The parents of alleged crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried were involved in Democrat dark money and 2020 election tactics deemed ‘illegal’ by a right-leaning political research firm.

Allan Joseph Bankman and his wife, Barbara Fried (who are currently being sued to claw back some a portion of $26 million to “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds” as part of FTX’s bankruptcy), have found themselves in the middle of fresh controversy.

In a Monday lawsuit seeking the clawback, the pair were accused of siphoning off millions in firm funds to benefit their “pet causes,” with Bankman – who says he helped FTX “navigate tax issues,” allegedly “considered having funds made available by Sam through Arabella,” one of the largest dark-wing money advisory groups in the USA, whose board Bankman sat on according to court documents.

“This meant that Bankman had unfettered access to the FTX Group’s financials and corporate structure — two things that would have alerted him that money was moving between and among the FTX Exchanges, FTX Insiders, and other legal entities,” reads the filing.

Bankman’s advisory role was revealed in a footnote on P. 19 of the lawsuit.

Arabella manages major left-wing nonprofit groups which then sponsor entities that pay no tax. The company has come under heightened scrutiny from conservatives over this “dark money” arrangement, the Washington Examiner reports.

Bro the story is that Sam Bankman Fried’s dad was on the board of left wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors and you’re mad conservatives are calling them out?! https://t.co/jJt0vy551q

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) September 19, 2023

The lawsuit, which seeks to claw back funds Bankman and Fried allegedly “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated,” cites the “New Venture Fund,” which “offered a platform through which FTX.US and its donors could contribute to select charitable causes.”

Lawyers for Bankman and Fried hit back, saying that “This is a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child’s trial begins.”

Illegal election tactics?

Meanwhile, according to a report from a right-leaning political research firm, Barbara Fried authored a memo in late 2019 that encouraged Democrats to donate to a 501(c)(3) known as The Voter Registration Project or Everybody Votes, the NY Post reports.

The Stanford professor argued that getting more Democrats registered to vote would be far more effective than simply donating to candidates, and encouraged donors to give 90% of their election contributions to Everybody Votes.

“Non- partisan voter registration” charities are “4 to 10 times more cost-effective” at “netting additional Democratic votes,” Fried wrote in the memo.

 The charity ended up raising a whopping $190 million, according to recent filings cited by the Capital Research Center.

Since charities and foundations don’t reveal donations until years after the fact, they are specifically forbidden from operating to benefit a political party, in effect or in intent, according to the author of the report, Parker Thayer.

Fried also told people to keep quiet about the strategy, which “managed to stay out of the news and as far as we know out of Republicans’ sight-lines,” she wrote. “It will come as no surprise to Republicans—and be of little interest—that yet another organization is trying to fund voter registration in battleground states.

“But the magnitude of our efforts, the details of targeting, and the names of the organizations we are recommending would be of great interest to them.”

According to an anonymous longtime GOP fundraiser and strategist, “This is the darkest of dark money.”

The news comes just days after federal prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of using $100 million in stolen customer funds for political donations. While there’s no evidence that he gave money to voter registration efforts or that his mother was involved in any wrongdoing, it underscores the impact the entire family had on politics.

In 2020, Vox reported on the memo from Mind The Gap and the millions the group raised aimed to raise.

But the new report from Capital Research Center reveals how effective the memo was with Democratic mega donors. Warren Buffett’s charitable foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, donated $5 million to voter registration efforts while George Soros donated $10.4 million, the report adds.

So many fingers in so many pies…

Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

I woke up earlier this week to two depressing articles that on the surface seem unrelated but are actually connected.

They both speak to the existence of a war on marriage in our culture that will destroy the fabric of our country if not dealt with. This is a war that surfaced ideologically in the early years of the Soviet Union in a way oddly similar to a primitive version of our “woke,” but was soon withdrawn as impractical even there.

Not here.

This war is now being fought in the USA on a deeper cultural level that could actually be more pernicious and ultimately succeed with monumental societal implications.

The first of these articles—“The Dating Pool Dropouts” by Olivia Reingold at The Free Press—details the declining number of men even attempting to find a life partner. Marriage itself has been declining for years.

Ms. Reingold describes a number of reasons for this, adding that “part of it also boils down to this: it’s hard for men to find partners at a moment when women are outpacing them both at school and work. Young women now hold 1.6 million more college degrees than men, and in a growing number of cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York, they make as much as—or more than—their male counterparts. And even if they become mothers, odds are four in ten will become the breadwinners of their households.”

And yet we have feminists still yammering on about “equal pay.” Go figure.

You would also think these now-successful women might enjoy having a working-class man in the house who knows how to fix the plumbing or the electrical, but such is not the behavior of human society, ours anyway. If a man does not have a college degree, the fancier the better, he is filtered out on the dating apps.

What has evolved from this, according to the article, is pervasive loneliness among the younger generation.

Ms. Reingold also points out that, statistically, married people are happier. But most of us have known that from simple observation.

Meanwhile, with the male sex in decline, we have a war on gender—or more accurately, massive, and likely deliberately instigated, gender confusion, making matters worse and putting marriage in further jeopardy.

He is reporting on a battle in San Bernadino County where a school system is fighting back against the state of California. The state’s attorney general is suing to nullify that system’s ruling that parents must be notified by the school if their under-18 children are attempting to transition.

Defending the parents is the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, public-interest litigation center. Good on them.

This is a portion of the massive struggle going on across the nation, all part of this war against the family that is being fought by the left—that apparently has not learned the lessons of the former Soviet Union to which I referred—on many fronts.

Disbanding the family in favor of the state is their intention. It is also another step toward globalism.

The tragedy is that it is also a road to serious human unhappiness.

When Klaus Schwab said, “You will have nothing and you will be happy,” he was also, by inference, implying the dissolution of the family. You don’t need a spouse. You have the World Economic Forum (WEF), or what flows from it, to take care of you.

If you recognize in this elements of Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, children denouncing their parents, you are not mistaken. It’s close to happening here, indeed probably already has in isolated instances.

Not inconsequentially, I have also been reading Dennis Prager’s “Rational Bible”—at the moment the volume on Exodus—so it contains lengthy discussion of the Ten Commandments.

I know I sound almost like an idiot for doing so, but I recommend, particularly, in these times with the family in jeopardy, the Fifth Commandment:

“Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Doctors claim a law created to protect pro-life workers from going against their religious beliefs is being employed by pharmacists to deny patients access to ivermectin.

“Right to refuse” laws initially enacted in many states to shield pro-life pharmacists from being forced to violate religious convictions are used by pharmacists as legal cover for denying patients COVID-19 treatments that they find objectionable, according to a medical expert.

In Texas, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner and founder of Coalition of Health Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the law, along with greater discretion granted to pharmacists during the pandemic, has become a roadblock in ensuring her patients receive the care needed, especially when it comes to prescribing ivermectin off-label to treat COVID-19.

“I can’t imagine how anyone can claim a religious or moral belief in denying my patients access to ivermectin, but that appears to be exactly how they are able to legally do this,” said Dr. Bowden. “It makes no sense and creates significant delays in getting patients access to the medications they need.”

In Texas, pharmacists are allowed wide discretion under House Bill 2561, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in September 2017. The law permits pharmacy workers the right to refuse to fill a patient’s prescriptions for moral and religious reasons, with the text of the bill specifying “freedom of speech regarding a sincerely held religious belief.”

Dr. Bowden said that in recent years, many pharmacists have anointed themselves as medication gatekeeper in deciding which drugs may or may not be prescribed. As a result, doctors are having to invest increasing amounts of time and resources toward finding ways to get prescriptions filled that would be better directed toward patient care, according to Dr. Bowden.

“I never had an issue before COVID. Now it’s an everyday issue I have to deal with as a doctor, and it’s just draining,” said Dr. Bowden.

What have become known as “right to refuse” laws vary by state. Six states—Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, and South Dakota—have laws or regulations that specifically allow pharmacies or pharmacists to refuse to honor prescriptions for religious or moral reasons, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Seven other states—Alabama, Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas—allow them to refuse a prescription but prohibit pharmacists from obstructing patient access to medication.

By 2023, the issue had made its way into a courtroom in a case brought by Dr. Bowden and other medical professionals when, on Aug. 8, a lawyer representing the FDA confirmed that doctors were free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

“FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Despite statements from the FDA affirming that right to doctors, Dr. Bowden says many pharmacists nationwide are still refusing to fill prescriptions issued for ivermectin issued to patients for the treatment of COVID-19.

In most cases, according to Dr. Bowden, individual pharmacists aren’t the ones to blame and are often only carrying out orders from corporate leadership. However, she claims to have also seen examples where pharmacists prevented her patients from getting their medication as a result of their own “personal agenda.”

Dr. Bowden believes the only way absent of new legislation ensuring a patient’s right to the fulfillment of the prescription written by their health care expert is for people to keep putting pressure on the pharmacies to leave the practicing of medicine to the doctors.

“Consumers can fight back, but there is going to be a price to pay in terms of time and money,” said Dr. Bowden. “Whether that means boycotting pharmacies that refuse to fill your prescriptions, and having to travel further to a different pharmacy, or pushing for new legislation to protect patient rights, there is no easy solution.

“But it is clear that we need an intervention of some kind, and soon.”

Several major retailers have already raised concerns about a downturn in consumer spending that may persist through the crucial holiday shopping season. Many mid to low-tier consumers are stretched thin in the era of ‘Bidenomics,’ grappling with rising credit card debt, diminished savings, and steep interest rates. Additionally, tens of millions of consumers are resuming their student loan payments this month. These factors are headwinds that may spark a growth scare narrative. 

Online review platform Trustpilot published a new survey of 2,000 consumers, finding that many have less disposable income than in previous years. However, some respondents are finding ways to leverage up to fund purchases: 

• Today’s economic crisis is undoubtedly contributing to consumer stress levels this year with 1 in 3 considering going into credit card debt to purchase holiday gifts this year. 

• This is followed by 41 percent considering Buy Now Pay Later services, while another 2 in 5 would cut down on essential expenses such as food and gas to afford their gift purchases. 

• 34 percent would look at dipping into their savings, and 1 in 3 would consider starting a side hustle to offset the costs.

Bad news for major retailers, Trustpilot revealed:

• 41 percent are considering opting out of purchasing physical gifts that require wrapping and going digital for gifts. 

• 38 percent are saying no to white elephant gift exchanges and Secret Santa, 38 percent are skipping gatherings that require travel, and 34 percent are ditching family gatherings altogether.

The survey further showed more alarming news: 

“That said, on average, Americans who shopped during the 2022 holiday season intend to spend 39 percent less this year, and cost is driving purchasing decisions.” 

The planned reduction in holiday spending was blamed mostly on the multi-year inflation storm:

“Respondents noted an increase in price of items (43 percent) and shipping costs (42 percent) would prevent them from shopping with a business this holiday season. In fact, if delivery prices were to increase, 64 percent would reduce their overall spending to offset the cost, 64 percent would only shop in-store, and 60 percent would only shop with businesses that offer free shipping.”

“People are financially struggling in today’s economy, which is only heightened during the holidays,” Mieke De Schepper, Chief Commercial Officer at Trustpilot, wrote in the report. 

The survey comes as we determined in a recent consumer credit report that “US consumer had finally tapped out.” And we also noted it’s extraordinarily rare for consumers to be in this worse shape… 

Plus, add the restart of student loan payments this month that will curb household spending by upwards of $15.8 billion per month – or $190 billion per year. 

Corporate America panicked about “student loans” this past earning season as chatter on earnings calls soared to the highest level ever. 

These mounting headwinds for consumers are why Macy’s only plans to hire 38,000 full and part-time workers this holiday season – much fewer than last year and the lowest number since 2008. Meanwhile, Nordstrom recently warned about a slowdown in consumer spending. Remember weeks ago when Walmart slashed pay for new hires? All of this suggests the economic downturn has arrived. 

Authored by Parker Thayer via RealClear Wire,

“Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.

Nonprofit voter registration, and the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities that usually accompany it, have become the heart of a billion-dollar industry in America. According to Candid’s Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy database, since 2011 nearly 60,000 grants have been made for “Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout” and “Civic Participation,” benefitting 15,000 different organizations to the tune of $5.9 billion dollars.

Most of the largest grantors and grantees in this industry are left-leaning. Despite IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit groups from engaging in partisan electioneering, it has long been an open secret that the purpose of their work is to register voters from favorable demographics in order to help get Democrats elected. The voter registration industry has always retreated behind the fig-leaf of “nonpartisanship” when necessary, which has protected it from serious scrutiny..

Until now, that is. My recent special report, How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections, ripped away that fig-leaf. The report reveals the untold story of a nondescript charity named the “Voter Registration Project” that was used to funnel over $100 million into a five-year voter registration scheme hatched by Clinton campaign operatives to help Democrats win elections in 2020. Using tax forms, leaked documents, and leaked emails, the report shows how the scheme aimed to register over 5 million “non-white” voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada; how it was developed through multiple drafts and edits into a highly sophisticated plan dubbed the Everybody Votes Campaign; and how that plan was eventually adopted by a super PAC tied to Sam Bankman-Fried that instructed billionaire donors to keep it completely secret since it was the most “cost-effective” method for “netting additional Democratic votes.”

The report even shows several of the plan’s major donors admitting, in signed tax forms, that their “charitable” grants to the Voter Registration Project were made for the express purpose of supporting the super PAC that had recommended it to them. It was the largest, most organized, and most blatantly partisan nonprofit voter registration drive in American history. By our estimates it generated between 1 and 2.7 million swing-state votes for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Americans are expected to believe the excuse, given on the Everybody Votes Campaign’s new website, that their left-wing donors are merely “committed to creating a more representative democracy by building and supporting large-scale, long-term voter registration in communities of color.” Their website notably boasts that 76% of the 5.1 million voters they have registered were people of color, but then curiously declines to mention which states said people of color were from. A recent job listing from the organization shows that their targets states for 2024 will be Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

That’s right, the donors and directors of the Everybody Votes Campaign care deeply about the civic participation of “communities of color.” So deeply, in fact, that they have been, and will be, registering millions of minority voters, but only in the most important presidential swing states. No room for California and New York (two of America’s most populous states) nor Mississippi and Louisiana (which have the highest Black population by percentage).

It should be obvious to anyone who looks a little deeper than the mission statement that “Everybody Votes” is more than a little bit of a misnomer.

On today’s episode of Damage Control Theatre…

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who will undoubtedly be decanted if and when Joe Biden can’t manage to mount a 2024 campaign, says that Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling scheme – in which prominent foreign businessmen, including the “fucking spy chief of China,” paid the Biden family millions to affect US policy while Joe was VP – is no big deal.

“One of the things that Republicans are relentless on, of course, is Hunter Biden,” CNN host Dana Bash asked Newsom, adding. “There is no evidence that Joe Biden benefited from anything that Hunter was doing, but Republicans have shown that Hunter Biden – he tried to leverage his father’s name, and that the president allegedly before he was president joined phone calls that Hunter Biden’s business associates were on. Do you see anything inappropriate there?”

To which Newsom, whose career was undoubtedly helped by his family’s connections with the Pelosis, replied: “I don’t know enough about the details of that. I mean I’ve seen a little of that,” adding “If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries – not just in politics – where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique.”

Newsom on a Biden impeachment inquiry: “Give me a break. This is student government. This is a joke. This is a perversity of what the Founding Fathers ever conceived of.” pic.twitter.com/63x4kKxnag

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 18, 2023

“I don’t love that any more than you love it or other people I imagine love that. We want to see a lot less of that, but an impeachment inquiry? Give me a break,” he continued according to Fox News.

“Threatening a government shutdown again after we went through that process with the debt ceiling. This is student government,” he added. “This is a joke. Ready, fire, aim. I mean, this is a perversity that the founding fathers never conceived of and imagined. So, if that’s the best they can do, give me a break. That’s about public opinion.”

By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist,

While the yuan is struggling in the foreign-exchange market, it continues to grow its market share in China’s cross-border transactions as the No. 1 payment currency.

That reflects progress of the yuan’s internationalization in trade, as well as growing influence of foreign capital flows to China’s financial markets.

The official settlement data Friday showed the yuan’s share in cross-border payments and receipts rose to a record 54% last month, compared with 41% for the dollar.

The data include goods and services transactions, as well as cross-border investments.

Since foreign investors trade Chinese stocks and bonds in the yuan, the ongoing opening of the capital market over the years has lifted the yuan’s market share in total transactions.

August, for example, saw foreign investors sell a record amount of Chinese stocks, which should inflate the yuan’s share in total cross-border transactions.

Even so, it’s still a long way before the yuan becomes a dominant international currency. 

The latest data from SWIFT shows the yuan’s share in global payments rose to 3.1% in July, from 2.8% in June. It was dwarfed by the dollar’s 46% share and the euro’s 24%.

The UN’s charter outlines a grand mission statement of benevolent purpose, with its supposed root mission being the pursuit of global peace and security.  It is therefore ironic that the institution relies on a host of fabricated crisis events and ongoing conflicts in order to remain relevant.  As UN Secretary António Guterres argues: “The UN is not a Vanity Fair, it is a political body.”  And really, that is the problem.  There is no use for the UN other than to act as a foil for the eventual imposition of a faceless and unaccountable world government.

The organization will always strive for more centralization as long as it exists; it does not care about peace, it cares about power.  Thus, every new crisis event is seen as an opportunity for these people, not as a threat that needs to be solved.    

If you want to find the source of most of today’s political and social discord, all you have to do is examine the history of interventions by the UN.  For example, the very existence of ESG lending programs designed to create incentives for corporations to push woke propaganda and carbon controls on the populace started in the halls of the UN.  If you want to know where the rush towards “sustainable development goals” and where the concept of the 15 Minute City comes from, just check the white papers of the UN.  If you want to know who is funding a large portion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives globally, keep your eyes on the UN.

While think-tanks like the WEF and summits like Davos are designed to keep political and financial elites informed on the overall agenda ahead, the UN is more of a vehicle for public engagement and implementation.  They are the “governing body” that is supposed to give legitimacy to the globalist obsession with world government.  They are the friendly face of the beast, and they come with many gifts and promises of justice and equity.    

Of course, not everyone is buying it.  In fact, the general assembly this week appears to be centered on that very issue – UN officials are frustrated that their goals have been put on hold and the public is not taking them seriously.  This is the sentiment expressed by António Guterres in the following self organized UN interview summarizing the key topics to be discussed at the assembly.

Main takeaways include:

The lack of attendance by four of the five permanent security members with veto power, including Britain, France, Russia and China.  Only Joe Biden will be present at the meeting, and we have to wonder given his fading cognitive abilities how much that will actually matter.  

Climate change hysteria will once again be at the forefront of UN talks.  The UN has consistently made false claims of record high temperatures (the records they use only go back 140 years and the Earth’s temps have been far higher in the past).  They also make false claims of increasing weather disasters (there is no evidence that today’s weather events are any more dangerous than those of the past century, and no evidence that man-made carbon has any effect on the weather).

The UN wants to phase out fossil fuels, but this is impossible without a severe degradation of production and population.  There is no “green energy” alternative available to fill the void that fossil fuels will leave behind.  It would be a monumental disaster.  

The UN wants to “reform” the international financial system.  Meaning, most likely CBDCs will be a point of interest at the assembly, as well as concepts like Inclusive Capitalism.  Reading between the lines, any trace of free markets will be done away with and replaced with a fully socialist framework; all in the name of “financial equity.”  The UN has consistently presented the idea that the economy must be fair, but there is no such thing as economic fairness.  Under socialism it is impossible to make everyone equally wealthy because governments cannot create wealth.  All they can do is steal wealth and make everyone equally poor.  

UN sentiments on the covid pandemic match with those we have seen out of the WEF and WHO, which is that they are visibly perturbed that their efforts for universal medical authoritarianism failed.  We have seen this time and time again – Globalists are indignant over the lack of compliance from numerous countries and local governments on the lockdowns, mandates and vaccine passports.  

Specifically, they are angry that the public was able to disseminate counter-information about covid even in the face of widespread censorship by Big Tech working in concert with political leaders.  They don’t like that so many of their covid claims have been debunked.  The UN wants a stronger World Health Organization with more influence over national pandemic response decisions as well as more control over what information is allowed to circulate online.  

The Ukraine war will be presented as a prime scapegoat.  The UN blames the war for many of their programs on climate being disrupted (who cares about climate hysteria when the threat of WWIII looms large?).  However, it’s important to point out that the UN has made no viable effort to offer a diplomatic solution to the conflict.  In fact, it seems as if they prefer the war to continue (Zelensky will be there to beg for even more money to keep the coflagration going).   

Guterres indicates that he sees no chance of peace “according to UN charter and international law.”  In other words, the UN is taking the same hard line stance as NATO, refusing to offer any concessions and avoiding all peace negotiations unless Russia exits Eastern Ukraine and Crimea completely, which is not going to happen.  The UN knows that this means the war will continue as long as NATO countries continue to supply arms to Ukraine, unless Russia eliminates every facet of the existing Ukrainian government.  

Finally, the UN will be talking a lot about AI, but in the capacity of regulation more that capability.  The UN has sought to become the global regulator for AI for years as they continue to suggest that individual nation states cannot be trusted with the power that AI commands.  Why should the UN be trusted with AI more than anyone else?  This question is never addressed.

This year’s assembly has launched with some undertones of angst, but this may very well be a part of the theater.  After all, globalists need international strife and chaos so that they can then offer their solution of centralization as the cure.  The UN might be hitting a brick wall today in terms of their climate and pandemic agendas, but there is always that next major crisis that could open doors for them in the near future.         

Authored byh Tom Ozimek and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has “gone rogue,” according to virologist Dr. Robert Malone, who accused the federal agency of sacrificing its own rules and regulations with its decision to recommend the latest batch of COVID-19 boosters, which only have limited clinical trial data attesting to their efficacy and safety.

Dr. Malone made the remarks in an interview with EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program on Sept. 11, the day that the FDA cleared new COVID-19 vaccines in a bid to counter the waning effectiveness of the currently available shots.

“It’s difficult to conclude anything other than the FDA is no longer feeling bound by their own rules and regulations,” Dr. Malone said. “The term is—they’ve gone rogue.”

Dr. Malone said the lack of human clinical trial data demonstrating effectiveness and safety of the updated vaccines should have precluded their approval by the FDA.

He said that, essentially, the FDA authorized the new vaccines on the premise that “neutralizing antibodies as detected in mice and their cross-reactivity are correlative protection,” which he said “is a lie, there are no established correlates of protection for SARS-CoV-2.”

FDA officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The agency cleared Moderna’s and Pfizer’s newest mRNA vaccines on Sept. 11 without analyzing data from any human trials.

In a statement announcing its approval, the FDA said that the decision was supported by its evaluation of “manufacturing data” from vaccine producers and “non-clinical immune response data on the updated formulations including the XBB.1.5 component.”

The benefit-risk profile of earlier versions of the vaccines is “well understood,” the FDA claimed, adding that the similar manufacturing process for the updated vaccines “suggests that the vaccines are a good match for protecting against the currently circulating COVID-19 variants.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) followed with its own recommendation on Sept. 12, urging nearly all Americans to get the new vaccines. The shots will be available to children as young as 6 months old this month.

The new vaccines target XBB.1.5, a sub-type of the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease COVID-19. However, the XBB.1.5. subvariant has already largely been displaced by newer strains of the quickly evolving virus, including EG.5, according to the CDC.

While FDA documents show the agency did not include any trial data in its review of the new shots, data from a Moderna trial was considered by the CDC before it issued its recommendation. The trial featured just 50 people receiving a new shot, and found the vaccine induced levels of neutralizing antibodies that authorities said would protect against COVID-19. One of the 50 people suffered a vaccine-related adverse reaction.

“Not only that, but there are a lot of red flags,” Dr. Ladapo added, while pointing to studies finding that the effectiveness of the vaccines turns negative over time.

“There’s been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people, there’s been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people.”

He also noted that studies have linked previous versions of the COVID-19 vaccine to cardiac problems such as heart inflammation.

“It’s truly irresponsible for FDA, CDC, and others to be championing something … when we don’t know the implications of it,” Dr. Ladapo said.

“Covid-19 vaccines are the best way to give the body the ability to keep the virus from causing significant harm. Extensive studies and real-world experience have shown that they are safe and they work,” she wrote. “And most Americans take them.”

Dr. Cohen said the vaccines were put through extensive clinical trials before they were introduced in 2021 and “since then, their safety has been intensely monitored.”

She didn’t address criticism, such as the little trial data that’s been made available.

Read more here…

India is remaining defiant and has refused to acknowledge Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s shock accusation that Indian intelligence assassinated a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Trudeau on Monday told lawmakers there is “credible” intelligence pointing to “agents of the government of India” as being behind the June murder of a prominent Sikh leader named Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver – shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia. He was a prominent leader in the Sikh Khalistan independence movement, and thus the Indian government labeled him a “terrorist”. 

Canada on Monday expelled an Indian diplomat who is a known intelligence official, but on Tuesday India in tit-for-tat fashion expelled a senior Canadian diplomat from its territory. India’s Ministry of External Affairs cited Canadian “interference” in India’s sovereign matters. “The decision reflects Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Indian government has condemned and rejected allegations, calling them “absurd” and politically motivated. Further, New Delhi has suggested Canadian officials are running cover for ‘terrorists’ that are engaged in Sikh separatist activities. Canada has a huge Indian and Sikh population.

All of this reflects the already long simmering tensions between the two countries:

A number of individuals designated as terrorists by India’s National Investigative Agency continue to call for India’s break-up in Canada. Since 2020, self-proclaimed “referendums” that call for the break-up of the Indian state of Punjab from the Union of India have been occurring despite India asserting strong diplomatic offences. 

“The inaction of the Canadian Government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern,” India’s foreign ministry said.

Trudeau had in his televised announcement before the House of Commons asserted that “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.” Some pro-Indian commentators and media are questioning whether Nijjar is a Canadian citizen at all.

Here’s more of the full Indian statement responding to Trudeau:

“We have seen and reject the statement of the Canadian Prime Minister in their Parliament, as also the statement by their Foreign Minister. Allegations of Government of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are absurd and motivated,” India’s foreign ministry said.

“Similar allegations were made by the Canadian Prime Minister to our Prime Minister, and were completely rejected,” the Indian foreign ministry added. Canadian PM Trudeau told his country’s parliament that he had taken up the purported matter of alleged Indian hand in Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing “directly” with his Indian counterpart during the G20 summit in Delhi earlier this month.

New: Weeks ago, Canada began pushing its closest allies, the Five Eyes, to make a joint statement about Nijjar’s killing, possibly at the G20. Countries including the US deferred, fearing angering India and spoiling its coming-out party
w @karishma__m__ https://t.co/eokAn5uUVa

— Gerry Shih (@gerryshih) September 19, 2023

Indeed Trudeau had told parliament that he had directly informed PM Modi of his intelligence service’s findings related to Nijjar’s murder.

But given India has focused much of its angry reaction on denouncing the Canadian government for being ‘weak’ on terrorism, it’s increasingly looking like Indian intelligence was indeed likely behind or at least had knowledge of the assassination. After all, Nijjar was a top wanted man in India, and there was even a reward for his apprehension. 

“That Canadian political figures have openly expressed sympathy for such elements remains a matter of deep concern,” India’s foreign ministry continued. “The space given in Canada to a range of illegal activities, including murders, human trafficking and organised crime is not new. We reject any attempts to connect the Government of India to such developments. We urge the Government of Canada to take prompt and effective legal action against all anti-India elements operating from their soil.”

This sheds some light on negative events which happened at the end of Trudeau’s G20 trip, as Reuters recounts:

Trudeau was seen as the most snubbed leader during the G20 summit in Delhi, away from media’s attention and geo-economic significance, as he chose to skip official dinners and made it a point to attend the formal business of the summit only. As Trudeau was to leave Delhi, his official plane developed a technical malfunction and he had to stay back in India for nearly two days, and denied the Indian offer to take the service of an Indian Air India One plane instead.  

The stunning and unprecedented moment of such a severe accusation as a political assassination on foreign soil, and the tit-for-tat expelling of diplomats is likely to send already tension-filled India-Canadian ties falling off a cliff.

Wow.

Washington Post reports that Justin Trudeau tried to get his western allies, USA, Australia etc., to issue a joint statement against India on Hardeep Singh Nijjar but everyone, including USA, refused to take Canada’s side fearing a diplomatic backlash from the Modi Govt. pic.twitter.com/lzu2gLzpYJ

— Sensei Kraken Zero (@YearOfTheKraken) September 19, 2023

There’s also the possibility the whole row could push India further away from the West when it comes to the Ukraine war, and into closer trade and economic cooperation with Russia and China.