The Government’s Sprawling Effort to Censor [True] Information During the Pandemic

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In July 2022, Twitter permanently suspended Rhode Island physician Andrew Bostom after awarding the epidemiologist and longtime researcher at Brown University a fifth strike for spreading “misinformation.”

A July 26 tweet alleging that there was no solid evidence Covid-19 vaccines had prevented any children from being hospitalized—”only RCT data we have from children reveals ZERO hospitalizations prevented by vaccination vs. placebo”—was apparently the final straw.

The funny thing was, it appeared Bostom’s tweet was true.

Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist and writer, said he was initially skeptical of Bostom’s claim. But after speaking with him for more than an hour, he realized Bostom was citing the government’s own data, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) briefing document that included randomized controlled trial (RCT) data on children.

“…Dr. Bostom’s tweet appears quite correct as per the FDA documents,” Koka wrote on Substack. “In the RCTs available, there does not appear to be evidence that the vaccine prevented hospitalizations.”

Bostom’s permanent suspension was one of many anecdotes shared by journalist David Zweig in a December Twitter Files thread viewed by more than 64 million people, which exposed how the government worked with Twitter to try to “rig the Covid debate.”

It turns out this was not the only one of Bostom’s tweets that was true but was nevertheless flagged for “misinformation.”

“A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid,” Zweig notes. “The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.”

In other words, all five of Bostom’s tweets that had been flagged as “misinformation” were legitimate. At the very least, four-out-of-five were, and that’s according to Twitter’s own internal audit.

How this happened was partially explored by Zweig, who explained Twitter’s convoluted censorship process, which relied heavily on bots, contractors in foreign countries who lacked the expertise to make informed decisions, and Twitter brass who carried their own biases and incentives. This structure led to a predictable result.

“In my review of internal files,” writes Zweig, “I found countless instances of tweets labeled as ‘misleading’ or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views.”

The CDC had effectively become the arbiter of truth.

This is alarming for at least two reasons. First, for anyone familiar with the government’s track record on truth, there’s reason to be skeptical of putting any government agency in charge of deciding what is true and false. Second, the CDC has been, to put it kindly, fallible throughout the pandemic. Indeed, the agency has been plagued with so much dysfunction and made so many crucial mistakes that its own director announced less than a year ago the organization needed an overhaul.

So there’s some reason to believe that Bostom and people like him—including epidemiologists like Dr. Martin Kuldorff (formerly of Harvard) and mRNA vaccine creator Dr. Robert Malone—were being suspended, banned, and de-amplified simply because Twitter was poorly situated to determine what was true and what was false.

There’s reason to doubt this claim, however.

Months after Zweig published his report on the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi published a separate deep dive exploring the Virality Project, an initiative launched by Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.

The project, which Taibbi described as “a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs,” is noteworthy because officials made it clear that a goal was not just to flag false information, but information that was true but inconvenient to the government’s goals. Reports of “vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway,” “worrisome jokes,” and “natural immunity” were all characterized as “potential violations,” as were conversations “interpreted to suggest that coronavirus might have leaked from a lab.”

In what Taibbi describes as “a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content,” the Virality Project began analyzing millions of posts each day from platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Medium, TikTok, and other social media sites, which were submitted through the JIRA ticketing system. On February 22, 2021, in a video no longer public, Stanford welcomed social media leaders to the group and offered instruction on how to join the JIRA system.

In contrast to Twitter’s previous internal guidance, which required narratives on Covid-19 to be “demonstrably false” before any censorship actions were taken, the Virality Project made it clear that information that was true was also fair game if it undermined the larger aims of the government and the Virality Project.

Specifically noted were “true stories that could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy,” personal testimonials about adverse side effects of vaccination, concerns over vaccine passports, and actual deaths of people following vaccination, such as Drene Keyes.

As NBC noted in 2021, Keyes, a 58-year-old black woman, died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine in February 2021. Described as an “elderly Black woman” by the Virality Project, Keyes’s death became a “disinformation” event after it garnered attention from “anti vax groups”—even though no one denied that she died within hours of taking the vaccine.

No autopsy was conducted on Keyes and there’s no way of knowing if the vaccine caused her death. But merely raising the possibility could have resulted in a ban. Officials at the Virality Project warned platforms that “just asking questions”—at least the wrong questions—was a tactic “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation.”

Ironically, Taibbi notes, the Virality Project itself was often “extravagantly wrong” about Covid science, describing breakthrough events as “extremely rare events” (a fact it later conceded was wrong) and implying that natural immunity did not offer protection from Covid.

“Even in its final report, [the Virality Project] claimed it was misinformation to suggest the vaccine does not prevent transmission, or that governments are planning to introduce vaccine passports,” Taibbi writes. “Both things turned out to be true.”

‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’

It’s clear that the Virality Project’s primary purpose was not to protect Americans from misinformation. Its goal, as Taibbi notes, was to get the public to submit to authority and accept the state’s Covid narrative, particularly the pronouncements of public figures such as Drs. Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky.

The official policy can be summed up in the immortal words of Colonel Nathan Jessup, the villain portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Aaron Sorkin’s popular 1992 film A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth.”

It’s important to understand that public officials, just like Col. Jessup, genuinely believe this. Jessup utters these words in anger in a wonderful monologue, after he is baited by Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) into telling the court how he really feels. Similarly, the Twitter Files reveal a program designed to control information—even true information—because it serves the state’s plan.

The last word—plan—is important, because it calls to mind Ludwig von Mises’s warning about those seeking to plan society.

“The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans,” Mises wrote. “He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan.”

‘Sometimes They Are Five’

Mises’ words apply perfectly to the Virality Project, a program designed specifically to get people to submit to the government’s narrative and objectives, not their own. The preeminence of the plan is so important that it requires censoring information and targeting individuals—as the Virality Project did—even if it’s true.

It’s difficult to overstate how Orwellian this is.

In Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story, says, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.”

Absent any context, the quote doesn’t make much sense. But it’s important to understand that Orwell saw statism and politics as forces destructive to the truth. His own brushes with state propaganda during the Spanish Civil War left him terrified that objective truth was “fading out of the world,” and he saw the state as inherently prone to obfuscation and euphemism (regardless of party).

“Political language,” he wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Within the context of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the meaning of Winston Smith’s words becomes crystal clear. Saying “two plus two makes four” might be an objective truth, but sometimes objective truth runs counter to Big Brother’s plan. Winston Smith is a slow learner, state agents tell him, because he can’t seem to grasp this simple reality.

“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.”

Many people who lived through the Covid-19 pandemic likely can identify with the terror of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Orwell’s fear that objective truth is “fading out of the world.” We witnessed public officials say things that were demonstrably false and face no consequences, while Andrew Bostom and countless others were exiled from public discourse because they said things that were true, but ran counter to the state’s narrative.

Fortunately, in large part because of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, we now know how this happened.

“Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging,” Taibbi writes.

All of it was designed to control information. And in doing so, the state—which actually attempted to create a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which critics promptly dubbed a Ministry of Truth—created an environment hostile to free speech and truth.

Ironically, despite the egregious abuse delivered upon the truth over the last three years in the name of fighting “misinformation,” polls show roughly half of Americans believe social media companies should be censoring such material from their sites. Few seem to realize this will almost certainly involve those with influence and power—especially the government—deciding who and what are censored.

This is a recipe for disaster. History shows there’s no greater purveyor of falsehood and propaganda than the government itself. The Twitter Files are a reminder of that.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.) His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

An open secret: Social contagion is driving the astronomic rise in teen gender dysphoria

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And adults are not immune either.

Social contagion is at least partially responsible for the upsurge in gender dysphoria in the past three decades, but this is vehemently denied by most social institutions charged with the safeguarding of children and young people, including governments, universities and schools, human rights commissions, legal institutions, and sporting bodies.

The misguided adherence to a scientifically bankrupt gender ideology has had, as yet unfathomed negative impacts on young people, their families, and the wider society. The reason that this phenomenon is never debated is that it would detonate and topple the edifice of gender ideology.

The prevailing view regarding this unprecedented upsurge is that the social and cultural milieu into which the current generation of children and adolescents has been born has permitted disinhibition of expression of their transgendered identity in the same way that left-handedness and homosexuality were permitted freer expression in previous decades, hence leading to increased numbers of those “coming out.”

This explanation is unsatisfactory and alternate explanations for this 21st century phenomenon of gender dysphoria and transgenderism must be canvassed. Social contagion is the prime candidate.

What is social contagion?

The term “psychic epidemic”, now called social contagion, describes the “spread of phenomena (e.g., behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes) across network ties.” Members of a network play different roles in the dissemination of innovations. A small number will adopt early (i.e., early adopters). Some of these will become opinion leaders who are central to the network, who contaminate their “peers” who in turn will influence others at different levels of the network. Networks with high centrality are the most effective in disseminating information or innovation.

Other characteristics of networks include cohesion (number of connections within a network) and shape (distribution of ties within the network).  A key example with respect to this discussion are the gender affirming organizations that have achieved remarkable success in a short time in changing health care, educational practices, and legislation related to transgender declaring young people.

With the arrival of Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that there would be an “infodemic” of misinformation spawned by social contagion. This did in fact occur, but those false beliefs did not take centre stage and sweep all science before it in the manner of transgender ideology because it was contained by responsible social and governmental bodies.

Not so for gender dysphoria.

What are the mechanisms of social transmission?

Social contagion in several adolescent behaviours (e.g., mood and emotion, eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, and suicide) has been well established empirically. For example, Madelyn Gould  concluded that… the existence of suicide contagion no longer needs to be questioned. We should refocus our research efforts on identifying which particular story components promote contagion under which circumstances and which components are useful for preventive programming.

Four mechanisms that may be involved in the social contagion of these behaviours and gender dysphoria are:

  1. Peer contagion: Peer contagion is a process of reciprocal influence to engage in behaviours occurring in a peer dyad/group.  By middle childhood, gender is the most important factor in the formation of peer associations, highlighting the significance of gender as the organizing principle of the norms and values associated with gender identity.
  2. Deviancy training as a mechanism of social contagion: A process whereby deviant attitudes and behaviours are rewarded by the peer group. Young people are particularly vulnerable to peer contagion if they have experienced peer rejection, hostility, and/or social isolation from the peer group.
  3. Co-rumination as a form of social contagion: A process of repetitive discussion, rehearsal, and speculation about a problematic issue within the peer dyad or peer group that underlies peer influence. It is more common among adolescent girls. Being in a friendship that engages in perseverative discussions on deviant topics has been associated with increased problem behaviour over the course of adolescence.
  4. Social media: Nathan and Kristina have argued that: “…[u]nlike the broadcasts of traditional media, which are passively consumed, social media depends on users to deliberately propagate the information they receive to their social contacts. This process can amplify the spread of information in a social network.”

Targeted marketing campaigns on and offline generate additional influence. Peer influence and homophily (intrinsic peer similarity) are major factors influencing the behaviour of those embedded in social networks. Peer influence is more likely to trigger positive, self-reinforcing feedback loops, where the imitation of the target individual’s behaviour by peers enhances that behaviour in the target individual so that s/he does more of the behaviour which becomes more extreme over time, creating a social multiplier effect.

This effect also occurs in online communities which is enhanced by introducing certain features into the market design of products, such as, in this case, puberty blockade, cross sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgery, and identifying the influential and susceptible users.

Online activity enables, enhances, or triggers potential risks of “copycat” behaviours such as self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders through the normalization of pathological behaviours, or vicarious and social reinforcement of these behaviours.

Is gender dysphoria socially contagious?

Given the strong evidence of social contagion in suicide, self-harm, substance abuse, eating disorders, and emotion/mood, especially among adolescents, the role of social contagion in gender dysphoria demands urgent attention. There are already strong indicators in the affirmative. For example, positively framed media reports of transgender issues result in increases in referrals of self-declaring transgender and gender diverse (TGD) children and adolescents to specialist gender services.

If we examine the gender dysphoria epidemic in social network terms, we see several features operating. It is an open-system network with nodes and ties expanding across the oceans to the USA, UK, Asia, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. Most countries are reporting sharp increases in the number of young people seeking services and treatment for gender dysphoria. Many are ramping up services and setting up new gender clinics to cope with demand, despite the recent closure of the Tavistock Gender Identity Service in the UK following the Cass review. This network is highly centralised with only one voice–unquestioning gender affirmation.

Opinion leaders of this position operating at the centre of these networks are very influential. The level of density in a network has two effects–firstly, it enhances the circulation of information between members and secondly, it blocks the introduction of dissenting ideas and evidence.

Peer contagion may be a relevant factor in the sharp increases in young people presenting with gender dysphoria. There are a number of mechanisms.

Low gender typicality, peer victimization, ingroups and the “trans lobby” *. Low gender typicality (i.e., perceived lack of fit within one’s binary gender) has a significant impact on social acceptance within one’s peer group. As children progress to adolescence, peer as opposed to parental acceptance becomes paramount. Peers therefore take over the role of gender socializing agents from parents. Adolescent peers tend to be critical of behaviours, dress, mannerisms, and attitudes that are not gender typical as a way of policing and reinforcing gender norms and respond with criticism, ridicule, exclusion and even intimidation of non-conformers.

Perhaps these groups of young people, searching for homophily (i.e., like peers) started to exaggerate their points of difference from their gender-conforming peers rather than to hide and minimize them to avoid being bullied and excluded. In so doing, they left the “outgroup” of nonconformers and formed an ingroup of extreme gender-nonconformers, transcending the gender barrier altogether and declaring themselves transgender. Suddenly, the discomfort and fear of not being gender typical becomes a virtue and rather than fearing the disapprobation of their peers, their open revolt in declaring themselves transgender is valorised by a politically powerful transactivist lobby.

Ingroups behave in stereotypical ways with respect to outgroups – they favour ingroup characteristics, assigning more positive attributes to its members and derogating outgroups in order to enhance the status of their ingroup.

It is not surprising, then, that members of the transgender ingroup exaggerate the characteristics of the “trans” gender they take on – becoming more “feminine” or “masculine” than heteronormative groups of cismen and ciswomen. Transactivist groups have proliferated and consolidated in a short time frame by exploiting the characteristics of ingroups and outgroups. For example, social projection (i.e., the belief that other members of the group are like oneself) has been a powerful integrating process that simultaneously creates protection for its own members and distance from outgroup members. Those disagreeing with the ideology of the trans lobby are labelled “transphobic” and publicly denounced.

Rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) and the role of social media: There has been a disproportionate increase in the number of female adolescents, and a change in the historically greater ratio of preschool boys compared with adolescent girls in earlier decades. Rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) figures from the Tavistock gender service in Britain 2019-2020 show a peak in presentations at 14-15 years, comprising mainly girls.

DSM 5 (2013) estimated prevalence at one in 10,000 males and 1 in 27,000 females. Now studies are frequently recording incidence of transgender young people at 1-2%. Current adolescent estimates are between 140 (males) and 350 (females) times higher than that for transgender adult males and females. Social forces must be at play to account for this unprecedented overall rise and increase in female prevalence in transgender declarations over the past decade. Pang et al. concluded that… increased media content (specifically via social media) might act as a … means of social contagion, whereby some individuals erroneously come to believe through exposure to such media that their nonspecific emotional or bodily distress is due to gender dysphoria and being transgender/gender diverse (p. 7).

Regret and detransition

Trangender proponents argue that social contagion is not at play because regret/detransition rates are low. However, Vandenbussche observed that the average time lag from transition to detransition was five years and that any study reporting on shorter time periods would underreport the true rates of detransition.

The 237 detransitioners in this study reported receiving no medical assistance with their medical detransition (e.g., how to safely stop cross-sex hormones) or with the complications arising from “gender-affirming” surgery. The majority reported lack of support and other negative experiences from their former treating medical and mental health professionals and from the LGBT+ community generally. The reason? They are bad publicity for transgender apologists.

A profiling study of 100 detransitioners reported that 70 percent were white female college graduates, 56 percent of whom reported experiencing pre-pubertal gender dysphoria. If gender dysphoria and gender transition are socially contagious, particularly among adolescent females, it would be expected that there would be a greater proportion of female detransitioners and this in fact the case. There was an average of four years between transition and detransition for the female participants.

Social contagion also affects doctors, professional bodies, legislators, courts, sporting bodies, educators, and parents

Social contagion is by no means limited to vulnerable, suggestible children and adolescents. Social contagion has been documented in medical practice, professional bodies, law and legislation, sport, education, universities, and politicians. We live in a “woke” society and have adopted a fearful herd mentality when it comes to speaking out against scientific fallacies like gender identity and the gender spectrum when personal loss is at stake.

Despite a lack of consensus internationally regarding safety, ethics, and benefit of the global trend to prescribe puberty blockade to increasingly younger patients, prescription of GnRHa has steadily risen over the past decade on the unfounded assumption that placing puberty on hold affords time for children to “decide” their “true identity,” while reducing suicide risk, although recent evidence confirms that puberty blockade conveys no benefit in reducing suicide and puberty blockade actually derails the normal developmental trajectory.

Many professional bodies that should be thought leaders appear less concerned about scientifically verifying their stances regarding the transgendering of young people and more concerned about falling foul of the dominant political stance of gender affirmation since they rely in a circular manner on a small oeuvre of flawed transgender affirming “research” that is underpinned by the essentialist notion propagated by trans ideologues that gender, not sex, is primary.

According to DSM 5 (APA, 2013), 98 percent of gender confused boys and 88 percent of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty. However, the American Psychological Association (APA, 2015) and the Australian Psychological Society (APS) (2023) ignore the evidence in favour of appeasing an increasingly strident trans lobby.

Legal protections for children have been progressively eroded internationally, with the courts withdrawing from their gate-keeping roles and legislators being persuaded to mandate treatment of “transgender” children using only gender affirmation pathways. They have also been successful in lowering the age at which young people can access sex re-assignment surgery without parental consent. Some courts have ruled that “a mature minor” is capable of giving consent to transgendering medical procedures.

Bills have also been passed allowing transgender people to change their birth certificates without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery. Under the legislation a person can self-nominate their sex and list as male, female or any other gender diverse or non-binary descriptor of their choice. Children can alter the sex on their birth certificate with parental support and a statement from a doctor or registered psychologist saying the decision is in the best interests of the child.

Medical, legal, and human rights organisations have been acting synchronously (i.e., contagiously) to produce their position statements, denying the science of biological sex, and abrogating their duty of care to young people. The Australian Human Rights’ Commission has provided guidelines about sports participation that clearly disadvantage natal females, and which may well have a profound effect on female participation in sport.

Education curricula internationally are introducing elementary school children to concepts like the gender fairy, the gender unicorn, the rainbow spectrum, and the freedom to choose their gender. These biologically incorrect precepts are instilled unchallenged in vulnerable, receptive audiences, a clear demonstration that educationists have succumbed to social contagion to adopt these policies. School principals have discretion to socially transition children at school without their parents’ knowledge or permission, undermining parental authority and setting a dangerous precedent allowing children to make decisions about their wellbeing for which they are not prepared.

In Bostock vs Clayton County (2020), the US Supreme Court held that an employer who terminates an individual’s employment merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII (p. 4–33). “Transgender” became a legally protected category for employment purposes. By analogy, this ruling implies that schools should treat trans students in a similar manner.

There are now strict policies within the police and media that there will be no reporting in the press or digital media of youth suicide. The reason: publication of the details of a suicide spawns copycat suicides in the same age groups of young people. So, there is no mention in the media of these tragic events. We are very aware as a society of the potential for social contagion in all our behaviours and the best way to stop the contagion is to remove social exposure.

When it comes to transgendering children and young people, it appears that we are unable to learn from history. As Ryan T. Anderson (2018) concluded:

The [transgender] movement has to keep patching and shoring up its beliefs, policing the faithful, coercing the heretics, and punishing apostates, because as soon as its furious efforts flag for a moment or someone successfully stands up to it, the whole charade is exposed. That’s what happens when your dogmas are so contrary to obvious, basic, everyday truths. A transgender future is not the “right side of history,” yet activists have convinced the most powerful sectors of our society to acquiesce to their demands. While the claims they make are manifestly false, it will take real work to prevent the spread of these harmful ideas.

Fortunately, and belatedly, social contagion can serve a positive function in this debate. A class action of 1000 families treated by the Gender Identity Disorder Service at the Tavistock Clinic in London has just been announced. This will be the first of many class actions against gender clinics as the long-term devastation wreaked by the worst medical experiment in history unfolds.

AUTHOR

Dianna Kenny

* I use this shorthand term to describe the multitude of organizations that have policies and practices associated with unquestioning gender affirmation

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tuberville on His Military Abortion Blockade: ‘I Have the Power, and They’re Panicking’

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In the military, most men and women would do anything to save a life. They’ll jump on grenades, parachute into enemy territory, walk across landmines. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) isn’t asking them to do any of that for the lives on the line with Pentagon’s new abortion policy. All he’s requesting is that a couple hundred flag officers wait a little longer for their promotions — an inconvenience that could save as many as 4,000 innocent lives. Who could possibly object to that? Radical Democrats, of course.

On Tuesday, abortion zealot Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) went on a tirade over Tuberville’s decision to hold up flag officer promotions until the Biden administration backs off its unconstitutional abortion expansion. “Holding up the promotion of every single military nominee isn’t democracy,” Warren ranted, “it’s extortion. That kind of extortion has serious consequences for our national defense. These holds pose a grave threat to our national security and to our military readiness. They actively hurt our ability to respond quickly to threats around the world.”

Funny how Warren is suddenly concerned about military readiness, since it hasn’t seemed to factor into any of the Democrats’ policies detracting from it — transgenderism in the ranks, unconstitutional vaccine mandates, CRT and pronoun trainings, and diversity, equity, and inclusion classes. The only war the president’s party seems intent on fighting is the cultural one.

Yet Warren wasn’t the only one raising a ruckus. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) insisted that “what’s happening” because of Tuberville’s “charade” is “not only dangerous, but it’s insulting. That’s the only word that can be used for one senator to hold up 184 men and women and their promotions in the military. I never thought I’d see that day in the United States Senate.”

In that case, Durbin must have been AWOL the day that Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) threatened to hold up the promotions of more than 1,100 senior Army officers if the Trump White House blocked their impeachment witness, Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, from advancement.

Either way, Tuberville made it clear where the blame for this situation really lies. “This is Secretary [Lloyd] Austin’s choice, not mine. He knew the consequences for months” of his radical abortion expansion. “I’m not going to budge,” he assured his Democratic colleagues. “I will come down here as many times as it takes — day and night — to vote. I’m not afraid to vote.”

Later, on “Washington Watch,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins that this isn’t just about abortion. It’s about a “tyrannical executive branch walking all over the United States Senate and doing our jobs.”

“This White House [is] dictating now from their purview,” Tuberville shook his head. “They’re turning into Canada and a lot of the European countries [with] one single leader. [They] don’t worry about going through Congress. Don’t worry about going through proper order. They just push things on the American people. You can’t force taxpayers to pay for abortion. That’s a law,” he pointed out. “Been a long law a long time. … And it’s worked pretty good,” Tuberville said, pointing out that the Pentagon has only approved about 20 abortions a year under the exceptions of rape, incest, and life of the mother.

Nobody had a problem with that policy until the Dobbs decision, the famous football coach explained. Now, they want to force as much taxpayer-funded abortion on the country as possible, “so they’re allowing abortions at any time in the military for any reason. Also, their dependents, they’ll fly them anywhere they want to go. They’ll pay them for three weeks. And who’s paying for it? The taxpayer is. Well, the Hyde Amendment says that’s against the law. But these people don’t worry about the law.”

Tuberville is planning to make them care. “They have the power, but now I have the power. One senator has got the power to put a hold on anything. And they are panicking. They don’t know what to do. But I can give them [something] to do: go back to the old policy.”

Of course, the Alabama icon said, “It’s not really about the military guys, and it’s not about the [Department of Veterans Affairs]. It’s about them controlling our country and doing what they want to do. … They’re circumventing every rule they possibly can. They said, ‘What can we do? How can we give more and more abortions? How can we make the taxpayers pay for it? Well, let’s look at this. The VA, we can do that.’”

Under this new rule, Perkins pointed out, “it’s estimated that the number [of military abortions] will grow from [20 per year] to over 4,000. That’s over 200 times the number of abortions that would be performed under this policy. This isn’t parity. This is expansion.”

Like a lot of Republicans, he’s been frustrated by the GOP’s timidity on the life issue. “We need more and more people to step up. … You know, if we’re going to be pro-life, let’s be pro-life. You can’t ride the fence.” Too many people are focused on protecting their seats, Tuberville warned. “I’ve been up here two years, and that’s all people try to do is get reelected. They like power. They like the prestige of all of this. … [But] we’re working for the people; we’re not up here for us.”

If that means he’s not popular, so be it. “They’ve called me every name in the book,” Tuberville said. “And I told them, ‘Listen, I coached college football for 40 years. I’ve already been called everything. That doesn’t bother me.’ I’m doing the work for the American people. … And the Constitution backs the law, [which] says … taxpayer money cannot be used for abortion. Done deal. Game, Set. Match.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Whistleblower: U.S. Govt. is ‘Middleman’ in Massive Migrant Child Trafficking Operation

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Today, a whistleblower testifyed before Congress with bombshell claims that the federal government has essentially become a “middleman” in a child trafficking ring along the southern border, an operation that is allegedly worth billions.

We’re in hell.

BREAKING: Whistleblower To Expose US Gov’t Involvement In Massive Child Trafficking Operation

By: Paul Aubert, Trending Politics, April 25, 2023

On Wednesday, a whistleblower is set to testify in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee that the United States government has been operating as the “middleman” to a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation, Fox News reported.

The alleged child trafficking is believed to be taking place via the unsecured Southern border of the US. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement will be evaluating the number of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border on Wednesday’s hearing.

Three witnesses are testifying at the hearing, which is titled “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children.”

One of those testifying is Tara Lee Rodas, a former employee, and whistleblower at the Department of Health and Human Services. A copy of Rodas’ testimony, obtained by Fox News, will detail the US government’s alleged role in child trafficking at the border.

“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” Rodas is planning on testifying. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”

Rodas will, citing her work experience with the HHS’ resettlement office, argue the US government is operating a “large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”

“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,” Rodas will explain.

“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”

The former HHS employee intends to call for a congressional investigation into the federal agencies overseeing the transportation of migrants into the US. “We can no longer turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening. Congress has the power to stop this, which is why I am calling on you to do what is right.”

Recent reports have shown the Biden administration has been unable to contact nearly 100,000 child immigrants. “The Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with over 85,000 child migrants, and more recently that administration officials ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor,” Fox News reported……

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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RELATED VIDEOS:

Sen. Hawley Grills Mayorkas on Biden Border Crisis, Spike in Trafficking & Abuse of Migrant Children

Todd Bensman Exposes Biden’s $450 Million Human Trafficking Scheme

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Do We Have A Mental Health Problem?

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These are indeed strange times we live in today. It is nothing like the America I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s. Today, we hear of such things as armed attacks on our schools, something never thought possible in my day. The knee-jerk reaction is to increase gun control and disarm the populace. There is little thought about the state of mind of the person pulling the trigger. Even if all of the guns were eliminated, there would still be people finding new ways to take the lives of others. So, the problem wouldn’t be solved. This is what got me thinking of Mental Health in the United States, something neglected for far too long.

Let me give you an example, for many years, the country had several psychiatric hospitals funded by the government. As I grew up, I knew of one in Chicago and another in Cincinnati. Perhaps you knew of one in your home town as well. They all served a vital purpose; to help those experiencing mental disorders. However, over the 1970’s and 1980’s, these were all shut down for funding reasons, and the patients transferred to jails, institutions that are not as well suited for treating people than the old psychiatric hospitals. At least 25% of the inmates in jail today suffer from some form of mental illness, and I’m told that number is on the rise.

Mental Illness affects our intellectual and emotional potential and, as such, influences our behavior. This, of course affects our socialization skills and ability to process what we are doing (problem solving). We now live in a world with people who possess hair-triggered tempers, resulting in primal speech laced with vulgarities, and reactionary violence. Even worse, the rest of us are suppose to accept it. The days of common courtesy are long behind us, which is discouraging. These are weak minded people who either have a physical deformity in their head or are prone to suggestions from others, right or wrong, thereby altering their perceptions and thought patterns.

There are two elements to be a sane person:

A. Perceptions – being able to correctly interpret the world around us through our five senses. Our perceptions can be impaired through such things as mental defect, drugs, alcohol, exhaustion, lies and deception, etc. As an old systems man, I can tell you authoritatively, if the input is wrong, everything that follows will be incorrect.

B. Processing – being able to produce logical conclusions. This too can be impaired as mentioned above, but add “lack of education” to it.

Understand this, all of our actions and decisions are based on these two variables.

What we are witnessing is a significant change to our culture as a result of our neglecting mental illness. Probably all of us have asked ourselves why this is happening. Beyond prisons, let us consider other indicators. To illustrate:

* The “Karen” movement, something that was nonexistent just ten short years ago. A “Karen” is a person, either female or male, who possesses a false sense of reality (only sees things from his/her perspective, not others), has no sense of empathy, possesses a sense of entitlement (that laws, rules, regulations do not apply to them), and are rather obnoxious in their interpersonal behavior to get their way, aka “Bullying.” Shouting and repetition in speech is a common weapon used by them. They are so convinced they are right, they are shocked and agitated when law enforcement arrests them and a judge finds them guilty of their behavior. The “Karen” phenomenon is becoming rather commonplace as we see it in retail stores, banks, offices, hospitals, on aircraft, “road rage,” just about everywhere. Such people are not ashamed of their actions and they are unapologetic for attacking others. Their focus is on themselves exclusively and nobody else. This suggests ego problems and the need to dominate others.

* Sovereign Citizens (aka, SovCits) – this is closely related to “Karens.” These are passive-aggressive people who resist law enforcement personnel and decisions by the courts. They are commonly found on our roadways where law enforcement pulls someone over for such things as speeding, not having a license plate (or an expired one), having a light out, failing to signal properly. When the officer pulls them over and asks to see their driving license, registration certificate, and proof of insurance, the SovCits refuses claiming his/her Constitutional rights do not require producing such documents. This often turns ugly as the driver is forcibly removed from his/her vehicle, handcuffed, and arrested for failing to comply. It is amazing how much these people do not truly understand the law. This is not simply a matter of a different point of view, but rather, they do not recognize state and local laws and resist police authority. By doing so, they are undermining public safety and the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates states can implement other laws not included in the Constitution, such as handling traffic. Basically, SovCits want to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and to hell with law enforcement authority as they do not believe it has a bearing on them. Very naïve. Quite simply, they are looking for reasons not to cooperate and comply with local laws. This suggests problems with their reasoning capabilities and hatred for authority, or they are simply trying to cheat the system.

* Schools – are much different than my day when all we had to learn is reading, writing, and arithmetic. There were also courses in language, music, Social Studies, History, and Civics where we learned how the government functioned. These last two items are incredibly weak today in schools. As such, students do not have a grasp of American History, the Constitution, and how local government works. They are also being taught the corporate world (Big Business) is evil, as is capitalism. This is where “entitlement” is learned and why the concept of workmanship suffers, and no corporate loyalty. At the college level, walk outs and demonstrations have become common place, and civil debate has been replaced by “shout downs.” How does this apply to mental illness? It demonstrates how false perceptions can be taught and embraced by the student, thereby affecting their mental patterns.

* Workplace – here, we occasionally hear about “office rage.” This is often caused by failing to respect authority, and an employee takes on a “Karen” approach to life, thereby disturbing the harmony of the corporate culture. Like Schools, many offices have lock down procedures should an employee blow a gasket.

In nonprofit organizations, the goal should be to promote harmony and cooperation through common goals. However, most today are run with an iron fist through autocratic rule thereby creating a highly charged political nightmare, and membership suffers.

* Morality – for several years, Gallup has been monitoring trends in morality. Their latest report announced a study whereby 50% of Americans thought the morality of the country was poor. Only 12% thought it was good. This is a big shift and may explain why religious institutions are on the decline. Television and movies have more influence today than the clergy. There is also a war on Christians underfoot. Consider this: years ago, divorce and declaring bankruptcy were considered shameful. We’re way past this point. Now, cheating is considered a perfectly acceptable form of behavior, and we are expected to accept things like trans-gender men in women’s sports. WOKEism, which is designed to teach us how to think about society, is actually a form of brainwashing and, as such, mental illness.

* Jails/Prisons – besides accommodating mental patients, our jails have become breeding grounds for drugs and crime. I know of one sheriff’s deputy, who worked in the local county jail, that estimated 99% of all inmates were taking illicit drugs smuggled into the facility. Such institutions also represent schools for learning how to violate the law. A young person going into such a facility will undoubtedly learn new scams and mayhem. In other words, instead of learning to adapt to society, most are likely to reoffend and extend their criminal careers.

All of these anomalies are caused by mental illness and, as mention, it can be caused by some physical defect, or learned either willfully or accidentally. As to the latter, how exactly is this caused?

* The rise of a drug culture that goes way beyond the 1960’s (or the last ten years for that matter).

* Excessive addiction to personal technology which gave birth to “instant” behavior, e.g., we demand something NOW, not later, and have no patience for waiting.

* The obsolescence of parental responsibility who are suppose to offer advice, and become role models of “right and wrong” for their offspring.

* Journalism and political irresponsibility who flagrantly lie to the public. This is reminiscent of Joseph Goebbels, the famed Nazi propagandist, who is remembered for saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

SO, WHAT CAN BE DONE?

No, gun control is not the answer, unless it is to check a person’s stability in order to own one. Even then, teaching gun safety to the schools and general public is imperative. Here are some other suggestions (in no particular order):

  1. Re-institute psychiatric hospitals. Separate those who truly need help from the prison population.
  2. Intensify the war on drugs, do not soften it. Make penalties for taking or selling drugs much harsher. Also, secure the borders as this has increased drug trafficking and placed an unneeded burden on our entire country.
  3. Regulate the use of personal technology, particularly in the classroom, stop the addiction.
  4. Have youth visit a court house, jail, and explain the process of booking and observe a trial. While we’re at it, let’s beef up History and Civics classes.
  5. Improve parenting skills to breed a new sense of responsibility. Conduct classes for parenting. The objective is to teach youth: Discipline, organization, accountability, responsibility, sacrifice/empathy. This can be aided by…
  6. Develop an apprentice system. A stint in the military or Peace Corps is nice, but understanding what is required to function in a workplace can greatly affect a youth’s perspective on life.
  7. Follow the rules and adapt to change. If the rules are inconsistent and need to be updated. Do so. And remember, try to achieve consensus; create Win-Win scenarios.
  8. Re-institute a censorship board over movies and television. They obviously do not know how to regulate themselves.
  9. Take the news media to task for fallacious reporting. Impose stiff penalties for inaccuracies. Editorials are one thing, facts are quite another.

Years ago, schools and the military added salt peter to meals, thereby having a calming effect on people, particularly males. Maybe it’s time to bring it back as well.

One of the things I learned from all this, is Mental Illness can be taught. Sure, there are physical abnormalities, but teaching people a different perspective on life or that 2 + 2 = 5, can be just as damaging.

So, do we have a Mental Health problem? Hell yes and it is growing every day, yet this country doesn’t seem to be too interested in solving this horrible problem. We can hope the problem will just go away, but as we all know, it will not.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – For a listing of my books, click HERE.

Note: All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

©2023 Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.

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Study: Wearing Face Masks Increase Risk of Stillbirths, Testicular Dysfunction, & Cognitive Deterioration From Carbon Dioxide Buildup

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The catastrophic consequences from Democrats’ weaponization of the flu (Covid) and their freedom crushing mandates will be felt for generations to come.

New Study Suggests Carbon Dioxide Buildup from Wearing Face Masks Increase Risk of Stillbirths, Testicular Dysfunction, & Cognitive Deterioration

By Jim Hoft Apr. 23, 2023:

The intense propaganda to coerce you to wear a face mask is not based on science.

It is a pure political power play designed to force you and your children into submission.

‘Explosive’ new research reveals that using a face mask during pregnancy may increase the chance of stillbirth, testicular dysfunction, and cognitive decline in children, Daily Mail reported.

When worn for extended periods of time, facial coverings may increase the risk of mild carbon dioxide (CO2) poisoning, according to a review of 43 previously published studies on exposure to CO2, mask-wearing, and pregnancy by German researchers.

Researchers in Germany found that elevated levels of carbon dioxide in pregnant women were associated with an increased risk of birth defects.

They also stated that CO2 is a contributor to oxidative stress, which can have negative effects on brain function and lead to testicular problems in men.

The German researchers reviewed a study that found that even short-term exposure to concentrations of CO2 as low as 0.3% caused brain damage, increased anxiety, and impaired memory in both pregnant rats and young mice. Testicular cells and sperm were destroyed in another study when male mice were exposed to 2.5 percent CO2 for four hours, the human equivalent of which is 0.5 percent. A third study found that stillbirth and birth defects occurred in pregnant rats exposed to 3 percent CO2 (equal to 0.8 percent for humans).

(The primary limitation of the research is that it is limited to studies on animals due to the unethical nature of doing such trials on human subjects due to the potential toxicity of carbon dioxide.)

More from Daily Mail:

Alluding to the surge in stillbirths during the pandemic, the German researchers said: ‘Circumstantial evidence exists that popular mask use may be related to current observations of a significant rise of 28 percent to 33 percent in stillbirths worldwide.’

‘[And] reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance of two full standard deviations in scores in children born during the pandemic,’ the researchers wrote in the paper, published in the journal Heliyon.

The German research team gathered data from 43 previously published studies on exposure to CO2, mask-wearing and pregnancy.

One mask study conducted in Germany, researchers measured the CO2 concentration of air behind surgical masks worn by 15 healthy men. Within 30 minutes, the CO2 concentration rose to roughly 2.8-3.2 percent.

In another study in Italy, scientists measured the air under surgical masks worn in a lab and found a concentration between 0.22 and 0.29 percent within five minutes.

Masks provide breathing resistance and create a dead space that traps CO2, leading to more inhaled and re-breathed CO2, the reviewers said.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

THE WEB OF DYSTOPIAN TYRANNY: The Medical Industrial Complex

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“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control…. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.” — Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, allegedly killed in Korean Airlines 747, purportedly shot down by the Soviets

“Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man’s freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot.” —  Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

“Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down, they are truly down.” —  Joseph McCarthy, US Senator and Communist Hunter, 1950

“When the road looks rough ahead, remember the Man Upstairs and the word, Hope. Hang onto both and tough it out.” —  John Wayne

A few months ago, I went to a new physical therapist and asked at the end of the first session why she and all the other therapists were masked up. She said because the flu, Covid and RSV were going around. I told her there have been 45 years of mask studies, one even completed by Stanford in 2020, that state they are worthless and actually harmful. She said, “Oh no, Knoxville had a drop in C-19 when we were forced to wear masks, and I’ve had five C-19 shots.”

I got up from the table and told her, “Then I won’t be back because your stupidity could actually hurt me.” I forgot to cancel the next appointment and before I did, the secretary called me and told me that my PT was out sick. I said, “That’s not surprising,” and cancelled all appointments.

This is the state of our Medical Industrial Complex today. Total compliance!

The Enemy

The world is divided into two parts, the Communist world and the non-Communist world.  The non-Communist world is the target.  Communist ideologies are completely contrary to those of our Judeo-Christian civilization.  It is by their motto, “the end justifies the means” that Communists rationalize, without any qualms of conscience, every inhumane and perverse act of cruelty imaginable. Link.

The medical industrial complex is now run by globalist depopulation and eugenics advocates, i.e., the United Nations, Schwab, Harari, Gates, the World Health Organization, the FDA, CDC, NIH and others. They are hellbent on controlling the entire population of the world, or what will be left of it after the majority of humanity has expired from their lethal mRNA Spike Proteins.

It looks like we can’t win a fight with America’s enemies, and yet we must.  In a life and death encounter, we know surrender is death.  If you don’t fight the ocean current, you drown.  If you quit running from a fire, you die.  If you don’t fight the bad guys, you get torn apart.

So, what will it be America?

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

First, The Good News

Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) attorneys have won religious exemption to vaccination in Mississippi for school children.  ICAN secured an historic and critical win with a ruling from the bench following an evidentiary hearing, where a federal court has ruled that the First Amendment requires that, by July 15, 2023, the State of Mississippi afford its residents a religious exemption for their children to attend school without one or more state mandated vaccines!

As initially reported on December 20, 2021, ICAN’s legal team, led by Aaron Siri, prevailed in the San Diego Superior Court, striking down San Diego’s Covid-19 vaccine school mandate.

It was Aaron Siri who pursued a lawsuit against the FDA to release the interim documents that Pfizer created as part of its rollout of the mRNA injections.  These documents showed what happened to people when they were injected.  The judge who heard the case was asked by the FDA to keep the documents hidden for 75 years.  The judge said no and the documents were released.

Those Pfizer documents contain evidence of the greatest crime against humanity.  The documents proved that the “vaccines” were a failure and that the third largest side effect of the jabs’ failure is COVID.

In January of 2023, ICAN, through its attorneys, sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) demanding an explanation for its inexplicable decision to broaden the heart health parameters for pilots.

ICAN will now fund any legal challenge to every single state that mandates its students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and will continue to be on the frontlines defending your civil rights!

With the medical industrial complex advocating mRNA jabs for all hogs, cattle and chickens, there is an urgency in growing your own vegetables and canning them.  However, there are places available to purchase meat that is free of growth hormones, antibiotics and mRNA injections.

Alderspring Ranch carries a variety of pure wholesome beef, pork and lamb without the negative additions.  Check out their website, as they have weekly specials.

Melaleuca’s Riverbend Ranch is another source for excellent beef.  Join Melaleuca.com.

The C-19 injections contain Spike Proteins (SP), mRNA and lipid nanoparticles covered in polyethylene glycol which is a petroleum product.  None of these contents are good for the human body.  That is why so many are working to save those who took any number of these injections.

There is hope.

To cleanse your body of that evil, please visit FLCCC.net and click on Treatment Protocols, then on I-Recover, Post Vaccine Treatment.

Dr. Peter McCullough’s Substack page shows Nattokinase eliminates the SP.  He sells Nattokinase through “The Wellness Company,” but it can also be purchased on the web.  Required dosage is 2000 FU, and $30.00 will purchase 270 capsules.

Naomi Wolf at Hillsdale

In her speech to Hillsdale College, Naomi Wolf exposed the Pfizer documents Aaron Siri was instrumental in getting released.  Both the FDA and Pfizer knew the dangers of the injections prior to their documents being released to the public.

Naomi stated, “It’s not even the deaths, it’s not even the disabilities, but in the center of these documents, there is literally a Mengele type experiment at a grand scale on human reproduction.  It was a 360-degree experiment on how to disrupt and impair human reproduction.

“Women were told not to get pregnant, but out of the 270 women who did get pregnant, Pfizer lost 234 of the records they were to keep, which is illegal.  Of the 36 women left, over 80% of them lost their babies by spontaneous abortion or miscarriage.”

Naomi Wolf explained, “This is a bioweapon and we’re under attack.”

But wait!  Guess who helped to make those billions of vials of poison injected into humans from two months old to the 90-year-old nursing home patients?

A German company made the Pfizer injections, but that’s not the whole truth.

Naomi told her Hillsdale audience, “Pfizer is a German-Chinese company and their subsidiary, BioNTech, which they purchased right before the pandemic, is a German-Chinese company.  BioNTech signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Fosun Pharmaceuticals in 2021.  Fosun Pharma is wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. It is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in China.  Every corporation in China is run by and answers to the CCP.  So, it’s nonsense for Dr. Fauci to think that Wuhan is a bunch of independent scientists scampering along doing nice things for America.  They’re run by the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army of China.

“Fosun Pharma, whose CEO is a senior official in the CCP, didn’t just sign an MOU with BioNTech.  But in 2021, if you look at the SEC filing, which is our stock exchange filing for BioNTech, it shows a 100% completed tech transfer of the technology, the IP, from BioNTech to China.  Right now, in 2023, if you get a Pfizer injection, you’re getting an injection whose IP (An IP can mean the formula that they’re using; it can mean the data harvested from using it; it can mean the manufacturing process; or any of those), all of which is owned by China now when it goes into your American body.”

Included in her hour-long speech was her statement regarding shedding.  She said, “In the Pfizer documents, Pfizer defined exposure to the vaccine as skin contact, inhalation and sexual intercourse especially at conception.”

Babies born to vaccinated mother are showing chromosomal abnormalities.

Her entire speech is exceptional; please take the time to watch it.

False Shepherds

It appalled me that Franklin Graham told people, “If Jesus were here, he’d support getting a COVID ‘vaccine.’”  I highly doubt that, but what happened to Graham after he took the jabs?  He ended up with pericarditis and had to have surgery at Mayo Clinic.

The Southern Baptist Convention is urging an expansion of Red Flag laws.  I guess they don’t read their Bibles.

Walter Reed suddenly cancelled soldiers pastoral care for Catholics and replaced priests with woke secularists.

Many herald the C-19 jabs from their pulpits and their websites, telling people to make sure they’re “vaccinated.”

Others are silent about the evil facing humanity.

The Medical Industrial Complex

In February of 2022, I wrote an article about Dr. Richard Day and his 1969 speech to an audience of physicians.  Day was most likely involved in early plans to destroy America’s healthcare.  He told his audience they could not take notes or tape the speech, but Dr. Lawrence Dunegan went home and recorded everything he could remember.  Two of his three tapes were transcribed.  Their plans for healthcare are all but completed.  Please read the medical goals listed by Dr. Day in the above linked article.  They are shocking.

Was the CIA involved in planning this pandemic?  Yes!  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, states that there were over 20 “pandemic” simulations beginning in 2000, and Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and the CIA were involved in every one of them. “The CIA wrote the script, high-level CIA officials participated in every one of those pandemic simulations.”

Let’s face it!  Our entire government was in on the COVID scam including the eugenics, depopulation, propaganda and mainstream media promotion of these toxic injections.

Were we lied to about the number of deaths from COVID?  Yes!  Were the tests run at cycles too high to purposely show false positives? Yes!  Could someone pass the virus if asymptomatic? No!  Was social distancing valid?  No!  Were masks beneficial? No! Was the lockdown effective in stopping the viral spread?  No!

In fact, researchers are now claiming long COVID is caused from mask wearing.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) has published leaked documents showing that primary care and family medicine doctors and others were bribed to recommend vaccinations for COVID-19 to their patients.

Have the AMA, CDC, FDA, NIH protocols saved patients?  Hell no! The dissident doctors, scientists and healthcare workers know there were repurposed drugs (inexpensive and available) that could have saved up to 86% of those who perished.

It is undeniable that in October of 2019, EVENT 201 Pandemic Simulation Exercise occurred, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Security, in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum. It was planned and executed.

A million Americans died because of hospital protocols for COVID, and now more are dying from Big Pharma’s C-19 injections.

Lies, lies and more lies.

Now they want to know who did not comply with their propaganda.

In February of this year, National File reported that the federal government is tracking the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated with a special insurance code that is entered in your electronic medical file.

Ever think of lying to your physicians?

U.S. Department of Defense

All of this was forecast years before the “gain of function” by our Department of Defense who decided we needed to join with the Chinese on bioweapons.

Sasha Latypova, who worked for pharmaceutical companies for over 25 years has exposed the US Department of Defense (DoD) involvement in the three-year nightmare of Sars-coV-2.  She revealed the DoD as the main player in the weaponization of the Wuhan vaccines, saying that it is in direct collusion with Big Pharma in faking clinical trials.

But it wasn’t just the DoD.  Latypova said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) give different grants and contracts for the development of these kinds of things. “So, these contracts are all with DoD and BARDA as well as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). They actually merge into the same organization and report to the executive branch of the government.”

In an excellent interview with Maria Zeee, Latypova goes on to talk about the filthy production conditions of the plants producing the C-19 injections and how a vaccine trial auditor was fired after reporting clinical trial fraud to the FDA.  Believe me people, the FDA has long been an enemy of the American people.

Conclusion

Investigative reporter, Leo Hohmann wrote that the US Senate declared the case closed on the origins of C-19, literally whitewashing the crime of the century.  Hohmann writes, “Once again, the U.S. government, investigating itself, withholds vital information from the American public.”

What our government did was join forces with the CCP to depopulate and cripple America, probably making her ripe for the Chinese invasion.

This is treason and murder.

The final part of this trilogy is about Medical Perversion.

©2023 Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

This Largely Unknown Psychological Phenomenon May Be Driving Men To Become Trans, Experts Say

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  • Most male-to-female transgender cases are driven by autogynephilia, a man’s sense of being sexually aroused at the thought of himself as a woman, experts have argued, but trans activists are pushing back against the label and the stigma it’s associated with. 
  • “Psychological disorders are not our fault, but when they are linked to sexuality, they can trigger negative emotions such as shame, guilt and fear. People don’t want that, so they deny the condition,” Debbie Hayton, who is transgender, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • “Acknowledging the existence of autogynephilia … challenges the conceptualization of male-to-female trans as normal, ordinary women who happen to have been born in the wrong body … [It] is probably a harder sell to the general public than the fairytale version,” Dr. Ray Blanchard, who coined the term, told the DCNF. 

Autogynephilia, or a man’s condition of being sexually aroused by the concept of himself as a woman, is a driving force behind male-to-female transgenderism, according to some experts, but activists and a leading transgender medical group have been reluctant to acknowledge the issue.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the leading transgender medical organization, removed the term from its standards of care between 1998 and 2001, and proponents of the transgender movement have decried the term as inaccurate and stigmatizing.

Autogynephilia, or AGP, undercuts the narrative pushed by proponents of transgender ideology that gender transitions aren’t sexual, and a significant proportion of transgender people are heterosexual men who are sexually aroused when they present themselves as female and wear women’s clothing, researchers and transgender people have argued.

‘Fairytale Version’

AGP drives the overwhelming majority of male-to-female transsexual cases, according to Dr. Ray Blanchard, a Canadian psychiatry professor who coined the term in the late 1980s. Most of the pushback against the classification of AGP comes from transgender activists and their allies in the mental health field rather than from medical institutions, he said.

“Acknowledging the existence of autogynephilia creates certain problems,” Blanchard told the DCNF. “First, it challenges the conceptualization of male-to-female (MTF) trans as normal, ordinary women who happen to have been born in the wrong body. It threatens the rationale they may have used for terminating their marriages, for risking alienating their children, and sometimes for experiencing a career setback.”

“Secondly, the autogynephilia explanation of nonhomosexual gender dysphoria is probably a harder sell to the general public than the fairytale version,” he added.

“I think it is important to understand, however, that some AGP individuals, with or without gender dysphoria, recognize themselves in clinical descriptions of AGP, and some are even relieved to learn that there are other men just like themselves. Furthermore, one of the very best scholarly works on autogynephilia was written by a postoperative [male to female] transsexual who is herself AGP, Dr. Anne A. Lawrence, MD,” Blanchard said.

Dr. Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University who is known for his research on biology and sexual orientation, told the DCNF he agreed with Blanchard that AGP motivates the majority of male-to-female transgender cases.

“Autogynephilia occurs in a small minority of natal males and is sexual arousal by the fantasy of being, or the act of imitating, women,” Bailey said. “In some subset of males with AGP — we don’t know how large — gender dysphoria develops.”
“Some AGP males are content with occasional cross dressing and masturbatory fantasies,” Bailey said. “This gender dysphoria can be severe and can motivate men to seek serious life changes, such as leaving their families to gender transition.”

Debbie Hayton, who transitioned from a male-to-female identity around age 40 after experiencing lifelong AGP, believes the condition motivates most male-to-female transsexuals.

“Psychological disorders are not our fault, but when they are linked to sexuality, they can trigger negative emotions such as shame, guilt and fear,” Hayton told the DCNF. “People don’t want that, so they deny the condition. When you accept that you have AGP, you need to take responsibility for your condition. This is a psychological disorder that can be treated, but we need to accept that our condition has an impact (often negative) on other people. The alternative born-in-the-wrong-body idea is attractive because it makes us a victim of an unfortunate circumstance.”

Blanchard’s characterization of AGP is based in part on testimonials from dozens of autogynephiles collected by Dr. Anne Lawrence; these patients expressed sexual arousal at the thought of themselves as women beginning around puberty, according to Blanchard’s “Early History of the Concept of Autogynephilia” published in 2005 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

“An early experience I can still vividly remember of becoming aroused at the thought of becoming female was when I was approximately 9 or 10 years old,” said one of the patients surveyed by Lawrence. “It wasn’t until I actually started therapy that I began appearing in public dressed as a female. In the early days I would become aroused whenever anyone, a sales clerk, a casual stranger, would address me as ‘Ma’am’ or perform some courtesy such as holding a door for me. This arousal led to a heightened fear of discovery, i.e., that my erection would give me away.”

Some of the patients Lawrence interviewed expressed shame and disgust at their feelings of arousal. Others gave detailed accounts of arousal they experienced through cross-dressing and mimicking female bodily functions.

“Wearing women’s clothing and feminizing my body has always been sexually exciting for me—even after SRS [sex reassignment surgery],” one patient said. “[I]t was and still is sexually exciting for me to have female body ‘functions.’ Before my SRS, I would pretend to menstruate by urinating in sanitary pad. Even the idea of owning a girl’s bike has aroused me.”

‘Trans Activists’

However, the AGP theory is rarely mentioned, or is downplayed, by WPATH and prominent transgender activists.

“Those who requested genital reconstructive surgery more commonly had adolescent histories of fetishistic cross-dressing or autogynephilic fantasies without cross-dressing,” according WPATH’s 1998 standards of care. The term was removed from its standards of care by 2001, along with the reference to cross-dressing as a fetish.

Blanchard said transgender activists likely pushed WPATH to stop using the term, though the DCNF could not confirm this was the case.

“Some proportion of WPATH members are trans activists, and WPATH is very sensitive to what its members want,” he told the DCNF. “Most pushback against the concept of autogynephilia has come from trans activists, their civilian ‘allies’ and a relative handful of mental health professionals who are also allied with trans activists.”

Activists and physicians have also argued that the AGP theory relies on outdated understandings of gender identity.

Dr. Charles Moser, a physician who specializes in transgender health, is critical of the AGP concept and argued that non-transgender females also experience arousal at the thought of being women, hence male-to-female transgender people classified as AGP aren’t manifesting a type of sexuality that’s paraphilic or distinctly male. His findings on female AGP were challenged by two other doctors, who argued that Moser’s research had problematic measures and limited comparison groups.

Dr. Julia Serano, a transgender activist with a background in biochemistry and molecular biology, wrote that AGP is needlessly stigmatizing as both a term and a medical category in a 2010 paper.

“The assertion that transsexual women are sexually motivated in their transitions challenges the standard model of transsexualism—that is, that transsexuals have a gender identity that is distinct from their sexual orientation and incongruent with their physical sex,” Serano wrote. “As a theory of transsexual etiology and taxonomy, autogynephilia seems to have little merit. For this reason, and because its terminology is especially maligning to [male-to-female] spectrum people, it is recommended that autogynephilia theory (and the language associated with it) should be avoided in favor of more accurate (and less stigmatizing) terminology. Like all human beings, MtF spectrum people have rich and diverse fantasy lives.”

‘Target Location Error’

Mental health professionals have observed AGP behaviors since the early 20th century, but often failed to distinguish this category from homosexuality and other forms of transvestism, according to Blanchard, who introduced the term “autogynephilia” in 1989 after the lack of an appropriate phrase for the condition became a hindrance to his writing.

Blanchard isn’t alone in his observations; Dr. Susan Bradley, who founded a pediatric gender clinic in Canada in the 1970s, and Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and sexologist who later ran the same clinic, wrote that most male-to-female transgender patients seeking sex reassignment surgeries experience AGP feelings and fantasies in a 2005 paper.

Bradley told the DCNF that autogynephiles don’t make up the entire male-to-female transgender population, and that a significant proportion of those individuals are actually gay men transitioning in response to homophobia. She did say that cross-dressing was a fetishistic activity for AGP individuals.

AGP was also the driving force behind gender dysphoria and eventual transition for Hayton.

“It is a target location error of male sexuality. Male sexuality is normally directed at the bodies of other people, specifically female people. When it is directed inwardly back at yourself, and your – lamentably – male body, it can cause all sorts of distress. There is a huge pressure to change that body to resemble the female body you are attracted to,” Hayton said.

Hayton is outspoken against childhood transitions, along with other movements pushed by trans activists.

“I first became aware that I was ‘different’ in early childhood. I desperately wanted to be a girl … I kept a lid on it for many years. I married in my 20s and had children. The distress became unbearable when I learned that other people were transitioning and I could too,” Hayton told the DCNF. “I therefore think it is an iatrogenic condition – the availability of the medical treatment drives the demand for it.”

“For that reason I worry greatly about children. Had I been aware that I could transition when I was 15, I would have been desperate to do so. And never had my own children,” Hayton said.

Dr. Stephen Levine, who chaired the committee behind the 1998 WPATH standards of care, told the DCNF that AGP had become less prevalent in recent years as the trans population became more heavily young and female.

“The phenomenon of transgenderism has dramatically changed in 30 years. Younger people and more females are being seen today. Many are not fetishistic. AGP generally have been excited by wearing female clothing but we are not seeing many AGP among adolescent trans females,” he said.

WPATH did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social issues and culture reporter.

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RNC Chair Tells Republicans: ‘We Can Win on Abortion’

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After a deflating 2022 midterm election, the surest path to lose the White House would come from Republicans refusing to speak on the issue of abortion, the party’s chair told aspiring candidates.

“We’ve seen what happens when we let Democrats define who we are and what we stand for,” said Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel during a speech Thursday at the Reagan Library. In 2022, “a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject. Then what happened? Democrats spent $360 million running ads filled with lies about abortion, and most Republicans had no response.”

“Let’s talk about abortion, which has become a huge issue coming after the Dobbs decision,” McDaniel exhorted GOP candidates. “When you don’t respond, the lies become the truth.”

The discussion should include a national minimum standard of protections for the unborn, which most voters favor — especially contrasted with the Democratic Party platform, she said. “Polling shows that when the choice is between a Democrat who wants zero abortion restrictions and a Republican who supports protecting life, at 15 weeks, we win by 22 points,” McDaniel noted. A 15-week national pro-life standard wins over “72% of voters, including 60% of Democrats [who] support protecting unborn children.”

“We are the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family party, and we can win on abortion. But that means putting Democrats on the defense and forcing them to own their own extreme positions,” she concluded.

Her comments came during a moment of uneasiness within GOP ranks, as aspirants and advocates contemplate the best strategy to advance the pro-life cause in a post-Dobbs environment. A statement from former President Donald Trump roiled the movement, as some interpreted it to advocate inaction at the federal level. “President Donald J. Trump believes that the Supreme Court, led by the three Justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the State level,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Washington Post late last week. The Post last week also reported on tales from unnamed sources that Trump personally believes abortion should be a matter of “states rights” and advocated not discussing the issue — comments that drew instantaneous backlash.

“Life is a matter of human rights, not states’ rights,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the SBA Pro-life America, adding that a states-only position would result in “abortion up until the moment of birth” in states such as California, New York, and Oregon. “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” she added. Other pro-life leaders amplified her position. “If you don’t understand killing children is a federal issue, you shouldn’t be running for federal office,” said Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America. “Imagine supporting a candidate who said that slavery was a ‘states rights’ issue,” tweeted Lila Rose of Live Action.

Trump did not address the criticism directly — but he appeared to take McDaniel’s words to heart, bashing Democratic extremism on abortion “As the most pro-life president in American history, I will continue to stand strong against the extreme late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party, who believe in abortion-on-demand in the ninth month of pregnancy, and even executing babies after birth,” said the 45th president in pre-recorded comments to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on Saturday. “They actually talk, beyond birth — after birth — executing the baby.”

He likely had in mind comments from then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D), who said in 2019 in the event of a live birth during a botched abortion, the abortionist would hold “a discussion” about whether the newborn would receive lifesaving care. In January, the House of Representatives passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to establish national standards of care — with the support of only one Democrat.

“This is where we’ve come, and it’s so sad to see,” said Trump. “I will stand proudly and defend innocent life, just as I did for four, very powerful, strong years. Because every child, born and unborn, is a sacred gift from God.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, said the former president provided a strong foundation during his four years in office. “President Trump gave us the justices who gave us Dobbs. He was the first presidential candidate to actually describe what an abortion is — a child being ripped out of her mother’s womb even just before birth — and he was the first president to attend the March for Life,” Szoch told The Washington Stand. “His administration did more for the unborn than any other.”

That sets a high bar for any Republican, including himself. “In a second term, he — or anyone else who calls himself a Republican — must be held accountable to do the same, which means committing to signing any democratically passed pro-life legislation and committing to upholding and reinstating federal protections for the unborn,” Szoch told TWS. “The pro-life movement must continue to work until nobody has the power to take away the fundamental right to life with a vote, scalpel, or pill.”

Trump’s proposals for future pro-life accomplishments seemed less precise. He promised to “again [appoint] rock-solid constitutional conservatives to be federal bench judges and justices, in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke at the Iowa event in person and plans to decide whether to mount a presidential campaign “well before late June,” endorsed national pro-life protections after the first trimester over the weekend. “I think the American people would welcome a minimum national standard in Washington, D.C. — 15 weeks,” he told CBS “Face the Nation” Sunday. Another likely presidential contender, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), has vowed, “If I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress.”

His colleague, senior South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R), believes his legislation, the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act, deserves top consideration. “America does not need, and the unborn cannot afford, to have two major parties who support no restrictions on abortion up to the moment of birth. The unborn need a voice in Washington,” Graham said. “It is up to us to provide it.”

Beltway pundits and consultants widely blamed the lack of the 2022 “red wave” on Graham’s bill, which Democrats portrayed as a “national abortion ban.” Yet Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Kim Reynolds of Iowa all signed heartbeat bills protecting children from abortion beginning at six weeks after fertilization before winning lopsided victories in 2022. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also signed a heartbeat bill after his 20-point reelection.

Being willing to have accurate, disciplined, unapologetic messaging and refusing to run from discussions about abortion will prove indispensable to retaking the White House and U.S. Senate in 2024, McDaniel said.

“Just as Reagan was the great communicator, we have to be great communicators. Republican candidates right now are trying to do that. They are out there working hard to get the nomination of our party. And in four short months, the RNC will host its first primary debate in Milwaukee.”

The second debate would take place at the Reagan Library, she announced. Life, family, parental rights, and children’s safety will all likely be topics of debate.

“I firmly believe that our next president will be on that stage,” as long as he handles the abortion issue properly, predicted McDaniel.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The ‘Father of the Abortion Pill’ reveals it was always about death

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

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The ‘Father of the Abortion Pill’ reveals it was always about death

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From the beginning of his research Étienne-Émile Baulieu pretended that that the chemical abortion pill was not really abortion.

In a recent profile in the New York Times, reporter Pam Belluck lays out the dark history of the chemical abortion pill. Meant as a glowing profile of Étienne-Émile Baulieu, known as the “Father of the Abortion Pill,” the article demonstrates the deception used to commercialize lethal pills that have, to date, killed millions of preborn babies.

Activists try to claim that the chemical abortion pill, now commercially available as Mifepristone, has many functions and benefits and just so happens to cause the death of preborn babies. To hear it from the mouth of the creator, Baulieu, the chemical abortion pill was always intended as an “unpregnancy pill.” From the beginning, he envisioned a pharmaceutical designed to disrupt a healthy pregnancy resulting in a dead child.

Baulieu, now 96, claims to have come up with the idea more than 50 years ago. Already working as a medical doctor and researcher in human hormones, Baulieu worked to develop the chemical abortion pill, also known as RU-486 (because it was the 38,486th molecule developed by the French drug developer Roussel-Uclaf, which had ties to Nazi Germany) .

Recognizing how shocking the chemical abortion pill would be, Baulieu then devoted decades of his life to carefully crafting the marketing of RU-486 to win approval. He succeeded first in several European countries beginning with France in 1988, then, after years of effort and further deception, in the United States in 2000.

To make RU-486 more appealing and overcome people’s moral outrage at killing innocent preborn children, Baulieu tried to distance it from abortion. He invented the word “contragestion” to describe the way that the chemicals counteracted the protective and nurturing effects of progesterone in normal gestation.

According to Baulieu’s misleading description, the chemical abortion pill could be “the middle ground between preventing fertilization and surgically removing a fetus.” There is no meaningful difference: whether a baby’s body is ripped apart by surgical implements or starved to death and forcibly removed from the mother’s womb, elective abortion is the deliberate and unjust ending of a human life.

Deceptive marketing started long before Baulieu began trying to convince health regulators to authorize the use of the lethal pharmaceutical. Belluck is not the first journalist to describe how Baulieu misled pharmaceutical executives in the initial stages of chemical development. Because the head of Hoechst AG, which controlled Roussel-Uclaf, was opposed to abortion, Baulieu pretended that his research into counteracting progesterone was intended to help reduce the effects of cortisol in astronauts in high-stress situations and certain chronic illnesses.

The non-existent distinction between abortion and the chemical abortion pill seems very important to Baulieu and his justification for his actions. According to him, “My intention was to give women a choice that, through a pill, respects their privacy and physical integrity and allows them to totally avoid the aggression of surgery.” This is not reality.

As we witness the continued expansion of the chemical abortion pill in increasingly risky and traumatic contexts, it is all too clear that “self-managed” abortions do not benefit women and do not protect mothers from the reality of ending the lives of their preborn babies. A mother who sees the lifeless body of her baby, small but fully formed, cannot be told that she is simply “unpregnant.” She knows that she is the mother of a dead baby.

Eerily, Baulieu uses an image of a woman he saw begging to justify his deadly work. While visiting India with a group of intellectuals, a woman cradling the body of her dead baby approached him asking for money. Baulieu said: “It really caused an emotion for me, which has persisted all my life. I think always of Calcutta as something which has pushed me to really work hard.” Baulieu may no longer have to see the bodies of the babies mothers have lost when society tells them that they are not worthy of support, but they still exist.

Women are also harmed by RU-486. Updated figures from the Food and Drug Administration indicate that at least 28 women have died from complications of the chemical abortion pill since its approval in 2000. Beyond that, studies show that one-third of women who undergo an abortion using the chemical abortion pill suffer from emotional trauma following the experience. Additionally, complications can result in infertility and other injuries for women.

These devastating outcomes are not surprising given that Baulieu was inspired by the development of the contraceptive pill by his mentor Gregory Pinkus. Pinkus encouraged him to travel to Puerto Rico to see his clinical trials of oral contraceptives, and Baulieu told the New York Times: “When I saw what they were doing in Puerto Rico, it was remarkable for the treatment of women.”

This is a shockingly naïve description given that Pinkus’s notoriously unethical experiments on human subjects in Puerto Rico resulted in serious illness and complications for women who were dismissed and ignored. Three women even died while participating in the trial, but there was no investigation into whether the contraceptive pill contributed to their deaths.

In classical misogynistic fashion, Baulieu claims, “I like women,” but ignores the physical and emotional pain of the women he inflicts his solution on.

Baulieu dismisses accusations that his deadly work is on the scale of Hitler and Stalin. Laughing at the idea, Baulieu uses his Jewish heritage to deflect any criticism. Of course, no one is accusing him of anti-Semitism. The similarity is that Hitler, Mao, Stalin and other tyrants were responsible for millions of deaths because they viewed certain groups of human beings as inferior and thought the solution to their problems was to kill en masse. The chemical abortion pill, RU-486, continues to kill upwards of 500,000 preborn babies in the United States alone each year.

Blind to reality, Baulieu calls the chemical abortion pill “the œuvre I dreamed of with artist friends in New York.” An instrument of death that was intended to kill babies from the very beginning, the chemical abortion pill is synonymous with destruction and injustice.

This article has been republished with permission from ThisIsChemicalAbortion.com.

AUTHOR

Anna Reynolds

Anna K. Reynolds is a freelance wordsmith. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Dallas and holds a Master of Arts in theology from Ave Maria University…. More by Anna Reynolds.

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Border Chaos Fuels Child Trafficking

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What is happening along our international borders today is not just about illegal immigration or drug smuggling. It’s also about the rapid increase in human trafficking and modern-day slavery, which is flourishing with the chaos that open borders facilitate.

With a record number of unaccompanied minors crossing into the U.S., it has become increasingly difficult to ensure they are leaving government care and going into safe, financially secure situations with people who will care for them. This disorder sets the stage for unaccountability and abuse of the system.

It is not uncommon that when Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officers come across unaccompanied minors, they find them with a phone number and name attached to them. Most times, the minor does not know and has never met the person that they are supposed to be handed over to. Recent investigations are revealing the truth of what happens to many of these most vulnerable children.

They are being exploited, abused, and trafficked.

Unaccompanied minors go into the Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program managed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (OOR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), an operational division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Once children enter OOR care, they are put in contact with their parents, guardians, or relatives, if known, and the process of finding a sponsor begins.

As of April 17, 2023, there are approximately 7,380 unaccompanied children in HHS care. The average length of time an unaccompanied child remains in ORR’s care is 25 days.

Tara Lee Rodas revealed in an interview that often, sponsors are typically not citizens, permanent residents, nor do they have a legal status in the U.S.

Minors are coming forward revealing their abuse. One young female explained that her sponsor was forcing her to engage in sexual acts for money. Antonio Diaz Mendez, a 14-year-old, claimed that he had to earn money to repay his debts and was working long shifts in a warehouse. He hadn’t seen his sponsor in months.

Due to the total chaos associated with processing over 6,000 illegal aliens each day, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents simply do not have time to conduct thorough investigative interviews to develop the articulable suspicion of trafficking, or even assess a claimed family relationship with co-travelers in any meaningful way. In all but the most egregious events, agents are forced to accept the information being provided at face value.

It is also important to note that many victims of trafficking do not know they are being trafficked when they initially enter the country illegally. They are often still under the belief that the smuggler is just providing a service to get them into the U.S. under the radar. They don’t find out the truth until it is too late.

Under prior administrations, as the border security environment was constantly improving and illegal immigration was slowing down dramatically, agents had more time to conduct in-depth interviews and identify inconsistencies in claimed family members’ stories. Agents identified countless cases where they were able to get a child or adult to admit they were not related. We will never know for sure how many children were rescued before they were victimized further.

Chaos provides cover for all types of criminal activity. As a direct result of the catch-and-release polices implemented by the Biden administration, our international border with Mexico and our immigration process for unaccompanied alien children have devolved into total chaos. Chaos that is ripe for exploitation by human traffickers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Deterrence policies and programs work. USBP has countless examples to show that if you simply enforce the law, hold people accountable and avoid releasing aliens into the U.S. until after a judge has adjudicated their case, cross border illegal entries dramatically decrease. This immediately increases the time that agents can investigate and mitigate more sophisticated criminal schemes like narcotics smuggling and human trafficking.

Some children are fortunate to make it out of these situations by running away and seeking help, or due to the diligent efforts of citizens who are paying attention—citizens like Jallyn Sualog, who was removed from her position at HHS after raising concerns over the phenomenon.

Tragically, there are likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children who will be enslaved to labor and sex work for most of their lives.

A safe and secure border will help ensure children are less likely to be put in harm’s way and support a system that can more effectively place them in proper homes. Getting there will require bipartisan efforts to regain operational control of the border.

Once that is underway, substantial reform can be enacted to hold HHS more accountable to the children they are responsible for.

In the U.S., almost no group is more vulnerable to falling victim than children migrants who have no legal guardian to ensure their safety.

We must work toward restricting human trafficking by securing and maintaining our borders. Customs and Border Protection personnel should be given every tool at their disposal to intercept and stop human trafficking efforts, both at and between ports of entry.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

SELENE RODRIGUEZ

Selene Rodriguez is the Assistant Director of Federal Affairs at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She served as an Intelligence Specialist in the U.S. Marine Corps and is completing her MA in Political Science at Texas State University.

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Marijuana: One Problem After Another

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Last month, Oklahoma voters rejected the legalization of recreational marijuana.  Hopefully, this means the word about all the problems associated with marijuana use is getting around.

In New York City, licenses for legal pot shops have been slow in coming so illegal shops have proliferated, leading to the sale of illegal drugs and attracting more than 500 violent robberies last year alone.  Mayor Eric Adams noted there are as many as 1,500 of these illegal shops in the City.  They open near schools and target kids.  “We are losing our grip,” he said.  Licensed shops also target kids with candy-flavored gummies and other cannabis products.  It’s Joe Camel all over again.

Legalized marijuana is also a factor in Colorado’s rising crime rates.  It attracted criminals to the state initially, and now the homeless and others are committing armed robbery and burglary to get the money to buy marijuana.  The same pattern is playing out in other states.  Legalizing marijuana was supposed to reduce crime but, instead, the illegal drug market has mushroomed and violence has increased.

There’s no end to the problems marijuana is causing:

  • the number of young children ingesting marijuana in Colorado is rising despite regulations meant to prevent it
  • suicide attempts linked to marijuana overdoses are up.  Remember, the drug is 10 times more powerful than it was a generation ago.
  • marijuana sent more than 800,000 people to the emergency room in 2021 with prolonged vomiting, psychotic episodes, and other problems, almost double as in 2011
  • the number of seniors hospitalized for a bong-gone-wrong in California increased 1,800 percent between 2005 and 2019
  • marijuana can lead to depression and worsen underlying mental problems
  • regular marijuana users may need more anesthesia during surgery, leading to more cognitive problems associated with anesthesia
  • marijuana is associated with a raft of other problems including emphysema, learning delays, and driving deaths

Legalizing recreational marijuana was supposed to be harmless.  It wasn’t.  It was supposed to reduce crime.  It didn’t.  It was supposed to keep marijuana out of the hands of young people.  The problem got worse.  It was supposed to fatten public coffers, but it drains public resources instead.  It costs more than four times as much money to fix the problems than marijuana brings in.

No wonder the pendulum is starting to swing, with some now calling for tighter regulations of various kinds.  That’s a good thing, no matter how much it might upset the progressive Democrats and the financially self-interested merchants of chaos who urged us into this mess.

©2023 Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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‘One or Two’ Lab Leaks Most Likely Origins for COVID: Senate Report

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Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) on Monday released a 301-page report concluding that COVID-19 “most likely” leaked from a lab weeks before China’s official narrative as the result of “one or possibly two” lab accidents. “We won’t be able to prove this in a criminal trial. But I do think there’s enough evidence, if this was a civil case, that we would convince a jury,” said Marshall of the report fittingly titled, “Muddy Waters.”

Conducted over 18 months by former Trump official Dr. Bob Kadlec, Dr. Bob Foster, and GOP staff on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the report concluded after studying the lab-leak theory as well as the natural origin theory, “The preponderance of circumstantial evidence supports an unintentional research-related incident.” The full senate report represents the fullest picture the American public has yet received of the evidence pointing in any direction; in earlier assessments from the U.S. intelligence community, only a summary was declassified.

The conditional nature of the lengthy study’s conclusions highlights the remaining uncertainty about the origins of COVID-19. “Every time I pick on China, we should look in the mirror because our own federal government has kept data from us, they wouldn’t show us information. They wouldn’t let us talk to the right people,” said Marshall.

The report didn’t discount the possibility of a natural origin without a fair hearing. It affirmed several data points that made the Hunan Seafood Market at least a plausible origin point. However, “the absence of key epidemiological and genetic data” led them to conclude this was unlikely. “Recent natural zoonotic spillovers of respiratory viruses with pandemic potential have left behind evidence of where and how they occurred,” they noted. Instead, they summarized, “the preponderance of information supports the plausibility of an unintentional research-related incident that likely resulted from failures of biosafety containment during SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-related research.”

The report described the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a lab-leak waiting to happen. By 2019, the lab had collected “approximately 20,000 … animal virus samples from across China,” which “underwent initial evaluation in BSL-2 settings … usually by graduate students.” The report added, “Widely accepted biosafety guidelines hold that initial evaluation of SARS-related bat coronaviruses should be conducted in at least BSL-3 laboratories because of the risk of creating infectious aerosols.” BSL-2 laboratories operate with lower safety standards than BSL-3 laboratories.

But WIV’s labs suffered from “neglected maintenance, insufficient operational funds, and a lack of specialized managers and engineers to operate BSL-3 labs,” complained Yuan Zhiming, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CCP) Committee of the Wuhan Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in May 2019.

Aware of WIV’s safety and maintenance shortcomings, researchers attempted to retroactively address them, all while its biolabs remained fully operational. In 2019 they filed patents for correcting “existing door seals that developed slow leaks over time,” “a manually operated exhaust fan,” HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter disinfection, and mending the pressure cooker-like autoclave sterilizers, used for sterilizing equipment, which were “unable to achieve required sterilization temperatures,” had “potential leaks around the autoclave doors,” and accumulated “excessive condensation of autoclaved infectious materials.”

“It is very, very apparent that their biological safety training is minimal,” said Robert Hawley, “who for years oversaw safety programs at the U.S. Army’s maximum-containment lab at Fort Detrick, Md.”

Eventually, the problems at WIV came to the attention of the nation’s leaders. On November 19, 2019, a senior CCP official from Beijing relayed “important oral and written instructions” to WIV senior leadership in a special biosafety and security training session, which was “was followed by a two and a half day remedial biosafety training course for WIV researchers.”

By then, the disease may have already been spreading. The report noted “an increase in adult Influenza-Like-Illness (ILI) accompanied by negative laboratory influenza tests” in the week November 11-17, 2019 from a Wuhan hospital, “approximately 13 weeks before the peak incidence of COVID-19 cases in late January-early February 2020.” According to international data collected in 28 other countries, 13 weeks is “the average time from the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID virus] to the maximum incidence of recognized cases.”

Officially, the report acknowledged, China holds that the first COVID-19 outbreak was “no earlier than December 8, 2019.”

However, “eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and additional academic studies further support October 28 to November 10 as the window of emergence.” Some of the anecdotes come from government sources (emphasis added):

  • “The Deputy Consular Chief [at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan] recalled, ‘By mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November.’”
  • “A January 2021 S. Department of State factsheet stated … ‘several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.’”
  • “Unpublished People’s Republic of China (PRC) Government data identified the first COVID-19 case in mid-November. A veteran South China Morning Post reporter reviewed an official China CDC document that showed a 55-year-old from Hubei province contracted the virus on November 17, 2019.”

Some anecdotes were collected media reports about the situation in Wuhan (emphasis added):

  • “An Australian journalist interviewed a frontline Wuhan doctor who conveyed that he and his colleagues saw a growing number of patients exhibiting fever and respiratory difficulties in early November, 2019. The physicians realized that a coronavirus, likely SARS, was the causative agent by early December.”
  • “Two other media outlets published information from leaked hospital data from pneumonia patients in Wuhan with suspected COVID-19. These reports identified two separate suspected case-clusters in early October and November 2019.”
  • “A Wuhan University biostatistics professor gave an interview in which he discussed his work to compile a nationwide database of COVID-19 cases. According to the epidemiologist, several suspected cases predated the earliest official cases in December, 2019. ‘There were two patient cases in November, with onset on November 14 and November 21, 2019, and five or six cases before December 8, 2019.’”
  • “In August 2021, a veteran Washington Post policy columnist reported that at least one of the WIV researchers became ill in early November, 2019 and exhibited symptoms highly specific to COVID-19, including the loss of smell and ground-glass opacities in his lungs.”

Still other anecdotes measured the crisis with proxy variables (emphasis added):

  • “A June 2020 published Harvard University study found an unusual increase in Wuhan hospital traffic during [autumn 2019].”
  • “Satellite imagery showed a significant increase in vehicles parked at major Wuhan hospitals – an indicator previously established as a proxy for hospital occupancy rates – in this period compared to October and November of 2018.”
  • “Search queries made on the Chinese search engine Baidu for terms like ‘cough’ also increased substantially in October and November, 2019.”

The report contained one more reason to believe that COVID may have been circulating earlier than Chinese authorities admit. “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Professor Zhou Yusen, Director of the 5th Institute at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), … submitted one of the first COVID-19 vaccine patents on February 24, 2020,” said the report. “Several experts assessed that Zhou likely would have had to start this vaccine development research no later than November 2019 to achieve the February patent submission date.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty called this revelation “the closest thing to a smoking gun” in the report.

The researchers considered other evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis as well, such as a unique genetic marker in the COVID virus, SARS-Cov-2. “One of the notable genetic findings of SARS-CoV-2 is the presence of an FCS [furin cleavage site]. It is the first SARS-related beta coronavirus found with one,” but WIV had been attempting “to artificially insert genetic sequences for human furin cleavage [HFC] sites to evaluate their pandemic causing potential in SARS-related coronaviruses” since 2018.

In the end, the report settles on “two plausible scenarios” for a lab leak. First, they hypothesized that a “research-related incident occurred sometime before September 2019,” the virus was first isolated in the low-level lab. “This infection, while unlikely to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, may have spurred the WIV and PRC government to undertake precautionary actions identified by this investigation and others,” they wrote.

Second, they hypothesized a “mid- to late October” spillover from the lab due to malfunctioning equipment, which provoked another round of security responses. A detail from a November 12 internal report suggested “the possibility of more than one research-related incident” when it indicated that “incidents involving ‘high pathogens’ requiring a response from the BSL-4 team had occurred.”

In any event, the report suggested that the poor quality of the WIV labs contributed to make any lab leak worse. “The identified underlying biosafety issues increased the likelihood that such containment failures were not immediately recognized,” they said. “The possibility of unrecognized biocontainment breaches combined with SARS-CoV-2’s clinical characteristics of asymptomatic and mild clinical illness in the majority of infections, likely confounded early recognition and containment of the initial outbreak.”

If these hypothetical scenarios strike close to the truth, then China has not only covered up the origins of COVID, but indirectly contributed to them through inadequate lab safety. The report repeatedly stated that none of the evidence it collected can definitively prove that the COVID virus came from a Chinese lab. However, they noted, “according to published research, the cause of over 80% of laboratory-acquired infections (LAI) are never conclusively determined.” To date, the 301 pages of research and 1,570 footnotes they published represent the fullest explanation Americans have been able to access.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Bill Gates Donated Over $80 million To Org that Teaches 10-Year-Olds How to Become ‘Sex Workers’

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The evil on the left is so grotesque that those of us who have been smeared, defamed, libeled because of our opposition wear our ruin as a badge of honor. When the history books are written, we fought for the good against insurmountable evil.

Gates funds millions to NGO claiming kids born sexual, 10-year-olds should learn about ‘commercial sex work’

The sex ed said kids under 10 should learn, ‘As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities’

By Hannah Grossman | Fox News

Planned Parenthood ripped after approving ‘woke’ sex education

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates millions annually to a nongovernmental organization which claims that children are born sexual and should learn about “commercial sex work” under 10 years of age.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – a separate entity from the U.S. nonprofit – wields significant influence on global sex education. The NGO comprises 120 independent organizations in over 146 countries and has received – including its European network – over $80M from Gates. Other significant donors included the World Health Organization.

A toolkit released in 2017 showed an insight into how the NGO teaches sex education to children around the globe.

“Sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships, including dating, marriage or commercial sex work, among others,” IPPF said about children under 10 should be taught, which was first flagged by Nicole Solas of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Children under 10 should also be told “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities,” the toolkit said.
Bill Gates funded an organization which claimed children are born sexual.

The IPPF suggested in multiple instances that children are born sexual.

Children under 10 should be taught that “Sexuality is a part of you from the moment you are born. Your sexuality develops and changes throughout your life.”

“[S]ex positivity acknowledges that human beings, including adolescents and young people, are autonomous sexual beings.”

Sex educators, according to the NGO, should have an “Understanding of young people as sexual beings.”

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXPOSÈ: Records Show Funding for EcoHealth/Wuhan Institute Research to Create Coronavirus ‘Mutants’

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Washington, D.C. – Judicial Watch announced today it received 552 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which include the initial grant application and annual reports to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from EcoHealth Alliance, describing the aim of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to create mutant viruses “to better predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people.”

Eco Health planned to sequence the spike protein from coronaviruses obtained from bats for the purpose of “creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2,” which is explained as “the receptor to gain entry to human cells.”

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it filed in December 2021 for:

All reports submitted by EcoHealth Alliance to NIH or its sub-agencies related to NIH Grant No. 1R01A|110964 titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” during the term of the grant.

In the initial “Application for Federal Assistance” submitted on June 5, 2013, by EcoHealth Alliance, a section is titled “Specific Aims,” which notes the intention to create mutant bat viruses and “predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people:”

To understand the risk of zoonotic CoV [coronavirus] emergence, we propose to examine 1) the transmission dynamics of bat-CoVs across the human-wildlife interface; and 2) how this process is affected by CoV evolutionary potential, and how it might force CoV evolution. We will assess the nature and frequency of contact among animals and people in two critical human-animal interfaces: live animal markets in China and people who are highly exposed to bats in rural China.

“Specific Aim 3” discusses “Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission:”

We will test our models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and humanized mice. With bat-CoVs that we’ve isolated or sequenced, and using live virus or pseudovirus infection in cells of different origin or expressing different receptor molecules, we will assess potential for each isolated virus and those with receptor binding site sequence to spill over. We will do this by sequencing the spike (or other receptor binding/fusion) protein genes from all our bat-CoVs, creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2, CD26/DPP4 (MERS-CoV receptor) or other potential CoV receptors.

In the continuing discussion of the aims of the research, the report states:

In vitro [outside the body] cell lines & Humanized mouse model: We have developed primary cell lines and transformed cell lines from 9 bat species using kidney, spleen, heart, brain and intestine. We have used these for virus isolation, infection assays and receptor molecule gene cloning. We also have a large number of cell lines from humans and animals that we will use for virus infectivity assays. We have obtained a letter of support from Dr Ralph Baric, who is keen to collaborate with us initially to infect his humanized mouse model with our bat SL-CoV [SARS-Like Coronavirus] that uses ACE2, and subsequently to use other CoVs that we identify …

[ *** ]

The results will provide information whether bat-CoVs could use known bat and human ACE2, DPP4 or other known CoV receptors to enter cells, and allow us to determine critical receptor binding sites, viral host range, and to better predict the capacity of our CoVs to infect people. [Emphasis in original]

EcoHealth Alliance’s $3.3 million grant to fund a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Coronavirus Emergence” was initially to run from October 1, 2013, to September 30, 2018. The first “Project/Performance Site Location” is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Three other Chinese sites follow: East China Normal University in Shanghai, Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention in Dali, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong in Guangzhou.

On May 27, 2014, the NIH awarded EcoHealth Alliance $3,086,735 over five years for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

An EcoHealth Alliance grant application, received by the NIH on June 5, 2013, includes a list of “Senior/Key Personnel” including Shi Zhengli and Zhang Yun-Zhi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV); Peter Daszak, CEO of EcoHealth Alliance; and other Chinese scientists, including Ke Changwen of the Chinese “CDC and Prevention of Guangdong Province.”

A section of the EcoHealth Alliance application titled “EcoHealth Alliance Budget Justification” describes some of the work to be conducted by EcoHealth scientists in China:

A research scientist will be hired at 12 months time per year to provide direct assistance and oversight of field activities in China; maintain equipment and logistics; and coordinate animal and human sample shipment to the labs in China and in the US.

[ *** ]

Once we secure IRBs [Institutional Review Boards] for human sampling in Y1 [Year 1], we will hire three medical officers from China provincial CDCs [Centers for Disease Control] as consultants to work in Guangxi, Hunan, and Fujian during Y2-Y5. These medical officers will be responsible for IRB approved human sampling as well as maintaining cold chain for storage and shipping samples.

[ *** ]

Dr. Zhengli Shi, Senior Virologist. [Redacted] per year in Y1 -Y5. Dr. Shi will oversee the coronavirus screening for all samples collected in China. She will work with the PI [Principal Investigator], Co-Investigators, and Senior/Key Personnel to analyze data and write manuscripts. She will also coordinate data and material sharing with the co-investigators.

In a budget calculation for the year 2014-15, the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a sub-awardee of the grant was allocated to receive $128,718 in direct costs and $10,297 in indirect costs from NIH. The salaries of Shi Zhengli and a Wuhan Institute of Virology colleague Ge Xingyl are redacted from the budget. Over the five years of the grant, the Wuhan lab was to receive $749,976.

A section of the grant award titled “Wuhan Institute of Virology Budget Justification, Subaward” discusses “Other Direct Costs:”

RNA Extractions

We will be running RNA extractions for 1,000 bats per year (three sample per bat: oral, anal, and blood) in each year … Extracted RNA per animal will be pooled.

[ *** ]

DNA Sequencing

In each year of the project, DNA sequencing will be performed on 3,200 samples at a cost of $2.91 per reaction….

Laboratory Supplies

We request support for in vitro infection experiments using pseudoviruses carrying the spike proteins (wild type or mutants) or live viruses in cell lines of different origins, binding affinity assays between the spike proteins (wild types or mutants) and different cellular receptor molecules, and humanized mouse experiments.

The Year 2 annual report for the bat coronavirus project, budget period June 1, 2016, to May 31, 2017, under “Specific Aim 3,” states:

Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. The following experiments will be undertaken in Year 2:

  • Humanized mice with human ACE2 receptors will be infected with WIV1 and the two rescued chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses to determine the tissue tropism and pathogenicity of bat SL-CoV.
  • Isolation of novel bat coronaviruses. Live virus or pseudovirus will be used to infect cells of different origin or expressing different receptor molecules. Spillover potential for each isolated virus will be assessed.
  • An infectious clone of full-length MERS-CoV [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus] will be constructed using reverse genetic method. Using the S [spike] sequence of different MERS-related viruses identified from Chinese bats, the chimeric viruses with S gene of bat MERS-related coronaviruses and backbone of the infectious clone of MERS-CoV will be constructed to study the receptor usage and infectivity of bat MERS-related coronaviruses.

Among the “Additional Year 2 items for Specific Aim 3” are:

  • The infectious clone of WIV1 was successfully constructed using reverse genetic methods;
  • Two chimeric bat SARS-like coronavirus strains were constructed by replacing the S [spike] gene in the backbone of WIV1;
  • Permission to import mice with human ACE2 to China was obtained, so as to conduct the experimental infections proposed in our R01 specific aims.

The annual report submitted for Year 3 of the grant project, budget period June 1, 2017, to May 31, 2018, under the heading “Specific Aim 3: Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission,” notes:

In Year 3, we successfully isolated Rs4874 from the single [bat] fecal sample. Using the reverse genetic system we previously developed, we constructed two chimeric viruses with the WIV1 backbone replaced with the S [spike] gene of Rs7327 and Rs4231, respectively. Vero E6 cells were respectively infected with Rs4874, WIV1-Rs4231S and WIV1-Rs7327S, and efficient virus replication was detected by immunofluorescence assay in all infections. To assess the usage of human ACE2 by the three novel SL-CoVs, we conducted virus infectivity studies using HeLa cells with or without the expression of human ACE2. All viruses replicated efficiently in the human ACE2-expressing cells.

In the Year 4 annual report, budge period June 1, 2018, to May 31, 2019, submitted to NIH by EcoHealth on September 16, 2020, in answer to the question “How Have the Results Been Disseminated to Communities of Interest,” the report details that Peter Daszak and WIV lab director Shi Zhengli briefed their findings to, among others, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Among the accomplishments listed in the Year 4 report is: “In vivo [experimentation done in a whole organism] infection of SARSr-CoVs with variants of S [spike] protein in human ACE2 (hACE2) expressing mice.”

The report also includes information about the construction of viruses of “varying pathogenicity” and testing them on humanized mice:

Using the reverse genetic methods we previously developed, infectious clones with the WIV1 [bat SARS-like coronavirus] backbone and the spike protein of SHC014, W IV16 and Rs4231, respectively, were constructed and recombinant viruses were successfully rescued. In Year 4, we performed preliminary in vivo infection of SARSr-CoVs on transgenic mice that express hACE2. Mice were infected with 105 pfu of full-length recombinant virus of W IV1 (rWIV1) and the three chimeric viruses with different spikes. Pathogenesis of the 4 SARSr-CoVs was then determined in a 2-week course. Mice challenged with rWIV1-SHC014S have experienced about 20% body weight loss by the 6th day post infection, while rWIV1 and rWIV-4231 S produced less body weight loss. In the mice infected with rWIV1 -WIV16S, no body weight loss was observed (Fig. 35a). 2 and 4 days post infection, the viral load in lung tissues of mice challenged with rWIV1-SHC014S, rWIV1-WIV16S and rWIV1-Rs4231 S reached more than 106 genome copies/g and were significantly higher than that in rWIV1-infected mice (Fig. 35b). These results demonstrate varying pathogenicity of SARSr-CoVs with different spike proteins in humanized mice.

In a revised award dated July 13, 2020, the NIH granted additional funds, including $77,750 to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, $76,301 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and $75,600 to the Institute of Pathogen Biology of China.

The 2020 renewal application to extend funding for the Wuhan bat research projects states that EcoHealth would not be working with “select agents” (severe threats), such as SARS-CoV, but rather with a SARSr-CoV molecular clone designated WIV1 which, while a “BSL3” (biosafety level 3) pathogen, was not considered a select agent.

The select agent research was to be conducted at Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

A section titled “P3CO Research” notes:

Importantly, we are not proposing to genetically manipulate SARS-CoV over the course of this proposal. [Emphasis in original] However, we are proposing to genetically manipulate the full length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone during the course of this proposal, which is not a select agent, has not been shown to cause human infections, and has not been shown to be transmissible between humans.

The same 2020 renewal application states: “This project is a multi-institutional collaboration led by EcoHealth Alliance, New York (Daszak, PI), which will subcontract funds to three institutions: the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Dr. Shi), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Dr. Baric), and the Institute of Pathogen Biology (Dr. Ren).”

“A review of these and other documents strongly suggest that U.S. funding in China and elsewhere for mutant virus, gain-of-function research may have been responsible for the emergence of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This gain-of-function scandal should be the subject of criminal investigations.”

Through FOIA, Judicial Watch has uncovered a substantial amount of information about COVID-19 issues:

  • HHS records included emails of then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis Collins showing a British physicians’ group recommended the use of Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID-19.
  • Heavily redacted HHS records showed that just two days prior to FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine a discussion was held between U.S. and UK health regulators regarding the COVID shot and “anaphylaxis,” with the regulators emphasizing their “mutual confidentiality agreement.”
  • Judicial Watch obtained HHS records regarding data Moderna submitted to the FDA on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which indicated a “statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The documents also revealed Moderna elected not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.
  • Heavily redacted records from the FDA regarding the COVID-19 booster vaccine detailed pressure on COVID booster use and approval.
  • HHS records detailed internal discussions about myocarditis and the COVID vaccine. Other documents detail adverse “events for which a contributory effect of the vaccine could not be excluded.”
  • Judicial Watch uncovered HHS records detailing the extensive media plans for a Biden administration propaganda campaign to push the COVID-19 vaccine.
  • HHS records revealed previously redacted locations of COVID-19 vaccine testing facilities in Shanghai, China. The FDA had claimed the name and location of the testing facilities were protected by the confidential commercial information exemption of the FOIA.
  • NIH records showed an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s lack of compliance with reporting rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
  • Texas Public Information Act (PIA) records showed the former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Dr. James W. Le Duc, warned Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of potential investigations into the COVID issue by Congress.
  • HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and related data for the COVID-19 vaccines showed how a key component of the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), were found outside the injection site, mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals, eight to 48 hours after injection.
  • Records obtained from HHS through a FOIA lawsuit related to hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 revealed that a grant to EcoHealth Alliance was cancelled because of press reports that a portion of the grant was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
  • HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
  • NIAID records showed that it gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces.
  • HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci ” email chain, citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”
  • HHS records included a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that appears to describe “gain-of-function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone.
  • HHS records showed the State Department and NIAID knew immediately in January 2020 that China was withholding COVID data, which was hindering risk assessment and response by public health officials.
  • HHS records show that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.
  • Fauci emails include his approval of a press release supportive of China’s response to the 2019 novel coronavirus.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘One or Two’ Lab Leaks Most Likely Origins for COVID: Senate Report

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.