Jonathon Cook

thefreeonline

There’s only one plausible explanation for continuing silence on excess deaths: governments, media and regulators are frightened of what the research may uncover

During the pandemic, the challenge for each of us was to maintain critical distance: spurning both the tribalism of those insisting Covid was a hoax and the counter-tribalism of those who demanded complete acquiesence to a corporate-political agenda dictated by Big Pharma under the mantle of “Follow the science”.

Fear of living under Big Brother or of dying from plague drove many people not only into the arms of one of these two oppositional camps but fuelled a pandemic mania in which reason and compassion were replaced with either extreme cynicism or extreme compliance.

We are still living with the consequences.

There has been a spate of “excess deaths” over the past two years across the West – well above what would normally be expected – and yet this sustained trend is being universally ignored by governments, establishment media and medical bodies.

No one is protesting. The cult of compliance is still in the ascendant.

More on that in a moment.

But it is worth first revisiting briefly the climate of intolerance and willed ignorance that predominated at the height of the pandemic, as I documented in real time in a series of essays that upset more of my readers than any I had written before.

It was always unwarranted to press for vaccine mandates, if only because they violated the critically important principle of bodily autonomy.

But the demand became completely unhinged once it was clear – as it was much earlier than publicly let on by Big Pharma, the World Health Organisation and national regulators – that the vaccines were doing little to halt virus transmission.

Similarly, it was always unethical to insist that children should be routinely given the vaccine and boosters when it was evident that the virus posed no threat to the overwhelming majority of them – and all the more so given that the mRNA vaccines were based on a new technology whose development had been rushed through on an emergency licence.

By definition, no one could know the long-term effects of mRNA vaccines on humans because there had been no long-term studies.

The science was built on a wing and a prayer, which is part of the reason the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations, demurred for so long, and despite huge political pressure, on recommending vaccination for children.

And it was always deeply irresponsible to refuse to consider, or even study, other treatments that might have had an impact on the virus.

Medical authorities ignored or warned the public off potential prophylactics and immunity-boosting treatments and behaviours – even when those interventions could have complemented the role of the vaccines, rather than serving as an alternative to them.

Nothing could be allowed to dilute the public’s exclusive reliance on vaccinations.

One prize example was Vitamin D, the sunshine hormone that, uniquely, every cell in the human body has a receptor for.

Most people in the West are deficient in Vitamin D, many of them severely so, and doctors still have little understanding of what the consequences of that deficiency – beyond osteoporosis – might be.

Even before Covid, there were many studies suggesting that Vitamin D was critical to improving the health of our immune systems, including by warding off and aiding recovery from coronaviruses.

That evidence has only grown stronger subsequently.

But definitive proof has been lacking because full-scale controlled studies are extraordinarily expensive and only Big Pharma has deep enough pockets to fund such studies (given that our captured governments refuse to dig deep themselves).

But Big Pharma has no interest in proving a cheap hormone like Vitamin D – one it cannot patent or profit from – which might offer the public health benefits not only in relation to Covid but for a wide range of chronic health conditions.

The fact that most medical regulators and media commentators continue to prefer to shut down debate about the potential benefits of Vitamin D rather than demand that governments fund research to confirm or refute the growing body of evidence for such benefits should be a scandal. But, predictably, it isn’t.

Blanket silence

I set this out as a preface to this latest scandal on excess deaths, one that – like so much else related to the pandemic and its aftermath – continues to elicit a blanket silence from the establishment media, politicians and, of course, our medical authorities.

The consistent and markedly elevated death rates each month across most of the Western world are not due to Covid and are far above the seasonal five-year average before the pandemic.

Such deaths have been significantly raised since late 2020 or mid-2021.

That is all the more surprising because, after early waves of Covid killed off those who were already sick and vulnerable, the expectation was that excess deaths would fall, not rise. That anomaly needs explaining – scientifically.

The video below sets out the latest figures for excess deaths, using Office for National Statistics and European Statistical data. (Links to the graphs presented by Dr John Campbell are in the notes immediately below the video.)

Despite the backlash inevitably provoked by asking critical questions, I want to examine this development because it highlights something important about the way of our supposedly democratic governments, and the regulatory and adversarial institutions meant to hold them in check, have been hollowed out.

We imagine we live in societies where scientific reason and compassion guide our response to a medical crisis. The reality is different. In our societies, one thing rules: money.

The issue of excess deaths is only one of many problems – though probably the most serious – that have emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Unless you have made an extraordinary effort to do your own research and managed to evade the internet censors and their algorithms, you will most likely not know about these developments.

Neither politicians nor establishment media have publicised them.

Instead troubling data is buried away in obscure, peer-reviewed scientific journals, or has to be squeezed out of government authorities through freedom of information requests – and even then the information is often heavily redacted.

[…]

Dr Campbell, whose Youtube channel became an invaluable internet resource during the pandemic and since (at least for those trying to sift the wheat from the chaff), has done sterling work shedding light on many of those problems.Some notable videos have covered:

• the mishandling and lack of oversight of Pfizer’s research into its vaccine;
• the astounding admission that Pfizer never actually tested whether its vaccine stopped transmission;
• continuing efforts to obscure evidence demonstrating that natural infection confers superior immunity to the vaccine;
• the troubling discovery that mRNA can remain in the blood for at least a month after vaccination, with no understanding of what it might be doing in that time to our immune systems;
• high variation in adverse reactions caused by different batches of mRNA vaccine, with some off the scale;
• the involvement of US researchers and Pfizer in engineering Frankenstein’s monster-type coronaviruses of the very kind that, it increasingly seems, led to the Covid pandemic in the first place;
• new research demonstrating the lack of evidence for reduction in virus transmission from masking;
• the failure of policymakers to weigh the serious financial, social and possibly medical costs of lockdowns;
• and a causal connection, confirmed by the WHO, between vaccination and the development of autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis.

There is doubtless much worse, but we cannot learn of it – at least from qualified sources – because any effort to discuss it publicly will almost certainly result in banning by the corporations that run social media, our modern town squares.

[…]

Via https://thefreeonline.com/2023/07/20/around-the-world-people-are-dying-in-much-greater-numbers-nobody-wants-us-to-learn-why/

Kit Klarenberg

The Grayzone

Newly declassified British Foreign Office files have added disturbing details to the history of Operation Gladio. The covert operation was uncovered in 1990, when the public learned that the CIA, MI6 and NATO trained and directed an underground army of fascist paramilitary units across Europe, deploying its assets to undermine political opponents, including through false flag terror attacks.

Among them was a young Silvio Berlusconi, the media oligarch who served as Italian Prime Minister in four separate governments between 1994 and 2011. Listed as a member of the P2, the secret Cold War-era cabal of political elites devoted to Gladio’s aims, Berlusconi undoubtedly took some weighty secrets to the grave when he died this June 12th.

It is almost impossible to believe that inconvenient truths were not weeded from Britain’s documentary record on Operation Gladio prior to declassification. Nonetheless, the recently released material is highly illuminating. Covering a fraught twelve month period after the first public disclosure of Gladio’s existence, the papers illustrate how London’s foreign intelligence apparatus kept a keen eye on the continent as events unfolded.

The papers not only shed fresh light on the conspiracy, they underline Gladio’s relevance as British intelligence joins its America counterparts in contemporary plots involving secret partisan forces from Syria to Ukraine.

Various passages dotted across the tranche strongly suggest the British knew much more than they publicly admitted about egregious criminal deeds, including the attempted overthrow of an allied Italian government and the kidnap and murder of its leader.

A ‘clandestine resistance network’ goes to work

Gladio consisted of a constellation of “stay behind” anti-communist partisan armies whose ostensible mission was to fend off the Red Army in the event of Soviet invasion. In reality, these forces committed countless violent and criminal acts as part of a “strategy of tension” designed to discredit the left and justify a security state clampdown.

As Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a Gladio operative jailed for life in 1984 for a car bombing in Italy that killed three police officers and injured two, explained:

“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security…People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”

The scandal triggered in Western capitals by the exposure of Gladio dominated mainstream headlines for months. The European parliament responded by passing a resolution condemning the existence of a “clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization [which] escaped all democratic controls, may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states [and] have at their disposal independent arsenals and military resources…thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating.”

The resolution called for independent judicial and parliamentary investigations into Gladio in every European state. But aside from inquiries in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, nothing of substance materialized. What’s more, investigators heavily redacted their findings while avoiding having them translated them into English. This may help explain why the historic scandal has been largely forgotten.

In this context, the newly declassified documents may be one of the most valuable primary sources to date offering new insights into the origins and internal workings of NATO’s secret terror militias in Italy.

Take for example an aide-mémoire (see it here) prepared by Francesco Fulci, Italy’s permanent representative to the UN, which was shared at a “super-restricted” November 6th 1990 meeting of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body, then forwarded to senior British officials at home and abroad.

Based on a note provided by Rome’s then-premier Giulio Andreotti to “the Head of the Italian Parliamentary Commission investigating terrorist incidents,” the aide-mémoire begins by noting that following World War II, Western intelligence agencies devised “unconventional means of defence, by creating in their territories a hidden network of resistance aimed at operating, in case of enemy occupation, through information gathering, sabotage, propaganda and guerrilla warfare.”

According to the aide-mémoire, authorities in Rome began laying the foundations of such an organization in 1951. Four years later, Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR) and “a corresponding allied service” – a reference to the CIA – then formally agreed on the organization and the activities of a “post-occupation clandestine network”:

“[Gladio] was; formed by agents active in the territory who, by virtue of their age, sex and activities, could reasonably avoid eventual deportation and-imprisonment by the foreign occupiers; easy to manage even from a command structure outside the occupied territory; at a top secret level and hence subdivided into ‘cells’ so as to minimize any possible damage caused by defections, accidents or network penetration.”

The “clandestine resistance network” was subdivided into separate branches, covering information operations, sabotage, propaganda, radio communications, cypher, reception and evacuation of people and equipment. Each of these structures was to operate autonomously, “with liaison and coordination ensured by an external base.”

SIFAR established a dedicated, secret section to recruit and train Gladio operatives. Meanwhile, it maintained five “ready deployment guerrilla units in areas of special interest” across Italy which awaited activation on a continuous basis.

“Operational materials”, including a wide variety of explosives, weapons – such as mortars, hand grenades, guns and knives – and ammunition were stashed in 139 secret underground caches across the country. In April 1972, “to improve security,” these arsenals were exhumed, and moved to offices of the Carabinieri, Rome’s military police, near the original sites.

Only 127 of the weapons storehouses were officially recovered. The aide-mémoir states that at least two “were very likely taken away by unknown persons” at the time they were buried, in October 1964. Who these operatives were and what they did with their stolen arms is left to the imagination.

British involvement in the coup effort

Fulci was eventually quizzed by attendees of the North Atlantic Council summit “as to whether Gladio had deviated from its proper objectives.” In other words, beyond operating strictly as a “stay behind” force, to be activated in the event of Soviet invasion. While “he could not add to what was in the aide-mémoire,” Fulci confirmed “weapons used in some terrorist incidents had come from stores established by Gladio.”

This may reflect the fact that political violence was one of Gladio’s “proper objectives.” A June 1959 SIFAR report unearthed by historian Daniele Ganser confirms guerrilla action against “domestic threats” was hardwired into the operation from its inception. In the Italian context, this entailed systematically terrorizing the left.

As the Italian Communist party surged in polls ahead of the country’s 1948 election, the CIA pumped money into the coffers of the Christian Democrats and an attendant anti-communist propaganda campaign. The cloak-and-dagger effort was so successful in preventing the outbreak of a left-wing government in Rome that Langley secretly ed between these parties over what form their administration would take.

[…]

Subsequent investigations showed how Henry Kissinger helped oversee the recruitment of 400 high-ranking Italian and NATO officers as P2 operatives in 1969. The US was so grateful for Gelli’s anti-communist purge that it made him a guest of honor at the inauguration ceremonies of US Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

[…]

It was not until 1993 that the public learned how the US and British gifted munitions to Gladio operatives to foment bloody acts of terror across Italy. As Francesco Fulci told his NATO friends at the “super-restricted” meeting, Washington and London supplied the perpetrators of mass casualty attacks including the 1980 bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200.

Those responsible for these hideous crimes have eluded justice in almost every case. Several of the Bologna massacre’s chief suspects, including committed fascist and confirmed MI6 asset Robert Fiore, escaped to London. Britain refused to extradite him and his co-conspirators despite their convictions in absentia for violent crimes.

The extensive experience British intelligence obtained in Operation Gladio raises questions about the lessons the MI6 has applied to current covert operations in theaters of conflict. As The Grayzone revealed in November 2022, British military and intelligence veterans have trained and sponsored a secret partisan terror army in eastern Ukraine to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea and other majority-Russian areas. The plan called for the training of cells of ideologically dedicated Ukrainians to “shoot, move, communicate, survive.”

By Maryanne Demasi, PhD and Tom Jefferson

A recent conversation between popular podcaster Joe Rogan and presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr ignited an international discussion about placebos in clinical trials. Here, we document the difficulty in determining the details (formulation and testing) of the placebo used in a controversial cholesterol-lowering trial of Crestor (rosuvastatin) – adapted from our earlier publication in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The basis for a “placebo” controlled trial is to reliably assess the safety and efficacy of a therapeutic drug or vaccine against a placebo – they can be active or inactive placebos.

An active placebo can be used to mimic the side effects of the intervention, with no therapeutic effects on the condition being treated.  For example, atropine may be used as a placebo in antidepressant trials to mimic the symptoms of “dry mouth” often experienced after using antidepressants, with no therapeutic effect on depression. The aim is to mitigate the risk of unblinding trial participants.

More commonly, placebos are intended to be inactive or inert. Inactive placebos should ‘match’ the sensory and visual aspects of the experimental drug to maintain blinding throughout the trial. In other words, a placebo needs to be equal in shape, size, colour, texture, weight, taste, and smell.

Drug companies keep details a secret

Drug companies will often manufacture their own placebo for use in clinical trials. The technical data and analytical methods used for the placebo are detailed in the certificate of analysis (CoA), which is part of the dossier submitted to the relevant drug regulator as part of a licensing application.

Drug regulators are expected to analyse the CoA to ensure the placebo and the experimental drug are appropriately matched, to eliminate an unknown variable. However, the details relating to the contents of a placebo are often unknown to independent researchers and remains proprietary information of the drug manufacturers.  For example, the in trials of Gardasil (HPV vaccine), the manufacturer often used a placebo containing amorphous aluminium hydroxyphosphate sulfate (AAHS) – an adjuvant to enhance immune response – and has kept the formulation a proprietary secret.

In fact, the exact formulation of a placebo is rarely disclosed in the peer-reviewed publication of a clinical trial.  Further, medical journals do not require authors, nor drug manufacturers, to disclose the contents of a placebo or publish the CoA. Placebos may contain excipients such as chemicals, dyes, or allergens, which might unintentionally cause side effects, raising concerns about the reliability of trial data and the transparency of important information.

In 2017, Robert Shader, physician and editor-in-chief of Clinical Therapeutics, raised concerns when a study on people with multiple sclerosis published in the New England Journal of Medicine, injected one group of people with a monoclonal antibody (ocrelizumab) and the other group with a ‘matching’ placebo. But what was in the placebo?

“Was it saline? Was it the same vehicle in which the monoclonal antibody was dissolved?” asked Shader.

[…]

Inappropriately matching a placebo to the experimental drug or vaccine can lead to under-reporting of harms or misleading trial outcomes as well as raising ethical questions about whether patients are properly consenting to participate in trials.

Even when one of us (TJ) found evidence that an ‘active’ ingredient in the placebo of a pivotal HPV vaccine trial had been misreported as ‘inert,’ neither the authors nor the editors acted to correct the error.

Placebo in the JUPITER trial

The JUPITER trial investigated the effects of 20 mg rosuvastatin (Crestor) in ‘healthy people’ at low risk of heart disease. It was a highly controversial study because – despite major criticisms – it underpinned the decision to grant regulatory approval for rosuvastatin for the prevention of “a first cardiovascular event.”

One aspect of the JUPITER trial piqued our interest. While, muscle aches were similar in the statin and placebo groups, the reported rate of muscle aches in the placebo group (taking the ‘inert’ pill) was much higher (15.4%) than in the placebo group of other statin trials (<5%).

Therefore, we sought to obtain the CoA of the placebo pill used in the JUPITER trial, in the hope that it might explain why the ‘healthy subjects’ at low risk of heart disease in the placebo group, experienced an unusually high rate of muscle harms.

The process of obtaining the CoA for the placebo used in the trial turned out to be arduous.

The peer-reviewed publication in the New England Journal of Medicine contained no information about the contents of the placebo, nor did the study protocol, which only described it as a ‘matching’ placebo.

We then contacted the lead investigator – Paul Ridker, Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital – but he did not respond to our emails.

We made enquiries to the European Medicines Agency since it allows access to certain regulatory data. However, the agency informed us that it had not licensed any single statin (only two statin-fibrate combination products) so we turned to the individual member states of the European Union.

The Dutch drug regulator – i.e. Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) – had licensed rosuvastatin and confirmed that it held the data relating to the JUPITER trial. But after multiple emails over several months requesting access to the CoA, the regulator finally conceded that it did not have that particular document in its possession.

We also lodged a request with the Australian drug regulator – the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) – which informed us that the information we requested was “not publicly available and the TGA would not be in a position to release this information…without the permission of the sponsor (AstraZeneca Pty Ltd)”.

The TGA also stated that we could apply through a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) process, however it would not guarantee the release of any information “if the sponsor raised valid objections” or if the documents were classified as exempt under the FOI Act. The TGA suggested that we approach the drug manufacturer directly, so we did.

After multiple emails and lengthy delays, we finally obtained a response from AstraZeneca stating that we could ‘apply’ for access to the information but that we could not share the data with any third parties without restrictions.  The company stipulated in its conditions that we could not publish the CoA in the peer reviewed literature and that any analysis of the CoA by us, would have to be “pre-reviewed” by the drug company since they were owners of the information.

We refused to abide by AstraZeneca’s conditions of access. This type of oversight, whereby research needs to be vetted by drug companies or where researchers are required sign confidentiality agreements, can stifle open science.

[…]

Via https://maryannedemasi.substack.com/p/whats-in-the-placebo

By Ivan Penchoukov
Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump said that he received a letter on July 16 informing him that he is a target of the special counsel investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

Mr. Trump said the Sunday letter from special counsel Jack Smith gave him four days to report to a grand jury. In a message posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on July 18, the former president suggested that the short deadline may mean he would be arrested and indicted.

Mr. Trump called the letter “HORRIFYING NEWS for our country” and framed it with the backdrop of the two other indictments he is facing amid a heated presidential reelection campaign in which he is dominating the GOP field.

Mr. Trump was charged earlier this year in connection to payments for a non-disclosure agreement in a state case in New York. He was later charged in a federal case in Miami in connection to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

“THIS WITCH HUNT IS ALL ABOUT ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND A COMPLETE AND TOTAL POLITICAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT,” Trump wrote.

Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for a copy of the target letter. The Epoch Times has also asked Mr. Trump’s campaign to answer whether he would present himself to the grand jury as the letter reportedly ordered.

The Department of Justice has indicted hundreds of people for participating in the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In two of the most prominent cases, the government convinced juries in Washington that members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, two right-wing groups, were guilty of seditious conspiracy.

Legal experts had previously suggested that the successful prosecution of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys cases spelled trouble for Trump, who could be snarled with seditious conspiracy charges over parts of the speech he delivered on Jan. 6 and other remarks he made leading up to that day.

Defense attorneys maintained that their clients exercised their First Amendment rights to free speech.

The Proud Boys were convicted even though an FBI informant testified that, to his knowledge, there was no organized plan to storm the building. Instead, he said, “a herd mentality” took hold.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment.

Trump was found not guilty in a Senate impeachment trial over his remarks on and before the Jan. 6 events. The charges against him hinged largely on selective quotations from his speech in the capital that day.

A massive crowd of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, at the behest of Mr. Trump to protest election irregularities. By that day, nearly every legal election challenge by Mr. Trump’s team had failed in the courts. After hearing Trump speak, the attendees started making their way to the Capitol, where a joint session of Congress was in the process of certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. The ensuing breach of the Capitol briefly interrupted the Congressional session.

Democrats have framed the events of Jan. 6 as an “insurrection” and, beginning with the impeachment, have ceaselessly used the attacks to paint Republicans and Trump followers as extremists. Republicans, including Trump, immediately condemned the violence and vandalism and drew a distinction between the largely peaceful crowd of protesters and the small group which engaged in egregious lawbreaking.

More than 1,000 people from 25 states have been indicted on charges related to Jan. 6, according to data maintained by Look Ahead America. Some defendants were detained for more than 800 days before their trials.

At least a half-dozen Jan. 6 defendants have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The underlying law has been on the books since the end of the Civil War and was intended for use against Southerners bent on rebelling against the federal government.

As defined, a seditious conspiracy means that at least two people worked together to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the U.S. government, oppose its authority, or prevent a law from being executed.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, a Trump ally, said he was questioned for hours by Mr. Smith’s grand jury about challenges to the outcome of the 2020 election.

“Having witnessed firsthand their abuse of power, no surprise these partisans now want to arrest Trump on political charges. This is a dire threat to the rule of law,” Fitton wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll released on Tuesday morning, two in three likely voters said they expect Trump to be the Republican 2024 nominee. Mr. Trump was 33 percentage points ahead of his closest GOP challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in an average of polls maintained by RealClear Politics.

Mr. DeSantis on Tuesday issued a mixed reaction in response to news of the target letter. The governor condemned the political weaponization of the prosecution while faulting Trump for not doing enough on Jan. 6 to thwart the violence.

Nikki Haley, one of Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers in the race for the White House, did not defend the former president in an appearance on Fox News.

“It’s going to keep on going,” said Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador. “It’s just going to continue to be a further and further distraction.”

“And that’s why I’m running,” she continued. “It’s because we need a new generational leader. We can’t keep dealing with this drama.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a White House hopeful with less than one percent Republican support on average, used the news to mount an attack on Mr. Trump.

“I have said from the beginning that Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 should disqualify him from ever being President again,” Hutchinson said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) told reporters during a House GOP press conference on July 18 on Capitol Hill that “We have yet again another example of Joe Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice targeting his top political opponent, Donald Trump.”

[…]

Via https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-received-letter-stating-he-is-target-of-january-6-investigation_5405674.html

Dr Eddy Betterman

A “rare” vaccine injury called Guillain Barré syndrome (GBS) has caught the attention of Peruvian health authorities. Peruvian President Dina Boluarte declared a 90-day national emergency after an “unusual increase” in GBS was detected in hospitals across Peru.

At least 18 of the country’s 24 departments have seen at least one case of GBS in June, which is unprecedented. Since June of 2023, 182 cases have been reported across Peru, of which 147 have been discharged, 31 remain hospitalized, and four have died.

Peruvian health authorities are taking alarming spike in GBS seriously

Boluarte’s latest decree sends $3.2 million to the hospitals to improve patient care and increase GBS detection and control measures. Though GBS is not contagious, Peruvian health authorities are moving quickly to acquire human plasma to manufacture intravenous immunoglobulin and human albumin to help treat GBS.

The government’s decree, published in the El Peruano (Official Gazette), warns of an “unusual increase” of a rare disease in a short period of time that threatens the nation’s health services. The rise in GBS “negatively affects the continuity of health services, as there are not enough strategic resources to respond to the volume and complexity of the cases in the different health facilities,” warned the decree.

GBS is a neurological disorder where the immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. It often starts with tingling in the hands, feet, and face, before progressing to muscle weakness and paralysis across the body. In severe cases, GBS can leave one “unable to breathe independently.”

In GBS, immune cells do not function properly and mistakenly attack the myelin sheaths of the peripheral nerves. According to Medical News Today: “The damage prevents the nerves from sending certain information, such as touch sensations, to the spinal cord and brain. This causes a feeling of numbness. In addition, the brain and spinal cord can no longer transmit signals back to the body, leading to muscle weakness.”

GBS can cause lingering issues such as blood pressure fluctuations and irregular heart rhythms as well as sluggish bowel function and urine retention. About one third of patients will experience severe nerve pain. With the right treatment, most people will recover from GBS but they will likely have some form of reoccurring weakness in their muscles.

GBS is a well-known injury for many vaccine types

GBS may show up in individuals who have a compromised immune system after recovering from an infection. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of GBS may appear weeks after an infection from the influenza virus, the cytomegalovirus, the Epstein-Barr virus, the Zika virus, or Hepatitis A, B, C and E.

GBS is also linked to several vaccines. The latest mRNA vaccines, including those made with an adenovirus (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca) and those designed to protect against RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) have been flagged by regulators for causing an uptick in GBS. The J&J covid-19 vaccine was slapped with an FDA warning label in 2021, alerting consumers to the increased risk of developing GBS up to 42 days after vaccination.

Additionally, the US Food and Drug Administration noted that GBS is a possible risk from Pfizer’s new RSV vaccine for older adults. There were two cases of GBS out of 20,000 recipients who took the experimental jabs. The FDA now recommends that doctors monitor for GBS after a patient takes a Pfizer RSV shot. The long list of childhood vaccinations are also known to cause GBS in rare instances.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is aware of the deadly and debilitating vaccine-GBS risk and stated that “very rarely, people have developed GBS in the days or weeks after getting certain vaccines.” However, like every other serious health issue related to vaccination, the CDC claims that the “benefits of vaccination far outweigh risks.” Of course, this is not true for the vaccinated individuals who come down with GBS and aren’t treated in time or perish from this most serious vaccine injury. At least one nation — Peru — is now taking this issue seriously.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2023/07/19/rare-vaccine-injury-becomes-national-health-emergency-in-peru/

Episode 15 Brahmanic Synthesis

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

From the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD, Brahmanism (the precursor to modern Hinduism) absorbed many features of Buddhism and Jainism (especially their emphasis on nonviolence and asceticism). This would require revision of the traditional Veda.* With the movement of the merchant class into cities in 500 BC, many of its original precepts no longer applied.

Brahman priests also composed a number of Shastras applicable to urban life.

• The Dharmastrastras – a manual focused on morality and the history of the Varna and Jatis,*
• The Arthashastras – a manual of material power
• The Kamashastras – a manual of sensual pleasure
• The Natyashastras – a manual of performing arts
• The Vastushastra – a manual for architecture
• The Shilpashasera – a manual for sculpture

The Dhamashastras

These describe three levels of Brahman priests:

• Some perform vedic rituals
• Some withdraw from society into the forest to contemplate
• Some practice asceticism

According to the Dhamashastras, individuals born into higher varna (Brahman, Kshatrya and Vaishya) process through four stages of life: student life, household life, retired life and renounced life. Each is associated with a specific samskara or rite of passage. Children are initiated into student life by donning a sacred thread to signify being twice born. Only about 10% of modern India qualifies as being twice born.

After being twice born, higher caste members attach themselves to a guru for a 36-year period to learn the Veda. The student must remain celibate, live on donated food and be totally obedient to his guru.

The next rite of passage is marriage to a healthy virgin from a religious family with a history of producing sons.

Retiring into the forest, the third stage of life, is open to women as well as man.

The final stage, renounced life, follows a symbolic cremation after which devotees leave their family and only eat when fed.

The Arthrashastras

The Arthrashastras address the interests of a rising merchant class, with an emphasis on marriage and the role of kings. While it stresses the obligation of brides to pay a dowry, it allows women more control of their dowries. It also allows a woman to divorce her husband if he stays abroad too long and a man to divorce his wife if she fails to produce a son after eight years.

It also describes how low born individuals can become debt slaves but must be set free if they pay their debt. It forbids masters from forcing slaves to perform “polluting” work or sexually abusing female slaves.

It describes the role of craft guilds to set wages, prices and working conditions, as well stipulating how much color fading subjects launderers to a fine and prescribing fines for medical ma;practice.

The Kamashastras (aka the Kama Sutra)

This manual is mainly directed at courtesans, guiding them in controlling their senses to improve their ability to derive profit from sensual pleasure. It lists 64 arts courtesans should become adept in, including seduction, kissing, touching, intercourse, music, art, carpentry, singing, gymnastics, archery, chemistry and magic.

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*See The Vedic Origin of India’s Castes

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/366254/366201