What Is Going Down In California???

(NOTE:  Full Lengthy Article attached, but Mercola’s site retains articles for only 48 hours, and this information is important)

California’s Misinformation Epidemic Pt. 1

I recently had the pleasure of getting to know one of my favorite pseudonymous writers on Substack who goes by ‘A Midwestern Doctor.’ This powerful essay needs as wide exposure as possible.

californias misinformation epidemic

By: Pierre Kory

From The Forgotten Side of Medicine Substack, this essay brilliantly details the history, current state, and future of the criminal control of information, corruption of science, and coercion of the public in regards to vaccines. I consider it an honor to host this essay for my subscribers.

When I was younger, a friend who was a corporate executive told me about “tiger teams,” an approach industry would utilize to solve a complex problem facing them or to develop a plan for achieving a long-term strategic goal. After he vividly described the tenacity with which they attacked their problem, I realized large corporations could be expected to conduct highly strategic and Machiavellian plans over long timelines that would be difficult for anyone but the most talented observer to spot.

Since that time, I’ve also come to appreciate how most businessmen and their industries will default to reusing tools that have previously proven themselves for addressing each new problem that emerges. As a result, once you learn what each of the tools are, it becomes possible to predict each of the sequential steps a tiger team will choose to accomplish its goals.

Since I have held a long-term interest in the politics of vaccination, I have been able to witness the sequential steps that played out first in California and then throughout the nation. What I still find remarkable about these events was how each one directly enabled the subsequent event, and that in many cases, what happened subsequently had previously been promised to never come to pass.

Given everything that I have observed, I am almost certain one or more tiger teams working for the vaccine industry chose to have California be the means through which to accomplish their goal of regular mandatory vaccinations for the entire American population.

At this moment, a highly unpopular law that prevents physicians from spreading “misinformation“ by questioning any orthodox perspective on COVID-19 is awaiting the governor’s signature, and if this law passes, it will likely be disastrous for the nation as additional jurisdictions adopt it.

The purpose of this article will be to discuss exactly what brought us to the point a law like that could be on the verge of passing and the important insights that can be taken from the entire process.

vax for the win

The “Truth”

Throughout human history, one of the most valuable commodities has always been ownership over the “truth,” as so much power and profit results from holding a truth that aligns with your vested interests. Once larger societies formed, determining “truth,“ was always a key societal need, and excluding a few enlightened societies, the method of determining truth normally evolved as follows:

  1. Might makes right.
  2. Judging the preponderance of evidence.
  3. A growing, and eventually unsustainable corruption of most “evidence.”
  4. Societal collapse or evolution.

Note: This trend roughly follows the 250 year life cycle of empires mapped out by a British general some suspect the U.S. is nearing the end of.

In many ways, forcing two opposing viewpoints to present their evidence and then having the appropriate parties determine which side presented the preponderance of evidence and thus “wins” is the best solution our species has developed for settling otherwise irreconcilable differences of opinion.

Unfortunately, as our times have shown, the natural response to having our society place a heavy weight on “evidence” is to have dishonest parties “win,” not by being on the side with the best evidence, but rather by buying out the entire evidence base and censoring the opposition — effectively creating a much more sophisticated form of “might makes right.”

In many ways, the anatomy of corruption within “science-based” medicine is quite simple and like many other things in business, continually reuses the same formulas. As a result, once you understand how corruption plays out in a few areas, it becomes feasible to understand how things will play out in many others.

I thus would argue many of the events we witnessed throughout COVID-19 (e.g. the sudden extreme censorship of scientific debate recently detailed by Pierre Kory), simply represents all of this longstanding corruption metastasizing to a degree which finally became visible to the general public.

Public Relations

Although Sigmund Freud is typically thought of as the most influential psychologist in history, his nephew Edward Bernays created an invisible industry that has had a far greater influence than Freud. To create his mark on the world, Bernays argued that the principles of psychology should be utilized not for individual psychotherapy but rather to control the population so that the irrational impulses of the masses could not derail the progress of society, and not surprisingly, the power-hungry elite fully embraced his narrative.

When you study the organizational structure of modern society, you will continually come across hierarchal pyramids being utilized that allow the top of the pyramid to exert a massive influence over the rest of society.

This is for instance why in medicine, doctors are expected to follow “guidelines” created by unaccountable committees that are typically composed of individuals being paid off by the pharmaceutical industry, and why in most cases it is nearly impossible for a patient to have any type of care provided to them without the approval of a doctor. Thus, by buying out a few committees, it becomes possible to exert a massive influence on the general public.

Public relations is essentially the science of how to create a pyramidal hierarchy throughout the media and to leverage that control so the general public can be manipulated into serving the interests of the sponsor.

We recently witnessed what I believe to be the most aggressive PR campaign in history and the collective effort to pull out every possible stop to sell the COVID-19 vaccines to the American public (ironically one of the individuals I know who became disabled from these vaccines worked in the industry and worked with a passionate zeal for over a year beforehand on the PR campaign for Moderna).

Studying the PR industry is quite depressing because it shows how much of the news is “fake,” just how manipulative much of it is, and how many foundational beliefs we hold in the culture are simply the product of a corporation’s public relations campaign. For those interested in this subject, an excellent book can be found here, a youtube documentary here, and an article here.

One of the most common tactics utilized in public relations is to take a complex subject and distill it down to a simple phrase that reframes it in terms that are favorable to the sponsor and removes the critical nuances from a debate (frequently this process is equated to weaponizing language).

Because the entire PR process is based around creating a pyramidal hierarchy that defers to the top, you can frequently observe these messages or scripted phrases that were developed by a PR firm be simultaneously disseminated on countless networks, including the “independent” ones:

Note: This behavior exists on both sides of the political spectrum; I am citing this one because it is the best montage I have come across.

“Misinformation”

During Obama’s presidency, the term “misinformation” started to come into vogue and was deployed to sink Trump’s presidential campaign (which failed as Trump managed to make the “fake news” meme every media platform was promoting stick to CNN instead of him). Before long, this steamrolled into “misinformation” being used as a justification to censor any viewpoint that challenged the status quo.

Initially, easy to disparage groups such as members of the far-right were targeted for censorship by Silicon Valley, before long liberal friends I knew who practiced holistic medical approaches (and had supported the initial censorship) were targeted, and by the time COVID-19 happened, this behavior had metastasized to the point it was nearly impossible to publicize any treatment for the disease or any potential harm from the vaccines.

Governments have continued their relentless push for censorship, best illustrated by the recent U.N. speech by New Zealand’s prime minister that declared free speech on the internet a weapon of war and called for the international community to work towards curating (censoring) all online information that questions government narratives.

Prior to Obama’s presidency, I had heard there was a push to establish a pyramidal hierarchy for all information on the internet, with a few major tech companies serving as the “gatekeepers” the public could access the information through, but until 2016, this always seemed like something that would happen in the far distant future. Recently, I learned that Sharyl Atkinson was able to identify when and where this all began:

“I first heard the term [curated] applied to controlling news and information in October 2016 when President Obama introduced the concept at an appearance at the private research university Carnegie Mellon. Obama claimed a “curating” function had become necessary.

The public at large had not been asking for any such thing. Instead, it was the invention of powerful interests that apparently felt the need to get a grip on public opinion — interests that were losing the information war online. But the concept is contrary to the nature of a free society and an open Internet. It would take some clever manipulation to convince the public to allow such “curating.”

“We’re going to have to rebuild, within this Wild, Wild West of information flow, some sort of curating function that people agree to,” said Obama. “… [T]here has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world.”

As far as I know, that signaled the start of what would become a global media initiative to have third parties insert themselves as arbiters of facts, opinions, and truth in the news and online [prior to this they were viewed as a joke and fortunately still are by half of the electorate].”

Credible Sources

Most of our modern hierarchies operate on the basis of being “credible.” For example, in journalism, about a century ago during the era of Bernays, the concept of “professional journalism” was created and a standard was set that news could not be considered credible unless it was disseminated by someone who belonged to a corrupt credible news organization that served the bidding of those in power.

This article for example discusses the profound consequences of the monopolization of journalism, and how as the decades have gone by, the issue has only gotten worse and worse.

Sharyl Attkisson’s book (the source of the above quotation) describes how pervasive corruption gradually entered her industry, and how despite her clout in the network as a premier news anchor, more and more of her investigations were not permitted to air by her superiors.

For example, in 1997, Clinton legalized direct pharmaceutical advertising to consumers. As the networks become beholden to their new advertisers, anything critical of that industry, such as vaccine safety, was no longer permitted to air.

In the early 2000s, Atkinson was assigned to report on the controversial military anthrax and smallpox vaccinations, and not long after, the smallpox campaign was cancelled. Now, in contrast, no criticism whatsoever is permitted of the much more dangerous COVID-19 vaccines (and now even the government is paying to incentivize this censorship).

To see how much things have shifted consider this report that was aired on the nightly news after the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle (this vaccine was not safe and I directly know people who developed permanent complications from it that persist to this day, but at the same time, it was much safer than the COVID-19 vaccines):

Something like this could never air today.

Evidence-Based Medicine

The pyramidal hierarchy of our society requires creating faith in authoritative sources and then having each institution work in unison to promote the sanctity of those (easy to control) sources. “Professional journalism” is one such example, another is the widespread societal adherence to the CDC’s arbitrary and ineffective guidelines (best illustrated by the absurd dictates they and other Western health authorities put forward in regards to social distancing during physical intimacy).

When evidence-based medicine (EBM) started, it was sorely needed by the medical profession because many disastrous practices were unchallengeable dogmas. However, in due time, as corruption entered the process, EBM became yet another means for “[financial] might to make right” as its authority was shifted into a pyramidal hierarchy. Presently, the “authority” in EBM rests in 5 areas.

  • The sanctity of all data.
  • Conducting large randomized clinical trials.
  • Peer-reviewed publications in high-impact scientific journals.
  • Authoritative committees reviewing the previous three to produce guidelines.
  • Other institutions (e.g. the media and the courts) upholding the sanctity of the data and evidenced-based guidelines.

There have been major issues in each of these areas for decades as industry has steadily worked to expand its influence over EBM, but as many observers noted, these issues spun completely out of control during COVID-19. Let’s review each of them:

  1. The sanctity of all data — The major problem with “data” is that most of it is never made available for outside analysis, which allows those who “own” the data to only present data that casts the owner in a favorable light (which essentially makes the data worthless).
    
    

    The pharmaceutical industry nonetheless has been able to sustain this practice by arguing that disclosing their data would constitute a violation of proprietary trade secrets. Thus excluding the occasional instance where they are forced to open their records as part of the discovery process (e.g. in the lawsuits against the antidepressant manufacturers) that research fraud and the concealment of critically important safety data never come to light (and never has for vaccines).

    
    

    Previously, one of the most egregious offenders in this regard were the statin manufacturers who have deliberately withheld their data from the public for decades. A corrupt Oxford academic consortium, the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration has access to that data and has published numerous pro-industry analyses of it, but despite continual outside requests, has refused to ever make this data available for outside scrutiny.

    
    

    This is concerning given the significant evidence that has emerged demonstrating statins are both ineffective and harmful, and has led to many more honest academics attempting to independently obtain this critical data from regulators.

    
    

    Almost all of the COVID-19 vaccine data likewise was never made available to the public (although the companies have suggested it may be made available a few years from now); instead, we simply received highly curated publications in prestigious medical journals. Since the vaccines have entered the market, countless red flags on their safety and efficacy have emerged in large datasets.

    
    

    However, in many cases, that data has only been available because it was leaked by whistleblowers or obtained by court order, and as the recent events in Israel showed (Israel agreed to be Pfizer’s laboratory to test their vaccines and many global vaccine policies were crafted from the Israeli data), much of the incriminating data against this program was deliberately concealed by governments around the world.

    
    

    On one hand, I view all of this as an immensely positive development, as in the past critical data suppression like this typically remained hidden and forgotten. On the other hand, I consider it completely unacceptable the public is being forced to take a vaccination product on the basis of data they are not even permitted to review.

  2. Conducting large randomized clinical trials — We are reflexively conditioned by the educational system to assume a clinical trial has no value unless it is randomized and controlled. While it is true that controlling for the placebo effect through blinding somewhat improves the accuracy of a study, conducting a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is immensely expensive, and the biases introduced by those costs dwarf those obtained by controlling for the placebo effect.
    
    

    A little known fact is that findings from study designs that do not rely on industry funding (i.e. retrospective observational controlled studies) reach the same conclusion, on average, to those of RCT’s. Yet the former are near systematically ignored by the high-impact journals and medical societies.

    
    

    Further, a frequent narrative parroted by high-impact journals and science news writers is that findings from studies deemed to be of a “low quality design” cannot be trusted. Not true. In a comparison of conclusions between groups of high and low quality studies, no meaningful differences were found.

    
    

    Put differently, RCT’s require industry funding, and industry funding has repeatedly been found to heavily bias trial data in favor of its sponsor. To highlight the absurdity of this, as the whistleblower Brooke Jackson showed, the RCT she supervised for the Pfizer vaccine was not even blinded because the trial site cut so many corners to produce a positive result for Pfizer.

    
    

    For those who wish to know about how the industry games clinical trials, this bookthis book and this book are the three best resources I have found on the subject.

  3. Peer reviewed publications in high-impact scientific journals — In the same way we are conditioned to reflexively dismiss anything that is not a large RCT, many people will not consider a scientific trial unless it is published in a high-impact peer-reviewed journal.
    
    

    Not surprisingly, there is a lot of money in this area and most of it comes from Big Pharma (which either comes from advertisements within the journal or agreements to purchase thousands of printed copies of that issue of the journal).

    
    

    This creates a setting where studies that support industry interests regardless of their deficiencies are published (e.g. pharmaceutical ghostwriting is a major source of fraud in the peer-reviewed literature), whereas articles that challenge their interests are never published. This has been a longstanding issue, and the earliest example I remember coming across was discussed in this 2001 book:

    medical biases and politics
    (I unfortunately was never able to track down the referenced news story; please let me know if you have)

    The positions of the journal sponsors also gradually enter the medical culture, and the peer-review culture frequently censors or attacks publications that do not match industry findings. One of the best examples was Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study which ruffled so many feathers by suggesting a link between autism and vaccination that the study was retracted and a thorough example was made of him (e.g. he lost his license) to deter further research into vaccine injuries.

    
    

    Many other examples also exist, such as the extreme hostility faced by researchers who publish data that is critical of other sacred cows like routine statin usage or psychiatric overmedication.

    
    

    Because of the systemic biases that exist against publishing anything which challenges medical orthodoxies, it can often take years or decades for bad practices to be abandoned as no one is willing to on take the risk of publishing studies refuting them.

    
    

    For example, a few of my Ph.D. friends who researched viral genomes knew within a day of the original SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence being published that it came from a lab, yet not a single one was willing to expose themselves to the personal risk they would take from authoring a publication on that subject.

    
    

    At this point, there seems to be an unwritten understanding that the introduction and conclusion of a scientific publication must match the prevailing biases of medicine. It is hence always fascinating to see just how often an article’s conclusion is not supported by the data within it (sadly few ever read those parts of the paper).

    
    

    Throughout COVID-19, these problems also became much worse. To share a few memorable examples:

    • A large study was published in the Lancet which showed data from around the world indicated hydroxychloroquine killed COVID-19 patients who received it and was used by the WHO as justification to suspend clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine (along with governments forbidding its administration to patients).
      
      

      Outside evaluators realized the data was nonsensical (leading to serious questions over how one of the best editorial boards in the world let it be published), the company that provided the data effectively admitted fraud had been conducted, and the study was retracted. Another one of the top 5 medical journals, the NEJM, also published a study utilizing Surgisphere’s fraudulent dataset.

    • Despite a tsunami of data showing severe harm from the COVID-19 vaccines, it has been virtually impossible for any publication on the topic to enter the peer-review literature.
    • As Pierre Kory has detailed throughout the last few years, numerous large clinical trials have been conducted that clearly show a benefit from ivermectin for COVID-19 and no risks associated with the therapy. Despite the evidence for ivermectin being stronger than what can be found for almost any other drug on the market, as Kory’s recent series shows, it is nearly impossible to have a study supporting ivermectin be published (unless the conclusion says the opposite).
      
      

      When they are instead published as preprints they often are retracted for political reasons (retracting a preprint is absurd), and not surprisingly, ivermectin is now widely viewed by the medical community as both unsafe and ineffective.

    
    

    Currently I believe that of the top five medical journals, the BMJ is the only “prestigious” medical journal still conducting itself in a manner deserving of its reputation.

  4. Authoritative committees reviewing the previous three to produce guidelines — A common complaint from conservatives is that unelected bureaucrats are allowed to control our lives with impunity. One area where this is particularly true can be found within the committee model where “experts” are nominated to assess existing evidence and produce a consensus on what should be done.
    
    

    Even though those guidelines which bypassed the legislative process should not be treated as law (as was ruled by a federal judge), in most cases they are. As you might expect, the people who make it onto these committees tend to have heavy financial conflicts of interest that inevitably result in their voting for their sponsors. Consider this paraphrased example that was shared in chapter 7 of Doctoring Data:

    The National Cholesterol Education Programme (NCEP) has been tasked by the NIH to develop [legally enforceable] guidelines for treating cholesterol levels. Excluding the chair (who was by law prohibited from having financial conflicts of interest), the other 8 members on average were on the payroll of 6 statin manufacturers.

    
    

    In 2004, NCEP reviewed 5 large statin trials and recommended: “Aggressive LDL lowering for high-risk patients [primary prevention] with lifestyle changes and statins.” [these recommendations in turn were adopted around the world].

    
    

    In 2005 a Canadian division of the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 5 large statin trials (3 were the same as NCEP’s, while the other 2 had also reached a positive conclusion for statin therapy). That assessment instead concluded: “Statins have not been shown to provide an overall health benefit in primary prevention trials.”

    
    

    Note: The Cochrane Collaboration (prior to 2012-2016 when they began taking industry money from groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and switched to defending their interests such as the HPV vaccine), was the group that best objectively evaluated existing clinical evidence.

    
    

    Many committees that directed the pandemic response have engaged in egregious misconduct. Consider for example the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the CDC committee that rubber stamps each new vaccine that enters the market (the only exception I know of was overruled by the current CDC director).

    
    

    The ACIP is the committee responsible for many of the vaccine mandates we have faced, and its rulings in favor of vaccination often bordered on the absurd. Similarly, Steve Kirsch was recently able to prove that the chair of the committee is willfully choosing to disregard Israeli data that undermines the justification for the entire vaccination campaign.

    
    

    I believe that the most corrupt committee during the pandemic response was the NIH one responsible for determining the appropriate therapies for COVID-19. Some (and possibly all) of its members were appointed by Anthony Fauci, many had personal ties to Fauci and almost all of them held significant financial conflicts of interest with Gilead, remdesivir’s manufacturer.

    
    

    Not surprisingly, that committee has consistently recommended against every therapy that effectively treats COVID-19 but is off-patent (and hence not profitable). Conversely, their recommendation for remdesivir is why it was the required treatment throughout the US hospital system despite the evidence for the drug being atrocious (a more detailed and referenced summary of this corruption can be found here).

    
    

    In many ways, the remdesivir story is eerily similar to the early days of HIV. There, Fauci used his influence to keep a variety of effective therapies away from dying AIDS patients so that he could win approval for AZT, a dangerous drug many believe significantly worsened the prognosis of those who received it.

  5. Other institutions (e.g. the media and the courts) upholding the sanctity of the data and evidenced-based guidelines — Many people I know used a variety of integrative therapies (e.g. intravenous vitamin C) to treat COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic, and successfully saved many lives at the same time countless Americans were being sent to the hospitals to die (as they had no treatment for COVID-19 besides often lethal ventilators).
    
    

    Yet, it was those who treated COVID-19 successfully (including a few of my friends) who were targeted by the government and either served with a cease and desist or prosecuted for “endangering” the public by utilizing unproven therapies not supported by the COVID-19 treatment guidelines.

    
    

    The mass media was also fully complicit in this and never once mentioned any option for COVID-19 (other than needing to get more ventilators or vaccines), except when attacking the doctors who were providing life-saving outpatient therapies. However, while the new’s conduct was egregious, by far the biggest offender was Big Tech.

Curating Information

As I think through all the things that had to come together to enable the pandemic profiteers to destroy our economy, withhold life-saving treatments from the American public, and mandate a disastrous vaccination on the populace, I believe Obama’s push for the Silicon Valley to become the arbiter of what we were allowed to see online was by far the most consequential.

Since that time, I have observed a remarkable decline in the quality of discourse on many social media websites (as many worthwhile topics are now censored or flooded with bots — Substack is a rare exception) and it has become much more difficult to find the information I am looking for online (to the point I sometimes need to use Russia’s search engine to find it).

Throughout history, freedom of speech has always been a hotly contested subject as people tend to support it, except for viewpoints they disagree with, and frequently lack the insight to recognize why those positions are at odds with each other. Societies likewise follow cyclical trends towards and away from totalitarianism and fascist censorship.

The earliest example I know of was shared with me by a scholar who had reviewed the plays of ancient Greece and had found that as censorship (e.g. political correctness) entered the plays, it immediately preceded the fall of Greek democracy and an authoritarian government taking over. From studying countless iterations of this cycle, I now believe the following:

  • It must be acknowledged that any position you hold could be wrong or based on erroneous information.
  • It is important to defend the right of those you disagree with to speak and not hate them because they hold viewpoints you adamantly oppose.
  • If you refuse to defend your position in an open and fair debate, you are probably wrong.
  • Very strict stipulations must exist on what speech can be outlawed, and those stipulations must be agreed upon by (nearly) the entire society. Some things such as shouting “fire” in a movie theater as a prank everyone can agree on. Anything everyone cannot agree on I would argue does not meet the standard that must be met for censorship.
  • The government may incentivize speech it agrees with, but it cannot restrict speech it disagrees with.
  • Any attempt you make to censor a viewpoint you disagree with is not worth it because the censorship you helped create will inevitably be turned on you in the future.

During Obama’s presidency, two major changes emerged in Silicon Valley. The first many are aware of was an obsession (by these otherwise evil companies) with saving the world through social justice that I would argue was analogous to the well known practice of Greenwashing, where an egregious polluter conducts a token environmental initiative and through doing so successfully recasts themselves as protectors of the environment.

This social justice focus was particularly problematic as it was used to justify the censorship of anything that was not politically correct and I would argue that many of the tech employees who helped spearhead the movement are now directly experiencing the consequences of the climate they created.

Note: This focus on censorship in lieu of debating opposing (“unsafe”) viewpoints also creeped into the university system and then the culture during Obama’s presidency and I believe was a direct consequence of policies enacted by his Department of Education.

The second, much more important one was that Big Tech became a key financial supporter of the Democrat party, and to varying degrees merged with the pharmaceutical industry and biotech. Because of this, there was a seismic realignment in the priorities of the Democrat party and it began ardently supporting those industries.

It is important to recognize how these two trends dovetailed. Big Tech was able to use their “altruistic” focus on social justice to distract the public from the more sinister direction their industry was moving in by using the standard for censorship they had established in the name of creating a “safe” (politically correct) environment; while at the same time targeting threats to their partners in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry by censoring any voices suggesting dangers were associated with those products.

From watching each piece of the plan that has been rolled out throughout my career, I suspect the vision of these three industries is to transform medicine into an algorithmic practice where most medical “decisions” in patient care are made by an AI system and the human body is treated as a genomic software code that can be “solved” by programmers.

Although this approach will have the ability to overcome certain issues we presently face in medicine, it is also fundamentally incapable of addressing many of the needs of each human being who goes through the healthcare system and will likely prove disastrous to our species.

Antitrust Activity

At the time Bill Gates founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he was one of the most disliked individuals in America. This was because he had leveraged the power of his operating system Windows, which was on almost every computer in America, to also monopolize the software market and prevent competitors like Netscape (an early internet browser) from being used by consumers.

Since this monopolistic behavior was illegal, Microsoft was sued for antitrust violations, and throughout the court process, Bill Gates was revealed to be a nasty individual who was doing everything he could to bury his competitors. To address the negative public perception of him, Gates founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to recast himself as a philanthropist and through this PR stunt was able to successfully remediate his public image.

From the foundation’s inception, Gates repeated the same antitrust behavior he had leveraged in the past but instead directed it toward the field of global public health. I first became aware of this behavior after I learned of the disastrous vaccination campaigns he conducted in India. For example to quote The Real Anthony Fauci:

“India’s Federal Ministry of Health suspended the [HPV vaccine] trials and appointed an expert parliamentary committee to investigate the scandal. Indian government investigators found that Gates-funded researchers at PATH committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying illiterate parents, and forging consent forms. Gates provided health insurance for his PATH staff but not to any participants in the trials, and refused medical care to the hundreds of injured girls.”

Gates also diverted a large portion of the global health budget towards eradicating the last few remaining cases of polio by giving large numbers of the (live) oral vaccine to third world countries, in some instances 50 doses by the age of five. This was disastrous around the world, for example paralyzing approximately 491,000 children over two decades in India.

In addition to vaccine fanaticism, Gates engaged in other “public health” measures that are more accurately described as colonialist practices. These included forcing poor women around the world to receive Depo-Provera (this is a long-acting injectable birth control that can permanently impair fertility) and pushing communities to abandon their traditional forms of farming and switch to genetically modified industrial agriculture (which places them at risk of starvation anytime a commodity price goes up).

One of my friends who has worked for the WHO for decades told me that the WHO has implemented a lot of good public health measures that saved lives. Unfortunately, ever since Gates got involved, those measured have fallen to the wayside and the focus has been on monopolistic public health practices that ultimately serve to enrich a few select industries at the expense of the third-world citizens the measures are alleged to help.

Similarly, many in the global health community have stated that since Gates has so much influence over the global health budget (and the WHO), it is nearly impossible to criticize or question any policy he promotes. To further entrench this monopoly, his foundation has prioritized buying out the press (be it groups like the Cochrane Collaboration or putting over 300 million into countless media outlets around the world), so that anything that challenges his vision of public health is “misinformation.”

Much more could be said about Gates (and is aptly summarized within The Real Anthony Fauci). However, we will focus on the two most important correlates to the misinformation epidemic:

  • Gates made a lot of money from the pandemic. For example, on 9/4/2019, two months before COVID-19 emerged in China, he invested 55 million in the company that produced Pfizer’s vaccine. Last year that investment was worth 550 million.
  • It has now been admitted by the mainstream media that Gates (and the Wellcome Trust) directed the pandemic response that failed disastrously from a public health perspective (but not in money-making). One quote from that article is particularly telling:

    “Leaders of three of the four organizations maintained that lifting intellectual property protections [which would prevent everyone from making money] was not needed to increase vaccine supplies – which activists believed would have helped save lives.”

In the second half of this series, we will show how this antitrust behavior and militant censorship metastasized within Silicon Valley and how increasingly draconian laws enforcing vaccine mandates for the pharmaceutical industry have been implemented by the California legislature.

from:    https://takecontrol.substack.com/p/californias-misinformation-epidemic

ESG-Whizz

The Roots Of ESG And How To Get Rid Of It

ESG exists as part of the WEF’s Great Narrative leading to the WEF’s Great Reset. It is primarily used to attack the US, demolishing the world’s engine of capitalism and free market economics. It also provided the bond between Big Business and Big Government. ⁃ TN Editor

At this point, everyone knows about ESG, and everyone knows that companies and firms that embrace it are intent on pushing an environmental, social, and governance agenda, mostly on America. But the full story is very interesting and extremely disturbing.

Recently, I had the chance to hear Vivek Ramaswamy, the founder of Strive Asset Management, speak about ESG, how it came to be, how it functions, and how to combat it.

Ramaswamy said that the problems of ESG are not state or even national economic ones. They make up a transnational, trans-partisan battle for the heart and soul of democracy itself. It is not Democrats versus Republicans, Left versus Right, black versus white, or gay versus straight. Rather, the real issue at stake is democratic-republican self-governance versus monarchy. Ramaswamy said that it is not a 2022 question but a 1776 question. ESG, says Ramaswamy, is a secular religion that started when ideas such as identity and the ability to achieve in life based on race, gender, or sexual orientation rose to the fore.

According to Ramaswamy, there were two toxic ideologies of the 20th century—the first being German Nazism, and the second Soviet-style Marxism. Blend the identity politics of the first with the oppressor-oppressed philosophy of the second and you have planted the seeds of ESG. This, in turn, allows for the application of labels to those who question the new cultural norm. Those labels include, but of course are not limited to, “racist,” “misogynist,” “climate-denier,” and “bigot.” Once those labels are applied, all debate is silenced.

The current problem, said Ramaswamy, began with the 2008 financial crisis. Ramaswamy was working for a Wall Street investment firm. He said anger began to rise when banks received financial bailouts, causing people to begin to question modern American capitalism. It also served as a nursery of sorts to the Occupy Wall Street movement. This movement, running on the fumes of the old progressive ideology, demanded that money be taken from the rich and given to the poor. But the neo-progressive movement was just starting to come into its own, and this movement postulated that the real problem was not poverty or economic injustice but rather racial injustice, bigotry, misogyny, and climate change.

Ramaswamy said that Wall Street saw a way to get off the hot seat. Corporations realized that they could get activists off their backs by doing things such as putting token minorities on corporate boards and championing the combatting of climate change and its supposedly racist impact. But the corporations said that the price would be for the Left to conveniently look the other way with regards to corporate power. In addition to being left alone, these companies also expected that the movers and shakers in government and these movements would give them certain business advantages. Ramaswamy cited a move by Goldman-Sachs in which it said it would not take a company public if it did not have a sufficiently diverse board. Ramaswamy called it a cynical grand bargain or even an arranged marriage between two sides that didn’t even so much as like one another. Ramaswamy likened it to “mutual prostitution,” which resulted in the “Woke ESG Industrial Complex.” This is a far more powerful entity than Big Business or Big Government, which allowed both elements to accomplish together what they could not do on their own.

This created the chance for new asset management companies to ride in on their proverbial white horses in the wake of the ’08 financial crisis. These included companies like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, which would create “better capitalism.” According to Ramaswamy, these three companies, over 15 years, have acquired enough assets to manage more than $21 trillion of investment funds. This money is then used to advance a progressive agenda that would have never survived a legislative session.

Seeing Wall Street’s success, Ramaswamy said that Silicon Valley realized that it would also like a piece of the action. Even back in 2008, the tech lords knew that it was the Left that posed a threat to their burgeoning monopoly on at least a philosophical level. So the tech lords said they would use their corporate power to advance progressivism, doing things like censoring opinions and eliminating “hate speech,” as the Left defined it. In return, the Left would conveniently ignore the tech monopoly.

Seeing how well things worked out for Wall Street and Silicon Valley, much of corporate America would follow suit. Ramaswamy cited Coca-Cola speaking out against Georgia’s voting laws and forcing its employees to take diversity training, including courses on how to be “less white.” At the same time, Coke could ignore its product’s effects on American obesity. Nike could condemn “systemic racism” in America, while people overseas toiled in sweatshops for slave wages and, as Ramaswamy asserted, in conditions of slave labor to make high-end sneakers for sale in the U.S., often to people who might not be able to afford coats for their children.

Even though the two sides still loathe one another, the system, which is the merger of state and corporate power, stays in place because it continues to work so well. Ramaswamy called it the most powerful force in modern American life. Ironically, liberals allowed themselves to forget about their skepticism of big business, and it duped conservatives because the system was presented in the context of the free market. Ramaswamy said that he knows principled people on the left and the right who are deeply concerned about the issue, in part because free speech and open debate in the public square, where all voices and votes count equally, is being neutralized.

That is the “S” or social prong of ESG. Far more sinister, said Ramaswamy, is the “E” prong, or energy. Climate change has been used to envelop the social prong and make it a Trojan horse. The major asset management firms and banks have served as an arm of the government to implement climate change policies, such as the Green New Deal, which could not have passed Congress. Democrats realized that the private sector could be used to that end. Climate Czar John Kerry was able to get companies across the nation to sign a “climate pledge” to put the Green New Deal into effect without any debate or vote in the legislative branch. Ramaswamy said that the tactic has not only contributed to a generational supply/demand imbalance for global energy, but it also hasn’t even been effective. This is because we are in a global energy market, and countries like China and Russia snap up every unit of energy that ESG takes out of play in the West. So, according to Ramaswamy, on the other side of the world, carbon emissions continue unabated. On top of that, Russian and Chinese energy production is much dirtier than it is in the U.S. Methane produced by those countries is far worse than in the U.S.

Read full story here…

from:    https://www.technocracy.news/the-roots-of-esg-and-how-to-get-rid-of-it/

BlackBalling BlackRock

Republicans Withdraw $1 Billion From BlackRock Due To Its ESG Policies

Multiple U.S. states governed by Republicans are withdrawing state funds from BlackRock’s management, as they disapprove of the ESG investment policies of the world’s top asset manager, the Financial Times reports.

In recent weeks, Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah, and Arkansas have announced they would divest funds from BlackRock totaling more than $1 billion.

Last week, Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder announced in a letter to BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink that he would divest all Treasury funds from BlackRock. Louisiana has removed $560 million to date and will pull out a total of $794 million by year’s end, Schroder noted.

“This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from mandates BlackRock has called for that would cripple our critical energy sector,” said Schroder. “I refuse to spend a penny of Treasury funds with a company that will take food off tables, money out of pockets and jobs away from hardworking Louisianans.”

South Carolina will pull $200 million from BlackRock by the end of the year, State Treasurer Curtis Loftis told FT in an interview.

For months now, Republican states have said they would not do business anymore with asset managers who have ESG-aligned investment policies, which, the states say, show that those financial firms are boycotting the oil and gas industry.

Texas, the largest oil-producing state in America, is leading the campaign against this movement. The Lone Star State published in August a list of financial firms that could be banned from doing business with Texas, its state pension funds, and local governments.

Texas and other Republican-led oil and gas states see the ESG investment trend as an implicit attack on fossil fuels and a boycott of conventional energy resources, the revenues from which make up a large portion of state budgets in the oil, gas, and coal country.

In early August, the Attorney Generals of 19 states—including Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Ohio—sent a letter to BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink expressing concerns with the asset manager’s commitment to net-zero emissions across all its assets.

“Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field,” the attorney generals wrote.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

from:    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Republicans-Withdraw-1-Billion-From-BlackRock-Due-To-Its-ESG-Policies.html

Check This Out: “Safe and Effective” For WHAT????

D*ed S*ddenly N*ws

September 23, 2022 • by Etana Hecht

Tiago Henriques launched a group that’s become a massive force.

Died Suddenly News

Tiago Fernando Henriques is an artifical intelligence programmer who lives in Canada. Back in the spring of 2021, he began to notice an unusually high number of his young peers experiencing serious medical issues, such as chest pain, seizures and strokes. He heard about a story from a friend about a buddy of his whose body went haywire 10 minutes after recieving the Pfizer shot. Mr. Henriques decided to go check out the situation for himself, and he took a trip out to North Sydney. The person in question was a disaster, paralyzed and not functional. After seeing him in June 2021, Mr. Henriques opened a Facebook group with the goal being support and communication from those who were injured from a Covid vaccine. The group grew organically for about a year, and had reached ~12k members at the beginning of this summer. Since then, the group has broken records for pace of growth. There currently are over 286,400 members, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Died Suddenly News is the name of the group, and it’s heartbreaking to realize that the growth of the group is due to people all over the world suffering suddenly, due to injuries or deaths of loved ones. Mr. Henriques personally approves every post in the group before it’s published, and he has a volunteer team of 30 moderators from all over the world in all time zones. The group has turned into a valuable resource, not only for people to find emotional and practical support, but for data. Mr. Henriques’s background as an AI specialist puts him in a position to be able to methodically collect and analyze data from the stories that are pouring in of post-vaccination disaster.

Mr. Henriques noted a few important pieces of information from the data he’s collected so far:

  1. The age of people reporting adverse events is dropping. More people of younger ages are suffering and dying.
  2. The group has become so large that there are now reports coming in that are clustered in specific geographic locations. This allows for targeted tracing of injuries or death by geographic cluster. Mr Henriques often finds spikes in adverse events reports from specific locations 3-4 months after a vaccine drive.
  3. For “sudden deaths” alone, there are 30-50 reports submitted per day. The total is well over 30,000 and makes up about 40% of the reports. The rest are injuries.
  4. Notable injury reports in high numbers include breast cancer for men, turbo-cancers, eye injuries, and sudden death of young athletes.

Censorship

Mr. Henriques is very well aware of the threat of censorship that hangs like a dark cloud over conversations on FB. Multiple similar groups have been shut down, including a group started in early 2021 by Brianne Dressen, a vaccine victim from the AstraZeneca clinical trials. As the group continues to explode in membership, Mr. Henriques is busy building an independent platform for the conversation and data analysis to continue, should the worst occur. He’s gladly accepting donations from those who’d like to contribute towards this expensive but important venture, and he created a GiveSendGo that details his plan.

Mr. Henriques appeared on Steve Kirsch’s weekly show VSRF last week and had a conversation with Mr. Kirsch about the group, how it began, and what his plans are moving forward.

The People

Died Suddenly News is a powerhouse, because it’s made up of the people. Heartbreaking stories flood in by the dozens every day from all over the world, the stories are eerily similar, and many people who post include that barely anyone in their circles will acknowledge the elephant in the room. Mr. Henriques and the group he launched is forcing the conversation to be had. It’s offering relief to those who feel like they live on a different planet from those they’re surrounded by who are blissfully, and sometimes willfully unaware of the unfolding disaster. It’s really difficult to confront, and those of us who have been surrounded by this information for over two years are growing more frustrated and confused by those who manage to continue to claim ignorance.

Well, they won’t be able to much longer, and as painful as it will be, we must reach that critical tipping point where vaccine injuries are acknowledged by the mainstream. The only way out of this mess is to go through it, and do our part to help the injured, share information and stand together against the medical criminals to resist their medical tyranny. Died Suddenly News is undoubtedly a huge force in pushing closer to the tipping point, and the stories on there remind us of the people behind the numbers. These are just a tiny sample from the dozens that are pouring in per day.

It’s time for accountability.

View Original Article

from:    https://dailyclout.io/ded-sddenly-nws/

Unemployment? Recession? Home Sales Down? No Problem.

They Know That They Are Killing The Economy, But They Are Doing It Anyway…

After everything that has already happened, it is hard to believe that Fed officials would continue to be so reckless.  On Wednesday, it was announced that rates would be raised by another 75 basis points

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points for the third straight month as it struggles to bring scorching-hot inflation under control, a move that threatens to slow U.S. economic growth and exacerbate financial pain for millions of households and businesses.

The three-quarter percentage point hikes in June, July and September — the most aggressive series of increases since 1994 — underscore just how serious Fed officials are about tackling the inflation crisis after a string of alarming economic reports. Policymakers voted unanimously to approve the latest super-sized hike.

It was a unanimous vote.

There wasn’t even one dissenting voice.

Have they gone completely mad?

Wall Street certainly did not like this decision.  The Dow plunged hundreds of points immediately after it was announced…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 522.45 points, or 1.7%, to close at 30,183.78. The S&P 500 shed 1.71% to 3,789.93, and the Nasdaq Composite slumped 1.79% to 11,220.19.

The S&P ended Wednesday’s session down more than 10% in the past month and 21% off its 52-week high. Even before the rate decision, stocks were pricing in an aggressive tightening campaign by the Fed that could tip the economy into a recession.

For ages, the Fed coddled the financial markets, but now it is almost as if they don’t even care anymore.

Personally, I am far more concerned about what will happen to ordinary hard working Americans in the months ahead.  Even Jerome Powell is admitting that “an increase in unemployment” is likely because of what the Fed is doing…

“I think there’s a very high likelihood we will have a period of … much lower growth and it could give rise to an increase in unemployment,” he said.

Will that mean a recession?

“No one knows whether that process will lead to a recession or how significant a recession it will be,” Powell said. “I don’t know the odds.”

Actually, we are in a recession right now.

And Powell and his minions just made things a whole lot worse.

Even Democrats understand this.  After the rate hike was announced, Senator Elizabeth Warren went on Twitter and warned that “millions of Americans” could soon lose their jobs…

.@federalreserve’s Chair Powell just announced another extreme interest rate hike while forecasting higher unemployment. I’ve been warning that Chair Powell’s Fed would throw millions of Americans out of work — and I fear he’s already on the path to doing so.

This is one of the rare occasions when Elizabeth Warren is right on target.

As I have been documenting on my website for weeks, large numbers of Americans have already been getting laid off.

In fact, things are already so bad that even Facebook is trimming their numbers

As growth stalls and competition intensifies, Facebook parent Meta has begun quietly cutting staff by reorganizing departments, while giving ‘reorganized’ employees a narrow window to apply for other roles within the company, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing current and former managers familiar with the matter.

By shuffling people around, the company achieves staffing cuts “while forestalling the mass issuance of pink slips.”

So why would the Fed choose to raise rates when layoffs are already beginning to spike?

Higher rates are also having a devastating impact on the housing market.

This week, we learned that sales of existing homes have now fallen for seven months in a row

Home sales declined for the seventh month in a row in August as higher mortgage rates and stubbornly high prices pushed prospective buyers out of the market.

Sales of existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — were down 19.9% from a year ago and down 0.4% from July, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

Someone should start putting “Jerome Powell did this” stickers on for sale signs all over the nation.

Because this didn’t have to happen.

Now the housing market is already in a “deep recession”, and the Fed just keeps making things even worse…

The prolonged downturn in confidence shows the housing market has been “in a tailspin for the whole of this year,” according to Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson.

“Activity tracks mortgage applications with a lag, and the early September numbers are grim, even before the full hit from the rebound in mortgage rates in recent weeks works through,” Shepherdson said in a note to clients on Monday.

“In short, the housing market is in a deep recession, which is already hammering homebuilders and will soon depress housing-related retail sales,” he added.

The Fed seems determined to kill the economy.

But why?

Why would they do this?

One analyst that was just quoted by Fox Business is warning that “times are going to get tougher from here”…

“With the new rate projections, the Fed is engineering a hard landing — a soft landing is almost out of the question,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist of Principal Global Investors. “Powell’s admission that there will be below-trend growth for a period should be translated as central bank speak for ‘recession.’ Times are going to get tougher from here.”

Yes, times are definitely going to get tougher from here.

In fact, we are eventually headed for a meltdown of epic proportions.

But instead of working to prevent a historic crisis, the Federal Reserve is actually encouraging one.

The American people deserve some answers, because there is something about all of this that really stinks.

They Know That They Are Killing The Economy, But They Are Doing It Anyway…

“We Have Tools”? What Tools, Ms. von der Leyen?

Shock: EU commission president threatens Italy on eve of election, says Brussels has ‘tools’ if wrong parties win

Italian politicians are asking Ursula von der Leyen not to intervene in Italian elections after her stunning threat just days before citizens choose their new government

editor: REMIX NEWS
author: JOHN CODY

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25. She added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.

“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.” Von der Leyen made the comment while responding to a journalist after a talk she gave at Princeton University in the United States. The journalist remarked that there were candidates in the Italian elections “close to Putin” and then asked her how the EU would react if they were elected.

https://rumble.com/v1l7nuj-eu-threatens-italy-on-eve-of-elections.html

The comments from the EU commission president, arguably the most powerful figure from any EU institution, have been met with shock from the Italian political class.

Von Der Leyen was making a clear reference to the European Commission’s ability to cut funding to member states it views as violating “rule of law,” a powerful tool Brussels can use to punish any democratically-elected government in Europe. Just last week, the commission proposed cutting €7.5 billion in funding to Hungary, with the country’s conservative government having long been a thorn in the side of the EU over its opposition to mass migration and support for traditional values.

Meloni’s positions, in many ways, are no different than Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s.

“There is no possible mediation. Yes to the natural family. No to the LGBT lobbies. No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, and no to major international finance,” said Meloni at a campaign event earlier this year.

Giorgia Meloni shares video of woman being raped by migrant, global left-wing press flies into rage

The left and global press are not particularly angry that a Ukrainian woman was raped by an African migrant in broad daylight, but they are furious that conservative leader Giorgia Meloni shared the video and raised awareness about the case

Meloni’s political beliefs mean the EU may respond with extreme sanctions against Italy if her party comes to power. However, unlike Hungary, where the population is overwhelmingly in favor of staying in the EU, Italy is already becoming increasingly skeptical of Brussels, according to polling data. If the EU were to cut funding to Italy, any such sanction measure could raise tensions in an already divided Europe and potentially spark a backlash among the Italian public.

Italian politicians are already responding to von der Leyen’s threat.

“What is this, a threat? This is shameful arrogance,” tweeted Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing League party. He asked von der Leyen to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people.”

He also said on Italian TV that “if anyone in Brussels thinks of cutting the funds that belong to Italy, because the League wins the elections, then we have to rethink this Europe,” adding that “this is institutional bullying.”

Elections are on Sunday, Sept. 25, and polls show a conservative-populist coalition is likely to come to power, with Brothers of Italy party leader, Giorgia Meloni, set to become Italy’s first female prime minister.

With the EU’s left-liberal establishment going into panic mode at the prospect, von der Leyen’s remarks are the most visible and threatening remarks from a major EU politician since the campaign season began in Italy. The fact that she issued her remarks just days before the “quiet” period of Italian elections may also potentially affect the outcome.

from:    https://rmx.news/article/shock-eu-commission-president-threatens-italy-on-eve-of-election-says-brussels-has-tools-if-wrong-parties-win/

Let’s Go From Reset to Resistance

Kim Iversen: WEF Is Marching Us Toward a Life of Passive Obedience

Political commentator Kim Iversen, on a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show,” dissected “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better,” an article written in 2016 by World Economic Forum contributor Ida Auken.

Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender’s Top News of the DayIt’s free.

When political commentator Kim Iversen read, “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better” — an article published in 2016 on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website — she waited for the punchline, assuming the article was satire.

But there wasn’t a punchline. The author of the article was serious.

Iversen devoted a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show” to dissecting the WEF article, whose “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” message resurfaced amid growing interest in the WEF’s Great Reset.

Iversen highlighted some of the article’s key statements, which she labeled “absurd” and “insane”:

  • “I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”
  • “It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.”
  • “In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.”
  • “Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods.”
  • “Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.”
  • “Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.”

The article, published Nov. 10, 2016, was written by Ida Auken, a member of the Danish Parliament (2007-present) and formerly Denmark’s minister for the environment.

Auken wrote the article in preparation for the WEF’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils which took place November 13-14, 2016, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The WEF in early 2017 nominated Auken as a Young Global Leader and promoted her article in a tweet:

 

“They [WEF leaders] were not joking around,” Iversen said. “This is the future that they envisioned. Everything will move to robotics, everything will be monitored in the name of saving climate.”

Iversen said although she historically called herself an environmentalist — “That’s really where my first foray into politics was, in the environmental movement” — she’s now “questioning the motivation of all of this.”

She added:

“I’ve seen them [WEF global leaders] claim a lot of things are really bad and they’re not. They were exaggerated greatly in order to use those [things] to make us afraid and control us.”

According to Iversen, the WEF is “marching us toward” a life of passive obedience to a centralized system of authorities who control and own everything.

Their message, she said, is “‘just be a good citizen and you have nothing to worry about so long as you don’t speak out against the government, so as long as you follow all the rules … Yes, you won’t have any privacy … You won’t own anything but you will be very, very happy. You just need to do as you’re told.’”

Iversen added:

“Thank goodness more and more people are reporting on this and waking up to this saying, ‘No. We are not going to go along with this agenda.’”

Watch the video here:

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children’s Health Defense.

from:    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/kim-iversen-wef-great-reset-no-privacy/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=8ad4e1dd-353b-431d-9c30-7212afb73ef1

I’ll Have Some Kidney Disease With That Burger

Rat and impossible burger

Rats fed GM yeast-derived protein soy leghemoglobin – the burger’s key ingredient – developed signs of toxicity. Report by Claire Robinson and Dr Michael Antoniou

The Impossible Burger is a plant-based burger, the key ingredient of which is a protein called soy leghemoglobin (SLH for short), derived from genetically modified (GM) yeast. It’s already being sold in restaurants and supermarkets in the US. In 2019 the manufacturing company, Impossible Foods, applied for permission to market the burger in the EU and the UK.

However, the results of a rat feeding study commissioned by Impossible Foods and carried out with SLH suggest that the burger may not be safe to eat.

SLH is the substance that gives the burger its meaty taste and makes it appear to bleed like meat when cut. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initially refused to sign off on the safety of SLH when first approached by the company. The rat feeding study results suggest that the agency’s concerns were justified. Rats fed the GM yeast-derived SLH developed unexplained changes in weight gain, changes in the blood that can indicate the onset of inflammation or kidney disease, and possible signs of anaemia.

2015: FDA says SLH safety not proven

The company maintains that SLH is safe to eat.[1] It wanted the US Food and Drug Administration to agree with its self-declared conclusion that SLH is “GRAS” (Generally Recognized As Safe), providing reassurance for consumers. But in 2015, in response to Impossible Foods’ first application, the FDA refused to agree that the substance was safe. It responded with tough questions for the company, as revealed in documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request.[2]

The FDA was concerned that SLH has never been consumed by humans and may be an allergen. The agency pointed out that the safety information submitted by Impossible Foods was not specific enough: “Although proteins are a part of the human food supply, not all proteins are safe. Information addressing the safe use of modified soy protein does not adequately address safe use of soybean leghemoglobin protein from the roots of the soybean plant in food.”[2]

The FDA concluded, “FDA believes that the arguments presented, individually and collectively, do not establish the safety of SLH for consumption, nor do they point to a general recognition of safety.”[2]

2017: Impossible Foods tries again

In 2017 Impossible Foods tried again with a new application for GRAS status. It submitted data from a study that the company had commissioned in which rats were fed SLH.[3]

Although Impossible Foods had in its 2015 submission told the FDA it intended to conduct a 90-day feeding study (the standard length for subchronic toxicity in rats), the company said that following “feedback” from the agency, it had decided on a shorter study of 28 days.[2]

While this change would cut costs for Impossible Foods, it is not in the public health interest. That’s because the shorter the duration of a study, the less likely it is to find health effects such as organ damage, which take time to show up.

The number of animals and duration of a feeding study are two key design elements in an investigation of the safety of a GM food substance.

It was always unlikely that SLH would have strong and obvious toxic effects in the short term; any adverse effects from a novel food substance would likely be subtle. Long-term studies with relatively large numbers of animals are required in order to reveal the significance of such effects. Given these requirements, it seems clear that Impossible Foods’ study was statistically weak. There were too few animals in each test group (10 per sex per group) and again, the study was too short in duration (28 days in a rat is equivalent to just 2-3 years in a human) to clarify any health concerns from long-term consumption of this product.

Potentially adverse effects in SLH-fed rats

In light of these limitations, it is remarkable that the SLH-fed rats did show a large number of statistically significant potentially adverse effects, compared with the control group – for example:
* unexplained transient decrease in body weight gain
* increase in food consumption without weight gain
* changes in blood chemistry
* decreased reticulocyte (immature red blood cell) count (this can be a sign of anemia and/or damage to the bone marrow where red blood cells are produced)
* decreased blood clotting ability
* decreased blood levels of alkaline phosphatase (can indicate malnutrition and/or celiac disease)
* increased blood albumin (can indicate acute infection or damage to tissues) and potassium values (can indicate kidney disease)
* decreased blood glucose (low blood sugar) and chloride (can indicate kidney problems)
* increased blood globulin values (common in inflammatory disease and cancer).[3]

The fact that these changes were seen in spite of the statistical weaknesses of the study (stemming from the short duration and low number of animals in each group) gives particular reason for concern.

Reproductive changes in SLH-fed females?

In the study, apparent disruptions in the reproductive cycle were found in some groups of females fed SLH. In normal healthy rats, the uterus fills up with fluid during the proestrus phase of the cycle, in the run-up to the fertile and sexually receptive phase (estrus). In the SLH-fed rats, significantly fewer “fluid filled” uteri were seen. This correlated with decreased uterus weight, as might be expected.[3]

In response to this finding, Impossible Foods commissioned a second rat feeding study, which found no effect on the SLH on the rats’ estrus cycle. The company concluded that the findings of the first study had been a mere artifact of the experimental method used.[3]

For the sake of the women who may eat the Impossible Burger on a regular basis, we hope that the company is correct.

All effects dismissed

Impossible Foods dismissed all these effects as “non-adverse”, as having “no toxicological relevance”, as “transient” on the grounds that they appeared to reverse themselves after some days, and as not dependent on the dose (i.e. the effect did not increase with increasing dose).

It is true that the adverse outcomes may appear somewhat haphazard. However, the fact that there were so many statistically significant changes in multiple organs and systems suggests that closer scrutiny of the safety of SLH is urgently required. The apparent randomness of the effects may be due to the fact that the study design was statistically weak. And it is well known that toxic effects do not always follow a linear dose-response pattern.[4] Dismissing the findings as irrelevant appears irresponsible.

The only way of ascertaining if potentially adverse effects seen in short studies are truly adverse or have lasting consequences is to extend the study length to the rats’ full lifetimes (2-3 years) and to do multigenerational testing. In this case, neither was done.

FDA capitulates

Impossible Foods’ second attempt to obtain GRAS status for SLH succeeded and the FDA issued a “no questions” letter, indicating that it had no further questions.[5]

Contrary to what many people believe, such letters are not an assertion by the FDA that the food in question is safe. They state that the company asserts that the food is safe and remind the company that it, and not the FDA, is responsible for ensuring that it only puts safe foods on the market.

“No questions” letters may protect the FDA from liability in case something goes wrong. But they do not protect the consumer from unsafe novel foods.

Another GMO ingredient

In 2019 Impossible Foods introduced a new recipe for its Impossible Burger. In addition to GMO-derived SLH, the burger now contains another GMO ingredient: protein from herbicide-tolerant soy.[6] The company introduced soy protein to replace wheat protein in order to improve the texture and to avoid gluten, the protein in wheat that some people cannot tolerate.[7]

As a result, Impossible Burger Version 2.0 can contain residues of the “probable carcinogen” glyphosate,[8] the main ingredient of the herbicide used on GM soy.

Testing by Health Research Institute Laboratories, commissioned by the advocacy group Moms Across America, found glyphosate at a level of 11.3 ppb. The level was 11 times higher than the Beyond Meat burger, another plant-based burger that is made from non-GMO ingredients.[9] (However, Beyond Meat’s crashing stock suggests that the hype over any fake meat product is misplaced.)

Knowing the concerns that the use of GMO soy protein and glyphosate residues may raise, Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown has gone to some lengths to reassure the buying public.[10] But based on what the rat feeding studies tell us about the potential health effects of the Impossible Burger, the company would be well advised to shelve SLH and the reformulate their product with natural – and if possible organic and minimally processed – ingredients.

References

1. Strom S. Impossible Burger’s ‘secret sauce’ highlights challenges of food tech. The New York Times, December 22, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/business/impossible-burger-food-meat.html

2. Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP. Response to FDA Questions – GRAS Notice 540 soybean leghemoglobin – Impossible Foods, Inc. May 2015. https://tinyurl.com/255e3s98

3. Impossible Foods, Inc. GRAS notification for soy leghemoglobin protein preparation derived from Pichia pastoris: GRAS Notice (GRN) No. 737. October 2017. https://www.fda.gov/media/124351/download

4. Hill CE, Myers JP, Vandenberg LN. Nonmonotonic dose–response curves occur in dose ranges that are relevant to regulatory decision-making. Dose-Response. 2018;16(3). doi:10.1177/1559325818798282

5. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Re: GRAS Notice No. GRN 000737. July 2018. https://tinyurl.com/msufbvpk

6. Brodwin E. The inside story of how the Silicon Valley burger startup Impossible Foods is going global after its sizzling Burger King debut. Business Insider, May 16, 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/impossible-burger-national-launch-gmo-soy-burger-king-2019-5?r=US&IR=T

7. Watson E. Impossible Foods replaces wheat with soy protein concentrate in its plant-based burger; says color additive petition won’t delay retail launch. Food Navigator USA, January 8, 2019. https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2019/01/08/Impossible-Foods-replaces-wheat-with-soy-protein-concentrate-in-its-plant-based-Impossible-burger

8. International Agency for Research on Cancer. IARC Monographs Volume 112: Evaluation of Five Organophosphate Insecticides and Herbicides. Lyon, France: World Health Organization; 2015. https://monographs.iarc.fr/iarc-monographs-on-the-evaluation-of-carcinogenic-risks-to-humans-4/

9. Moms Across America. GMO Impossible Burger positive for carcinogenic glyphosate. July 8. https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_positive_for_carcinogenic_glyphosate
Note that when interpreting the health implications of the level of glyphosate found, it is daily intakes that count and not the concentrations in ppb that were detected.

10. Brown P. How our commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy. Medium.com. May 2019. https://medium.com/impossible-foods/how-our-commitment-to-consumers-and-our-planet-led-us-to-use-gm-soy-23f880c93408

An earlier version of this article appeared on the GMOScience website in 2019. It is republished here in updated form with permission.

from:    https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20099-rat-feeding-study-suggests-the-impossible-burger-may-not-be-safe-to-eat

Bill Gates & The Seeds of Doom

Bill Gates’ ‘Magic Seeds’ Won’t Solve World Hunger But Will ‘Create Ecological Disaster’

Bill Gates is rebranding genetically engineered seeds as “magic seeds” and says they’re the answer to world hunger, but according to Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a “failed, clumsy crude manipulation of living systems does not create ‘magical seeds.’ It creates an ecological disaster.”

Bill Gates said he believes the global community must invest in engineered crops using what he calls his “magic seeds” to solve world hunger.

Food aid alone cannot address the problem, Gates said in an essay accompanying the  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) Goalkeepers 2022 Report, released earlier this month.

What is needed, he said, are “magic” seeds that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to hot and dry climates or to grow three weeks faster than natural seeds.

“Temperature keeps going up,” Gates said. “There is no way, without innovation, to come even close to feeding Africa. I mean, it just doesn’t work.”

However, André Leu, organic farming expert, former president of IFOAM Organics International and author of “Growing Life: Regenerating Farming and Ranching,” criticized Gates for calling his genetically modified seeds “magical.”

“This is patently false and an example of spin doctoring by public relations companies to rebrand products that are widely regarded as Frankenfoods,” Leu told The Defender.

According to Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., environmental activist, author and founder of Navdanya International, “[Natural] seeds as the source of life are magical. They hold their implicate order within them, and unfold to relocate the unique patterns and structures of life in its diversity.”

In contrast, Shiva said, “Genetically engineered seeds have been made to own life through patents.”

Shiva told The Defender:

“[Genetically engineered seeds] are a failed technology.

“Herbicide-resistant crops were supposed to control weeds. They have created superweeds. Bt toxin crops were supposed to control pests. They have created super pests, increased the need for pesticides, increased farmers’ debt and driven farmers to suicide in India.

“A failed, clumsy, crude manipulation of living systems does not create ‘magical seeds.’

“It creates an ecological disaster of monocultures of GMOs [genetically modified organisms] displacing the rich diversity of crops that we need for the health of people and the health of the planet.”

According to Gates, he’s concerned about the planet — at least how it may be impacted by climate change.

The BMGF on Sept. 6 released an “Agriculture Adaptation Atlas” that uses predictive modeling to estimate how climate change may affect growing conditions for crops in African countries.

The BMGF is also promoting the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that processes the genome sequences of crops along with this environmental data to conjure up a data-based vision of what farms should look like in the future.

“From this computer model, researchers can identify the optimal plant variety for a particular place,” Cambria Finegold, director of digital development for CABI, an intergovernmental organization that is developing models for the BMGF, earlier this month told The Associated Press (AP). “Or they can do the reverse: pinpoint the optimal place to grow a specific crop.”

Finegold added:

“It’s not just, ‘how do we get through this crisis and get back to normal?’ It’s, ‘what does the future normal look like?’”

But critics pointed out this reliance on AI and genetically modified seeds would exacerbate environmental issues because the modified seeds require heavy use of fossil-fuel fertilizers, which must be transported across great distances, and pesticides that threaten biodiversity.

According to Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and AGRA Watch, a group that “works with partner organizations in Africa and the US to support sustainable, agroecological, socially responsible, and indigenous alternatives,” the BMGF’s industrial agricultural programs in Africa, including its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), cause biodiversity loss, hurt small-scale farmers and cause environmental harm — all while failing to solve hunger.

Rachel Bezner Kerr, a professor of global development at Cornell University, told the AP there are existing alternatives — such as locally managed seed banks, composting systems that promote healthy soil and non-chemical pesticide interventions — that can build more resilient farming systems and reduce the need for food aid.

Kerr, a lead author of the food chapter of the latest report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that although the panel doesn’t make recommendations, “overall, the kind of focus on a few technologies and reliance on fossil fuel-based inputs isn’t in line with ecosystem-based adaptation” or a biodiverse future.

However, BMGF CEO Mark Suzman contended fertilizer is necessary. “You simply cannot meet overall productivity gains without it,” he said on a call with reporters, according to the AP.

Gates also dismissed alternative ideas.

“If there’s some non-innovation solution, you know, like singing ‘Kumbaya,’ I’ll put money behind it,” Gates told the AP in an interview. “But if you don’t have those seeds, the numbers just don’t work.”

Gates said, “When researchers in Kenya compared plots of this new [genetically modified] maize, which they called ‘DroughtTEGO®,’ with the old one, they saw the DroughtTEGO farms were producing an average of 66% more grain per acre.”

Shiva said genetically engineered crops and seeds aren’t the answer.

“To end world hunger we must stop treating food as a commodity and seeds as corporate ‘intellectual property,’” she told The Defender.

“To solve world hunger every farm must become biodiverse and ecological. Biodiversity intensification produces more nutrition per acre, with no dependence on external inputs of seeds and toxic agrochemicals as our report ‘Health Per Acre’ shows.”

“We can feed the people while regenerating the biodiversity of the planet,” Shiva said.

Leu agreed. “The scaling up of regenerative organic agriculture based on the science of agroecology would easily solve the global food insecurity crisis. It is low-cost, proven, and effective, and scaling it up globally would be less than the cost of developing one GMO crop.”

Claiming GMOs have no place in solving world hunger, Leu said:

“Despite more than 40 years of hype that GMO seeds were going to dramatically increase yields, solve pest and disease problems, reduce pesticide use, drought-proof crops, allow them to be grown in saline soils, and numerous other extravagant claims, this has not been achieved.

“The research by independent scientists — not by the scientists employed by the biotech companies who have an obvious conflict of interest — clearly shows that there have been no yield increases over conventional breeding.

“The only two things GMO crops have succeeded in doing are dramatically increasing the use of toxic pesticides such as glyphosate (Roundup) in our food, bodies, and environment and the profits of the large agribusiness pesticide companies.”

Leu emphasized the effectiveness of teaching organic farming methods to small-scale farmers to address hunger.

“The majority of food-insecure people are smallholder family farmers and others who depend on them in rural communities,” he said.

“We have proven many times that teaching good organic farming practices can increase their yields by over 100% so they can feed their families and local communities. They also get an income to pay for healthcare, education and many other things that are important for a good quality of life.”

Who really suffers and who profits from ‘philanthrocapitalism based on biopiracy’?

The BMGF and the Gates-led AGRA say they aim to transform agriculture in Africa by increasing incomes and food security for millions of smallholder farmers.

On July 13, Gates pledged to donate $20 billion to the BMGF so it can increase its annual spending to “mitigate some of the suffering people are facing right now.” The donation brought the foundation’s endowment up to $70 billion, CNBC reported in July.

The BMGF has spent $1.5 billion on grants focused on agriculture in Africa, according to Candid, a nonprofit that researches philanthropic giving.

But an independent evaluation of AGRA’s efforts, released in late February by the consulting firm Mathematica, found “mixed” outcomes on inclusive financial, output markets and farmer outcomes, The Defender reported.

According to Joeva Rock, Ph.D., assistant professor of development studies at the University of Cambridge who wrote a not-yet-released book about food sovereignty in Ghana, activists in Africa questioned whether the funds could have been better spent elsewhere.

In Ghana, field trials for four varieties of genetically modified seeds began in 2013, Rock told the AP.

“What would happen if those went into increasing funds to the national research centers in Ghana, to building roads, to building storage, to building silos or helping to build markets?” Rock said.

Food insecurity is not caused by low yields, Leu told The Defender. “It is caused by unfair and inefficient food distribution systems.”

Leu said:

“Industrial farming systems are not designed to feed the poor. The COVID-19  pandemic lockdowns and war in Ukraine are examples of why it is the wrong model.

“Growing food thousands of miles away from where it is needed instead of growing it locally is the problem. People are dependent on supply chains that can easily be disrupted.

“Also, food-insecure people are the poorest on the planet. Even if the food gets to their country, they can’t afford to buy it.

“On the other hand, we now have an obesity epidemic in the more affluent countries and regions due to an oversupply of calories empty of nutrition from industrial agriculture.”

In 2006, the BMGF joined with the Rockefeller Foundation to spur a “green revolution” in Africa by creating AGRA.

“Over the long term, the partnership, called Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), intends to improve agricultural development in Africa by addressing both farming and relevant economic issues, including soil fertility and irrigation, farmer management practices, and farmer access to markets and financing,” the groups said.

At its inception, AGRA declared Africa deficient in what it referred to as “improved inputs,” such as fertilizer and “advanced” seeds, and has worked to implement policies that would make African farmers use manufactured fertilizers, pesticides and engineered seeds — which are all patented products that generate profits for their owners.

AGRA Watch — founded to respond to and challenge AGRA’s policies — calls BMGF’s efforts “philanthrocapitalism based on biopiracy.”

Although the BMGF and AGRA claim to be “pro-poor” and “pro-environment,” their alignment with transnational corporations such as Monsanto, and foreign policy groups such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), makes their motives suspect, according to AGRA Watch:

“[BMGF] takes advantage of food and global climate crises to promote high-tech, market-based, industrial agriculture and generate profits for corporations even while degrading the environment and disempowering farmers.”

A three-part video series “Rich Appetites: How Big Philanthropy Is Shaping the Future of Food in Africa” explains why exporting the U.S. agribusiness model to Africa is a “grave mistake” and exposes how “Big Philanthropy” — namely the BMGF — is destroying farming and food in Africa by seizing control from local interests.

As of Sept. 20, Forbes estimated Gates’ net worth to be around $104.4 billion.

from:    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-gates-genetically-engineered-seeds-world-hunger-ecological-disaster/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=8ad4e1dd-353b-431d-9c30-7212afb73ef1

Rappoport Considers Illegals on The Vineyard

DeSantis sends illegals to Martha’s Vineyard

by Jon Rappoport

September 16, 2022

First the story, then the really interesting part.

Axios: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes of undocumented migrants to [elite] Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday, joining Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in sending migrants to sanctuary cities, Fox News first reported.”

“DeSantis appeared to target Massachusetts, which has a Republican governor, because state and local leaders have expressed support for policies that benefit immigrants regardless of their status.”

“Some 50 migrants believed to be from Venezuela arrived by charter plane at Martha’s Vineyard Airport on Wednesday afternoon, per multiple reports.”

“‘States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as “sanctuary states” and support for the Biden administration’s open border policies,’ Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communications director, told Fox News.”

Now let’s see, isn’t one of the sparkling celeb couples who make their home on Marth’s Vineyard…the Obamas?

Why, yes. Right there on the waterfront. They have no fear of impending climate-change tsunamis.

Sitting on 29 acres, the house spreads out its arms 6,892 square feet, and features seven bedrooms and eight and half bathrooms. Plus a garage, a separate barn, a pool, a pond, a boathouse, and a private beach.

Marvelous.

Perfect for housing undocumented illegal aliens.

I would think at least a dozen.

Can we expect an announcement in the next few days?

“Michelle and I are providing a home for three youths who appear to be about 29, two small children, and four men and three women. They’ll have all their meals served to them, and we’ve hired tutors to facilitate their fluency in English. Of course, Michelle and I will be taking Spanish lessons as well. Having new people moving around in our home is a welcome addition to our daily lives. We’re all in this together.”

Meanwhile, TMZ is reporting: “We have audio of a phone conversation between Michelle Obama and her Martha’s Vineyard gal pal, Gloria Van Landingwort-Schwartzmeister. The first voice you hear is Michelle’s:”

“Barack has gone full-bore wackaloon. Bullshitting the press is one thing, but making a promise like that…there’s no fucking way those migrants are moving into my house. I have enough trouble with the hired help.”

Van Landingwort-Schwartzmeister: “Lock up the silverware, baby. The invaders have come ashore. I’ll give you the name of my guy, Pedro. He’s flaming gay and sensational on details. He’ll do a running inventory of every single item in your house and ride herd on those aliens. By the time he gets through with them, they’ll be reporting on how many squares of toilet paper they use…”

Alas, I have a feeling all those exceedingly wealthy liberals who live and vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, and who support unlimited immigration, will consign the migrants to some sort of “community housing”—as far away as possible from their mansions, lawn parties, boating excursions, and leverage-merger type conversations that slice and dice the country on behalf of…themselves.

Tune in next week, when a commercial construction baron on the Vineyard brings a tank, mortars, and flamethrowers to his property, so he can remain secure while he conducts high-level meetings on new gun control legislation…

from:    https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2022/09/16/desantis-sends-illegals-to-marthas-vineyard/