Judicial Watch announced today that it received 254 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this included emails of then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis Collins regarding a British group’s recommendations on the use of Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID-19.

Judicial Watch obtained the records as the result of an August 2021 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for Collins’ emails filed after the HHS failed to respond to a June 8, 2021, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02302)).

In February 2021, a leading British physician and World Council for Health co-founder Dr. Tess Lawrie,who is director and founder of a doctors’ organization called the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group (BIRD), emailed 31 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, including the Director of the Offfice of New Drugs in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Peter Stein; Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks; and then-Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock; and copying several leading foreign medical figures, with an email titled “URGENT: The BIRD meeting and recommendation on covid-19 prevention and treatment.” She attached a document titled “Draft BIRD Proceedings 25-02-2021 v.1.4.pdf.”

Webmaster addition: Remember when ABCNNBCBS called Ivermectin Horse paste?"

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, a virologist, slammed gain-of-function research as not worth the risk during the House’s hearing on the origins of COVID-19.

Redfield appeared in a Wednesday panel in front of the House COVID origins select committee, where he blasted the controversial research method, saying he is not aware it has ever created a treatment or "life-saving vaccines."

"No, on the contrary, I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen," Redfield told committee chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, who asked if gain-of-function research has ever stopped a pandemic.

Josef Mengele — the Nazi “Angel of Death” — was hounded to the ends of the Earth by the US and other Western governments in the aftermath of WWII for his sadistic medical experimentation on Jews in his custody during the war.

That’s how America used to treat psychopathic war criminals.

Now, America pays them the highest salary in the whole government, fellates them on television, and lavishes them with $100K per speech in retirement.

We are speaking, of course, of the one and only COVID Warlord Anthony Fauci.

The man was actively engaged in the engineering of a deadly bat coronavirus to make it even deadlier — a process called gain-of-function — in the Wuhan Institute of Virology immediately prior to the pandemic. He used a “nonprofit” called EcoHealth Alliance to pull it off, as detailed via The Intercept.

Don’t take my word for it, or The Intercept’s; take the NIH’s, which quietly admitted that EcoHealth Alliance had, in fact, received federal funds to conduct the research in violation of the Terms and Conditions of the grant.

At today's House Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) spoke to Matt Taibbi about alleged threats to free speech.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Thursday that China should know the US is willing to go to war over Taiwan, pointing to comments made by President Biden that he would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack.

Haines made the remarks at a House Intelligence Committee hearing when asked by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) if she thinks the US should change its policy of “strategic ambiguity” over the question of defending Taiwan. “I think it is clear to the Chinese what our position is, based on the president’s comments,” she said.

In September 2022, President Biden was asked if American men and women would be deployed to Taiwan if China attacked, and he replied, “Yes.” Unlike previous times he made the commitment, the White House did not walk it back. Kurt Campbell, Biden’s top Asia official on the National Security Council, said at the time that the president’s comments “speak for themselves.”

The White House is asking Congress for a whopping $886.4 billion military budget for the fiscal year 2024, with $842 billion of it going to the Pentagon. The rest would go toward other federal agencies’ military spending, including the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program.

The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act will likely be much higher than the White House request as Congress added tens of billions to the previous two military budgets. For 2023, President Biden requested $813 billion, but Congress added $45 billion, bringing the finalized NDAA to $858 billion.

Congress could easily bring the 2024 NDAA to over $900 billion, closing in on the $1 trillion mark. The NDAAs don’t include the funds authorized for the Ukraine war, which could add another $100 billion if the US keeps spending on the conflict at the same pace.

Saudi Arabia wants the US to provide formal security guarantees and help the Kingdom develop a nuclear program as part of a potential deal to normalize relations with Israel, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Both President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been pushing for Israeli normalization with Riyadh as part of an effort to build a regional alliance against Iran. Since Israel signed normalization deals with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020, the countries have expanded military cooperation.

The Saudis have long demanded a Palestinian state as a precondition to normalization, but the Journal report, which cited people involved in the normalization talks, said Riyadh could be flexible on that issue. The people said a deal could be reached if Israel entered peace talks with the Palestinians, although that seems unlikely for now as tensions are soaring in the West Bank.

Viewers tuning in to last week’s carefully choreographed hearing of the US select committee on the Chinese Communist Party got a jolt when two protesters interrupted an almost unbroken stream of tough-on-Beijing rhetoric, a disruption all the more striking given recent bipartisan cooperation on China in Washington.

The highly anticipated evening event convened by the newly formed House panel, itself a reflection of alarm within the American government about China’s rise, was but one of about a dozen congressional hearings this year devoted wholly or in large part to the threat posed by Beijing.

Less than half an hour after committee chair Mike Gallagher framed the US struggle with China as “existential”, a woman dressed in pink held up a sign bearing the words “China is not our enemy”.

Germany is showing how the all-electric car plans may not be as rosy as it would seem. The European Union has said that it will phase out gas-powered cars by 2035. But now Germany has asked the EU to exempt cars powered by synthetic fuel. Italy has supported this request with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni arguing that phasing out gas-powered cars would put thousands of jobs at risk. Spain’s environmental transition minister has said that this is a disappointing request and that it could derail the plan. In fact, this did derail a vote that was scheduled for March 7. That vote was delayed on fears that Germany would abstain.

A new wave of mass demonstrations against a government plan to limit judicial independence swept across Israel on Thursday, with protesters restricting road access to the country’s main airport hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to fly to Italy later in the day.

Thousands of demonstrators, some of them in a convoy of tractors, disrupted traffic in several cities, and others sailed a flotilla of boats through a maritime shipping lane near a major port.

By late morning, at least 25 protesters had been detained or arrested, according to Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster. Some demonstrators parked their cars on an access road to Ben-Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, slowing the entry of passengers and prompting the police to warn that the cars would be towed.

The US has approved the "diplomatic visa" request for far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich despite pressure from rights groups to deny him entry into the country, according to the Israeli minister's office.

Smotrich is set to visit Washington on Sunday and will speak at the Israel Bonds conference. Several outlets, including Axios, The Times of Israel, and Haaretz reported the approval of the visa, citing Smotrich's office.

A senior US official told Axios that during the discussions at the State Department, it was understood that there is a "very high bar" for denying a diplomatic visa for a minister of an American ally.

"Civil war" is probably the term most heard in Israeli discourse today, and it is not just a figure of speech.

It is an expression of overwhelming and unprecedented anxiety like nothing Israelis have experienced before.

It sounds even more ominous in Hebrew when the alternative term to "civil war" is "brothers' war" in a country that prides itself on internal solidarity to the level that people call each other "brother".

But for many Israelis that fraternal feeling has now gone and has been openly replaced by hate, contempt, and plain horror. 

Protesters in Israel gathered outside the country’s main airport on Thursday to disrupt a trip abroad by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a “day of resistance” against a controversial judicial overhaul. 

Netanyahu was due to leave Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv for a two-day visit to Rome on Thursday afternoon.

However, demonstrators blocked traffic on the road to the airport.

Israeli media reported that the prime minister and his wife Sara may have used a helicopter to evade the disruption on Thursday morning. 

"I’m here because I have three children and I’m afraid for their future," said Zohar, a 45-year-old protester.

Ukrainian troops slowly eased out of their most precarious defences in Bakhmut during the last week of February and the first of March but they did not give up the eastern city to Russian forces.

Ukraine’s tactic was likely to limit its losses while continuing to suck in Russian forces into what now ranks as the war’s longest and most hard-fought battle.

The Twitter account of a Saudi Arabian man purporting to be a colonel in the General Directorate of Public Security has been suspended days after he announced his defection and publicly criticised the state of the kingdom.

In a video posted this week, Colonel Rabih Alenezi said he was abandoning his post over "dangerous violations to human rights" and "the reckless policies and political indiscretions" of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Middle East Eye understands his account to be credible.

On Twitter, he expressed concern over the level of enforced disappearances in the kingdom and said that the crown prince's strategy to diversify Saudi Arabia's economy, Vision 2030, had been disastrous. 

The chief of Lithuania's military intelligence said Russia has enough resources to continue the war in Ukraine for two more years at the current intensity.

Moscow says it launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine a year ago to combat a security threat. Kyiv and the West call it an unprovoked war to subdue an independent state.

"The resources which Russia has at the moment would be enough to continue the war at the present intensity for two years", Lithuania's intelligence chief Elegijus Paulavicius told reporters.

"How long Russia is be able to wage the war will also depend on the support for Russia's military from states such as Iran and North Korea", he added.

White people are having their culture disappeared. I have reported the reinterpretation of the artistic accomplishments of white artists by museums as racist works. The history of Western civilization has been rewritten in the most blatantly false ways, such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The universities in the US and UK have become anti-white propaganda ministries. Statues and memorials are being removed, and the removals erase history. One of the Cambridge University colleges removed a memorial to the founder of statistics and one of its own leaders because he was interested in racial differences in intelligence, a legitimate study at the time but now suppressed as racist. Some American universities are removing donors names from buildings on the charge that the donor was a racist. As all white people are by definition racist, this policy should discourage future donations. We see the black demonstrators who looted and burned business districts not held accountable but given monetary payouts for being confronted by police, while white supporters of Trump are imprisoned on false charges of insurrection. And all the while we hear about “white privilege” while white people are forced by employers to take “sensitivity training” and accept that blacks and sexual perverts have preferential treatment in university admissions, employment, and promotion. Everyone who protests the exclusion of white people from the 14th Amendment and equal rights under the law is branded a white supremacist and a threat to democracy.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) easily disproved a false allegation from Democrat Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) during a hearing of the new House Subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.

“You cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any lawful speech. And when I saw lawful, I mean non-criminal speech,” claimed Rep. Goldman.

Vice President Joe Biden eats ice cream during a visit to Little Man Ice Cream, in Denver, Tuesday, July 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

“I’ll give you one,” responded Jordan. “I’ll ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the following email from Clark Humphrey, executive office of the presidency, White House office, January 23 2021. That’s the Biden administration.”

“This goes to Twitter: ‘Hey, folks… just wanted to flag the below tweet. And I’m wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP. And then if we can keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre, that would be great.'”

“The gentleman’s point was, [that] at no time did government try to tell Twitter to specifically remove something.”

The Democrat countered that his comments were restricted to lawful speech, casting doubt on whether the tweet — from Robert Kennedy Jr. — was lawful. Rep. Jordan then revealed that the tweet concerned the death of former baseball star Hank Aaron after taking the coronavirus vaccine — a perfectly lawful topic.

As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the "weaponization" of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.

Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two "so-called journalists" as dangerous and a "threat" to former Twitter employees.

She claimed that Republicans brought "two of Elon Musk's ‘public scribes'" in "to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative - Elon Musk’s chosen narrative - that is now being parroted by the Republicans" for political gain.

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” former NIAID Director and former White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that there are “very few reasons” to engage in research “where you deliberately make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic,” but “the whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms” and there is critical research that “involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain-of-function, it really is not in many respects, but when it is, it needs to be very well-regulated.”

Remember when Janet Yellen exclaimed proudly that there would never be another financial crisis "in our lifetimes" in 2017, only to see the repo crisis and the reaction to COVID lockdown policies prompt the biggest response by The Fed ever.

Well, we hate to say it but she may have just 'cursed' something even more ominous this time, saying, when asked for comment about the increase in non-dollar trade around the world since US sanctions began:

"I don’t think the dollar has any serious competition, and is not likely to for a long time."

The reason the question of the dollar's ongoing dominance is growing louder is simple - as Reuters reports, US-led international sanctions on Russia have begun to erode the dollar's decades-old dominance of international oil trade as most deals with India - Russia's top outlet for seaborne crude - have been settled in other currencies.

India is the world's number three importer of oil and Russia became its leading supplier after Europe shunned Moscow's supplies following its invasion of Ukraine begun in February last year.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), now a CNN contributor, said Thursday on “The Situation Room” that if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicts former President Donald Trump, it will make him more popular in the Republican Party and help him possibly win the 2024 nomination.

Kinzinger said, “I guess it’s a big story to an extent. It’s not the enchilada I think everybody is thinking. Obviously, the biggest thing I’m interested in is what happens on the Jan. 6 situation and stuff like that. But this obviously, there’s a lot of details I still don’t necessarily know about this case. But as all your guests have been saying, it is difficult to prove, difficult to prosecute. So I think people need to look at this kind of in that spectrum and realize we’re still waiting to hear from Georgia and some other stuff federally as well.”

Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked, “What do you think, Adam, if, in fact, he is charged with a crime, do you think he can still run for president?”

Kinzinger said, “I think he absolutely will still run because, it actually will probably make him more popular within the GOP. I think this is a reality whether it’s this crime, maybe potentially even the January 6, look at what happened when he defeated impeachment the first time, look what happened, you know, frankly when he wasn’t even removed the second time which he should have been. He actually gains popularity, he’s so good at being a victim. It’s amazing in this kind of culture that they have where it’s supposed to be about strength and manhood he’s the biggest victim ever. But I think he will play the victim card in this, probably will help him in the primary and short of being convicted of a felony it will not stop him from running.”

Webmaster addition: Most people have heard that convicted felons cannot run for public office. It's a good idea, but inaccurate. There is nothing in the Constitution that says anything about it.

The largest nuclear energy plant in Europe, located in southern Ukraine, lost all off-site power for the sixth time in a year as Russian forces carried out a massive missile attack on Thursday, once again raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe with continent-wide implications.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed dismay over the repeated near-misses at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and said he is "astonished by the complacency" in the face of such a threat.

"What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on," Grossi said in a statement to the IAEA Board of Governors. "Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out. I call on everyone in this room today and elsewhere—we must commit to protect the safety and security of the plant. And we need to commit now."

Grossi noted that Thursday marked the first time since November that the nuclear plant has lost all off-site power, sparking the activation of emergency diesel generators. The IAEA chief said there is enough diesel at the facility to power it for just over two weeks.

A constant supply of power to the plant is necessary to prevent a nuclear meltdown. "This is the sixth time—let me say it again, this is the sixth time—that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode," Grossi said. "Let me remind you—this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe."

The former Soviet Republic of Georgia experienced a serious Color Revolution attempt Tuesday night after radical pro-Western rioters tried to storm parliament in response to its passing of a bill requiring all organizations with at least 20% foreign funding to register with the authorities. The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) artificially manufactured the false narrative in the run-up to events alleging that the law is based on Russia’s related system even though it’s explicitly inspired by the US’.

This well-intended attempt to protect Georgia’s fledgling and admittedly imperfect democracy from foreign meddling per its sovereign right was subsequently exploited as the pretext for organizing a violent regime change against Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

The West wants to punish him for his pragmatic refusal to open up a “second front” in the US’ proxy war on Russia after he publicly exposed this plot in early December while also pledging never to arm Kiev either.

President Salome Zurabishvili, who was visiting the UN in New York during the unsuccessful regime change against Garibashvili on Tuesday night, threw her full support behind the riots in a video that peddled the West’s false information warfare narrative alleging that the bill is backed by Russia. Readers should be aware that she served most of her career as a French diplomat after having been born there and was previously that country’s Ambassador to Georgia up until 2004.

So ask yourself one thing: In all the post-broadcast ranting about the Tucker Carlson Menace—and let’s not kid ourselves, he may invade Poland at any moment—how many politicians and media figures have you heard specifically addressing Carlson’s three narrow fact claims about Chansley, Hawley, and Sicknick?

When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air.

How many times have we seen this maneuver? Q: You said the vaccines were 100 percent effective, and that everyone who gets them immediately becomes a dead end for the virus. Was that true? A: Ohh, I know that some people are anti-vaxxers who don’t believe in science, but I don’t have any patience for these conspiracy theories.

It’s topic-shifting, quite thinly disguised. Again: When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response.

The petition argues the two Winthrops’ values “are entirely antithetical to the current mission of Harvard College, creating a harmful environment that undermines the ability of our community to participate in the work of the University.”

Harvard University’s media affairs department declined to comment when asked by The College Fix on the future of the Winthrop House name.

Meanwhile, Harvard students also protested in the dining hall during dinner to advance their cause, the Crimson reported Feb. 27.

Student Clyve Lawerence, who is helping to lead the charge to change the name, gave a speech focusing on the histories of the two Winthrops and their ties to slavery as students ate their food, the Crimson reported.

The petition is led by two student organizations, the Generational African American Students Association of Harvard and Natives at Harvard College, who say they feel that the namesakes of Winthrop House represent ideas and actions that would be “abhorrent today.”

Webmaster addition: Except those actions are not happening today, are they?

Less than half meet national standards for literacy, and only one-third meet standards for math. The picture is grimmer for minorities: percentages hover around 30% for African Americans, American Indians and Hispanic/Latino students in literacy, and 20% for math.

Last October, Gov. Gavin Newsom underscored the urgency of getting California students “the resources they need to thrive.” Three weeks later, however, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Legislature’s independent fiscal adviser, pressed Newsom to claw back billions of promised spending because of a looming $24 billion budget deficit.

Faced with students’ abysmal academic performance and the prospect of severe belt-tightening, Newsom and state legislators are now forced to scrutinize their fiscal promises and missteps.

First on their list should be new expensive educational initiatives that do not demonstrate academic benefits, chief among them California’s 2021 ethnic studies high school graduation requirement (AB-101). Its proponents’ bold claims that ethnic studies courses improve academic achievement evaporate when held to scientific scrutiny. A 2022 critique by UCLA and University of Pennsylvania professors of the single quantitative study cited as proof of these claims found that “no conclusion” could be drawn from the data, charging that the study “should not have been published … much less relied upon in the formation of public policy.”

Michael Shellenberger, one of the journalists chosen to publish the Twitter Files, is testifying in front of the Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee’s hearing on the files.

Shellenberger explained the path of government censorship:

SHELLENBERGER: “Seeing this censorship industry go from, well, we’re just fighting ISIS to well, we’re just fighting Russian disinformation bots to well, now we need to fight domestic misinformation, which is just saying we need to fight against people who are saying things we disagree with online, that’s all that means. And I — I mean, it’s not a slippery slope. It’s an immediate leap into a terrifying mechanism that I — we only see in totalitarian societies of attempting to gain control over what the social media platforms are allow — are allowing.”