How a group of powerful corporations seek to define 'Reality’
Pay no attention to the corporations behind the curtain...
I only heard about the Trusted New Initiative (TNI) a couple of weeks ago. At first, I thought it was some Orwellian conspiracy theory, but it’s not. Similarities to the Ministry of Truth notwithstanding, it’s a group of news and internet companies that have banded together to fight “Disinformation”. The infographic below shows the membership of the TNI – there’s some serious media clout there. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the European Broadcasting Union(EBU) seem to be proud of their role in defining truth. In the linked article, BBC Director-General Tim Davie states “The Trusted News Initiative partners will continue to work together to ensure legitimate concerns about future vaccinations are heard whilst harmful disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks.”
As I was writing this blog post, I received an email from Chris Martenson alerting his subscribers to another of his videos, “Your Job or the Jab” , being censored by YouTube, which they claimed violated their community standards. YouTube is another TNI member. What are these community standards? See the list below which was sent to Chris by YouTube; the highlighted one is the violation.
What was the specific violation? Chris went in depth about how many women have experienced changes in their menstrual cycle after getting vaccinated. Why is this worthy of censorship? Apparently the Covid-19 vaccines can’t tolerate anyone reporting negative experiences with the vaccines. It can’t be reported in the news unless the health authorities deem it to be true first – the TNI sees to that. How would we ever find out about this kind of negative consequence if no one is allowed to report it? Who do you think benefits from the censorship?
Apparently the TNI members get their health information from the health authorities, and has become their information enforcer, removing anything that doesn’t comport with the approved narrative.
If the TNI members get their information from the health authorities, we can hope that these authorities have our best interests at heart, are exercising their proper role in regulating pharmaceutical companies, and are providing accurate information to the TNI members as well as to the public. However, if the regulatory agencies are captured by the corporations they are required to regulate, the insertion of the TNI into the process of informing the public sets us up for disaster. These two possibilities are depicted below:
These are obviously conflicting models of reality. It’s been said that a sign of high intelligence is to be able to hold conflicting models at the same time, so let’s do that and consider how well each of these two conflicting models match observations. Actions speak louder than words.
Since anything related to the pandemic is so emotionally charged, I’d like to look at a drug that has nothing to do with the pandemic; an Alzheimer’s treatment drug called Aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm), which was approved in June 2021. Here is a snippet from Wikipedia.
“The drug is considered controversial as clinical trials gave conflicting results on its effectiveness.[32][33] Specific criticisms of the approval included: insufficient evidence of efficacy; that the drug offers false hope; and that the high cost will adversely impact patient finances and Medicare budget.[34][10] One member of the FDA review panel was uncertain, while 10 members did not vote to approve the drug.[5] Three members of that panel — Aaron Kesselheim, David Knopman and Joel Perlmutter — resigned after the FDA approval against the committee recommendation.”
If the FDA’s focus is to give first priority to the people’s health, why would they disregard the advice of their own panel? This act was so egregious that 3 of the panel members resigned after the approval. This drug costs $56K per year, so it’s an obvious benefit to Biogen, the drug's maker. Whose interests are being served here?
This is not an isolated case. This 2016 article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) documents the revolving door of FDA medical reviewers, who, after leaving government, work or consult for the industries they previously regulated. This article by the Union of Concerned Scientists discusses how common it is for scientists to be pressured to exclude or alter findings, creating fear of retaliation if they don’t comply. The TV show “60 Minutes” ran a segment in 2019 titled “Did the FDA ignite the opioid epidemic?” which raises concerns about the FDA’s integrity; with a simple (and not scientifically supported) change to a package insert, the FDA allowed Oxycontin’s potential market to be increased dramatically.
Scientists, in my experience, are some of the kindest, most thoughtful and ethical people I’ve ever met, but they are humans too, and subject to the same ambitions, manipulations, and fears that the rest of us are. With 18% of the US GNP spent on health care, the financial pressures, seductions, and perverse incentives of playing a key role in medical regulation must be enormous. It only takes a few at the top to compromise the integrity of an entire institution.
I don’t know how compromised our medical authorities are, but I do see a pattern of not prioritizing the health of the people they are intended to serve. For example, it’s clear that high Vitamin D3 levels attenuate the severity of Covid-19, yet the CDC Guidance does not mention a single thing about Vitamin D3, or any other way that people can act to improve their immunity. Obesity and metabolic syndrome are also highly correlated to poor Covid-19 outcomes. Shouldn’t we expect our health authorities to help us understand what we can do to improve our immunity during a viral pandemic? The CDC Guidance is to get vaccinated, wear a mask, socially distance, avoid crowds, wash hands, cover coughs, clean and disinfect. They seem to want us to be very afraid of the virus, and paint the vaccine as our collective savior. Whose interests are served by this narrative?
Our health authorities have also been more standing in the way than helpful when it comes to finding treatments using safe and well known drugs like Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin (IVM); these drugs are off-patent, and can be produced very quickly and cheaply. Anthony Fauci dismissed HCQ early in the pandemic using a now widely discredited study which The Lancet later retracted. It’s taken a major effort by doctors on the front lines who are successfully using Ivermectin with Covid-19 patients to get the health authorities to budge even a little. Please note that these two drugs are specifically called out in YouTube’s “community standards”, which is positive proof of censorship. How do you think the ‘scientists’ at YouTube determined that HCQ and Ivermectin have no value in Covid19 treatment and all information about them should be censored? Do we want YouTube (owned by Google) determining what is scientifically valid and allowed, and what is invalid and should be censored? Do we want any corporation doing that? If the TNI members instead take their censorship direction from the health authorities, then we have government agencies acting as the ministry of truth. Is that really any better? Is that the kind of world we want to live in? It’s a totalitarian dictator's wet dream.
Does the public dismiss the above two medications because they see the world through TNI colored glasses? If there was evidence that Ivermectin was an effective treatment for Covid-19, would the public ever see it as anything other than horse de-wormer? Good science depends on allowing disagreement, and the public should not be denied a window into that disagreement.
I have to wonder if our health authorities have been disparaging these treatments to allow vaccine deployment under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). The EUA grants the vaccine manufacturers immunity from liability, and can only be invoked if there are no other effective treatments. If Ivermectin or HCQ can successfully treat Covid-19, they could not sell their vaccines, and that would be a huge financial loss to the vaccine manufacturers. Imagine a drug so widely distributed that the entire human population is your target. Do you think that kind of money might cause a few rules to be bent or broken outright?
If the WHO/NIH/CDC/FDA are captured agencies, and if they have in turn captured our access to information via the Trusted News Initiative partners, we are all in big trouble. This is both too likely and too consequential to be dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theory without serious investigation. Though it may lead us to conclusions that are difficult to bear, we must be willing to consider "following the money" to see who is profiting from a specific narrative.
Even if the agencies are not fully captured, but only have the occasional lapse in integrity, do we really want to stamp out all differences of opinion through a self-appointed ministry of truth? Scientific authorities may not like dissent, but the scientific method demands that dissent be allowed. We can only keep science on track if past mistakes are allowed to be discovered by those brave and intrepid souls willing to stand against “what everybody knows.” If you truly believe in science, then evidence and the scientific method should triumph over scientific authority. Dissent is the scientific method’s self-correction mechanism; silence the dissent and you turn science into a political force that can’t uncover its own errors. The truth only wins in the end if we give it space to breathe.
Please take another look at the companies who are part of the Trusted News Initiative. What percent of the news that people receive is filtered through their algorithms? Do we want these powerful corporations censoring those they disagree with? Do we trust them to report without bias? Will we cooperate with their attempt to own reality?