A gauge of the transgender explosion is the growing number of clinics providing gender affirming treatments. In the US, there are literally thousands  A pioneer in gender treatment for children is Boston’s Children’s Hospital. While its gender services site stresses that genital surgeries are only performed on patients aged 18 or older, its Gender Multispecialty Service states that it now offers services to “patients aged 3 to 25.”  Fox TV host, Tucker Carlson, has waged an ongoing campaign against such clinics and what he calls the “genital mutilation” of children.

Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, has called the transgender phenomenon : “sociological contagion.”

In this article, I cite two main sources: feminist and activist, Kara Dansky, author of  The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls and investigative journalist and activist, Jennifer Bilek, who has documented the transgender industry and the money behind it.

In her book, Dansky describes how the term “transgender” was invented in the 60-70s by post modern academics in the US, and ultimately led to the emergence of gender ideology and the idea that  “biological sex does not exist as material reality.” Since postmodernism rejects traditional truths and science and asserts that everything, including human identity, is constructed, it was easy to make the next step and claim that “you are what you believe you are.”  Everything became possible. If you say you are a woman, you must be treated as a woman, legally and socially.

Dansky recounts how her views on transgenderism evolved: “In 2014, I assumed that the left narrative about transgender rights was legitimate, meaning that this was a legitimate movement fighting to protect the rights of a marginalized group of people. But, as I delved further into the issue, I realized that the movement was in fact anti-women and the fact that men can identify as women really harms feminists’ ability to fight for the rights of women and girls.” As a member of the Women’s Liberation Front, one of the things Dansky is campaigning against is the US government’s effort to replace the word “sex” with gender identity in all its operations.

The Biden administration, she notes, is spearheading the transgender movement. US Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine (a transwoman herself), recently declared that trans people have “support at the highest levels of the US government.” In an astounding interchange last year at the US Senate, President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was unable to define what is a woman during her confirmation hearings.  “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” she was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn. Jackson responded: “I can’t, not in this context, I’m not a biologist.”

The present situation has led to situations such as these:

• Girls’ toilets in schools have been made accessible to transwomen (often young boys who have not completed their transition/surgery process). In Loudoun County, Virginia, a 15 year old boy, dressed as a girl, raped a young girl in a transgender-friendly bathroom.
• Female only dormitories, shelters, prisons etc. can now include transgender women.
• Women’s sports are being dominated by transwomen. A notable case is that of Lia Thomas, a transgender American swimmer who won a national women’s championship last year.

Follow the money – says investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek

A key to understanding how transgender ideology has become so widespread, says Bilek, is to follow the money. “This is not an individual rights’ movement about a small group of marginalized people,” she says. “It all comes from a top-down multi-billion dollar industry funded by a small group of very wealthy individuals.” To name a few, Bilek cites billionaire John Striker who has given billions to the Argus foundation which funds LGBT activism, with the funds going mainly to the last two categories – bisexual and transgender groups; transwoman, Martine Rothblatt, a billionaire US entrepreneur who has declared: “Genitals are as irrelevant to one’s role in society as skin tone. Hence, the legal division of people into males and females is as wrong as the legal division of people into black and white races;” and transwoman Jennifer Pritzker of the wealthy Chicago Pritzker family and cousin of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. The Pritzkers have given millions to medical schools, gender care clinics and academic transgender studies departments in the US and Canada.

As with most issues, Bilek says it is important to ask: Who benefits from putting young people on a lifetime of hormones? And who benefits from medically unnecessary surgery? In the first case, it is big pharma and, in the second, it is the medical supplies industry. Not surprisingly, the billionaire philanthropists who are funding the transgender movement also have major investments in both fields – their tentacles run deep.

Bilek stresses how, what appears to be a human rights issue, is in fact a way of trapping an entire generation into a big profit scheme. The gender affirming treatments which are being pushed today for youth, end up making the youngsters sterile. As a result, if they wish to have children, they will need years of assisted fertility treatments and will become totally dependent on new age tech reproduction. One can hear the endless ka-ching of slot machine mega-winnings.

Censorship

As we saw, during the Covid epidemic, speaking out against the dominant narrative, whether it be the origin of the Covid virus or transgender ideology, is a risky business.  Those who do so are attacked, canceled and even fired from their jobs. A notable case is famed Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling. For speaking out against transgender excesses, Rowling, was branded a transphobe and was boycotted even by her own fan base. She first came under fire when she mocked an article promoting equality for “people who menstruate.” “I am sure,” Rowling tweeted, “that there used to be a word for those people,” referring to the out-of-date term “women.”  While sympathizing with the suffering of transwomen, Rowling has also been open in her criticism of transgender activists who, she says, are trying to erase ‘women’ as a biological and political class.

Are women the primary victims of the transgender movement?

In addition to the erasure of women in language and law, there have been numerous clashes between feminists and trans activists, notably on the issue of protecting women’s spaces. Protests by feminist groups against the erosion of women’s spaces are regularly met with aggressive counter demonstrations by trans activists.   “Trans women are women!” they shout.”

Dansky points out the irony of transgenderism and how it has eroded all the gains made by feminists in the last decades. “It’s an incredibly regressive agenda,” she says, “that reduces womanhood to outdated sex stereotypes. Today, if you wear a dress and make-up, you can say you are a woman. Transwomen glorify sex stereotypes and take women back in time. Everything feminists fought against is now being pushed as progressive!!”

The backlash has begun

Against the background of increasing evidence that gender affirming treatments have negative physical and psychological side-effects on youngsters and do not improve their mental health, as claimed by trans ideologues, a number of states in the US have begun banning gender affirming care for minors.

In Britain, the government recently closed the country’s only gender identity clinic at the Tavistock Center in London, following a damning report that criticized the clinic’s too hasty encouragement of transitioning for children (some were recommended treatment after just one or two appointments), over prescription of puberty blockers, and placing children on medication that should not have been given to them (one child was just 8 years’ old).  Many of the children suffered from mental health problems and over a third had autistic traits. The rapid growth underwent by the clinic in the last ten years reflects the extent of the transgender explosion: in 2009 the clinic had 80 patients, in 2019 that number rose to 2,700.

Sensibly, Finland recently decided that psychotherapy and counseling should be the first line of treatment for gender dysphoric youth, instead of drugs and hormones. The country’s top transgender expert, Dr. Riitakerttu Kaltiala, has stated that “four out of five teens, who question their gender, come to accept their bodies if they don’t receive medical intervention.”

American comedian Bill Maker recently accused wokeism of trying to reinvent the very nature of human beings and showing the same intolerance to opponents as autocratic regimes. The ‘woke left’ he said are like the Chinese Red Guard revolutionaries who publicly shamed their critics and sent them to reeducation camps – just like those who step out of line today, even in top academic posts, are being cancelled or obliged to undergo “diversity training.”

Some say that, by blurring the boundaries between gender (wokeism claims there is no such thing as a woman or a man, only who a person identifies as), by encouraging gender fluidity and transitions, by attacking moral values of good and evil and traditional institutions such as the family and religion, by normalizing pervert conduct (in the U.S. pedophiles are being renamed minor-attracted people), by promoting the sexualization of children, etc. wokeism is trying to destroy Western civilization.

Russian President Putin has often poked fun at the West and its self-flagellating debates on gender, systemic racism and white supremacy. He is one of those who maintains that wokeism and its far-left progressiveness is fast destroying Western civilization. Lately, a pushback against woke ideology is beginning to be felt in countries led by right-wing parties. In Hungary, President Victor Orban has taken steps to counter wokeism and protect the traditional Christian values of his country.  He has banned LGBTQ content in schools and in TV programs for under 18s and launched a campaign to strengthen religious, national and family values. In Israel, PM Netanyahu’s right wing government has pledged to ban progressive “woke” educational programs in schools and strengthen Jewish identity by giving Judaism a greater role in the state.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Canada – a country once admired for its tolerant, moderate, compassionate society – has become the ultimate woke country. In Ontario, the educational authorities have allowed a transgender teacher flaunting huge prosthetic breasts to continue teaching young children. Apparently, the authorities fear that taking measures against the teacher would offend the sensitivities of the LGBTQ community.  Protecting children seems to be of secondary importance.

And, now, with its new progressive euthanasia  – Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – law, Canada has taken wokeism to new heights of negativity and destructiveness.  Canada’s euthanasia law first came into effect in 2015 and has since been so radically amended in favor of ‘liberalism’ and the right of the individual to die that it ranks today as the most permissible euthanasia law in the world.

• In Canada, it is no longer required to be terminally ill to qualify for ‘assisted death’ – it is enough to be disabled or incapacitated.
• The 10 day waiting period between a request to die and the issuance of authorization has been removed; authorization for assisted death can be received within 24 hours.
• The request to die does not have to be given in writing, it can be made verbally.
• Physicians are not required to sign the authorization; this can be done by two nurses or medical practitioners, even pharmacists.
• Beginning in March 2023, people who suffer solely from mental illness will be eligible for the program.

Last year as many as 10,000 people died in Canada as part of the country’s assisted death program. These numbers could in fact be much higher since they only cover cases where the requests to die were made in writing. In addition, physicians in some states, such as Ontario and Quebec, are instructed not to list cause of death as “medically assisted.”

The extent to which the program has become extreme in Canada can be gauged by a comparison with other countries. In the Netherlands – the first country to authorize euthanasia (in 2002) – a person needs to suffer from an incurable illness to qualify for euthanasia and all treatment alternatives must have been exhausted, requests to die have to be made in writing and can only be authorized by a physician, and all cases have to be reported to a regional review committee to ensure due care by the physician. In Belgium, also a pioneer in the field, physicians are advised not to mention euthanasia to patients. No such restriction exists in Canada where medical staff are allowed to inform patients about the MAID program as a possible “clinical care option.”

It appears that Canada has done away with the traditional safeguards which countries elsewhere instituted in order to protect people and prevent abuse. Sheila Gunn, a journalist with the Canadian media outlet, Rebel News, has documented the issue and lists some of the problematic cases involved in the program. “We know,” she says, “of cases involving:

• pensioners and disabled people who requested euthanasia because they had difficulty coping or could not afford home care.
• veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) who requested euthanasia.
• mentally ill people who requested euthanasia.”

Gunn says the law reflects a system of distorted values: “it takes 180 days to get knee surgery in Canada but assisted dying service can be obtained in one day!” It makes one wonder whether Canada, under the guise of liberalism, has in fact taken a pragmatic approach to the problem of caring for the disabled and chronically ill and opted for the least expensive “clinical care option.”

Certainly, the fact that medical practitioners are free to “offer” euthanasia to a patient as an option is highly problematic. One such case has caused shock ripples across the country. In December 2022, Christine Gauthier, a retired Army Corporal and  paraplegic, testified before the Canadian parliament that a caseworker had offered her euthanasia after she complained about delays in having a wheelchair ramp installed in her home. Gauthier has been waiting five years for the wheelchair. In response to her complaint, the caseworker told her: “You should take advantage of our government-funded euthanasia program.” Speaking on Fox News, Gauthier vented her frustration at the Canadian government: “This is crazy,” she said, “I need to live but the government wants to help me die!”

Gauthier’s case highlighted the moral ramifications of a liberal law that makes euthanasia easily accessible to the disabled. While, as an army veteran, Gauthier had the mental strength and resourcefulness to fight a flagrantly unjust and immoral system, others were not so lucky. 41 year old Sean Tagart of British Columbia, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, did not have enough money to pay for all the care he needed. He tried raising funds privately but this too was insufficient, so in 2019 he asked to be euthanized. Other disabled people such as Roger Foley of London, Ontario, who suffers from a brain disorder and Candice Lewis of Newfoundland, who suffers from cerebral palsy, reported that they were told they should consider euthanasia as an option.

Canada’s law has been described by Prof. Tim Stainton of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”

Another controversial case demonstrated  the dangers of allowing mentally ill people access to the assisted dying program. In June, 2019, 61 year old Alan Nichols was hospitalized with suicidal tendencies. He suffered from depression, had a history of seizures and other medical issues, such as hearing loss, none of which were incurable. In the course of just one month, he made a request for euthanasia, his request was granted and he died. Shocked at this death, his family lodged a complaint with the authorities. A police enquiry concluded that Nichols made a valid request for euthanasia while the hospital told his family that, in line with patient privacy, it was not obligated to inform Nichols’ relatives of his request.

No recourse for the family and no way of holding the hospital and relevant staff responsible for what was clearly an unnecessary death.

Canada is due soon to expand its euthanasia program to allow people to be euthanized solely for mental health reasons and to enable children under 18 to benefit from the program. Even before this happens, Gunn says that she knows of cases where parents of sick children were offered the service. “This is what it means to be woke in Canada today.”

Before she left her post, former Canadian human rights commissioner, Marie-Claude Landry highlighted the moral dilemma of the country’s euthanasia program: “In an era where we recognize the right to die with dignity,” she said, “We must do more to guarantee the right to live with dignity.”

Even more damning, there are experts like Dr. Didier Raoult in France, who say that the vaccines may have prolonged the epidemic by encouraging the emergence of variants and it would have been better perhaps not to have  interfered. Instead, he says, the focus should have been on effective treatment.

Fear and panic
The global wave of panic, elicited by the pandemic, paralyzed the world and created so much fear that still today thousands of people remain in panic mode – afraid to go out, to socialize, or even touch another person. Much of this fear was promoted, manipulated and encouraged by the media and government officials. A document written for the British scientific advisory group that set government Covid policy stated that “the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, by using hard-hitting emotional messaging.” Similar tactics were used across the world. In November 2020, Britain’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, admitted he had “regrets” about frightening people with doomsday figures that predicted 4,000 Covid deaths a day. A similar phenomenon was seen in the US. Dr. Scott Atlas, a member of President Trump’s Covid taskforce, admitted that there was an “intentional inculcation of fear in the American public.”
For some bizarre reason, even in the most democratic and educated countries, governments thought they needed to scare people into compliance. What followed was an unprecedented attack on freedom of thought. Do what you are told, no questions asked, was the message. Anyone who questioned the official message was quickly silenced by social media and accused of disseminating misinformation. The irony is that it was the governments themselves, supported by social media, who disseminated misinformation. None had the integrity and courage to say to the public: “We are entering unknown territory. We know nothing about this virus. We hope that vaccines will work but that too is an unknown as are the risks involved. We will give our citizens as much information as possible and let them decide what steps they wish to take.” That would have been the honest, mature approach.

Instead, even though it was known early on that Covid presented a danger mainly to the elderly and people with serious co-morbidities such as diabetes, obesity, cardio/pulmonary problems, nearly every country (except for Sweden) imposed draconian (which we now know were useless and harmful) policies of nationwide lockdowns, mandatory masks, green/health passes and forced vaccinations. We now know that the lockdowns failed to stem the epidemic: not only did they cause great economic and social hardship, they impeded herd immunity. As for the vaccine, the hopes invested in it simply did not materialize. Nor did its accompanying propaganda. The vaccine is completely safe the authorities told us. If you get the vaccine, you won’t get Covid. The pandemic is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. They were wrong on every count.

The vaccine is safe – not so!
When government and medical authorities assured us that the vaccine was completely safe – they were lying, because there was no way they could be certain their claim was true. Since the world was in a hurry to find a solution to the pandemic, the clinical trials of the vaccines were curtailed and corners cut – as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla explained: “we were operating at the speed of science.” But speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. Pfizer insider employees have reported that “the company falsified data, unblinded patients (after just a few months, Pfizer gave the vaccine to the control group in its trial), employed inadequately trained vaccinators and was slow to follow up on adverse events” (BMJ 11.2021). The many holes in Pfizer’s trial have been analyzed by numerous experts and can be found online.

As for the vaccine’s impact on our health, there have been numerous reports in the US and in Europe by independent observers (doctors, researchers, journalists) on serious side effects. Some countries have been more open than others in disclosing data on this sensitive subject (the UK, Scotland and Denmark fall in the ‘more open’ category while the US, Canada, France and Israel have kept this data under wraps).

What we do know is that no vaccine has garnered as many reports of adverse side effects as the Covid vaccine. According to the VAERS system in the US, which is a voluntary reporting system by doctors, patients and families, over 1 million reports of adverse events have been received so far. These include 16,310 deaths, 8,689 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, 23,712 permanently disabled and many more.

In Florida, Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladopo, recently warned men aged 18-19 not to take Covid vaccines. This comes after a study showed that men under 40 had an 84% increased risk of cardiac death following vaccination with an mRNA shot. In Switzerland, when Dr. Christian Mueller followed 770 patients post booster vaccination, he found that 1 in 35 showed signs of myocarditis, with a larger percentage in women than in men! The Swiss researchers determined that all mRNA jab recipients suffered some level of heart injury even if they were asymptomatic. They described their findings as “important” especially in light of the fact that repetitive or annual booster jabs may become the norm.

In an acknowledgement of the vaccine’s failure, Australia (which had adopted some of the most stringent pro-vaccine policies) and Denmark have both ended their vaccine programs for adults under 50. And recently Norway declared that no one under 65 should receive additional shots unless they were at risk of severe disease.

The vaccine prevents transmission – not so!
Despite being repeatedly told by top health figures like Anthony Fauci in the US – if you get the vaccine you won’t get Covid – it soon emerged that the vaccines did not prevent people from getting Covid or passing it on. Pfizer itself admitted to the European Parliament that it did not test its vaccine to see if it stopped transmission of the virus.
“This admission has massive implications,” says Rob Roos, a Dutch representative at the European Parliament. “Governments pressured millions of people into getting the vaccine by telling us that it would protect our grandmothers… They tricked perfectly healthy people into taking the jab using false arguments and they made access to many places of employment and leisure conditional on getting the vaccine. This was real institutional discrimination.”
Roos noted that thousands of people lost their jobs and livelihoods because they refused the vaccines. Unbelievably, vaccine mandates are still in effect today in certain places such as US colleges and in the US army and in France, unvaccinated health workers who were fired and disqualified from unemployment, have still not been reinstated. An editorial in the prestigious newspaper Le Monde, published just last month, claimed that: “at a time when the virus is still circulating strongly, such a move would be tantamount to giving in to anti-scientific arguments and undermining public health policy!!!”

Few countries (except for Austria) ostracized the unvaccinated as much as Canada. In addition to being barred from places of work and leisure, for over two years the unvaccinated were banned from air travel within the country and banned from entering the country. The famous truckers’ strike in Canada in February of this year was a graphic protest against these rigid regulations.

And now, opposing voices are making themselves heard at government level. In an unprecedented move, Danielle Smith, the new premier of the province of Alberta in western Canada, acknowledged that the unvaccinated were “the most discriminated group” she had witnessed in her lifetime. Vaccine mandates, she said, represented unacceptable discrimination and she pledged to amend the province’s Human Rights Act in order to protect the unvaccinated.

Pandemic of the unvaccinated – not so!
For nearly two years, political leaders and health officials across the world told us that they were dealing with a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The mantra was repeated time and again, primarily to support measures that distanced the unvaccinated from places of work, study and leisure. Then, as it became clear that everyone was getting infected, unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted alike, these voices fell silent. No correction given, no apologies made.

Does the vaccine offer any benefits?
We now know that, at best, the vaccine offers around 3 few months protection and hardly any after 6 months, either against infection or hospitalization. Boosters help but only temporarily.

It should also be remembered that the statistics given to us regarding vaccine efficiency did not take into account the first two weeks after vaccination. During this period, every country saw a huge spike in Covid cases and deaths. This is generally accredited to the ADE (antibody dependent enhancement) phenomenon when, instead of neutralizing a virus, the antibodies created by the vaccine encourage the virus to proliferate.

So, when it became clear that the vaccine did not stop anyone from getting Covid or passing it on, we were then told that it stops severe illness and hospitalization. But this too proved to be false. Figures emerging now from the US and Britain show that the vaccinated are more likely to be hospitalized or die of Covid than the unvaccinated!!

In Australia, which pursued the most severe lockdowns of any Western country, mandated the vaccine on its workforce and segregated the unvaccinated, Covid hospitalizations reached record levels in the summer of this year. In New South Wales, the country’s largest state, 85% of Covid deaths were in vaccinated people.

Recent data from the Netherlands show that the vaccines not only fail to prevent severe illness, they even raise the risk of hospitalization.

So, despite the fact that billions of dollars were spent and entire populations vaccinated, the pandemic was not stemmed and is in fact still around. The policies adopted by the West simply did not work. Covid death tolls in 2021 (when vaccinations were in full swing) were much higher than in 2020 and excess mortality is worryingly above the average – it is higher this year than in 2020 and 2021. As journalist Alex Berenson points out “before the rollout of Covid vaccines in mid-2021, Europe had no excess mortality among people under 45. Now it does.”

How statistics were manipulated
In January of this year, John Campbell (whose informative and extremely objective YouTube videos on the pandemic garnered millions of viewers) reported that, according to a freedom of information request release by the UK’s Office of National Statistics, the number of deaths solely attributable to Covid 19 in the UK was far lower than previously thought. While the official death toll in the UK stands at 137,133, if the death toll is based on deaths caused solely by Covid, meaning in people with no underlying diseases, the number falls to just 17,000!

Naturally, Campbell’s report was sharply criticized. The UK Office of National Statistics condemned it as “factually incorrect and misleading” stating that that it was a distortion to exclude people with pre-existing health conditions from the total death toll. As the Campbell controversy showed, statistics are highly dependent on interpretation and it is possible to arrive at totally different conclusions depending on the way the data is calculated.

What is known is that many health institutions, hospitals etc. boosted their number of Covid deaths for financial reasons. Since these institutions as well as medical insurance companies received higher remunerations for Covid deaths, it was natural for them to fudge their records in order to favor Covid deaths. Numerous families of patients who died in hospital reported being asked to sign a Covid death certificate for their deceased relative, when the latter died of another illness altogether. And in the US, after the Biden Administration offered reimbursements of $9,000 for funeral expenses for Covid deaths, a spike in Covid deaths was inevitable.

And the big winner was …
The answer is in the figures. Pfizer reported revenues of $81.3bn for 2021, compared to $41.7bn for 2020. Moderna reported revenues of $18.5bn for 2021, compared to $803m for 2020.

Alert – a shocking new proposal from the US
We may think that the pandemic is over and we can all now relax, but this is not the case. There is still a need to remain vigilant. A shocking development recently emerged in the US. The CDC’s advisory committee recommended adding the Covid vaccine to the vaccine package offered to children. “Children six months and older should get the Covid vaccine,” said the committee. If the recommendation is adopted, the Covid vaccine will become mandatory for school attendance in the US.
The proposal elicited a sharp response from numerous health experts. On Fox news, Dr. Harvey Risch of Yale School of Public Health said: “This goes against everything we know. According to CDC data itself, the risk mortality of Covid among children is .003%, that is, 3 in 100,000, while the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine in children is tenfold that.” A recent German study also showed that young children are significantly more likely to have severe side effects from Covid shots than from other vaccines.

Journalist Alex Berenson believes the move is not aimed at protecting children but rather at protecting vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer & Moderna. Currently, because of the US federal “public health emergency,” these companies cannot be sued for side effects from the shots. But this emergency status is temporary and requires constant renewal. If the Covid vaccine becomes part of the children’s vaccine package, the companies will then enjoy permanent liability protection.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Denmark has banned the vaccine for anyone aged 18 or younger. Henceforth, it is not possible for children in Denmark to get the jab. In so doing, the Danes have recognized that healthy children are at zero risk from Covid and the vaccine offers little benefit.

Thank you Danes for this flicker of sanity and honesty.

At the same time, as a former actor and as a consummate PR strategist, Zelensky has played to the hilt the image of Ukraine under threat of annihilation by Russia. He has often invoked a similarity between the plight of Ukraine today and the Holocaust, when the world stayed silent in the face of extermination. In a recent address to the Israeli parliament Zelensky accused Russia of genocide and of planning a “final solution” for the Ukrainian people.

But while what is happening in Ukraine is horrendous, it is not genocide. In WWII, the Jews were defenseless, weak and scattered. In the current Ukraine/Russia conflict, Ukraine has an army, a huge country and a population of 40 million.  Furthermore, if Russia were to win its war and occupy Ukraine, it would not proceed to exterminate all Ukrainians. It would undoubtedly stifle opposition but, as long as Ukraine fell into line, the country would survive and even thrive. The analogy with what happened to the Jews of Europe or with the existential threat looming over Israel, should enemies like Iran win the upper hand, is totally false.

One comparison however is partially valid, that with Israel during its War of Independence. In 1948, as the fledgling Israeli state was attacked by 6 Arab armies, it was confronted by a crippling arms embargo. Not only did the West (the US & UK) refuse to supply arms to Israel, when its army possessed one gun for every three soldiers and an air force consisting of no more than a dozen light aircraft,  but it imposed an embargo applicable to all UN countries. Fortunately one country had the temerity to flout the embargo. During this critical period, little Czechoslovakia supplied Israel with large quantities of arms, ammunition and fighter planes. It also trained Israeli pilots. In order to evade the embargo, the Czech planes were dismantled, shipped as separate parts and reassembled in Israel. Helping Israel was not just a way of earning much-needed cash for Czechoslovakia, it was also a moral issue and played a decisive role in the outcome of the war. “Czechoslovak arms saved the State of Israel, really and absolutely,” said Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. “Without these weapons, we wouldn’t have survived.” Albeit late in the day, the West has shipped arms, anti-aircraft systems, drones and missiles to Ukraine. But no country has, as yet, dared to send it fighter planes.

Another emotional button which Zelensky keeps pressing is the claim that the Ukrainians rescued Jews during WWII. It is true that 2,673 Ukrainians have been recognized as Righteous Gentiles for having saved Jews during the Holocaust. But, while making his claim, Zelensky forgets to point out that 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered in Ukraine during the Holocaust.  Israeli commentator Caroline Glick has described Zelensky’s emphasis on the rescue of Jews as “sick historical revisionism,” noting that the “Ukrainians were active, enthusiastic Nazis and that Ukrainian Jewry was not annihilated in Poland but in Ukraine, by their neighbors.”  Ukrainian Nazi collaborators played a major part in the mass murder of nearly 40,000 Jews at Babi Yar and their cruelty is legendary.

Of note is the fact that no Ukrainian collaborators were ever brought to trial in post-war Ukraine. On the contrary, they are revered as national heroes. One such ‘hero’ is Stepan Bandera whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought alongside the Nazis and killed thousands of Jews and Poles. Bandera was named “Hero of Ukraine” by former president Viktor Yushchenko and monuments venerating him can be found across western Ukraine. In 2014, Kyiv named one of its major streets “Stepan Bandera Avenue.”  Even Zelensky recognizes Bandera as a hero.

Another illustration of Ukrainian support for rabid anti-Semites is the veneration shown to Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the notorious Cossack hetman whose men slaughtered 50,000 Jews in the 17^th century. A colossal monument to Khmelnytsky stands in Sophia Square, right the center of Kyiv. The third anti-Semite after whom streets and monuments are named in Ukraine is Simon Petliura who was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Jews during the infamous pogroms of 1918-1921. Historians estimate that over 100,000 Jews perished in these pogroms, the scope and brutality of which were unprecedented.  Here is how the Tablet magazine describes what happened: “Armed militants, with the acquiescence and support of large segments of the population tore out Jewish men’s beards, ripped apart Torah scrolls, raped Jewish girls and women and, in many cases, tortured Jewish townsfolk before gathering them in market squares, marching them to the outskirts of town and shooting them. On at least one occasion, insurgent fighters barricaded Jews in a synagogue and burned down the building” (The Killing Fields of Ukraine.) As the author of the article observes: “when the Germans arrived, they found a decades-old killing ground.” And yet, in 2016, a minute of silence was observed in Ukraine to mark the 90th anniversary of Petliura’s assassination in Paris at the hands of Sholom Schwartzbard, who lost fifteen of his relatives in the pogroms. Khmelnytsky, Petliura and Bandera are considered heroes in Ukraine because they fought for Ukraine’s independence but this should not obscure the fact that they were also murderers who were guilty of crimes against humanity.

One of the so-called justifications made by President Putin for the invasion of Ukraine was that Ukraine had become a Nazi state and needed to be de-nazified. As Caroline Glick notes, Putin’s claim may have been over-the-top but it is not totally unfounded.  “There are a lot of Nazis in Ukraine,” she writes pointing out that Zelensky himself owed his 2019 election to the support of Arsten Avakov, a leading Ukrainian Nazi. She also notes that the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia, is part of the Ukrainian National Guard and has played a significant role in the recent fighting in Mariupol and Kharkiv.

Evidently, in order to survive in the maelstrom of Ukrainian politics (Ukraine is ranked among the three most corrupt nations of the world), Zelensky has to walk a delicate tightrope, placating both the democratic as well as nationalist, far-right elements in his electorate. This must be the only explanation for his association with outright anti-Semites.

The origin of the virus

It was in April 2020 that Montagnier first set alarm bells ringing when he publicly asserted that SARS CoV-2 was not an entirely natural virus. The virus, he said, showed definitive signs of having been artificially manipulated in a lab and he asserted that it specifically contained tiny sequences of the HIV virus. If his assertion was true, it meant that the Chinese had willfully produced the new virus in their Wuhan lab and were therefore responsible for the global pandemic…..heresy of heresies! But Montagnier did not accuse the Chinese of fabricating the virus as a biological weapon or of intentionally releasing it. In his soft spoken manner, he theorized that the Chinese had probably been trying to develop an AIDS vaccine (a natural goal since an estimated 38 million people still suffer from AIDS) and the manipulated virus had accidentally leaked from their lab.

On what did he base his claim? One would imagine it took meticulous lab work to make such a discovery. But no. Instead, Montagnier used a sophisticated computational mathematical approach to compare the genetic code of the HIV virus with that of Covid-19. The aim was to determine whether long identical sequences existed in both viruses.  His theory was that if a sequence of 18 identical nucleotides were found in both viruses, this would demonstrate external manipulation since such a situation could not occur naturally. Montagnier’s analysis came up with at least 6 identical sequences of more than 18 nucleotides. In a very detailed scientific paper entitled “Covid-19, SARS and Bats Coronaviruses Genomes – Unexpected Exogenous RNA Sequences” published in May 2020, Montagnier and his co-author, Jean Claude Perez concluded that: “we have demonstrated that the Covid-19 genome contains an insertion of six strategic HIV regions concentrated in a mini-space representing less than 1% of the length of the genome. These were placed side by side with the precision of a watchmaker.”

Predictably, Montagnier was lambasted and vilified for his claim. The entire scientific community locked arms against him and accused him of spouting nonsense. Of course, the virus was natural, they screamed while the big guns were brought out to silence him: he was censored by YouTube, accused by Google fact-checkers of propagating ‘false’ information, ostracized by the media and generally disparaged as a doddering old fool. “There is enormous pressure to silence everything related to the origins of the virus,” Montagnier lamented in a TV interview. “It’s a blackout.” But he continued to speak out. Unlike the majority of his colleagues, Montagnier was free to speak his mind.  Since he was not part of the system and did not fear loss of income, career or prestige, he did not have to kowtow to anyone or succumb to the prevailing “scientific climate of terror.” He made his assertions in a quiet, gentle manner but with the confidence of someone who knew what he was talking about. Nor did he try to sow panic. He reassured the public that, even though the alleged manipulation of the virus could make it more contagious, it would also make it less lethal. Nature, he said, does not like artificially inserted external elements and, as such, he predicted that the virus would mutate in order to get rid of the artificial HIV fragments and the process of mutation would weaken it. This is, indeed, what happened: from Alpha to Delta to Omicron, Covid-19 has got weaker over time.

And, in a major turnaround, what was considered heresy two years ago – namely Montagnier’s assertion that the Covid virus leaked out from the Wuhan lab – is now regarded by the scientific community and the media as “highly plausible!” The connection with HIV has yet to be corroborated.

Covid vaccines

Early on in the epidemic, before the Covid vaccines were rolled out and before any side effects were noted, Luc Montagnier warned: “These new type of vaccines may have totally unpredictable consequences. Human beings should not be used as guinea pigs.” He did not accept the comfortable assurances given to the public that the vaccines were “totally safe.” He called for more extensive trials and a halt to mass vaccination. He was particularly troubled at the idea of injecting children with ‘experimental’ vaccines. He said it was “irresponsible” to put children at risk and the side effects of the vaccines could affect not only the youth of today but also future generations.

But even Montagnier was surprised at the extent and rapidity with which serious side effects such as myocarditis and neurological problems emerged following vaccination. “We expected something like this might happen but not so quickly,” he said. “Barely a year has elapsed since the first vaccinations and we are already seeing severe neurological side effects.”

Recently, in an opinion piece co-authored with Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld and published in the Wall Street Journal (“Omicron Makes Biden’s Mandates Obsolete”) Montagnier criticized vaccine mandates, stating: “It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to public interest for a government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target.” In fact, not only have the vaccines been unable to prevent the Omicron surge, research cited by Montagnier in the article has shown that, after 90 days, the vaccines begin to have a negative effect – meaning that, at this point, vaccinated people are more susceptible to Omicron than the unvaccinated.

In the long term, Montagnier worried about the risk of the RNA from the vaccines integrating into the human genome. Albeit a rare phenomenon, it could not be excluded, he said, adding that “faced with an unpredictable future it is best to be cautious and abstain.”

The AIDS race:

In 1982, as AIDS was beginning to spread in the West, Montagnier was asked to examine a lymph node taken from a young man suffering from an unknown syndrome. An expert in retroviruses, Montagnier and his team at the Pasteur Institute quickly identified the HIV virus and published their findings in 1983. Concurrently, Robert Gallo was pursuing the same line of research in the US and came up with similar findings. Which man was the first to discover the virus became the subject of a heated dispute between the two scientists and, subsequently, between France and the US. Various investigations concluded that the virus sample used by Gallo was the very one which Montagnier had sent him and Gallo was accused of misappropriation. He was, however, credited with discovering that the HIV virus caused AIDS. A compromise was reached when the French and US governments agreed to split rights to the HIV blood test patent which named Montagnier and Gallo as co-discoverers. Nevertheless, in 2008, he Nobel Committee awarded the prize in medicine to Montagnier and his team stating that it had no doubt “as to who had made the fundamental discoveries” concerning HIV.

Ever a gentleman, Montagnier expressed regret that Gallo had been overlooked by the committee: “It was important to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS and Gallo played a very important role in that. I am very sorry for Robert Gallo.”

Prophetic words:

In 1984, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Montagnier was asked what measures should be taken to protect people against AIDS. He replied: “I am opposed to coercive measures to stop the epidemic and to isolating the sick like lepers. Such measures will not work.

I believe in persuading people and trusting people to be responsible. It is important to inform the public how the virus is transmitted and how it can be avoided. At the same time utmost effort must be invested in research on therapeutic solutions.”

 Homage by Dr. Didier Raoult:

“Luc Montagnier did not discover HIV by chance. He had been working for years on a bold hypothesis that challenged the central dogma of molecular biology which held that RNA cannot transform into DNA – a dogma that is still taught today in medical schools. Basing himself on the work of scientists before him who had demonstrated that reverse transcription could indeed happen – meaning that RNA could integrate into DNA – Montagnier pursued this field and became an expert in retroviruses. He established the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute and it is this that enabled the discovery of the HIV virus. We must recognize that, with his discovery of HIV, Montagnier made the biggest discovery of the 20^th century in terms of public health.”

Legacy

Journalist Jean Robin: “Although he was vilified in his lifetime by the scientific community, Montagnier will leave a lasting legacy and will be an icon for many. He saved France’s reputation because France was also partly responsible for the pandemic since it built China’s Wuhan lab in 2004 and transferred to the Chinese the sophisticated gain of function technology that enabled them to ‘create’ SARS-CoV2. Montagnier redeemed France with his quest for the truth and his courage in speaking out.”

In Israel the green pass (vaccine pass) is granted only to someone who has received a booster shot or 2 vaccine doses in the last 6 months. Entry into Israel is dependent on having had the booster. Over 4,000,000 Israelis have received the third shot (booster and 500,000 have even received a 4^th shot.

In the US, a third of adults have received the booster and numerous institutions (schools, colleges, hospitals) have made it mandatory.

In the UK, over half the adult population has received the booster, which is given just 3 months after the 2^nd vaccine jab.

The question is why? What happened to the miracle vaccines that were meant to put an end to the pandemic and how many boosters are people going to have to take? An endless number?

There are two reasons why boosters have become necessary. It is now known that vaccine efficacy begins to wane after a few months and by six months is hardly effective at all: the  vaccines ramp up our production of antibodies, but it seems that our bodies do not tolerate such high levels and very quickly begin to get rid of them.  Secondly the vaccines were originally designed to combat the Wuhan strain and are proving ineffective against new variants such as Omicron. One could say that the boosters also do not work against Omicron, since they consist of the same vaccines as the first 2 doses. And this is effectively what we have seen. In the most boosted countries, Omicron has soared just like everywhere else. But governments still insist that boosters are necessary: they may not stop infection but they prevent severe illness and hospitalization. The trouble is that the efficacy of booster shots declines even faster than doses 1 and 2.

Take the case of Israel which was one of the countries fastest off the ground with its vaccination program which began late December 2020.  Six months after the second dose, in August 2021, it was determined that a booster was necessary to ramp up vaccine efficacy. Then in December 2021, just 4 months after the third shot (booster no. 1), the Israeli authorities determined that a 4^th shot was necessary for the over 60s and at risk populations. The announcement of the 4^th shot was accompanied with the usual fanfare declarations that the shot boosted antibodies fivefold etc. The over 60s rushed to get their shots and Israel’s Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, waxed proudly:  “Israel’s trailblazing vaccine campaign has reached another milestone….thank you to the half a million Israelis who got the fourth dose of the Covid vaccine and in so doing, help to keep us all safer.”

That was on January 14. On January 17, Israel’s Sheba Medical Center released the results of the world’s first trial with Omicon, conducted on its medical staff. The trial found that the 4^th shot does not provide enough protection against Omicron. This was exemplified by the case of Israel’s Finance Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. On January 10, Lieberman received his 4^th shot. On January 15, he tested positive with Covid! Against Omicron, the vaccine has proved powerless.

The fact that the boosters have not helped to check the pandemic or protect people against infection should make authorities everywhere query their policy of mass vaccination and vaccine passes. There is no sense in separating the vaccinated from the unvaccinated if everyone is getting infected. And if as is claimed (but is disputable) the boosters help protect people from severe illness and hospitalizations, then taking the booster should be a personal medical decision that has nothing to do with “infecting” or “protecting” others.

In addition to the inefficacy of Covid boosters, there is the issue of the danger they pose to the health of our immune system. “There is a very basic phenomenon in immunology which is called “immunological exhaustion,” explains Dr. Hooman Noorchashm of the University of Pennsylvania. “This means that if you continuously stimulate, in short spaces of time, the immune system to hyperactivity, the B and T cells that normally respond will eventually become unresponsive and actually become tolerant to the virus.”

And not just of the virus. Geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude, who is a leading opponent of mass vaccination, explains how repeated boosting can threaten a person’s entire response to disease: “The more boosters you receive, the more you condition your body to respond solely via antibodies,” she says. “Once these antibodies wane, your weakened immune system will no longer be able to respond to any illness.” Well before the issue of Covid vaccines, immunologists were aware of this danger. In 2009, a Japanese study showed that repeated immunization led to the emergence of auto-immune diseases (MS, lupus, Guillain-Barre syndrome etc.).

Speaking on a recent webinar, Belgian physician, Dr. Stephane Resimont (who was fired from his position as a hospital ENT surgeon because he refused to be vaccinated) recounted that this is what he has witnessed in his private practice: “I have seen patients who were in remission from MS experience an upsurge of the disease following vaccination. The boosters change the way our body defends itself in a catastrophic way.”

Even the WHO has weighed in against the boosters warning that repeating booster doses of the original Covid vaccines is not a viable strategy against emerging variants. “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” declared recently WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. His view was echoed by Britain’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, who stated at the beginning of January 2022, “It is not sustainable to give COVID-19 booster shots every 3 to 6 months in the long term.” Marco Cavaleri, vaccine strategy chief of the European Medicines Agency, took this even further when he stated “repeated vaccinations within short intervals could lead to problems with the immune system.”

Even Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, has expressed doubt as to whether there is a need for a 4^th dose. Pfizer is clearly staking its bet now less on the vaccine and more on its new antiviral drug Paxlovid which it claims reduces hospitalization or death by 89% (more on the new Covid drugs about to hit the market in a forthcoming article).

Another danger emanating from the boosters is that of the ADE (antibody dependent enhancement) phenomenon. This is when, instead of producing neutralizing antibodies, the vaccines cause us to produce antibodies that facilitate infection. New data emerging from Denmark shows that vaccine protection against Omicron not only falls quickly but even turns negative after three months. This means that a vaccinated person is more likely to contract Omicron than someone who did not get the vaccine. So either the ADE phenomenon or a weakened immune system would explain why several countries are now showing infection rates that are higher among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.

A reflection of the pace at which Omicron is spreading: to date, it has already been identified in 77 countries.  In the UK, it is spreading at a rate of 200,000 infections per day.  By the end of January, the rate is expected to reach one million cases a day, totaling 30 million by the end of the month. That’s half the population of the UK! No variant has every spread this fast. Indeed, a new study by Hong Kong University has shown that Omicron replicates 70 times faster than Delta.

The other major concern raised by Omicron is that the new variant is now so different from the original Wuhan or Alpha strain that it may evade the immunity imparted by the vaccines. The first case of Omicron identified in Israel at the end of November was in a cardiologist who picked up the virus while on a visit to London and who was fully vaccinated with three shots of the Pfizer vaccine.

Reactions have been swift. Varying levels of lockdowns and sets of restrictions have been imposed across Europe. In the UK, people have been told to isolate and work at home as much as possible, and vaccine passports have been introduced against the will of many members of the governing party; Japan and Israel have closed their borders to foreigners and a swathe of African countries have been placed on a travel ban list.

So what do we know precisely about Omicron and is the panic justified?

The main characteristic, as noted above, is its high level of transmissible. In South Africa, Omicron has taken over completely from Delta and has become the dominant variant within a period of just a few weeks. As Dr. John Campbell (whose highly informative You-Tube clips this article is based on) points out: “The South Africa data shows that Omicron does not live side by side with Delta, it totally replaces it.”  The same picture can therefore be expected to be seen shortly in the rest of the world. “We are all going to be exposed,” says Dr. Campbell with certainty.

The good news is that the symptoms caused by Omicron appear to be relatively mild.

Of the 4,250 newly hospitalized cases in South Africa, 70% were patients who suffered from other causes. And despite the huge spike in infections, the rate of Covid deaths has not increased there. In Israel, the doctor who was infected in the UK suffered a fever for 48 hours and extreme fatigue for 72 hours. He is now fully recovered.

Another reason for optimism, says Dr. Campbell, is that a common cold sequence has been identified in Omicron and such a sequence has not been found in any other Covid variant. This sequence derives from a common cold coronavirus, of which there are many, known as HCoV-229E. Dr. Campbell concludes that this characteristic is what makes Omicron more transmissible but less dangerous. The Hong Kong study, mentioned above, also found that Omicron grows 10 slower in the lungs than the Delta variant.

The fact that Omicron is, at the same time, highly transmissible but mild is seen by many commentators as very good news since this could bring an end to Covid. In this optimistic scenario, Omicron will take over, infect almost everyone but mildly and bring about the much wished-for herd immunity without the need for vaccines. In fact, a mild Omicron could act as a natural vaccine imparting immunity to a massive number of people.  And, hopefully, this immunity will also be effective against other new variants that may emerge.

Based on the data coming out of South Africa, the other good news is that, as quickly as Omicron spreads and peaks, so it declines. In the state of Gauteng, the epicenter of the epidemic in South Africa, the number of cases has already begun to fall.

But do lockdowns actually work?

The science says that they don’t. Studies published so far on the efficacy of lockdowns show that they fail to stop the spread of an infection. Some scientists even maintain that lockdowns are “pro-contagion” and can enhance the spread.

In his 2020 study of 24 European countries, Danish scientist, Christian Bjornskov found “no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality rates.”

In their study, “Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19,” of January 2021, Dr. Eran Bendavid and colleagues from Stanford University concluded that “while small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions). Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less-restrictive interventions.”

And more recently, a team of researchers from the University of Southern California and Rand Corporation analyzed data from 43 countries as well as all US states to measure  change in excess deaths before and after lockdowns. The team found that excess mortality actually increased following the implementation of a lockdown (National Bureau of Economic Recovery, June 2021).

None of this is new to Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University who has long been a critic of lockdowns. He has described the response of the US and Europe to Covid as the “biggest public health fiasco in history.”  Lockdowns, he says, not only do not work but involve heavy collateral damage in terms of economic damage and physical and mental health. He points out that in Sweden, which never closed down its schools or daycare centers, there were zero Covid deaths in a population of 1.8 million children.  He notes wryly that the number of children who die from the flu every year is higher than the number who die from Covid.

Dr. Kulldorff is harsh in his criticism of lockdowns because he says they go against the basic principles of public health: “Public health is about all health outcomes, not just about one disease like Covid. You can’t focus only on Covid and ignore everything else (rise in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer…as a result of people’s reluctance to go to hospital and the inaccessibility of physicians, loneliness, the need for social contact etc. )

Together with Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Battacharya of Stanford, Dr. Kulldorff was one of the three founders of the Great Barrington Declaration which was issued in October of 2020. The Declararation warned about the devastating effects of lockdowns on the physical and mental health of the public. Instead of lockdowns, it  proposed a policy of “Focused Protection” which would focus on protecting those groups at highest risk of the disease while allowing those at minimal risk to lead normal lives. Schools, universities, restaurants, business, sport and cultural activities would all remain open.  The Declaration has since garnered 10,000 co-scientist signers and 870,000 signatures from the public.

But despite these impressive numbers and despite high rates of vaccination, governments  continue to turn to lockdowns as practically the only means of fighting Covid.  After nearly two years of tackling the pandemic, there is, says Dr. Kulldorff, no scientific evidence to back the efficacy of lockdowns while there is much evidence of extensive social damage. He states categorically: “In the US, lockdowns have been the biggest assault on workers since segregation and the Vietnam war. Except for war, there are few government actions in my life that imposed more suffering and injustice on such a large scale as lockdowns.”