “two weeks to stop the spread,” and social distancing requirements.
According to Waters, Birx “admitted to making things up,” adding that she and Fauci “were lying to the president and to the American people about their COVID protocols.”
With the first lie; ’15 days to stop the spread’ – Birx writes “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of the two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it.”
“So that 15 days to slow the spread was just a sneaky way to get their hooks into us, so they could lock us down for longer,” Waters opines. “And if you dared to leave your house, Birx told us, the only way to stay safe was to social distance.”
To that end, Birx writes that she “I had settled on 10 (feet) knowing that even that was too many, but I figured that ten would at least be palatable for most Americans – high enough to allow for most gatherings of immediate family but not enough for large dinner parties and, critically, large weddings, birthday parties, and other mass social events…”
Watch:
Dr. Birx ADMITS her and Fauci LIED to Trump and America about how to stop COVID— They ALTERED the reports?! pic.twitter.com/GlhonaKoYi
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 20, 2022
Mongol Invasion of China
Episode 29: Conquest of Song China
Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)
Dr Kenneth Harl
Film Review
Harl regards Kublai Khan as the greatest of all the Mongol conquerors. His grandfather Genghis Khan was content to control large portions of the Chinese-dominated Silk Road. His uncle Ogedei settled with occupying the rump Jin Dynasty and securing a treaty relationship with the more powerful southern Song Dynasty.
Kublai Khan began his assault on China by moving his forces into Tibet (a vassal state that paid to the Mongols), on the Song Empire’s western border. He proceeded with an assault on Dali (currently Hunan), an independent kingdom inhabited by non-Chinese Bai people. Due to China’s large number of settled cities, the war on China proper was mainly one of sieges and logistics. Once he captured cities, Kublai Khan recruited large number of Chinese mercenaries to garrison them.
In 1259 the great khan Mongke died of cholera while Kublai Khan was besieging the fortresses on the Yangtze River. Mongke’s younger brother Verke had himself declared great khan while most of the Mongolian nobility was fighting in China. In 1260 during a brief civil war, Kublai Khan marched to Karakorum and deposed Verke (becoming great khan himself).
Under Kublai Khan, the Golden Horde Mongols on the western steppes were ruled by descendants of his cousin Batu. Kublai Khan’s nephew ruled the Ilkhanate on the central steppes, consisting of the modern day states of Iran, Iraq and. Under Kublai Khan, the Chagatai Khanate broke away from the Mongol Empire and was ruled independently by descendants of Genghis Khan’s second son Chagatai. By the 14th century, all three khanates had adopted the Turkish language and the Muslim religion.
1268 Kublai Khan reopened the war against the Song Dynasty. The Ilkhan sent Muslim engineers to assist Chinese engineers in building trebuchets, incendiaries and other siege technologies. The Mongols also deployed great paddled river flotillas to isolate Yangtze fortresses from the river. Eventually numerous Chinese generals defected to fight for Mongols.
Unlike western Mongol victories, Kublai Khan’s victories in China weren’t accompanied by massacres and atrocities. Instead he sought to win over the civilian population.
When the dowager Song empress surrendered on behalf of the child emperor in 1271, Kublai Khan became the new emperor, founding the Yuan Dynasty. For the most part, the bureaucratic Mandarin class generally supported the new regime.
This film can be rented free on Kanopy with a library card.
July 21, 2022
Are the Chemicals in Your Shampoo and Food Packages Making You Fat?
By Grace van Deelen
When Dr. Rob Sargis sees a patient struggling with obesity, his recommendations go beyond diet and exercise. He may advise them to stop heating things in plastics or to avoid congested roads during rush hour.
Sargis, a practicing doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Illinois, is one of a number of doctors incorporating the science of obesogens — endocrine-disrupting chemicals that spur obesity — into their clinical practice.
Obesogens are a subset of endocrine-disrupting chemicals — man-made compounds that alter hormone activity.
They are generally defined as any chemical that can cause the human body to produce more fat than it normally would, and can include substances we usually think of as fattening, like sugars or artificial sweeteners.
However, obesogens are not only found in food, rather entering the body through other consumer products, like makeup, shampoos, soaps, plastics and food packaging.
People are exposed through contact with the chemicals and through ingestion of contaminated foods. The chemicals are also shed from such products and can accumulate in household dust, which people breathe in.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (toxic chemicals used in many consumer and industrial products) are another example of obesogens, as is bisphenol- A (BPA).
By disrupting hormone activity, these chemicals can spur obesity in a number of ways. They can alter metabolism, cause the body to produce new fat cells, alter eating behavior, and even change the way food is digested.
To Sargis, incorporating an understanding of obesogens into clinical practice is part of the goal of medicine as a whole: to build a healthier society.
Obesogenic chemicals have other harmful health impacts too — for example, PFAS and BPA are also linked to certain cancers and reproductive problems. Reducing obesogen exposure is beneficial across the health spectrum.
Sargis told EHN:
“What we’ve seen in medicine over the last few years is this shift from individual factors, like genetics, lifestyle and diet, to an embracing of the social determinants of health, including things like food, environment, exercise and education.”
However, Sargis and other doctors interested in using the obesogen framework face barriers, such as difficulties gathering data on obesogens, a bias toward focusing on diet and exercise, and inadequate medical school training in environmental exposures.
In addition, a lack of regulation of obesogens makes it hard to reduce the exposures — even for patients who are aware of the risks.
Sargis continued:
“The challenge is that there are systemic forces that you have to fight, and a lot of that’s policy, and a lot of that policy is embedded in politics.”
Lack of data
A major obstacle to incorporating an understanding of obesogens into clinical practice is that doctors are sometimes not convinced by the data available. While plenty of data exists to show a correlation between obesogen exposure and obesity, there is less data that shows that if a person reduces their obesogen exposure, they can lose more weight.
Gathering that data is difficult, but possible, said Sargis. However, the ubiquity of obesogens in everyday products, as well as the lack of transparency from companies about the chemicals in their products, makes designing such a study difficult.
The sheer number of chemicals that would need to be tested — there are more than 9,000 types of PFAS, for example — also adds to the challenge.
Jerry Heindel, a biochemist and founder and director of HEEDS, a coalition of researchers advocating for better regulation of chemicals, told EHN that doctors and patients could benefit from an accessible and cheap way to measure exposure to obesogens.
That way, patients could hypothetically see if their exposure levels drop over time as they worked to eliminate obesogens from their daily life. For now, he said, patients would need to pay for the tests themselves, but he hopes insurance would cover the tests in the future.
Jenna Hua, a doctor-turned-CEO of medical testing company Million Marker, thinks her company’s product could play a role. Million Marker offers at-home test kits that measure the levels of 13 common endocrine disruptors, some of which also act as obesogens, in a person’s urine.
The tests are able to detect BPA, two BPA alternatives, five types of phthalates, four types of parabens, and oxybenzone.
It’s “quite empowering,” Hua told EHN, when someone using the tests can see their exposure levels drop as they swap out products they’re using that include obesogens.
The type of testing that Million Marker offers would be another tool in managing weight loss.
Heindel said:
“It would not be possible to tease out what part of weight gain is due to obesogens. The doctor would have to explain to the patient all the possibilities and how to address each of them to reduce their weight.”
As more patients recognize that obesogen exposure is a threat to their health, Hua said, the public may be more inclined to pressure governments to regulate endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Most obesogens are not currently regulated in the U.S., for example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not restrict the use of BPA in food packaging, and there are no federal standards limiting PFAS discharges in drinking water.
Bias toward individual factors
One of the reasons that obesogens have been overlooked, Sargis said, is that treatment of obesity is biased toward individual factors like diet and exercise.
“There’s an inherent bias that this is somehow a personal failing,” said Sargis.
That kind of thinking, he said, might be rooted in conventional beauty standards and the idea that obesity is an aesthetic problem more than a health problem.
Research has shown that in the U.S., obese individuals are often highly stigmatized and labeled as lazy, unmotivated, and lacking in self-discipline.
[…]
CDC Says Effectiveness of Flu Vaccine Last Year (2021-2022) was 14%
Fanatic Cook
The CDC says the effectiveness of the flu vaccine last year (2021–22) was 14%.
Interim Estimates of 2021–22 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness — United States, February 2022, MMWR, CDC, 11 March 2022
VE [vaccine effectiveness] against outpatient medically attended ARI [acute respiratory infection] associated with influenza A virus types was 14%.
…
Based on data from 3,636 children, adolescents, and adults with acute respiratory infection during October 4, 2021–February 12, 2022, seasonal influenza vaccination did not reduce the risk for outpatient respiratory illness caused by influenza A(H3N2) viruses that have predominated so far this season.
The FDA requires that any vaccine, including flu vaccine, be at least 50% more effective than a placebo in preventing disease.
What about the upcoming season?
So far, data from the US Flu Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) network, which consists of seven study sites, have not shown that the vaccine [for 2022-2023 season] is protective against influenza A. “We can say that it is not highly effective,” said Brendan Flannery, PhD, who leads the US Flu VE network for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
…
The vaccine is estimated to be 8% effective against preventing influenza A infection (95% CI, -31% to 36%) and 14% effective against preventing A/H3N2 infection (95% CI, -28% to 43%) for people aged 6 months and older.
This is a lot of vaccine being sold for not a lot of effectiveness. Do you think? It’s almost as if the CDC had some other incentive for promoting the drug other than public health
[…]
Criminal Focus of Secret US Biolabs Becomes Apparent
Internationalist 360°
Russia’s special military operation to localize neo-fascist activities in Ukraine continues to receive more and more documentary evidence of the criminal plans and activities of the current government in Kiev, sponsored by Washington, as well in as the USA itself.
This special operation has helped to publicize many secret programs for the development of biological weapons by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine. Documentary evidence was obtained of the research on dangerous pathogens, including the Ebola virus, the causative agent of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, as well as many others (for by no means peaceful and humane purposes) by American, British, and German military biologists in Kiev and Odessa. It became known that the American company Metabiota was going to study the Ebola virus in Ukraine. Due to such experiments being prohibited in the USA over their inherent risk, they were transferred to Ukraine and other countries – as a rule, those where the government is corrupt, completely subordinate to Washington, and does not ask unnecessary questions.
Additionally, Russian doctors in hospitals, where captured Ukrainian soldiers were taken for treatment, obtained data indirectly confirming that the Ukrainian special forces were preparing to use biological weapons developed by the USA. This is evidenced by the presence of a high concentration of antibiotics, sulfonamides, and fluoroquinolones in their blood, which could indicate the use of such drugs as a preventive measure, and therefore preparation of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out tasks via the use of bacteriological weapons.
From a report obtained during the capture at a US biolab in Ukraine, prepared for the Pentagon by Metabiota and Black & Veatch, it follows that “Veterinary Projects” codenamed “TAP” were implemented in Ukraine, during which infections were developed that could cause damage not to the manpower of the enemy, but the agriculture of entire regions. Of particular interest to US military biologists was African swine fever (ASF). It should be noted that the USA already has vast experience in causing damage to the agriculture of its opponents in this way. This is how the United States devastated Cuba in the 1990s, poisoning the entire country’s agriculture with various biological agents, spraying such bioweapons from airplanes. Then pigs, sugar cane, tobacco, and rice died en masse, causing Cuba to amass an enormous debt of $32 billion. This is one of the many episodes of the USA’s subversive economic war against its opponents, which is, in fact, a manifestation of American state terrorism.
According to information obtained during the special operation in Ukraine, the USA carried out a significant portion of its secret biological experiments under the guise of Ukrainian institutions and companies. For the past five years, the Ukrainian company Microkhim, judging by the documents discovered, has been conducting biological experiments with E. coli, staphylococcus, and salmonella. Microorganism strains were delivered from a collection in the Czech Republic, as well as pharmaceutical prototypes from Europe and the USA. The experiments were carried out on Ukrainians themselves, who were paid 6,000 hryvnias each (that’s about $250-300) for participation. Experiments were also carried out with potent narcotic drugs, particularly, nalbuphine, which is dangerous because it is very addictive and is on par with morphine, methadone, and tramadol. It, in particular, was supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Luhansk front. It is nalbuphine, although it has not been registered in the country, that is present in the first-aid kits of Ukrainian military personnel. The militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine used these drugs and went into battle, and this potent drug dulled all of their pain receptors and fear. The owner of this Ukrainian pharmaceutical company fled and, according to the intelligence services, is now in Europe under the patronage of the West.
The efforts of American secret biological laboratories to develop hard drugs for US and NATO soldiers for use in military operations, as well as developments in the field of psychotropic weapons, are well known. In the middle of the last century, experiments with LSD in the hope of creating a “universal soldier” became famous. It is noteworthy that the Nazis of fascist Germany also actively engaged in similar “experiments,” trying to create a super-soldier to correspond to their ideology of the Aryan domination in the world. Pervitin, created by the Nazis, was one such “remedy” to increase the stamina of those fighting. The British and Americans took up similar studies in the wake of the Nazis. Moreover, as evidenced by the documents obtained during Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, the Pentagon is even now continuing this “research” in its secret biolabs.
It terms of drug research at the USA’s secret biolabs, one must not forget that war is a very costly business. Based on what funds the United States has been pumping into Ukraine over the past eight years and continues to do so after the start of Russia’s special operation, the bill is in the tens of billions of dollars. In order to “compensate” for such costs, the USA has long been involved in illegal drug trafficking, which has already been repeatedly confirmed by journalistic investigations and scandals about the activities of the US military in “war zones.” Frank Lucas’ “Vietnamese business” in which he supplied drugs from Asia to the United States in the coffins of soldiers sent home is well known. Many such scandals became known from American journalists then and during the US war in Afghanistan. In addition to the use of new types of drugs in research to create a “universal soldier,” secret biolabs may certainly have an “applied” interest in narcotics, especially since there is no control from the side “receiving” these biolabs, or from the American authorities in this matter.
Recall that 30 biolabs have already been discovered in Ukraine, created with the active financing of the Pentagon. In total, there are 336 such facilities around the globe, according to the Chinese government, most of which are located in the area of the former Soviet Union. Research at these biolabs is carried out in three main areas: the study of the epidemic situation near the expected deployment areas of NATO or US troops; the study of the genotype of possible future opponents (in particular, Slavs and Chinese); increased pathogenicity via synthetic biology, which have already appeared in service with US military virologists. Over the past 20 years, the USA has spent more than two billion dollars on the creation of biolabs in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) alone.
[…]
Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/20/the-criminal-focus-of-secret-us-biolabs-becomes-apparent/
No, mRNA Covid vaccines do not offer long-term protection from serious illness
Alex BerensonData from the Dutch government show the opposite – after seven months they substantially RAISE the risk of hospitalization and intensive care
mRNA vaccine advocates have one final defense against the failure of their billion-person experiment.
Okay, the shots won’t stop you from getting Covid. Or spreading it. Or having symptoms.
But they will stop you from getting very sick, and that protection lasts long after they stop working against infection.
Only it doesn’t.
Not against Omicron, anyway. And Omicron is only variant that matters now, since it’s the only variant that exists now.
An official government report from the Netherlands earlier this month has the truth.
On July 5, the RIVM – a research institute that is part of the Dutch Ministry of Health – reported a basic two-dose Covid vaccination offered no protection against Covid hospitalization. Worse, vaccinated people were 20 percent more likely to need intensive care than the unvaccinated.
“There was hardly any visible protective effect of the COVID-19 basic vaccination series against hospital and ICU – intensive care- intake,” the researchers wrote (understating the case).
The topline figures are bad enough.
The report is based on hospitalizations across the Netherlands from March 15 through June 28, not a small sample. And like the United States, the Dutch relied overwhelmingly on mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna – the supposed gold standard for Covid shots.
But the details in the report are even more disturbing.
The researchers stratified the risks of hospitalization and intensive care by time from vaccination and the age of the infected person – and those show that the risks increase over time.
After seven months, vaccinated people in their fifties and sixties had a 68 percent higher risk of being hospitalized for Covid compared to the unvaccinated. They had a 41 percent higher risk of needing intensive care.
The trends were similar for people 70 and over, though most of them had been boosted or received a fourth shot, so comparisons were harder to make.
(Negative vaccine effectiveness, it’s a thing. A very bad thing.)
Again, this negative effectiveness is against severe disease – hospitalizations and intensive care.
Not infection, severe disease.
The report also showed that boosters and fourth shots did reverse the negative efficacy against hospitalization and intensive care and provide some protection. That fact led the researchers to call for vaccinated people to receive boosters.
But the effectiveness of boosters and fourth shots against severe disease also sharply and quickly declined.
In people 70 and over, the effectiveness of a booster against hospitalization fell from 85 percent in the first month to under 50 percent by five months out. The trends for the fourth shot were similar, but worse. Though the researchers did not have five months of data for the fourth shot, by roughly three months, protection had fallen to 60 percent.
The results could not be clearer, or grimmer.
The mRNA vaccines fail within a few months and then begin to raise the risk of serious outcomes.
Why?
The promise that the mRNA shots will produce durable T-cell protection against severe disease appears faulty. Any protection the shots offer against hospitalization or death probably results from their antibody-driven protection against infection, which lasts only a few months.
Repeated shots can reverse the trend, but they too fail, and each additional shot appears to do less and fail more quickly. Worst of all, because the shots cause recipients to produce antibodies to the original coronavirus rather than Omicron’s mutated spike, vaccinated people now have a higher risk of Omicron infection – which means they have a higher risk of hospitalization or death.
Worst of all, the Dutch collected this data during the spring, when the existing Omicron subvariant was relatively mild. Now Omicron has mutated again, and we do not at this point know if the new variant is more or less dangerous.
But the trends from countries like New Zealand – which are test cases for Omicron’s potential virulence because they are highly mRNA vaccinated and have little preexisting natural immunity – are not promising.
[…]
Via https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/no-mrna-covid-vaccines-do-not-offer
July 20, 2022
Putin Tells US to Stop ‘Looting’ Syria
Aletho News
The US needs to stop “stealing” the oil from the Syrian people and state, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, after meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts in Tehran. The three guarantors of the “Astana process” also agreed that the US should leave the trans-Euphrates, and stop making the humanitarian crisis in Syria worse with their unilateral sanctions.
American troops must leave the territory east of the Euphrates river and “stop robbing the Syrian state, the Syrian people, exporting oil illegally,” Putin told reporters on Tuesday evening. He said this was a “common position” of Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Several hundred US troops are illegally present in Syria, mainly controlling the oil wells and wheatfields in the country’s northeast, controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia since the defeat of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists. The US-backed SDF has refused to reintegrate with the government in Damascus, which Washington wishes to see overthrown.
Since 2019, the US has sought to punish anyone trying to assist the reconstruction of war-torn Syria via the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” accusing the government of President Bashar Assad of war crimes and blocking all assistance to Damascus.
Putin said on Tuesday that such sanctions have had “disastrous results” and that humanitarian aid to Syria “should not be politicized.”
During Tuesday’s summit in Tehran, Putin met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a joint declaration, the three presidents confirmed their conviction that “there can be no military solution to the Syrian conflict,” only a political one under the leadership of the UN. They also condemned “unilateral sanctions violating international law” that are exacerbating the serious humanitarian situation in Syria, urging the UN and other international organizations to “increase assistance to all Syrians, without discrimination, politicization and preconditions.”
Russia sent an expeditionary force to Syria in September 2015, at the request of Damascus, to help defeat IS and other terrorist groups. In January 2017, Moscow, Ankara and Tehran launched the “Astana process” – named after the capital of Kazakhstan – to resolve the conflict in Syria, which began in 2011.
[…]
Via https://alethonews.com/2022/07/19/putin-tells-us-to-stop-looting-syria/
Gazprom CEO says Northstream2 pipeline ready to pump 55 billion cms of gas to Germany any time.
The Freeonline
Resembling a Monty Python sketch, Berlin officials still insist new Nord Stream 2 pipeline is ‘not certified’, refusing to back down and switch on the 55bcm of Gas while going bankrupt for lack of gas.
Germany will not use the new alternative pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia, Nord Stream 2, even though its usual route, Nord Stream 1, is shut down for maintenance, the country’s government reiterated on Monday.
The announcement comes as Gazprom ‘upped the ante’ in the gas dispute by declaring force majeure on EU gas flow via Nord Stream 1, citing “extraordinary” circumstances outside its control.
That pipeline is currently closed for maintenance until Thursday. There is rising concern in Germany, however, that Gazprom will not resume supply when the works are complete.
German politicians have united in raging economic war hysteria against Russia, leading no less than 7 rounds of deep and unprecedented illegal punitive sanctions, for its intervention war to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
In addition politicians have gifted billions of euros worth of often advanced weaponry to Ukraine, ensuring a long and bloody war. Until now Russia had committed about 20% of its armed forces, and excluding conscripts and reservists.
German led economic war against Russian oil and gas has ignored their own dependence on these commodities and could spell economic suicide.The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, has the capacity to transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas annually and its construction was completed last September.
However, the certification process was repeatedly delayed due to opposition from the US and a Russophobic campaign in Europe over energy dependence on Russia.
In February, prior to the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, German authorities finally denied the pipeline’s certification and the project was halted indefinitely.
Berlin is now reportedly considering repurposing parts of the unused pipeline for an LNG terminal to import expensive and highly methane leaking frack-gas from the USA.
Gazprom’s CEO Alexey Miller said last month that the pipeline is ready to be switched on and could start pumping gas to Germany any time.
[…]
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