Search & Seizure at Home of Judge Who Rendered the Sensational Weimar Mask-Judgment
2020News | April 26, 2021
As 2020News has just learned, the judge at the Weimar District Court, Christian Dettmar, had his house searched today. His office, private premises and car were searched. The judge’s cell phone was confiscated by the police. The judge had made a sensational decision on April 8, 2021, which was very inconvenient for the government’s anti Coronavirus measures policy.
At the suggestion of a mother, the judge had ruled in a child welfare proceeding pursuant to Section 1666 of the German Civil Code (BGB), Ref.: 9 F 148/21, that two Weimar schools were prohibited with immediate effect from requiring students to wear mouth-nose coverings of any kind (especially qualified masks such as FFP2 masks), to comply with AHA minimum distances, and/or to participate in SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests. At the same time, it had determined that classroom instruction should be maintained (full text of the ruling in German including three expert opinions – English translation will be available soon).
This was the first time that evidence was presented before a German court regarding the scientific reasonableness and necessity of the prescribed anti-Corona measures. The expert witnesses were the hygienist Prof. Dr. med Ines Kappstein, the psychologist Prof. Dr. Christof Kuhbandner and the biologist Prof. Dr. rer. biol. hum. Ulrike Kämmerer.
After examining the factual and legal situation and evaluating the expert opinions, the judge came to the conclusion that the measures he had forbidden posed a present danger to the mental, physical or psychological well-being of the child to such an extent that significant harm could be foreseen with a high degree of certainty in the event of further development without intervention.
He wrote: “… the children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and spiritual well-being by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each other and from other persons, but, in addition, they are already being harmed. At the same time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the constitution and international conventions. This applies in particular to the right to free development of the personality and to physical integrity from Article 2 of the Basic Law as well as to the right from Article 6 of the Basic Law to upbringing and care by the parents (also with regard to measures for preventive health care and ‘objects’ to be carried by children)…”
The judge agreed with the experts’ assessment that the masks were not useful for viral protection, that the PCR test could not detect a disease-causing infection with the necessary certainty, and that asymptomatic transmission played no detectable role epidemiologically with respect to SARS-CoV-2. On the contrary, the masks would have a negative impact on children’s health due to handling-related contamination. Testing in school classes would be unnecessary, harmful and also extremely problematic in terms of data protection.
The judge’s ruling confirms the mother’s assessment: “The children are harmed physically, psychologically and pedagogically and their rights are violated, without this being offset by any benefit for the children themselves or third parties.”
In conclusion, the judge stated, “100,000 elementary school students would have to put up with all the side effects of wearing masks for a week in order to prevent just one infection per week. To call this result merely disproportionate would be a wholly inadequate description. Rather, it shows that the state legislature regulating this area has fallen into a factual disconnect that has reached historic proportions.”
The decision, which 2020News analyzed – in English – in more detail here, had caused quite a stir. It had been downloaded about two million times from the 2020News website alone.
In a side note on the sidelines of proceedings with other parties, the decision in question had been described as unlawful by the Weimar Administrative Court without any comprehensible justification.
UK Hiring COVID Marshals to Patrol Streets Until 2023 Despite Lockdown Restrictions Supposedly Ending in June
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 27, 2021
Government councils in the UK are hiring COVID Marshals to patrol streets from July until the end of 2023, despite the fact that all lockdown restrictions are supposed to end in June.
“A new army of Covid Marshals is being recruited for roles that could last until 2023 despite Government plans to lift all remaining restrictions on June 21,” reports the Telegraph.
“Councils around the country are advertising jobs that do not begin until July – several days after the supposed freedom day.”
One example is Hertfordshire County Council, which is “offering a contract of up to £3 million to firms that can supply 60 marshals from July 1 until January 31 next year.”
“The contract comes with a possible one-year extension, meaning marshals would still be patrolling until 2023,” states the report.
The Marshals will be tasked with ensuring “compliance” and helping the public understand “regulations and guidance,” despite the fact that all regulations are supposed to be terminated in 8 weeks time.
“We know that the virus is still circulating and will be for some time. We know from last year that numbers of infections can change rapidly, and Government are very clear that we should plan in case a third wave arises. It would be a dereliction of duty not to prepare for a third wave,” said Jim McManus, director of public health for Hertfordshire County Council.
Critics have accused the government of wasting taxpayer money by allowing councils to use government grants to fund the program.
“To start hiring people based on the situation we faced last year, before we had rolled out the vaccines, does seem to be a waste of public money,” said Mark Harper MP, Tory chairman of the Covid Recovery Group.
The fact that COVID Marshals will be patrolling the streets beyond June once again illustrates how the timetable to lift restrictions is completely phony.
Just like the UK government promised for months that it wouldn’t introduce vaccine passports while secretly funding their creation, the state has been caught lying yet again.
In all likelihood, fearmongering over a “third wave” of the virus, despite the UK vaccinating virtually all of its vulnerable population, will be used to reintroduce lockdown at the beginning of Autumn.
Are Covid Fatalities Comparable with the 1918 Spanish Flu?
By Ethan Yang | AIER | April 27, 2021
On April 23, 2021 The New York Times published an article titled “How Covid Upended a Century of Patterns in U.S. Deaths.” The article lays out some data regarding the unprecedented uptick in the US death rate that occured in 2020.
As shown in the graph provided by the New York Times, US death rates have been steadily declining over the past century, likely due to advances in technology and living standards. Last year certainly signaled a noticeable break from this trend with a sizable increase in deaths, but not nearly the same as the 1918 Flu which is a universal benchmark for a killer influenza virus.
This graph provided by the New York Times indicates the spike in excess deaths in 2020, which is the number of deaths that have occured exceeding the predictions of standard death trends. This is of course all important information. Last year was certainly a horrific year with the outbreak of Covid-19, the lockdowns, and all the chaos that followed. It was a year of death and despair which should not be taken lightly.
Important Discussion: Deaths and Victims
It is common to invoke comparisons with the 1918 Flu Pandemic, as that was an extremely devastating virus that rocked the world. The article makes multiple references to the 1918 pandemic but there are a couple that raise interesting questions for further investigation. The first point is as follows,
“Combined with deaths in the first few months of this year, Covid-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States. The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide.”
Comparing the death counts between the 1918 Flu and Covid-19 without adjusting for population growth is extremely misleading. In 1918 the population of the United States was roughly 103 million, while near the end of 2020 it stood at roughly 330 million. According to CDC statistics compiled by a study in JAMA Covid-19 killed 345,000 people in 2020 and now stands at around half a million as stated by the New York Times. Adjusted for the population growth of over 200 million people and holding the death rates constant, the 1918 Flu would have killed over 2 million people if it occured today, which is more than four times greater than Covid-19.
Furthermore, the two diseases are vastly different in terms of who is vulnerable. Covid-19’s severe outcomes almost exclusively affect the elderly and the immunocompromised, particularly those over the age of 65, which is also approaching the life expectancy of a human. Furthermore 94 percent of Covid deaths occurred with preexisting conditions. It poses virtually no risk to children, minimal risk to young adults, and only seems to kill more than 1 percent of victims with those over the age of 65.
On the other hand the Spanish Flu was devastating to virtually all age groups and did not discriminate between the healthy and the unwell. The CDC writes the following about the 1918 Flu:
“Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.”
It is clear that the comparison is flawed between the 1918 Flu and Covid-19, as the former was a devastating killer virus whereas the latter only poses a threat to vulnerable populations.
Too Much Statistical Noise
It is certainly worth investigating the noted increase in excess deaths in 2020 as that is obviously a problem. However, the article seems to suggest that Covid-19 was the main causal factor driving increases in death. Although that is certainly a reasonable intuition given that it is a novel virus, clearly there is far more at play.
The main issue to point out is that there were two health crises, not one. Covid-19 is certainly one but we cannot simply ignore the absolutely devastating and unprecedented use of lockdown policies that drastically upended all of society in a way that a virus could never accomplish.
The effects of lockdowns have been thoroughly studied by AIER and in a series of articles I noted just some of the damage to the economy, young people, and the normal functioning of society. All these disruptions led to adverse outcomes whether it be mental health issues, decline in living standards, or even disrupted healthcare procedures. In a press release the CDC noted that in May 2020, it recorded the highest number of drug overdoses ever recorded in a 12-month period.
A study in JAMA notes that although there was a substantial increase in overall deaths in 2020, Covid-19 was only one part of the problem, assuming all Covid deaths are directly attributable to Covid and not a comorbidity.
Some statistics of note are an increase in deaths due to heart disease, unintentional injuries, stroke, and diabetes. Although more investigation would be needed to understand how all of this comes together, it wouldn’t be absurd to believe that lockdown policies led to an increase in deaths due to their many disruptions to normal societal functions.
To cite one example of many, the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation recounts on one of its clients by writing,
“One of the affected medical practices, Grand Health Partners, operates in the Grand Rapids area. It performs endoscopies and other elective surgeries, many of which were deemed nonessential by executive order. Due to the shutdown, many of their patients were not able to receive treatment and have suffered because of it.”
Alongside exploring and cutting through the statistical noise posed by increases in death plausibly related to lockdowns, there still needs to be a discussion on quantifying the Covid-19 death count. Genevieve Briand, an economist at John Hopkins University, was subject to a massive degree of controversy for putting out a flawed but important lecture – later expanded into a research paper – that pointed out among other things that Covid-19 deaths may be inappropriately reclassified as deaths from other leading causes.
This is especially worthy of discussion given that the overwhelming majority of Covid deaths occur with comorbidities amongst eldery populations often nearing or exceeding life expectancy.
Key Takeaway
The data is clear; 2020 was a horrific year full of death and despair. The New York Times’ article certainly does a great job at starting a conversation about this topic. However, its comparisons of Covid-19 and the 1918 Flu raises more questions than answers. Furthermore its presentation of data regarding increases in deaths requires more context.
Upon further investigation, it is clear that Covid-19 claimed many lives. However, it is also clear that there is a substantial presence of statistical noise from comorbidities and increases in death from other causes. This raises many questions not just about the collateral damage of our policy response, but also about whether we are even operating with the appropriate information to be making such decisions with people’s lives in the first place.
Lockdowns Devastating For Child Development & Language Skills
By Richie Allen | April 27, 2021
A major survey has concluded that lockdowns are having a devastatingly negative impact on child development. Data from 50,000 pupils and a survey of schools across England, has revealed that an increased number of four- and five-year-olds need urgent help with their language skills.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) research suggests that the lockdowns have deprived the youngest children of social contact and experiences essential for developing their vocabulary. According to the BBC:
Less or no contact with grandparents, social distancing, no play dates, and the wearing of face coverings in public have left children less exposed to conversations and everyday experiences.
Of 58 primary schools surveyed across England:
- 76% said pupils starting school in September 2020 needed more support with communication than in previous years
96% they were concerned about pupils’ speech-and-language development. - And 56% of parents were concerned about their child starting at school following the lockdown in the spring and summer.
Sally Miner, head teacher at Ryder Hayes school in Walsall told the BBC that problems with communication were “really limiting” for young children, particularly if they were unable to express themselves, interact with peers and make themselves understood.
“It’s absolutely key,” she said. “It’s all about a child’s self-esteem and confidence. She went on to say:
“All the research shows that if a child does have issues with language at that age, by adulthood they’re four times more likely to struggle with reading, three time more likely to have mental health issues, twice as likely to be unemployed and have social-mobility issues, so getting this right at such an early age is literally the key to children’s futures.”
Lockdowns are a crime against humanity. Lockdowns are a form of child abuse. If lockdowns are child abuse, the witch doctors and lying politicians responsible for them are child abusers, plain and simple. There must be a day of reckoning for them.
Canadian government seeks to police videos posted on social media in ‘assault’ on free speech
RT | April 27, 2021
Critics of Canada’s Liberal government are accusing it of mounting an ‘assault’ on free speech after it proposed modifications to a broadcasting law that would enable it to regulate user-generated video content on social media.
At the heart of the controversy is ‘Bill C-10’, an amendment to the Canadian Broadcasting Act (1991) that purports to give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) oversight abilities over online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
When the Trudeau government introduced the bill, it contained language exempting content created by individuals. But that clause was removed by a parliamentary committee during the bill’s final review stages on Friday, creating an avenue for the CRTC to treat YouTube videos and TikTok posts uploaded by Canadian users as ‘programs’ – the same way it does broadcast networks.
The move “doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy,” according to former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies.
“It’s difficult to contemplate the levels of moral hubris, incompetence or both that would lead people to believe such an infringement of rights is justifiable,” Menzies told the National Post newspaper.
The bill’s critics said the changes – made by the Liberal-dominated House of Commons Heritage committee – were especially alarming in light of recent proposals by Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault to give Ottawa the power to order platforms to take down content deemed objectionable.
At present, online services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are not subject to Canadian content rules.
A spokesperson for Guilbeault told the Toronto Star that the bill would still “exempt individual users from being considered broadcasters” and the clause was simply removed to allow for better regulation of things like music playlists.
“Where content uploaded by individual users is curated by a platform, and is deemed of significant impact, that platform, not the users, could be subject to the Broadcasting Act,” she told the paper.
But critics aren’t buying it. Cara Zweibel, fundamental freedoms programs director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, contends that the legislation “opens up a regulatory door” for Ottawa to implement future regulations on user content.
The same concerns were echoed on social media. University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist asked Guilbeault how “removing your own legislative safeguards and regulating user generated content for millions of Canadians” could be considered as “standing up to web giants”?
Meanwhile, privacy lawyer David Fraser branded the minister’s approach to policymaking an “incoherent word salad of buzzwords.”
“Regulating what I post on YouTube or forcing Facebook or Twitter to pay for news links that I share on their platforms is simply idiotic,” he wrote.
Others said the Liberals took an “already bad law” and made it worse, warning of an “exodus” from platforms if it came into force.
Not everyone was against the proposals, however. Daniel Bernhard, executive director of advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said the bill was not the “assault on liberty some were making it out to be.”
In a series of tweets that denounced “hypothetical concerns” about a “tyrannical CRTC”, Bernhard said options to regulate social media monopolies are “far less intense than broadcast licensing” and that “even in that hyper regulated system, CRTC has never been found to have censored or intervened in programming.”
The Truth About the Covid ‘Crisis’ in India
By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • April 27, 2021
Now that Chile is settling down a bit, the latest Covid cautionary tale is India, which never seems to be out of the news at the moment as its positive cases and deaths have rocketed in the past few weeks.
Even the usually level-headed Kate Andrews in the Spectator has been painting the situation in lurid colours.
As it happened, the UK’s worst nightmares were never realised. The Nightingale hospitals built to increase capacity were barely used. But what the British Government feared most is now taking place elsewhere. India is suffering an exponential growth in infections, with more than 349,000 cases reported yesterday, as well as nearly 3,000 deaths. Hospitals are running out of oxygen for patients and wards are overflowing. There are reports of long queues as the sick wait to be seen by medical professionals. It’s expected the situation will deteriorate further before it gets better.
Jo Nash, who lived in India until recently and still has many contacts out there, has written a very good piece for Left Lockdown Sceptics putting the current figures in context – something no mainstream outlet seems to have any interest in doing.
Jo makes the crucial point that we need to keep in mind the massive difference in scale between India and the UK. At 1.4 billion people, India is more than 20 times larger than the UK, so to compare Covid figures fairly we must divide India’s by 20. So 2,000 deaths a day is equivalent to a UK toll of 100. India’s current official total Covid deaths of approaching 200,000 is equivalent to just 10,000 in the UK.
In a country the size of India and with the huge number of health challenges faced by the population, the number of Covid deaths needs to be kept in perspective. As Sanjeev Sabhlock observes in the Times of India, 27,000 people die everyday in India. This includes 2,000 from diarrhoea and 1,200 from TB (vaccinations for which have been disrupted by the pandemic). The lack of adequate hospital provision for Covid patients may be more a reflection of the state of the health service than the severity of the disease.
Jo Nash also points out that poor air quality plays a role.
Delhi, the focus of the media’s messaging, and the source of many of the media’s horrifying scenes of suffering, has the most toxic air in the world which often leads to the city having to close down due to the widespread effects on respiratory health…
Respiratory diseases including COPD, TB, and respiratory tract infections like bronchitis leading to pneumonia are always among the top ten killers in India. These conditions are severely aggravated by air pollution and often require oxygen which can be in short supply during air pollution crises…
According to my contacts on the ground, people in Delhi are suffering from untreated respiratory and lung conditions that are now becoming serious. I’ve also had breathing problems there when perfectly healthy and started to mask up to keep the particulate matter out of my lungs. I used to suffer from serious chest infections twice yearly during the big changes in weather in India, usually November/December and April/May. When I reluctantly masked up that stopped. My contacts have reported that the usual seasonal bronchial infections have not been properly treated by doctors afraid of getting Covid, and people’s avoidance of government hospitals due to fear of getting Covid. Undoubtedly, these fears will have been fuelled by the media’s alarmist coverage of the situation. Consequently, the lack of early intervention means many respiratory conditions have developed life-threatening complications. Also, people from surrounding rural areas often travel to Delhi for treatment as it has the best healthcare facilities and people can go there for a few rupees by train. This puts pressure on Delhi’s healthcare system during respiratory virus seasons.
Positive cases look like they may be peaking in many regions now.
One mystery, as yet unexplained, is why India, which has not experienced a strong surge like this so far, suddenly did in March and April. Adding to the mystery is that the simultaneity of the surge across the regions is unexpected in a country as large as India and contrary to earlier outbreaks last year. Nick Hudson from Panda suggests it means there must be something artificial about it as it is not a natural pattern, since viruses naturally spread across the country with some delay and variation evident between regions.
It hasn’t escaped people’s attention that one novel factor is the nationwide vaccine programme rollout, beginning in January and accelerating during March. Is this a further example of the post-vaccine infection spike seen in the various trials and population studies, possibly caused by temporary suppression of the immune system?
Testing is another possible factor, as the number of tests being carried out surged in March and April – though so did the positive rate, suggesting this can’t be the only explanation.
Whatever is going on, it’s a pity there is not more curiosity among our scientists and journalists. Instead, it’s just the usual scaremongering driven by the misrepresentation of data.
Stop Press: Former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Professor Ramesh Thakur has been in touch with a comment he left on a story in the Australian.
Some context and perspective. India’s Covid deaths yesterday were 2,163 (seven-day rolling average). India’s average daily death toll is 25,000 from all causes.
Second, despite this surge, as of now India’s Covid mortality rate is 140 dead per million people. This compares to 401 for the world average, 1,762 for the US, and 1,869 for the UK. It puts India 119th in the world on this, the single most important statistic for comparison purposes.
Third, the crux of the problem in India is not the proportion of cases and deaths from Covid. Rather, it is the lack of a fit-for-purpose public health infrastructure and medical supplies of equipment and drugs.
Fourth, although Government neglect of public health while prioritising vanity projects like a new Parliament building during the pandemic, building temples and statues etc. is a contributory factor, the real cause of a poor public health system is poverty. Put bluntly, poverty is the world’s biggest killer.
Fifth and finally, this is why a strong economy is not an optional luxury but an essential requirement for good health.
New FBI Documents Reveal Seth Rich May Have Been Assassinated In Murder for Hire Plot After All
By Eric Striker | National Justice | April 26, 2021
For years, officials in the US government have held that Democratic National Convention voter expansion data director Seth Rich was killed during a random robbery in July 2016. Nothing was taken and there are currently no suspects in the case.
Julian Assange and others have suggested that Rich was in fact the source for the Wikileak’s dump of DNC emails and that foul play from political actors was involved in his death. Debate on this matter has been suppressed through high powered litigation and dismissed as a baseless conspiracy theory.
Now, lawyers representing the Rich family have been able to obtain 68 pages of heavily redacted FBI documents on the case that reveal Assange and others may have been right after all.
While the FBI has repeatedly asserted over the years that it was not involved in the investigation into Rich’s death, the documents show that they were lying.
New information shows that Rich’s homicide was in fact the subject of a Department of Justice meeting in 2018. In another document, it is speculated that “given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.”
Most pressing is the revelation that an individual, whose name is also redacted, had snatched Rich’s laptop and taken it home. The FBI is currently in possession of the laptop but will not say if anything was altered or deleted from it. The FBI revealed this information earlier this year, but has stated it has not investigated a pertinent piece of evidence in the case.
According to the narrative spun by the Metropolitan Police Department, Rich was killed in a failed robbery after leaving a bar in Washington DC.
Rich was still alive when the police reached him, but was supposedly “too drunk” to describe his attacker before his death. Journalist Joe Hoft reported in 2017 that the police body camera footage from the encounter has mysteriously gone missing.
Countless pages of the FBI’s records on Rich are redacted in their entirety. The FBI’s FOIA office has been battling in court for more time to meet the rest of their Rich FOIA obligations (hundreds of more pages) citing the need to fully censor information in the interest of “privacy.” As others have pointed out, the FBI and DoJ don’t have any problem releasing totally unredacted files on people they dislike.
Ultimately, its clear that the FBI and DoJ agree with skeptics that the Rich murder wasn’t just a mugging gone bad. The explosive story appears to be heavily suppressed by Google search algorithms. Suspicions of Rich being a victim of a US government sponsored or otherwise politically motivated assassination will only rise the more the FBI drags its feet and covers for the suspects.
Rampaging Israeli Settlers
Calls for “Death to Arabs” in Jerusalem
By PHILIP GIRALDI • Unz Review • APRIL 27, 2021
Last week there were some interesting stories that were very definitely underreported partly due to the fact that the mainstream media was heavily into the distraction provided by its beatification of George Floyd. For example, the tale of how a mob consisting of hundreds of Israeli Jews, composed mostly of settlers and the extremist so-called Kahanists, rampaging through Jerusalem and calling for “Death to Arabs,” was largely ignored. Right-wing Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir sent a message to the settlers, encouraging participants to “hang Arabs.” One member responded to the advice to bring their firearms with them with “We’re burning Arabs today, the Molotov cocktails are already in the trunk.”
In spite of the extreme violence and racism behind the attacks, the story did not seem to interest the disproportionate number of Zionists among American news editors and reporters. Along the way, the angry Jews beat Palestinians and attacked their homes and businesses in one of the Old City’s remaining Arab neighborhoods Sheikh Jarrah.
Attacks on Palestinians, to include their homes and livelihoods have been increasing in Jerusalem and on the occupied West Bank over the past several months without any intervention by Israeli police. The settlers were reportedly part of a right-wing Israeli group called Lehava which organized the violent demonstration with the objective of “restoring Jewish dignity” by “breaking the faces of Arabs.” Lehava claimed it was only avenging alleged attacks on Jews by Palestinians in and around Jerusalem, but most reports indicated that recent violence was instead caused by small groups of Jewish teenage boys looking for trouble.
During the rioting, Israeli soldiers and police made some arrests but primarily attacked the Palestinian civilians, including children, and some Jewish counter-protesters, with ‘skunk water’ sprayed from trucks, water cannon, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. 105 Palestinians were injured and 22 remain in the hospital. One Palestinian was shot in the head by an armed border policeman who fired into the counter-demonstrators and there are unconfirmed reports that at least four more Arabs died.
In a normal world and if the United States had a normal government that adhered to some kind of moral compass, there might have been a protest coming from the President Joe Biden administration or from the “people’s house” Congress, but there was nary a whimper. On the contrary, though the Congress was thinking about Israel, it was looking in a different direction, towards those whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared to be the enemies of his country. The attacks took place on April 22nd, ironically the same day that Congressmen Ted Deutch and Michael McCaul released a letter that they had sponsored. The letter was intended to stop dead any consideration that the United States just might condition its billions of dollars in largesse to the Jewish state annually based on Netanyahu and his band of war criminals restraining themselves just a bit.
Such a possibility has been raised by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, along with a handful of other brave legislators, who expressed concern that Israel will act without restraint as long as it knows that its money from Washington will continue to flow. In particular, Israel is currently pressuring Congress and using its media clout to oppose any re-entry by the US into the multilateral agreement to limit and inspect Iran’s nuclear development program, which Biden is just possibly intending to do. The previous agreement, which was being observed by Iran, became largely a dead letter when President Donald Trump, acting on behalf of major Jewish donors to the GOP as well as his neocon advisers, withdrew from the existing plan, the JCPOA, in 2017.
The letter was signed by 330 Congressmen, roughly half Republican and half Democratic, which is nearly two-thirds of the House and Senate. It begins with “As the United States meets pressing global challenges, we strongly believe that robust U.S. foreign assistance is vital to ensuring our national security interests abroad. One program that enjoys particularly strong bipartisan backing and for which we, Democrats and Republicans, urge your continued strong support is the full funding of security assistance to Israel.” The usual balderdash follows, about how “Israel continues to face direct threats from Iran and its terrorist proxies… Our aid to Israel is a vital and cost-effective expenditure which advances important U.S. national security interests in a highly challenging region.”
Sure it does, just ask the victims of the Israeli attack on the US naval vessel the USS Liberty in June 1967, which killed 34 sailors and injured 171 more. But no matter. The only things missing from the letter was the boilerplate assertion that Israel is America’s best friend in the whole wide world, which is obligatory in such documents, probably because everyone in Congress has already agreed to that. One also has to wonder why the other 205 Congressmen didn’t sign the letter, which is also obligatory, and one has to assume that their mothers had just died or something similar.
The letter also recalls how “President Biden has stated, ‘I’m not going to place conditions for the security assistance given the serious threats that Israel is facing, and this would be, I think, irresponsible’” before adding that “Reducing funding or adding conditions on security assistance would be detrimental to Israel’s ability to defend itself against all threats.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), regarded as the most visible component of the Israel Lobby, was very pleased with the letter. Its spokesman Marshall Wittmann told the Jewish Insider website that the letter is “a very strong bipartisan statement that full security assistance to Israel – without additional conditions – is in the national security interest of the United States.”
Just once it might be nice to see someone in Congress or the White House concede that tying one’s security arrangements to a nation that most of the world considers “rogue” is not exactly a smart thing to do, but it all depends on how one defines smart. Smart for a congressman on the make is to have the Jewish dominated media and the invincible Israel Lobby on one’s side. Smart is to receive a pat on the head from AIPAC. It should be noted, of course, that the letter and the commentary surrounding it make no reference to the behavior of the rampaging Jewish mobs in Jerusalem that were out for blood, even though that was taking place as the document was being released to the media.
In addition to the “threat” posed by legislators like Sanders and Warren, the letter was clearly intended to meet a challenge coming from Congresswoman Betty McCollum, who has twice sponsored legislation forbidding the Israeli use of American financial aid to torture Arabs and, in particular, to beat and imprison Palestinian children. Her legislation the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act H.R. 2407 amends a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act known as the “Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel. McCollum argues that an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system since 2000. These children between the ages of 11 and 15 have sometimes been tortured using chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation.
The Deutch-McCaul letter not coincidentally appeared less than a week after McCollum joined by 15 progressive Democrat co-sponsors submitted her bill, which admittedly is unlikely ever to emerge from committee for a vote. As of September 2020 there were an estimated 157 children still detained in Israeli prisons and, though it would be difficult to break down the money to Israel which is advanced in a lump sum, one would think the objective to be an admirable one to anyone but the always on-alert and powerful Israel Lobby.
The pledge by Congress together with its clear message that behind it there are enough votes to override any White House attempt to cut the aid, is also intended to send a warning to another perceived threat to Israel, that of the growing non-violent Boycott, Divestments and Sanction movement (BDS). The movement, which is particularly strong on college campuses, is being de facto criminalized in states all over the country, 26 at least and counting, and there are also Congressional bills that would possibly make the issue of boycotting Israel a felony with serious jail time and fines attached.
The overriding message is that Israel’s friends in the United States, and also in countries like Britain, France and Canada, are too strong to confront. In this case, the obvious racism and resort to lethal violence by the large component of the Israeli population should be resonating with a congress and media due to the recent convulsions being experienced here at home. Indeed, most of the “opinion makers” are jumping on the BLM bandwagon. This cheerleading for BLM is ironically highly visible in the actions taken by leading Israeli advocacy groups like AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but that does not mean that there is any empathy to share for the plight of the Palestinians. Indeed, they are steps taken to get close to blacks to contain any possible pro-Arab sentiment.
A humane response to the suffering of the Palestinians does not surface much in the US because, frankly, Israel and its supporters have assiduously bought control of the US media as well the White House and Congress to such an extent that they can get what they want and never be challenged. That, of course, must end but the real question is how do we accomplish that when we the people have been effectively disenfranchised on the issue. When your government has been bought and your free speech limited by the oligarchs who control what passes for news and information, where do you go? Indeed, that is the dilemma.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
ITV’s Lorraine Show Caught Lying! Photoshops Picture To Push For Climate Lockdowns
WE GOT A PROBLEM
Show was aired thursday 22/04/21 https://www.itv.com/hub/lorraine/1a93…