A Small Price (for us) To Pay

First published at NewCatallaxy blog, 23 December, 2022.

On 25th of March, 2022 (keep the date in mind) Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defence Minister, released figures for Russian army casualties in the month-long war, or “special military operation,” in Ukraine. 1,351 Russian servicemen had been killed, and another 3,825 wounded. NATO sources put the number killed at between 7,000 and 15,000.

On 22nd of September, Shoigu updated the figures to 5,937 Russian servicemen killed. Neither of these numbers included Donbas militiamen, or the Chechen forces, or mercenaries of the Wagner Group. Up to that time, much of the fighting in northern Donetsk and in Luhansk had been conducted by the Donbas militias, who had been carrying the main burden of the fighting with the Ukrainian army since 2014, by the mercenary Wagner Group, and by forces comprised primarily of Chechens under a Chechen leader. Both of the latter were engaged in the fighting around the city of Bakhmut, a vital supply link for Ukrainian forces which had been shelling the city of Donetsk since the war broke out in 2014.

At the same time, Shoigu put the Ukrainian losses at 61,207 dead and 49,368 wounded. The precision with which the Ukrainian losses are given is clearly spurious. Aside from the necessary inaccuracy of the sum of multiple estimates, they present of ratio of dead to wounded of 6:5, where a very rough rule of thumb would be more like 1:3 or 1:4.

Mediazona is a dissenting Russian media outlet founded by two members of Pussy Riot, so there is no question as to their dissent. Their services are sought out by, for example, the BBC, especially for anything detrimental to the Russian government. For the BBC, Mediazona did research on Russian casualties from information on funerals and various other notifications of deaths. On the 3rd of September, they claimed to have identified 6,024 Russian servicemen killed. By the 16th, the BBC was reporting 6,476 killed. The most remarkable thing about this is how close it is to the official Defence Ministry number. To give this some context, the CIA, Estonian Foreign Intelligence and MI6 were asserting that 15,000 Russian troops had been killed. Such estimates were dwarfed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, which was claiming to have “liquidated” 55,100 Russian fighters. The take-away here is that the official Russian figures on their own casualties are reasonable, and that the Ukrainian figures are one of those forms of propaganda which consists in looking through whichever end of the telescope best fits the pre-determined story.

The Ukrainians do not provide their own casualty figures. These numbers are classified. However, in November, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley said that Russia’s armed forces had suffered 100,000 killed and wounded, and that Ukraine’s casualties had probably been similar. Given that the U.S. is the major sponsor of and major arms supplier to the Ukrainian war effort, Mark Milley must know exactly what Ukrainian casualty figures are, or he must explain to the Administration why he doesn’t. So his “probably” is obfuscation. While this announcement didn’t get a lot of traction, another did.

The sanctions so enthusiastically applied against Russia by the EU and the UK have rebounded very badly against the countries applying them, especially the UK and Germany, which is discovering how dependent its economy is on cheap Russian energy, and why Angel Merkel was so keen to push through Nord Stream 2 over the persistent and ruthless opposition of the US. Meanwhile the Russian economy is strengthening, much to the surprise of The Economist.

The EU needs all the money it can get, and the bureaucrats who govern are hungry for the €300 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets, and the €19 billion of assets seized from private Russian citizens, always referred to by these bureaucrats as oligarchs. There is, however, a difference between “freezing” and “seizing.” Brussels has not been able to find a legal way to take ownership of these funds, and some member states are rightly concerned about the precedent such a seizure would set. In the latest attempt to construct a framework for plundering these resources, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission,  made an ill-advised broadcast in which she said, “It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and more than 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far.”

This revelation caused a storm in Ukraine and elsewhere. The EU PR gurus addressed the problem by editing the offending sentence out of the video, and re-releasing the edited version.

One expects of government bureaucrats a certain facility in the plundering of funds; that’s their day job. But this well of comedic talent in Brussels is something unexpected, and it evoked gales of laughter across the internet. Take three. The numbers that von der Leyen had given were only estimates, a spokeswoman said, and estimates of “dead and wounded,” at that. Unfortunately, she said “killed.” What about the 20,000 civilians? Were they “killed,” or “killed and wounded”?

The bottom line here is that Ukraine, in the estimation of the EU, has lost 100,000 men killed. That number is somewhere between a third and half of the entire Ukrainian army, although there have been repeated call-ups of the increasingly elastic category of fighting-age men.

Many Western readers may have realised that they, and by extension all of us, are suffocating in a miasma of misinformation and disinformation that is generated and re-generated by the news industries of the West. They may struggle to maintain their composure under the barrage of lies about climate change, CO2, “free” renewable energy; they may have despaired at the enthusiastic abandonment of hard-won Western civil liberties and traditions of the rule of law when Covid-19 came; at the loss of all reason, caution or medical ethics in the coercive application of mRNA “vaccines.” Yet many of these same readers have suspended all scepticism concerning Russia’s “unprovoked and unjustified” war in Ukraine. This cohort may well embrace every story from the Ukrainian military, and cheer at every video of a Russian tank being destroyed or Russian troops being killed by drone-directed artillery. So be it.

Yet both General Mark Milley and Ursula von der Leyen assert, for every Russian body over which we might care dance a jig, there is at least one Ukrainian body. In fact, if we pay attention to those numbers for which there is considerable agreement between the Russian Defence Ministry and sceptical indirect investigation, there is a shocking imbalance of casualties in Russia’s favour. Col Douglas McGregor, practically the lone ex-military voice in the US that is critical of the Western response, agreed with von der Layen’s estimate, and added an estimate of 400,000 casualties in total. He added that the recent fighting, and consequent Ukrainian casualties had been so great that the number of deaths was probably closer to 120,000. His own estimate of the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian deaths is one to eight, which would put total Russian deaths in combat at around 15,000.

Shortly after those casualty figures released by Sergei Shoigu on the 25th of March, a tentative agreement for a cease-fire and settlement was reached between representatives of Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. As described in an earlier post, this agreement was sabotaged in an aggressive campaign of war-mongering lead by then British P.M. Boris Johnson. The cost in lives of this sabotage is terrible enough, but the economies of Europe in particular, and the U.S. to a lesser extent are being devastated by the sanctions designed to cripple the Russian economy, which has withstood these attacks handily. The conditions offered then by Russia will not be repeated. Russia, and Putin, have learned their lesson, not least from the revelations by Angela Merkel on Western and Ukrainian attitudes to the Minsk agreements. A full-scale Russian war effort is about to commence with the freezing of the Ukrainian soil, and all that has happened before will pale in comparison.

As this is being prepared, Poland, the most enthusiastic EU supporter of war in Ukraine, is on the brink of mobilisation, having announced that up to 200,000 Poles will be summoned for military training next year. Poland, it must be said, has irredentist claims on Ukraine dating from the 14th century, and particularly on Galicia and Volhynia in Western Ukraine, which were part of Poland from the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918-19 until the joint German-Soviet invasion of 1939. The outcome of Polish military intervention in Ukraine (in which 1,700 Poles are said to have died already) may not be what Western puppeteers anticipate.

Decisions about war are the most immediately consequential decisions that any government makes. They are now, and always have been, taken by small coteries of men, and increasingly women keen to get into the business of wielding power of the lives of populations; from the ineffectual Ursula von der Leyen to the ruthless and cynical Victoria Nuland. Any polity which lacks the information or the power to demand accountability and rationality from such men and women cannot claim to be self-governed. And here we are, in spite of our remoteness from the theatre, doing what we can to bring about the total destruction of Ukraine.

Peace-Mongering, Ukraine style

First published at NewCatallaxy blog, December 10, 2022.

News Reports and Analysis

Daily Mail, 30th November, 2021

The Daily Mail reported that three gatherings of some Downing Street staff had taken place during November and December of 2020. This was the lifting of the lid on the cesspool of cynicism that characterised the political response to Covid-19 all over the Western world, with the notable exception of Sweden.

In January and February of 2022, the lid was completely unseated. Up to twenty events involving Government staffers, most frequently Downing Street staffers, were investigated. These included two parties in Downing Street on the eve of the funeral of Prince Philip.

24th February, 2022

Russian commences “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.

The White House 16th March, 2022

President Biden today announced an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine to $1 billion in just the past week, and a total of $2 billion since the start of the Biden Administration.

Reuters, 30th March, 2022

In the most tangible sign yet of progress towards ending the war, Russia emerged from the talks promising to scale down military operations around Kyiv and the country’s north, and Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status.

Wall Street Journal, 31st March, 2022

President Erdoğan announces that Turkey has hosted two rounds of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks. These talks had progressed to the point that Erdo?an offered to host a meeting between the two leaders. “Western officials have been hesitant to endorse Ukraine’s proposal to have its security guaranteed by outside powers…”

NPR 2nd April, 2022

“…around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine, Russian forces are withdrawing. …we don’t know yet where these Russian troops are going to be redirected to. The Pentagon says they aren’t going home…

“…there is an attack on a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, which is near the Ukrainian border.

“Russia has said that the attacks came from low-flying Ukrainian helicopters, but Ukraine’s top security officials deny it. … And Russia has said that this attack could also impact peace talks, which are ongoing.” [my emphasis]

Forbes 6th April, 2022

“A Pentagon official told reporters Wednesday all Russian troops had left the areas of Kyiv and Chernihiv to regroup and resupply in Belarus and Russia…”

BBC 9th April, 2022

‘Prime Minister Boris Johnson has held talks in Kyiv with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. No 10 said the visit was a “show of solidarity” with the Ukrainian people. Following the meeting, Downing Street said the UK would send 120 armoured vehicles and anti-ship missile systems to support Ukraine…

‘Mr Johnson paid tribute to “President Zelensky’s resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people”, saying: “Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv“…[my emphasis] Speaking…alongside President Zelensky…Mr Johnson said Ukrainians “have shown the courage of a lion but you, Volodymyr, have given the roar of that lion”…

‘Mr Johnson’s visit to Kyiv came the day after the UK announced £100m of weapons for the country.’

12th April, 2022

Boris Johnson announces that he had received a Fixed Penalty Notice for violations of his own Government’s lockdown regulations.

New York Times 14th April, 2022

Biden Announces $800 Million in Military Assistance for Ukraine.

U.S. Department of Defense 21st April, 2022

President Joe Biden announced today that the United States will send another $800 million in equipment to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s two-month-long invasion. Today’s announcement comes on the heels of an $800 million military aid package the president signed last week.

7th July, 2022

Boris Johnson announces his intention to resign when the Conservative Party has selected a new leader.

6th September, 2022

Boris Johnson resigns the Prime Ministership.

New York Post 4th October, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seemingly shut the door on the prospect of having any peace talks with Vladimir Putin — but not with Russia under a different leadership. Zelensky signed a decree on Tuesday formally declaring negotiations with the Kremlin autocrat to be “impossible.”

Vladimir Putin Astana press conference 14th October, 2022

“But we are also aware of Kiev’s position – they kept saying they wanted talks, and even sort of asked for them, but have now passed an official decision that bans such talks. Well, what is there to discuss?

“As you may be aware, speaking at the Kremlin when announcing the decision on the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, I said we are open. We have always said that we are open. We reached certain agreements in Istanbul, after all. These agreements were almost initialled. But as soon as our troops withdrew from Kiev, the Kiev authorities lost any interest in the talks. That is all there is to it.”

Foreign Affairs September/October 2022

Foreign Affairs is the house journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential foreign affairs think tank in the U.S. In the 2022 September/October was an article written by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, titled The World Putin Wants: How Distortions About The Past Feed  Delusions About The Future. If you’re looking for a summary of every article written since February about Putin’s real motives and Putin’s real objectives in the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine and Donbas, this is a good place to start.

Buried on page eleven is this passing acknowledgement, which is the most comprehensive description of the conditions for peace that had been agreed between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators 5 weeks after the commencement of the Russian “Special Military Operation”:

According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.

Die Zeit 7th December, 2022

Angela Merkel’s interview with Die Zeit magazine is published. Merkel is tidying up her legacy. Among other things, she discusses her contradictory and poll-driven energy policies, including the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear industry, and her push, taken up personally with Vladimir Putin, for the building of Nord Stream 2. Most revealing though, in the current context, are her comments about policy towards Donbas, which require a little background.

After the US-engineered Maidan coup of 2014, which overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – the Donbas – refused to recognise the newly installed government, and broke away. Ukrainian armed forces immediately occupied Donetsk airport and from there launched attacks on Donetsk city and surrounds. This led to very heavy and bitter fighting between the Ukrainian military and the separatist militias (with covert Russian support.) The first Minsk agreement, signed on the 14th of September, 2014, failed to stop the fighting. The second Minsk agreement, signed on the 12th of February, 2015, was more successful, but it was never fully implemented.

Now back to Merkel’s comments:

I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong. The contries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its rules of assistance. And Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.

Ukraine used this time to get stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltsevo in early 2015, Putin could have easily overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine. [My emphasis.]

The Ukrainian defeat at Debaltsevo led to the signing of the second Minsk agreement. According to Merkel, it was “clear to all of us that the conflict was frozen, that the problem had not been solved, but that gave Ukraine valuable time.” Merkel also revealed that, in her view and presumably that of other Western leaders, “the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace.” Another translation renders that as “…basically not satisfied.” NATO, she said “should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness” in 2014, contradicting her previous remarks. It was a long interview.

So Merkel, and no doubt her Western partners, cynically manipulated her interlocutors in the Minsk negotiations, but according to her, it was not Germany, the US and the UK that were “basically not satisfied” at the end of the Cold War, but Russia. Western powers never accept any opprobrium for cynical deceit and treachery, because the other side – in this case Russia – is always the underlying source of such destructive behaviour, and Merkel and Co are regrettably forced to respond in kind. Remember that Merkel was 35 in the year the Berlin Wall came down. She learned her trades in the world of The Lives of Others, but she found soul siblings in the foreign affairs organisations of the USA, the UK and the EU.

* * * *

All of the lives lost, the buildings and infrastructure destroyed, the refugees displaced, and the massive cost to the Ukrainian, Russian and Western economies since April flow from the sabotage of those peace talks. It is well to remember this now that negotiations are once again being proposed, this time by the USA, directly with Russia. The fact that these talks have been proposed by the US, and that Zelensky, who only a month ago declared that Ukraine would not negotiate with Russia until Putin was overthrown, turns the spotlight on the real real Western protagonist of this war. But that merely reasserts the lesson of Zelensky’s reneging on the April agreement.

It’s a Vaccine, Jim, But Not As We Know It.

Published at NewCatallaxy blog on 20th September, 2021.

Who knew the term “non-sterilising vaccine” six months ago? If you did not, you are in plentiful company. Maybe the woke young, who know everything, knew about it, but for oldies like me, a vaccine was a vaccine was a vaccine. It protected you from the thing you were vaccinated against, and because you couldn’t catch it, you couldn’t pass it on.

That’s old fashioned. The CDC definition of terms includes [my emphases]:

Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

These definition were introduced by the CDC…let me see… “Page last reviewed: September 1, 2021”…weeks ago. Before then, the definitions were (26th August, 2021; page last reviewed: May 16, 2018):

Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

Science moves so fast.

The hey-day of vaccines was the 50s and 60s, and the stars of the show were smallpox and polio vaccines. Both diseases are caused by viruses, and, like the common cold, measles and herpes, those viruses are particular to humans – they have no other hosts. That characteristic makes it possible, even if not practical, to eliminate the disease.

Some years ago, the WHO announced the death of smallpox. (It wasn’t quite dead, but it was on life support in labs about the place, just in case, heaven forbid, some other rogue state decides to use its lab supply to produce biological weapons.) But to eliminate a virus, you have to have a sterilising vaccine; or, in terms most people understand, one that works.

Think of it this way. There are measures you can take to prevent disease; for example, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise, along with plenty of sunlight to top up your Vitamin D levels. These are prophylactic measures, but they’re non-sterilising prophylaxis. You can still get crook. It’s just that, compared to an obese person, or a person suffering from some immunodeficiency, or a person with a heart ailment, you have much less chance of catching whatever disease happens to be doing the rounds. If you do get sick, though, and you have good medical treatment available to you, you come under a therapeutic regime in the care of your doctor and, if it’s severe enough, hospital staff. The purpose of the therapies is to reduce the severity of the disease. The therapy may be non-sterilising (addressing the symptoms only) or, thanks to modern medical advances, sterilising (as penicillin was initially.) These are unexceptional health-care measures (though particular therapies will vary greatly in effectiveness), and the same general principles have applied for millennia before the advent of vaccines. In the case of prophylaxis and the ameliorating of symptoms, the aim is to reduce the likelihood of contracting disease, and, should that fail, to reduce the severity of the disease.

The story we are now hearing about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is that they do just this, and only this. But that was not always the story.

When SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were first touted, soon after our international border was closed, they were to be the definitive solution to Covid-19, eliminating all concerns about the virus and allowing us to get back to “normal.” That story is still essentially the public version of vaccine reality, as promoted ceaselessly by the media, Chief Medical Officers and Ministers of the Crown. But, quietly, the notion of getting back to normal has been nudged, prodded and shouldered off the stage. Normal has become new normal, a horse of a different colour. New normal starts with vaccinations, but somehow masks are here to stay, along with anti-social distancing, perspex shields and lines on the floor in shops and supermarkets, QR codes at every doorway, and a general level of hostility and suspicion.

The cracks in the foundations began with the surge of adverse events, as reported by VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, in the U.S., and the Yellow Card system in the U.K. Nobody believes that these systems are accurate reflections of the actual numbers of such events. All agree that these are under-reported, but no-one knows by how much.

The Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) from the U.S. FDA for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was issued in December of 2020, for persons older than 15 and older than 17, respectively. In May of 2021, the Pfizer EUA was extended to adolescents 12 to 15 years of age. In the same month, the CDC recommended that children from 12 years old should have the vaccine. At the time, the CDC’s own best estimate of Infection Mortality Rate for the 0-19 years age group was 3 per 100,000 infected; 0.003%.

At the end of June 2021 that the FDA added a myocarditis warning to the vaccine fact sheets. Studies noted that the risk was greatest in younger males.

While this was happening, it was gradually becoming obvious that vaccinated people were getting sick, and vaccinated people were dying. Obvious, that is, unless you were getting your information from the nightly news. If it were to turn out that similar numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated were becoming ill and were dying, what would happen to the vaccine push? Fortunately for politicians and drug companies, scientists determined that the vaccinated people were much less likely to become ill, and much less likely to die. Sighs of relief all round. That in spite of, for example, a study of an outbreak in Barnstable County Massachusetts, which found that 74% of those who tested positive were fully vaccinated. Only five of those required hospitalisation, but four of them were fully vaccinated.

So what do these vaccines actually do, or more precisely, what do they not do, as opposed to what we were told they would do? They are to some yet-to-be-determined extent, prophylactic. The deeply-ingrained acceptance of vaccination, in general, in Australia arises from their original promise: effectively complete prophylaxis. We didn’t take earlier vaccines in order to make our bout of smallpox or polio less dangerous to some uncertain extent. When the Covid-19 vaccines were introduced, no-one who was hectoring us to take them was saying that we would still get infected, would still pass the virus on, would still get sick, but not as badly, and would still die, but not as many of us.

Yet that is the reality, and the new story was brought centre-stage without a blush or a hint that it was a brand-new narrative. Nothing to see here, folks. Are we so used to being lied to?

How, then, does the vaccine differ from any other protocols of incompletely effective prophylactic measures and possibly incompletely effective therapy if the disease is contracted? It differs in this; that the vaccine is a threat to your health and your life.

If there are protocols of proven effectiveness in prevention and treatment of Covid-19, and there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that this is the case, then those who suppressed such protocols are culpable for a considerable measure of the suffering, debility and death that has been wrought by Covid-19. They are also culpable for every sickness, debility and death from the vaccine.
If I am denied accurate and complete information about the risks of the vaccine, including appraisals of rushed vaccine roll-outs in the past, or about the availability of alternatives, I am denied the possibility of informed consent. That is a denial of one of my most basic human rights in a supposedly free society.

Active, ceaseless, recalcitrant suppression is the hallmark of our political “leaders,” CMOs, legacy media and especially social media. The medical profession has largely cowered in silence, when they have not actively been part of the suppression and the touting for the vaccines. If the protocols are shown to be effective, all of these people have blood on their hands.

It’s not up some some lesser crested cockatoo on TV, or the CMO of the Administrative State, or the Prime Minister, to decide what risks I take with my life and health. Were I a serf, that decision would rest with the Lord of the Manor. If the elites lording it over us think that they can take those decisions for us, it makes crystal clear what their view of us plebs is. But I insist that I am a citizen, and I insist on making those decisions about myself for myself, and I insist on the information I need to make that decision.

There is a crucial difference between the risks I run from SARS-CoV-2 and the risks I run from a vaccine. I can minimise the risks I run from the virus. I know enough about its habits and its preferences to adjust my behaviour to try to avoid it. I can take advantage of the now commonplace changes to workplaces and spaces. I can take advantage of online orders and contactless pickup. Or I can take my chances in shops and malls. Most importantly of all, I could, until last Friday, find a GP who will offer me the best alternative prophylactic and, should I become infected, therapeutic protocols that have been determined by his colleagues around the world.

But there is nothing I can do to neutralise the risks of the vaccine; except refuse to take it.

As a postscript, I acknowledge Alex Berenson, whose Substack post wended its way to me and alerted me to the change in the CDC definitions. He also pointed out that the so-called vaccine is in fact a therapy.

The Forgotten Vaccine

This article was published in Quadrant Online on 14th September, 2021.

A paywalled article in the BMJ begins,

…the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the…vaccine. “The track record for serious adverse events is very good. It’s very, very, very rare that you ever see anything that’s associated with the vaccine that’s a serious event,” he said.

This was written in 2018; the YouTube appearance was in October 2009, and the vaccine was the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine.

[B]y October 2009 the new vaccines were being rolled out … in the UK, with prominent organisations, including the Department of Health, British Medical Association, and Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, working hard to convince a reluctant NHS workforce to get vaccinated. “We fully support the swine flu vaccination programme … The vaccine has been thoroughly tested,” they declared in a joint statement.
Except, it hadn’t. Anticipating a severe influenza pandemic, governments…had made various…arrangements to shorten the time between recognition of a pandemic virus and the production…and administration of that vaccine… [An arrangement], adopted by countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, and Germany, was to provide vaccine manufacturers indemnity from liability for wrongdoing…

By 2018, the incidence of narcolepsy in young people throughout Europe as a result of vaccination, primarily with Pandemrix, was sufficiently well established to give rise to lawsuits in which the manufacturers’ confidential concerns about the vaccine were brought to light.
A 2012 article at orthomolecular.org, with the relevant citations in Swedish and Finnish, outlines the sequence of events.

On 25 September 2009, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) approved Pandemrix…In Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, the authorities explicitly set the goal of vaccinating the entire population…
Mass vaccination started in Finland and Sweden in October 2009. … [T]he authorities initiated an enormous public relations campaign… Solidarity became the slogan: “Be vaccinated to protect your fellow citizens.” … In Sweden, 60% of the population had been vaccinated, while in Finland 50% was covered.
In August 2010, Finland reported an increased occurrence of narcolepsy in children and youngsters vaccinated with Pandemrix. On 1 September 2010, Finland stopped all Pandemrix vaccinations.
On 1 September 2011, the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) … stated…, “The increased risk associated with vaccination amounted to six cases of narcolepsy per 100,000 persons vaccinated in the 4-19 age group during the eight months following vaccination. This was 12.7 times the risk of a person in the same age group who had not been vaccinated.”…
This statement was made almost exactly two years after the THL’s earlier statement…that it would be safe. [My emphases]

It will be pointed out, accurately, that on those figures from 2011 the risk of 4-19 year olds contracting narcolepsy from the vaccine was 0.006%. Keep that figure in mind.

In Sweden, at least 150 children are now [2012] suffering from narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix vaccine. In Finland, the number is approximately 100. … Narcolepsy is a disease with lifetime consequences, and the risk that Pandemrix may have caused other neurological illnesses has not yet been excluded.

By November of 2020, a Medical Xpress web article noted:

The Swedish Pharmaceutical Insurance has so far approved 440 of 702 narcolepsy claims linked to Pandemrix, paying out a total of 100 million kronor (9.8 million euros, $11.6 million) in compensation. [My emphasis]

The current population of Sweden is 10 million; of Finland 5.5 million.
In the U.K., according to The Guardian in 2017, a High Court decision opened the way for “about 100 people in the UK with narcolepsy” allegedly caused by Pandemrix to claim compensation under the Vaccine Damage Payment Act. The Court rejected an appeal by the Government to withhold payments.
In Ireland, however, the State admitted no liability in settling a 2019 case brought by a then 26 year old woman. Another case was settled by mediation, without admission of liability, for €990,000. An Irish narcolepsy support group claims over 70 children are affected.
Narcolepsy sufferer Meissa Chebbi, 10 at the time of her vaccination, is quoted in the Medical Xpress article. “I’m not going to take the (COVID) vaccine until after about five years when we know what the risks are.” This is the voice of bitter experience. The John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center puts it this way. “A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer, to assess whether the vaccine is safe and efficacious in clinical trials, complete the regulatory approval processes, and manufacture sufficient quantity of vaccine doses for widespread distribution.”
Just to get back to that extremely low risk of narcolepsy; 0.006% in 4-19 year olds. In April of 2021, the CDC’s own best estimate of Infection Mortality Rate for the 0-19 years age group was 3 per 100,000 infected; 0.003%.

Breaking News: Stairs sue Dan Andrews for defamation

Published at Catallaxy Files on 10/06/2021

A set of stairs today filed a defamation suit against Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, lawyers representing the as-yet unnamed stairs announced today.

“Dan Andrews called our client ‘slippery’,” a spokes-entity for the stairs’ lawyers said. “‘Slippery’ is an entity slur that stairs take very seriously, as the Premier is about to discover. Our client is not the slippery entity in this incident.”

No further details of the suit are available.

Debunking Dr Shiva

This document was prepared some time ago, but could not find a home.

Ever since I first saw the analysis by Evans, Smith and Shiva of vote leakage in the big Michigan counties, I have thought of it as the single most compelling evidence of electoral fraud, and one with much wider application that just Michigan. Michigan was selected because of the availability of straight part-ticket voting in that State, a bit like the above-the-line voting in the Senate here. That gives a demographic snapshot of the party vote on a precinct-by-precinct basis. (Polling booths are probably the nearest analogy to the precincts.) By comparing the specific Trump/Biden vote to the straight-ticket voting, a picture of the leakage to or from the party Presidential candidate can be constructed. Continue reading “Debunking Dr Shiva”

Practice makes Perfect

The mid-term elections of Trump’s presidency were held on the 6th of November 2018, amid high expectations of a so-called “blue wave” of Democrat victories. All House of Representatives seats were on the line, but although Democrats won control of the House, they made little impact in the Senate, which remained under Republican control.

Florida was particularly sensitive about election processes because the result of the 2000 Presidential election, which hinged on the result in Florida, was effectively settled in the Supreme Court of the US. Broward County has 1.2 million voters, a similar number to Miami-Dade county. Unlike Miami-Dade, however, Broward officials did not expect to complete the count by the deadline for sending preliminary totals to the State. Continue reading “Practice makes Perfect”

Learning from Bin Laden

Bin Laden knew a thing or two about the media; especially the Western media. On the rare occasions on which he permitted an interview, he always had the entire exchange recorded by his own videographer. It’s a lesson a good many Australian public figures could have benefitted from. The latest of them is Andrew Hastie.

When Major-General Brereton released his report, Andrew Hastie, as a former officer in the Special Service Regiment (SASR), was anxious to put his point of view. He wrote an article published in The Australian, and then he was interviewed by Andrew Probyn for the ABC. In his Australian article, Hastie wrote, “The report is hard reading. It is comprehensive, detailed and unsparing in its judgment on those ­alleged to have committed war crimes.” A problem jumps out from this, a problem that characterises the whole media circus. It does accurately characterise the report, and it seems also to characterise Hastie’s attitude. How can unsparing judgment be made on allegations? Such language implies pre-judgement.

Continue reading “Learning from Bin Laden”

Brereton’s Backup

The most interesting, and in many ways the most useful, part of the Brereton report is Annex A, the Whetham Report, to Part 3, Strategic, Operational, Organisational and Cultural Issues. It’s written by Dr. David Whetham. Among (many) other things, he’s Director of the King’s Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College, London. He was made Assistant Inspector-General of the ADF for the purpose of this very report. Here’s his bio from King’s.

David Whetham is Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. He is the Director of the King’s Centre for Military Ethics and delivers or coordinates the military ethics component of courses for between two and three thousand British and international officers a year at the UK’s Joint Services Command and Staff College. Before joining King’s as a permanent member fo staff in 2003, David worked as a BBC researcher and with the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] in Kosovo, supporting the 2001 and 2002 elections.

Continue reading “Brereton’s Backup”

No officers were harmed in the making of this report

It’s like this, in the gospel according to Brereton

All that said, it was at the patrol commander level that the criminal behaviour was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed, and overwhelmingly at that level that responsibility resides…
The Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Commander Joint Task Force 633, Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Headquarters. Nor…was [there] any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes.
…responsibility and accountability does not extend to higher headquarters…
The responsibility lies in the Australian Defence Force, not with the government of the day.
…that culture was not created or enabled in SOTG, let alone by any individual Special Operations Task Group Commanding Officer. … It was in their parent units…that the cultures…were bred, and it is with the commanders of the domestic units who enabled that, rather than with the SOTG commanders, that greater responsibility rests. Continue reading “No officers were harmed in the making of this report”