Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.
Lawmakers want military researchers to determine whether the COVID-19 vaccine caused more harm than good for service members.
Included in the annual defense authorization bill passed by Congress earlier this month is language calling for “a study to assess and evaluate any health conditions and adverse events arising in service members on active duty one year after receiving the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.” Researchers will be required to report their findings back to lawmakers in December 2024.
But the research mandate — inserted by Republican House members during debate on the legislation — takes that further, again calling into question the safety of the vaccine.
For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. This guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk
Most studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, regardless of fat content. And even though full-fat dairy products have higher calorie content, they don’t appear to contribute to weight gain either
A 2018 Lancet study found that, compared to those who did not consume dairy (milk, yogurt and cheese), those who consumed two or more servings per day were 17% less likely to die from any cause, 23% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, and 34% less likely to die from a stroke
Another large-scale trial found those with the highest levels of milk fats in their diet had a 29% lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes
The most ideal choices are products made from raw, unpasteurized milk, as the pasteurization process destroys many valuable nutrients. Pasteurization also destroys lactase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of lactose. Many people with lactose intolerance have no problem drinking raw milk, because it has lactase in it
For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. To this day, the U.S. dietary guidelines and health authorities like the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization recommend drinking low-fat or skim milk for this reason.
However, as Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Tufts University, recently told New York Times reporter Alice Callahan,1 this guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk.
In fact, most studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, regardless of fat content. What’s more, even though full-fat dairy products have higher calorie content, they don’t appear to contribute to weight gain, either.
Dairy Protects Heart Health
For example, a 2018 Lancet study,2 which followed 136,384 adults across five continents for nine years, found that, compared to those who did not consume dairy (milk, yogurt and cheese), those who consumed two or more servings per day were:
17% less likely to die from any cause
22% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease
34% less likely to die from a stroke
Milk and yogurt, in particular, were associated with a lower risk of mortality and/or major cardiovascular events, and there was no discernible difference between low-fat and high-fat products. Cheese and butter intake were not significantly associated with these outcomes. Serving sizes were as follows:
Milk and yogurt — 1 cup or 244 grams
Cheese — one slice or 15 grams
Butter — 1 teaspoon or 5 grams
There’s More to Milk Than Milk Fat
As noted in the Lancet paper:3
“… dietary guidelines recommend minimizing consumption of whole-fat dairy products for cardiovascular disease prevention …
However, dairy products and dairy fat also contain potentially beneficial compounds — including specific amino acids, medium-chain and odd-chain saturated fats, milk fat globule phospholipids, unsaturated and branched-chain fats … vitamin K1 and K2, and calcium — and can contain probiotics, many of which also affect health outcomes.
Therefore, the net effect of dairy intake on health outcomes might not be reliably informed solely from its effect on a single risk marker (i.e., LDL cholesterol) or fatty acids.”
The authors also review the results from previous meta-analyses,4 none of which were able to discern a significant problem with dairy. For example, one meta-analysis of cohort studies found higher milk intake lowered the risk of high blood pressure while having “a neutral effect on cardiovascular disease.”
The DASH trial also found a link between milk consumption and reduced blood pressure. Other meta-analyses have punctured the LDL argument as well. One such analysis, which included 20 randomized trials, found a “non-significant” increase in LDL cholesterol among those who consumed either low-fat or high-fat dairy products. Ditto for cheese.
One potential reason for this is because milk fat is packaged in globule phospholipids, which help bind cholesterol in your digestive tract.5,6
Another large-scale trial,7 also published in 2018, which pooled results from 16 cohorts from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Taiwan, involving 63,682 individuals with a follow-up of nine years, found those with the highest levels of milk fats (odd-chain fatty acids 15:0 and 17:0, and trans-palmitoleic acid specifically) had a 29% lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes.
No Need to Avoid Full-Fat Dairy
According to The New York Times,8 an independent panel of nutrition experts is currently reviewing the evidence9 on how saturated fat consumption affects your cardiovascular disease risk. Their findings may eventually result in updated dietary guidelines, with regard to dairy.
In the meantime, Penny Kris-Etherton, Professor Emeritus of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University, recommends three servings of dairy per day as part of a balanced diet, and “Based on the most recent dairy fat data … it’s probably OK if one or two of those servings are whole-fat milk, yogurt or cheese.”10
Curiously, Kris-Etherton still recommends plant-based oils like canola oil, soybean oil and margarine instead of butter, which is flat-out horrible advice, as these oils are loaded with mitochondrial-destroying linoleic acid (LA), which appears to be one of the primary drivers of chronic disease. To learn more about this, see my previous report, “Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet.”
When it comes to dairy products, whether we’re talking about milk, yogurt, cheese or butter, the most ideal choices are products made from raw, unpasteurized milk, as the pasteurization process destroys many valuable nutrients. Even organic grass fed dairy is not identical to raw dairy.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to this day claims that “All raw milk is risky,”11 simply because it hasn’t been pasteurized.
[…]
While it’s true that raw milk CAN be contaminated, the reality is that it rarely ever is. As explained in the video above, raw milk contains components that protect against disease-causing pathogens.
Research13 by Dr. Ted Beals shows you are actually 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw dairy. This includes pasteurized dairy, which has been linked to 73 deaths, whereas raw milk has not been linked to a single death so far.14
The key to healthy raw milk is making sure it’s from organically raised grass-fed cows. Never ever drink raw milk obtained from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Doing so could indeed be life threatening, as CAFOs are hotbeds for pathogens of all kinds. In fact, the propensity for pathogens to thrive in CAFOs is one of the reasons the milk must be pasteurized in the first place. It’s simply not safe to drink otherwise. Of course, pasteurization also extends shelf life, which is a convenience, but it comes at a cost to health.
Iowa Has Legalized Raw Milk Sales
The video above is from 2014 and, sadly, not much has changed since then, at least not on the federal level. Some states, however, have gotten wiser about raw milk. Iowa, for example, signed Senate File 315 into law earlier in 2023, which allows farmers to sell raw milk directly to consumers in the state. The law came into effect July 1, 2023.
This, despite heavy lobbying AGAINST the bill by the Iowa State Dairy Association, the Iowa Dairy Foods Association and the Iowa Public Health Association.
The reason they’re so against legalizing the sale of raw milk is because by preventing farmers from selling directly to consumers, processors can (and do) price fix the market. As a result, they can push small, family dairy farms out of business, leaving industrialized, CAFO dairy farms to dominate.
Raw Milk Can Bring Farmers Out of Poverty
In its Campaign for Real Milk, the Weston A. Price Foundation describes the stark difference in income for farmers selling conventional, pasteurized milk compared to those selling raw milk, and once you understand the economics of the situation, it’s easy to see why Big Dairy wants to keep raw milk under wraps.
A conventional dairy farmer may receive about $16 per hundredweight (100 pounds), which keeps him and his family in near-poverty:15
[…]
In contrast, a farmer selling raw, grass-fed dairy directly to consumers will have a very different outcome — one that allows him to thrive while selling a superior, healthier product to his customers:16
[…]
As they make more money, raw milk farmers can also provide a major boost to rural economies. If 100 farms in Wisconsin could provide raw milk to 50 local families, it would lead to more than $10 million in “increased wealth and well-being” for Wisconsin residents, according to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.17
Raw Milk Is the Healthiest Choice
Raw milk is also far healthier for you in terms of nutrition. Beneficial components destroyed by pasteurization include:18
Lactoferrin, which binds to iron
Lactoperoxidase, which has antimicrobial properties
Enzymes, needed for healthy digestion
Prebiotics that support gut health
Raw milk also contains highly bioavailable calcium to support thyroid and adrenal health, along with higher amounts of potassium, B vitamins, choline and zinc. (Pasteurized milk actually contains about 70% less zinc than raw.) The saturated fats in raw milk also aid in the production of important hormones, including testosterone, pregnenolone, DHEA and progesterone.
Pasteurization also destroys lactase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of lactose into glucose and galactose (the two sugars that makes milk taste sweet). Once broken down into its two constituent parts, each sugar can then be absorbed by your bowel.19
Lactase deficiency is one of the primary reasons for lactose intolerance, as your bowel cannot absorb the undigested lactose. On a side note, lactose intolerance could be indicative of low thyroid function, as your thyroid aids in the production of lactase in your intestines.20 Many people with lactose intolerance have no problem drinking raw milk, because it has lactase in it.
How to Assess the Quality of Raw Milk
When choosing raw milk, remember that quality matters. Raw milk produced by CAFOs, which is intended for pasteurization, is typically not safe for consumption as the cows live in filthy conditions and are typically in poor health. CAFO raw milk often tests positive for pathogens and must be pasteurized to kill the pathogenic bacteria before it’s safe to drink.
A booking photo of Duane “Keefe D” Davis is shown on a monitor. A Nevada grand jury indicted Davis on one count of murder with a deadly weapon in the fatal drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur. [Source: cbsnews.com]
By John Potash
Covert Action Magazine
In late September 2023, police arrested a man they say ordered the murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur in 1996. This arrest comes after decades of murders and cover-up of the globally loved rapper and film star whose work at bringing peace between rival gangs threatened the CIA’s racist, imperialist drug-trafficking agenda.
After the September 29 arrest of Duane “Keefe D” Davis, the Associated Press called Davis “the last living suspect” in Tupac’s murder.
There is additional evidence lending credence to the belief that Death Row Records label director Marion “Suge” Knight, attorney Dave Kenner and security director Reggie Wright, Jr., were leading suspects in collaboration with U.S. intelligence.[1]
LA’s Death Row Records a CIA Front for Drug Trafficking, Opposing Gang Peace?
Tupac’s Black Panther extended family, including his Harlem Panther leader mother, Afeni Shakur, his Republic of New Afrika leader stepfather Mutulu Shakur, and his Los Angeles Black Panther leader godfather, Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, inspired the rap icon’s activism.[2]
By the time Tupac was 17, the New Afrikan Panther Party, attempting to replicate the Black Panthers, elected him their national leader.[3]
After Tupac’s major label rap debut at 21 in 1992, along with a starring film role, he took on a new activist “Thug Life” plan that had him pretending to be a “gangsta” in order to appeal to gangs and politicize them. This was part of the highly successful gang peace truce movement.[4]
U.S. intelligence, which had used their FBI Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to murderously target Tupac’s Black Panther extended family in the 1960s and 1970s, now appeared to target Tupac and his gang peace truce movement.[5]
Former FBI Agent Wes Swearingen reported COINTELPRO’s continuance into the 1990s.[6]
Many books and documentaries have presented the research on how CIA programs such as CHAOS and MK-ULTRA colluded with the FBI’s COINTELPRO against the Panthers.[7]
Gary Webb documented, in his viral Dark Alliance newspaper series and book, that CIA operatives trafficked cheap cocaine to “Freeway” Ricky Ross, and Death Row Records founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris was Ross’s understudy.[8]
David Kenner was Harris’s lawyer and Death Row’s real owner, owning its umbrella group, Godfather Entertainment.[9]
When Harris went to prison, Kenner hired Suge Knight as the chairman, and Los Angeles Police Officer Reggie Wright, Jr., as security director, along with “dozens of other LA police officers” moonlighting under Wright.[10]
One of those officers working under Wright was Kevin Hackie, who later said that the FBI was also regularly paying him. [11]
Hackie reportedly turned on the FBI and told Tupac to avoid Las Vegas the night of his shooting there. Death Row subsequently fired Hackie, and he said the FBI set him up on false charges that had him imprisoned for a number of months.[12]
Reggie Wright, Sr., worked as head of the gang division for the Los Angeles area’s Compton Police Department, one of the first locations where the rival Bloods and Crips gangs called a truce, vowing to fight racism.[13]
As the gang truce movement spread nationwide, many of these gang members also gave up drug dealing and started legitimate businesses, taking billions of dollars of profits from the CIA drug traffickers and money launderers.[14]
Davis Arrest Part of Kading’s Unsubstantiated Conclusion of East vs. West Rap Murder
Greg Kading stated that he made “Keefe D” an offer: that the drug-dealing charge pending against him, “and the probable life sentence that came with it,” would be dropped if he gave a confession regarding Tupac’s murder.[15]
Davis stated that it was a coincidence that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, had a scuffle with Tupac and Suge Knight in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas just after a Mike Tyson fight that evening, but that he and Anderson used that opportunity to murder Tupac just two hours after the scuffle.[16]
Davis further said that rap producer Sean P-Diddy Combs offered a million dollars for Davis and some Crips gang members to kill Suge Knight and Tupac. Many media outlets report that no evidence supports this.[17]
Davis reportedly said he was in the car when he gave a gun to his nephew Orlando Anderson, who fired 13 shots at Tupac, which would prove fatal to him six days later, at the age of 25.[18]
That is quite the coincidence that young Anderson gets Mike Tyson fight tickets in Vegas, gets in a scuffle on a security camera in front of guards, showing probable cause when he purportedly ends up trying to kill Tupac and Knight, but miraculously misses the 300+ pound Suge Knight in the path of the bullets.[19]
Kading said this in his book Murder Rap and to civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who reported that Kading’s information lacked supporting evidence and was unreliable.[20]
A gunman murdered Anderson in 1998, and Russell Poole found evidence supporting Kevin Hackie’s assertion that Death Row security director Reggie Wright, Jr., carried out that murder as Wright owned the same champagne-colored Chevy Blazer observed at the scene of that murder.[21]
Detective Poole had also found much evidence that his fellow police officers in Death Row Records were trafficking drugs and guns.[22]
Suge Knight and others in Death Row further tried to re-start the Bloods versus Crips gang war in Los Angeles at various times, including doing so successfully after Tupac’s shooting, until activists quelled the murderous conflict again by countering Knight’s assertions that the Crips killed Tupac.[23]
Did LAPD Murder an Ex-LA Police Detective Who Concluded They Killed Tupac?
In 1997, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Russell Poole asked to be assigned to top rapper Biggie Smalls’ murder investigation.[24]
Mainstream media had suggested that Biggie Smalls, Tupac’s former friend, and Biggie’s producer Sean “Puff Daddy” (also “Puffy” and “P-Diddy”) Combs had been in a murderous rap rivalry with Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight.[25]
In the 1960s, the FBI’s COINTELPRO documents discussed mainstream media pushing similar “manufactured murderous rivalries” regarding Black Panther leaders, including the “East Coast versus West Coast” conflict between the New York Black Panther-leading Shakurs and National Black Panther leader Huey Newton in Oakland, California.[26]
During the Biggie Smalls murder investigation, LAPD Detective Poole found dozens of his fellow police officers involved with Death Row Records, whom his superiors referred to as “covert agents.”[27]
Poole ended up telling award-winning documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield that he believed these officers killed Biggie Smalls to cover up their murder of Tupac Shakur.[28]
Police superiors threatened Poole for stating these findings and he resigned to get his information to the media. About a decade after Poole started his investigation, powerful forces assigned Detective Greg Kading to “re-investigate” Tupac’s murder.[29]
Poole said that Kading was brought in after leaving “the LAPD in disgrace for his false testimony on a federal murder and racketeering case… Kading never attempted to interview me.”[30]
Russell Poole kept investigating the case and wrote a book with Michael Carlin before he died.[31]
Michael Carlin stated in an affidavit that, when the 58-year-old Poole set up a meeting with the LA County Sheriff to give new evidence, Reggie Wright, Jr., boasted about being present at that meeting, and that Poole was murdered there.[32]
Carlin also stated that several police choked Poole unconscious and murdered him with a defibrillator. Mainstream media restated police reports of Poole having a coincidental heart attack in their office.[33]
Cover-up of Tupac’s Murdered Comrades and Rap Murders En Masse
The arrest of Duane “Keefe D” Davis and his upcoming trial mark the most recent episode in the nearly three decades of cover-up of Tupac Shakur’s murder.
Evidence supports that U.S. intelligence also murdered Tupac’s back-up rapper, Yafeu Fula (Yaki Kadafi), the main witness to Tupac’s murder and the son of Bronx Black Panther leader Sekou Odinga and Panther Yaasmyn Fula.[34]
At the same time as Tupac’s murder, his close comrade and bodyguard Yakhisizwe Tyehimba, son of Tupac’s mentor, Black Panther Watani Tyehimba, turned up dead.[35]
Filmmaker Broomfield had said in his 2002 filmBiggie & Tupac that a bipartisan Senate subcommittee was formed in 1993 out of concern over rap’s alleged subversive elements. He also said that the FBI was spying on rappers that year.[36]
Furthermore, in 2004, the Miami Heraldrevealed that, by the summer of 2001, a New York police unit trained the Miami police, the Los Angeles police and other major cities’ police departments to focus on rappers. Two rappers were murdered in Miami soon after that police training.[37]
Journalist Dasun Allah interviewed New York Police Department rap unit whistleblower Derrick Parker and stated that Parker was trained in the FBI’s COINTELPRO tactics.[38]
Police foul play continued regarding a massive number of other rappers who started turning to activism, including the late Run DMC DJ “Jam Master” Jay Mizell, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, the late Wu-Tang Clan frontman Russell “ODB” Jones, the late Earl “DMX” Simmons, and the late Ermias “Nipsey Hussle” Asghedom, Dead Prez and The Coup. A number of these rappers were on the New York police rap unit intelligence list.[39]
While there are various lists of murdered rappers, one includes a very conservative listing of 58 rappers murdered starting in December 1993, after the Senate hearing on rappers.[40]
A more expansive list of rappers who were fatally shot includes 211 murdered just between January 2020 and the end of November 2022.[41]
As people around the world paid tribute to Tupac—from a statue in Germany to murals and t-shirt wearing freedom fighters in Africa—it is hoped that Tupac will inspire widespread anti-imperialist struggle despite the continuation of this pro-imperialist cover-up.[42]
Well, that’s pretty much it for 2023 … which I’m officially dubbing The Year of The Mindfuck.
I’m doing that against the advice of my attorney, who is (a) trying to keep me out of German prison for as long as possible, and (b) trying to stop me from gratuitously alienating whatever remains of my former readership and going totally broke.
I’m not making that particularly easy for him.
The thing is, no one wants to hear that they have been mindfucked. People want to hear that other people have been mindfucked. Which … they have. Other people have been thoroughly mindfucked. But that doesn’t mean that other people — i.e., the people who want to hear that other people have been mindfucked, but not that they, themselves, have been mindfucked — haven’t also been mindfucked, which is what I’ve been mostly writing about in 2023, which, as Matt Taibbi put it in a blurb for one of my books, “probably this is not a profitable life choice.”
So it goes in the political satire racket. Sometimes you are hailed as a “prophet,” other times you’re scorned as a “dissension-sowing asshole,” censored into Internet oblivion by beloved billionaire free-speech defenders, and prosecuted for trumped-up “hate crimes.” It depends which way the wind is blowing.
It hasn’t been blowing my way this year.
On top of which, I’ve been pissing into it, the wind, at more or less every opportunity. I know it’s dumb, but I can’t seem to stop. Something about watching people being mindfucked over and over again “triggers” me, or punches my buttons, or something.
But enough about me … let’s get to the mindfucking. Due to the voluminosity of it, I won’t be able to review it all in detail but I’ll try to cover most of the mindfucking highlights.
Ready? OK, here we go.
The mindfucking started in January with the birth of the Musk Cult and the whitewashing of Twitter, and the trickle of “revelations” about “mistakes that were made” during the “Covid pandemic.” The Powers That Be needed to memory-hole the story of what actually happened (and didn’t actually happen) in 2020-2022 and enshrine the official Covid narrative in history. To achieve this they needed to mindfuck some people, not the Covidian cultists who they had already mindfucked, the other people, who they hadn’t been able to mindfuck. It was obvious that we were about to be subjected to The Mother of All Limited Hangouts.
If your memory of what actually happened (and didn’t actually happen) in 2020 is little hazy, here’s an excerpt from that column, which I published in January.
“In March and April of 2020, in the course of roughly five to six weeks, the majority of societies throughout the world were transformed into pathologized-totalitarian police states. A global ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign was conducted. Constitutional rights were suspended. The masses were locked down inside their homes, where they were subjected to the most massive official propaganda blitzkrieg in human history. Goon squads roamed the streets of Europe, the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, Asia, the Americas, and elsewhere, beating and arresting people for being outdoors without permission and not wearing medical-looking masks. Corporate media around the world informed us that life as we knew it was over … a ‘New Normal’ was coming, and we needed to get used to it. The entire official pandemic narrative was rolled out during those first few weeks. Everything. Masks. Mandatory ‘vaccines.’ ‘Vaccination passports.’ The segregation of ‘the Unvaccinated.’ The censorship and demonization of dissent. Everything. The whole ‘New Normal’ package. It was rolled out all at once, globally.”
Now, over three years later, the facts are indisputably clear to everyone but the hopelessly brainwashed. There was no global epidemiological emergency … no legitimate justification whatsoever for that initial “shock-and-awe” campaign, or the totalitarian “New Normal” it ushered into being.
However, by January of 2023, that wasn’t a problem for The Powers That Be, as most of the masses had been hopelessly brainwashed, and they would break down and start spastically gibbering at you like frightened hyenas if you confronted them with facts.
No, the problem for The Powers That Be was us, i.e., those of us who had never bought the PSYOP. By the end of 2022, we comprised what you call a sizable minority … a problematic, pissed-off, sizable minority. So we needed to be promptly and extensively mindfucked. We needed to be managed, decoyed, distracted, buried in minutiae, partial revelations, limited hangouts, official inquiries, and so on. Above all, we needed to be made to feel like we were getting revenge on The Powers That Be. And we needed to be made to feel this way without actually endangering The Powers That Be, or inconveniencing them in any significant way.
Enter Elon Musk & Co.
Yes, that’s right, Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire military contractor! At last, a savior had arrived to deliver us from the Cabal of Wokeness, and Cultural Marxism, and Globalistism! Vanquished were evil Wokian censors and shadowbanners of the “old bad” Twitter! It was Morning in America Again!
An Elon’s-ass-kissing contest ensued. Internet hucksters, social media influencers, and all manner of money-worshiping toadies competed against each other to get their lips on the Muskian anal orifice! This salacious spectacle went on for months …
Meanwhile, the sleight-of-hand artists got to work, distracting folks with groundbreaking stories like how the Pfizer Corporation had engineered THE MUTANT COMMUNIST VIRUS BIOWEAPON that had caused the pandemic that never happened and triggered THE MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS that prompted The Powers That Be to go bonkers and launch the PSYOP that the sleight-of-hand artists were memory-holing right before our eyes …
… or something more or less along those lines.
And then, right on cue, came the Twitter Files story! Do you recall, way back in 2008, when Obama took office, admitted that we had “tortured some folks” in Iraq, and so on, and then decided against prosecuting Bush and his crew for launching a textbook war of aggression, murdering hundreds of thousands of people, and destabilizing and restructuring the Middle East, based on a lie about WMDs? Do you recall all the limited hangouts back then? The Abu Ghraib scandal?The mea culpas? Is your memory of all that a little “hazy”? Imagine what people’s memories of “Russiagate” and “Covid” will be like in twenty years.
People’s memories don’t get hazy just by accident. If they did, The Powers That Be wouldn’t need to distract us, redirect our attention, and otherwise relentlessly mindfuck us. Which is how Class-A limited hangouts work. You feed people a juicy part of the story, so they forget about the rest of the story. You redirect their attention away from the globally-coordinated simulation of “a worldwide epidemiological emergency” and the roll-out of new totalitarian “health measures” — “health measures” that become permanent features of society, like the post-9/11 “security measures” did — with a story about US “Red/Blue” politics, government overreach, “woke” bad apples, and the so-called “Censorship Industrial Complex.”
I don’t mean to denigrate the Twitter Files story. I really don’t, and I have made that clear to Matt and other Twitter Files journalists. Had I been in their positions, I would have done the same thing. I would have gladly taken whatever Musk gave me and reported on it, exactly as they did. And, no, the Twitter Files story is not at all a “nothingburger.” It is one of the most important stories about censorship in the 21st Century so far, despite the fact that it is also a limited hangout … like Abu Ghraib and most of those other “Iraq-post-mortem” stories were.
In real life — as opposed to the Hollywood version, or the social-media version, where people are conditioned to see everything in black-and-white terms and judge everyone as “good” or “bad,” as “truth-telling heroes” or “controlled opposition” — historical events have different aspects, and sometimes even contradictory aspects. One aspect doesn’t cancel out the others.
Some people absolutely hate it when I say this, but the kind of mindfucking I’ve been writing about is not intentionally perpetrated by “bad guys.” In fact, most of it is perpetrated by “the good guys.” In other words, yes, of course the Twitter Files are a limited hangout and part of the mindfuck, but the Twitter Files journalists are not the mindfuckers. And Elon Musk is not Mindfucker-in-Chief. The kind of mindfucking I’m talking about is not a conspiracy; it’s built into the system. It’s how the system protects itself.
Ideological systems are not just sets of interconnected components and procedures. They are organic entities, self-sustaining organisms, with survival programming, just like you and me. They react when threatened, like any other organism, like our bodies react to mutating cells, invasive pathogens, and other internal threats. They perceive (or register) these threats, and take defensive action against them. The more totalitarian the ideological system is, the more aggressive its reaction to internal threats will be.
In our global-capitalist ideological system, mindfucking is one of the primary means of dealing with internal threats. Global capitalism cannot afford to do the Orwellian boot-stomping-your-face thing, not for extended periods, anyway. It needs to maintain a simulation of “freedom,” and some semblance of “the rule of law,” so consumers will continue shopping, and not … you know, launch an armed rebellion.
Yes, you read that last part right. If you thought I think I am immune to the mindfuckery … I don’t. I’m not. I get mindfucked too. For example, I got mindfucked into travelling to London and taking part in The Michael Shellenberger Show in June, and wasting months afterward helping to draft and gather VIP-signatories for the “Westminster Declaration,” which turned out to be the weakest popcorn fart in the history of popcorn farts.
While Israel is causing starvation in Gaza, Israeli soldiers are cheerfully filming themselves destroying food, looting, and vandalizing Palestinian property.
Defence for Children Palestine | December 18, 2023
Dunia A., 12, and her family were struck by an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. Dunia’s family was killed and she lost her leg.
While she was recovering in Naser Hospital in Khan Younis, an Israeli tank-fired shell hit the hospital and killed Dunia. This video was filmed on November 25 during a seven-day truce between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups and Dunia was killed on December 17, 2023.
Systematic review and meta-analysis shouldn’t just be a reflection of power — who can fund the most randomized controlled trials, who can perform the most statistical wizardry. They should be about gathering the most high-quality information to create the most comprehensive picture of any problem and any proposed remedy.
[…]
I. How systematic review and meta-analysis are supposed to work
Imagine a world where scientists, doctors, government regulators and the general public actually cared about high-quality data. We all know that such a world does not exist.
But just as a thought experiment, let’s imagine that everyone involved in science and medicine really wanted high-quality data to make appropriate medical decisions to improve health.
Even with the best of intentions, it’s pretty difficult to draw accurate conclusions about any medical intervention. Every human is different so there is enormous variability in any group of people that is studied. Any chemical or biological intervention will have a range of effects.
Other factors — the weather, what someone had for breakfast, existing chemicals in one’s system, hormonal cycles, etc. can influence research outcomes. There are always errors in administration, note-taking, reporting, etc. in any clinical trial.
To overcome some of these problems, large data sets are sought. The larger the data set the better because that enables various small natural variations to cancel each other out so that one can look for the larger signals about safety and efficacy.
Because humans are always biased, double-blind randomized controlled trials are used so that the investigators themselves do not know who has received the medical intervention.
However, large, well-conducted, double-blind randomized controlled trials are very expensive. One way to overcome the problem of small sample sizes is to group lots of different clinical trials together in a systematic review or meta-analysis.
In a systematic review, one formulates a research question, identifies the keywords or phrases associated with that question and then engages in a search of high-quality medical databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, etc.) to identify every study related to that question over a certain time period (e.g. the last ten years or the last twenty years).
Then one reads through the studies to identify any that are contaminated by bias or low-quality methods and those are thrown out. Then one summarizes the remaining high-quality studies to see if the results agree with each other and to identify areas of disagreement.
In a meta-analysis, one follows the same initial steps as a systematic review (formulate a research question, identify keywords, find every relevant study, read them and throw out any low-quality studies).
Then one obtains the data from all of these studies (it’s often available online or one can write to the researchers to request it) and pools that data to create one massive data set. Finally, one runs the analysis (about safety or efficacy) on that new larger sample.
This problem of how to obtain reliable, reproducible, medical results is so enormous that an entire field has developed called evidence-based medicine to help clinicians sort through the available data.
[…]
II. The reality
How does one decide which studies to include and which studies to exclude?
It is standard practice to exclude from a systematic review or meta-analysis any study that is not a double-blind randomized controlled trial.
However, we know that pharmaceutical companies using contract research organizations have figured out how to game randomized controlled trials (RCT) to create their preferred results.
[…]
Contract research organizations select healthy young people with no underlying conditions to decrease the possibility of side effects, use a long ramp-up period and kick people out of the study who show any initial side effects, kick people out of the study for going to the emergency room (for violating the trial protocol) and other gimmicks to give pharmaceutical companies favorable results every time.
Common sense would suggest excluding any study contaminated by a conflict of interest. Indeed there is a whole field of research into the “funding effect.”
As the name suggests, these studies focus on how financial conflicts of interest influence research outcomes. These studies universally find that ANY financial conflict of interest no matter how small — literally a single slice of pizza — changes research outcomes in the direction of the funder.
So the presence of any financial conflict of interest means that the results will not accurately reflect the underlying reality. Of all the findings in modern science, the funding effect is the largest, most reliable and most reproducible.
[…]
So a proper systematic review or meta-analysis will only use RCTs, but even RCTs are often manipulated by Pharma, and studies with any financial conflict of interest no matter how small should be excluded.
III. It is impossible to do a proper systematic review or meta-analysis of the mainstream vaccine literature
A. The censorship is extreme
Professors self-censor in universities so that they don’t lose their jobs. Literally, they will not conduct a study that could possibly show harm from vaccines because they do not want to be blacklisted.
Scientific journals block the publication of any study that shows harm from vaccines. It won’t even make it to peer review. It’ll just be rejected outright.
Databases including Google and Google Scholar block access to critical studies. So it’s as if those studies never existed.
B. There are no mainstream RCTs
The vaccine industry claims that because vaccines are “Safe & Effective™️” it would be unethical to have an unvaccinated control group.
This is an example of the “circular reasoning fallacy” — an argument that assumes the very thing it is trying to prove is true. But thus far they’ve gotten away with it and they simply do not conduct RCTs of vaccines (as proved by the Informed Consent Action Network [ICAN]).
C. All mainstream studies of vaccine safety and efficacy are contaminated by financial conflicts of interest
The studies are either conducted directly by pharmaceutical companies (via contract research organizations) or by scholars who are taking money from pharmaceutical companies.
If one wants to engage in proper evidence-based medicine one has to admit that the current evidence generally relied upon to make vaccination decisions is scientifically meaningless.
The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act formally outlines a process whereby Congress can demand an investigation from the United States State Department into human rights abuses from nations that receive our taxpayer-funded security aid.
Senator Bernie Sanders has officially introduced a resolution that would invoke that act, in response to the tens of thousands of dead men, women, and children in Gaza as a result of an indiscriminate Israeli military operation and bombing campaign. The resolution is “privileged,” meaning that Senator Sanders can force his Senate colleagues to hold the vote.
Israel, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has come full circle with its invasion of that territory in response to the atrocities perpetrated by the Hamas militants.
But, just as the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust from power a terrorist militia whose rise it had facilitated via its Pakistani intelligence connections for Afghanistan’s stability sake, Israel is tasting the bitter fruits of a divide-and-rule policy that helped midwife the birth of the Hamas “Frankenstein monster” that it is now seeking to subdue.
Treating the Hamas slaughter of innocent civilians as a kind of Pearl Harbor moment, Israel has vowed to “wipe out” the Gaza-based militia group through a military offensive that is one of the most intense of the 21st century, according to the New York Times. The terrorism-glorifying ideology of Hamas, however, cannot be crushed by military means alone, raising the question whether Israeli forces could get bogged down in Gaza the way America’s Afghanistan invasion turned into a costly quagmire.
The international focus on the war in Gaza has helped obscure the fact that Israel in the 1980s aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel’s policy was clearly influenced by the U.S. training and arming of mujahideen (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
The multibillion-dollar American program from 1980 to create anti-Soviet jihadis represented what still remains the largest covert operation in the Central Intelligence Agency’s history. In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several mujahideen, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”
Out of the mujahideen evolved the Taliban and al-Qaida. As then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly admitted in 2010, “We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden … And it didn’t work out so well for us.”
Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, with Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists. Hamas, a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was formally established with Israel’s support soon after the first Intifada flared in 1987 as an uprising against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
Israel’s objective was twofold: to split the nationalist Palestinian movement led by Arafat and, more fundamentally, to thwart the implementation of the two-state solution for resolving the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By aiding the rise of an Islamist group whose charter rejected recognizing the Israeli state, Israel sought to undermine the idea of a two-state solution, including curbing Western support for an independent Palestinian homeland.
Israel’s spy agency Mossad played a role in this divide-and-rule game in the occupied territories. In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”
To be sure, some others, including the U.S. intelligence establishment, have not endorsed the Israeli connection to the rise of Hamas, portraying it simply as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
About seven years before U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in a helicopter assault on his hideout near Pakistan’s capital, an Israeli missile strike in 2004 assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic and partially blind cleric. By drawing specious distinctions between “good” and “bad” terrorists, Israel and the U.S., however, continued to maintain ties with jihadis.
While Barack Obama was in the White House, the U.S. and its allies toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, creating a still-lawless jihadi citadel at Europe’s southern doorstep. They then moved to overthrow another secular dictator, Syria’s Bashar Assad, fueling a civil war that helped enabled the rise of the Islamic State, a brutal and medieval militia, some of whose foot soldiers were CIA-trained. And apparently shocked by the brutality of some of those U.S.-backed militants, and amid questions over the effectiveness of the policy, then-American President Donald Trump in 2017 is reported to have decided to shut down the covert Syrian regime-change program.
Israel, by contrast, persisted with its covert nexus with Hamas. With the consent of Israel, Qatar, a longtime sponsor of jihadi groups, funneled $1.8 billion to Hamas just between 2012 and 2021, according to the Haaretz newspaper.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power for much of the past decade and a half, told a meeting of his Likud Party’s Knesset members in 2019 that, “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” adding, “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Israel, like the U.S., may have been guided by the proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, as history attests, “the enemy of my enemy,” far from being a friend, has often openly turned into a foe.
America’s longest war ended with the Taliban’s return to power. The reconstitution of a medieval, ultraconservative, jihad-extolling emirate in Afghanistan has no direct bearing on a distant America. But Israel’s war against the monster it helped spawn will greatly shape Israeli security.
Forced mobilisation in Ukraine will continue, said the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, Kyrylo Budanov, on December 17. His statement came only days after it was announced that women would begin being conscripted, showing the chronic shortage in manpower the Ukrainian military is experiencing as Russian forces are methodically destroying it.
“As of today, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have over a million soldiers. Without mobilisation, no recruitment will meet these needs,” said Budanov at the discussion panel of 2024: Challenges and Perspectives. Budanov explained that the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not have enough personnel, warning that the number of soldiers in the army must be maintained despite continued losses.
The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate admitted that “everyone who wanted” joined the Army within the first six months of the war, but now Ukrainians are not motivated to serve and are trying in every way to avoid mobilisation.
“The majority of our people, although everyone shouts ‘I am Ukrainian, Ukraine is above all,’ never felt like citizens of Ukraine,” he complained.
In Ukraine, a martial law regime and a decree on general mobilisation have been in force since February 2022. Men aged between 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, and evasion from military service is punishable by criminal liability with a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Due to major losses since the launch of the failed counteroffensive, Ukrainian authorities have resorted to a new method to recruit, such as raiding public places, which has intensified in recent months. Ukrainian Security Service officers went to restaurants in Kiev and Krivoy Rog and handed out summonses. Previously, raids on gyms in Odessa were reported.
Employees of the military recruiting office and representatives of the Airborne Forces “are carrying out a series of activities to inform citizens about the advantages of military service under contract,” announced the press service of the Centre Territorial Recruitment of Lviv.
In the greatest demonstration of the chronic manpower shortage the Ukrainian military is experiencing, it was announced on December 14 that Ukraine could begin mobilising women, presumably for service, in the rear units of the Ukrainian Army.
Maryana Bezuhla, member of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine, declared that the recruitment age for mobilisation would be lowered from 27 to 25 years. According to her, the draft law on mobilisation abolishes compulsory military service in the army and introduces basic general military training for all citizens between 18 and 25 years old.
“The bill contains changes aimed at achieving gender equality in Army matters. Women will continue to have a single postponement, pregnancy. If she is pregnant, they do not have the right to mobilise her,” said Bezuhla.
At the end of August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered a complete review of all mobilisation exemptions granted by military medical commissions as of February 24, 2022. Zelensky also fired the heads of regional recruitment commissions amid corruption allegations.
According to a report cited by a Western analysis based on Eurostat data, 650,000 men of military age have fled Ukraine, thus further weakening the recruitment pool.
Full mobilisation in Ukraine, the supply of Western weapons and the introduction of reserves have not only failed to change the situation on the battlefield but have also increased the number of casualties among Ukrainian troops. In early June 2023, Ukraine launched its much-hyped counteroffensive and sent NATO-trained brigades into battle and armed with Western materiel, including Leopard and Challenger tanks. However, just three months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Kiev’s attempt failed and that Ukraine suffered huge casualties, whilst the Russian Defence Ministry estimated the cost of the counteroffensive for Ukraine to be more than 125,000 soldiers and some 16,000 pieces of weapons.
It is recalled that The Washington Post wrote on December 8 that Ukraine is rapidly running out of professional military personnel. An increasing number of men of fighting age are dying in Kiev’s failed counteroffensive, abandoning active service, or evading the draft. No one wants to suffer a pointless death on a suicide mission, the article noted.
Morale across Ukrainian society is at an all-time low as the intense propaganda can no longer hide the realities that Ukraine faces – a destroyed country, more loss of territory, and an entire generation traumatised by war. Under such conditions, it can be seen why the Kiev regime is resorting to forcibly conscripting women. As Budanov attests, there are no more troops without forced mobilisation.
Armed men stand on the beach as the Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen’s Houthis last month, is anchored off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen, on December 5, 2023 [Khaled Abdullah/Reuters]
Energy markets are beginning to take notice of non-stop assaults on Israeli-linked shipping.
Hijackings, missile strikes and drone assaults on ships by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have forced AP Moller-Maersk, a Danish shipping and logistics giant, and Hapag-Lloyd, a German shipping and container transportation company, to pause shipments through the Red Sea.
Their decisions, announced on Friday, are a sign that major corporations are taking the security situation in the Red Sea increasingly seriously. But the consequences might also be felt by the world’s oil markets and the cost of energy that consumers need to bear – though the extent of any disruption might depend on how major global players respond to the looming crisis, said experts.
Maersk said in a statement that its decision stemmed from the company’s concerns about the “highly escalated security situation in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden” over the past few weeks. Recent missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels represent a “significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers,” it said.
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd together operate almost a quarter of the world’s shipping fleet.
The growing insecurity in the Red Sea is a result of Israel’s war on Gaza which began on October 7. Since Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian enclave began 10 weeks ago, the Houthis have attacked at least eight ships in the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait separating Eritrea and Djibouti on one side from the Arabian Peninsula on the other.
Only 29km (18 miles) wide at its narrowest point, the Bab el-Mandeb is a vital route for international trade –10 percent of the world’s seaborne crude flows through this strait – meaning any disruptions become a global problem.
The Houthis have been targeting vessels which are at least partly owned by Israelis or by anyone shipping cargo to Israel via the Red Sea. In November, the group said it had taken over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, which it claimed was Israeli owned. But Israel described it as a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo vessel with no Israeli nationals on board. That ship was headed for India.
The rebels, who have been in control of large parts of Yemen since 2014, have promised to continue carrying out such attacks until a full ceasefire is implemented in Gaza. This is part of a strategy aimed at raising the costs for the US and others of supporting Israel in various ways.
Such hostilities also serve to demonstrate that the Houthis are a force with staying power in Yemen and an increasingly bold and determined part of the so-called “axis of resistance”. This also includes Hamas in Gaza, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Syrian government and various Syrian and Iraqi non-state actors backed by Tehran.
Oil market ‘taking more notice’
There is little to suggest that the Houthi attacks will stop any time soon. What does that mean for the oil market?
Colby Connelly, a senior analyst at Energy Intelligence, a Washington-based energy information company, told Al Jazeera that there has been a “fairly limited” but “not intangible” impact of these attacks on the oil market.
“As these attacks have gone on, markets have taken more and more notice, so crude prices did end the week higher than they’ve been for the last couple of days or so, especially as these attacks don’t look like they’re going to stop until there’s a stronger effort to actually stop them,” he commented.
As tensions heighten, it is difficult to tell where this crisis in the Red Sea is headed. “If the Bab el-Mandeb is constrained to oil traffic due to tensions in the region there is a good chance the price of oil to some places will go up due to a crisis and war premium on insurance and the products themselves,” said Paul Sullivan, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
“Given the present circumstance, this is doubtful, but in the increased tensions in the region just about anything is possible. If it gets bad enough that all sorts of cargoes will be redirected around Africa, this could reconfigure many cargo contracts, including of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG). And prices will have upward pressures. The softening of overall oil prices may mitigate that, but not for long,” added Sullivan.
No discernible pattern to attacks
One of the factors which makes this situation challenging is that the Houthi missile and drone attacks do not necessarily follow a discernible pattern.
“The Houthis are acting in a way that makes it more difficult to determine what they’re going to do next as they do more,” said Connelly.
If the Houthis were to try to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it “would have a massive impact” because of the risks in shipping insurance, the costs of alternative routes and the potential for supply disruption, among other factors, said Connelly. “But I don’t think that’s something they have the capability to do and something like that would be certain to draw a very stern response, very quickly.”
Indeed, the Houthis’ disruptive actions in the Red Sea have much potential to result in significantly greater pressure on them from players such as China, India, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Iran and Western powers.
“Because of the negative impacts on its economy, China is against any interruption to global trade, especially in routes as strategic as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal. Hence, China and Iran — at China’s request — may pressure the Houthis to reduce their hostile activities in the Red Sea,” Amin Mohseni, a senior lecturer in economics at American University, told Al Jazeera.
“It is important to note that the US, the UK, China, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Saudi Arabia and Japan already have military bases of some sort in Djibouti, limiting the Houthis’ hostile activities in the Red Sea in the long run. Russia and India are also keen on setting up their own military bases in the Red Sea,” he added.
Could China, India step in?
Sullivan said he also believes that some of these global players could step up their presence in this part of the world in order to ensure that shipping is not interrupted by any actors in Yemen. “I would not be surprised to see China and possibly even India send more assets to the region to protect their oil. NATO could beef up task forces that could focus on freedom and security of navigation. The US will get more involved as the tensions ratchet up,” Sullivan said.
Nonetheless, as Israel’s war on Gaza rages on with the Palestinian death toll having reached more than 18,700, the Houthis will likely stick fast to their desire to influence the conflict as much as possible.
Continued carnage in Gaza will likely guarantee that the Red Sea will continue facing heightened threats, requiring the shipping industry and the world at large to prepare for new economic risks.
A booking photo of Duane “Keefe D” Davis is shown on a monitor. A Nevada grand jury indicted Davis on one count of murder with a deadly weapon in the fatal drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur. [Source: 
