Fired Workers Sue New York City, Seek $250 Million and End to COVID Vaccine Mandate
The Defender | January 20, 2023
New York City public-sector workers who lost their jobs for refusing to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on Thursday filed a $250 million lawsuit against the city and Mayor Eric Adams seeking to end the mandate.
The 72 fired workers are demanding the city overturn the mandate, reinstate their jobs and compensate them with punitive damages.
The workers argue the mandate should be found “arbitrary and capricious” given that “President Joe Biden, Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer have all declared that the pandemic is over,” and that it was already rescinded for private sector employees and students, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in the Bronx County Supreme Court of the State of New York, also alleges the plaintiffs were discriminated against with “willful or wanton negligence, or recklessness” and were mocked and ridiculed by their colleagues.
Many of the plaintiffs — formerly with the New York Police Department (NYPD), the New York Fire Department, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and other agencies — worked for the city for more than 20 years but now are unemployed, have lost their homes and their ability to support their families, the lawsuit states.
Attorney James Mermigis, who represents the plaintiffs, told The Defender :
“Anybody that goes into the city does not have to be vaccinated except for NYC public sector workers, including firemen, policemen, teachers.
“I just think it is absurd, especially once Mayor Adams lifted the mandate for private employees, that these people, who were heroes during COVID-19, still have the mandate.”
According to the lawsuit, Adams admitted, “I don’t think anything dealing with COVID is makes sense [sic], and there’s no logical pathway of what one can do[sic].”
The lawsuit also alleges the COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent disease transmission and that it is well-established that the risks of vaccination outweigh the benefits.
It also argues the plaintiffs have immunity from prior infection that should exempt them from any mandate, because “the scientific community has conclusively established that natural immunity provides strong and durable protection.”
According to the lawsuit, the city used, “a discriminatory practice to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with Petitioners in their exercise or enjoyment of their closely held religious beliefs,” by failing to engage in “cooperative dialogue” with them regarding their petitions for religious exemption, which were denied.
The plaintiffs seek $250 million in punitive damages.
“[Punitive damages] punish the city for its behavior towards its employees in the hopes that they will establish policies in the future that will prevent this from happening again,” Mermigis said.
Landmark win for New York healthcare workers may help city workers
Alleging New York City lacked the authority to institute COVID-19 vaccine mandates, city workers cited the landmark ruling earlier this month by the New York Supreme court, which struck down the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
In that case, which Children’s Health Defense (CHD) financed, the court held that the state’s health department lacked the authority to impose the mandate.
In the ruling, Judge Gerard Neri declared the mandate “null, void, and of no effect.”
The court also ruled that the state’s mandate was “arbitrary and capricious” on the basis that COVID-19 vaccines do not stop transmission of the virus, thereby eliminating any rational basis for such a policy.
That lawsuit was filed Oct. 20, 2022, by Medical Professionals for Informed Consent and additional plaintiffs against NYSDOH, New York Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul and Mary T. Bassett, the state’s health commissioner.
Commenting on the Supreme Court ruling in favor of healthcare workers, Mermigis said he believes the decision will help the workers’ case against the city.
“It puts less pressure on the judge reading our lawsuit knowing that another judge in New York also eliminated a healthcare vaccine mandate,” Mermigis said.
Michael Kane, CHD’s national grassroots organizer and founder of Teachers for Choice, said:
“It’s historic what Sujata Gibson and CHD were able to do and it’s part of the cascading falling dominoes. It really feels like it’s just a matter of time.
“They will delay as much as they can, but public opinion has shifted. The courts are no longer afraid. Judges are no longer afraid to rule lawfully, and we are starting to see that.”
Court of public opinion is shifting
More than 1,750 city workers were fired for refusing vaccination, including 36 members of the NYPD and 950 Department of Education employees, The New York Post reported.
Many of them brought — and won — lawsuits against the city. But the city appealed all of the rulings challenging its vaccine mandate for public employees, The Defender reported.
On Sept. 13, 2022, a Manhattan Supreme Court ruled that unvaccinated NYPD officer Alexander Deletto could keep his job. The city appealed that ruling.
In a Sept. 23, 2022, ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank reinstated the jobs of several unvaccinated members of the NYPD’s union, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York. The city also appealed that decision.
On Oct. 5, 2022, Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio ruled New York City must reinstate a Staten Island firefighter. The city appealed that decision as well.
Later in October 2022, Justice Porzio struck down New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for public workers, ruling in favor of 16 unvaccinated city workers who sued following their termination. That decision is currently being appealed.
According to Kane, however, the tides are turning — and that could be significant for the lawsuit filed Thursday.
Kane said:
“We are now seven days into the [CHD] victory and there has been no appeal. This is the first case for New York employees that have been fired that has stood for even seven days …
“The most important thing now is that the court of public opinion is different. I really feel that we are winning the majority in the court of public opinion, and that influences what happens in all of these courts …
“We are definitely rooting for him [Attorney Mermigis] and hoping he is very successful with the case.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Incentivizing Censorship: a Snitch in Every Skull
Traveling the nine circles of thought-police hell with TJ Coles, the cancelled University of Plymouth academic.
Helen of desTroy | January 22, 2023
An informational iron curtain is coming down across the West, and its architects are determined to make examples out of those who refuse to pick a side. Our Democracy™ has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for pollution of the information ecosystem, and the Thought Police are standing by to halt rogue infodemics in their tracks, lest the people lose trust in their institutions. Dr. Tim Coles, a freelance writer and postdoctoral researcher until recently at the University of Plymouth didn’t realize he was in their crosshairs until he found himself locked out of his university email account in October. Tech support was no help; department staff refused to talk to him, closing ranks and sending him a threatening email demanding he cease contact. Clearly, he had violated some unwritten law. But what?
The chain of emails that had culminated in his removal only raised further questions about why an apparent stranger whom Plymouth has refused to name – a university employee, he suspects – had complained about his writing for Australian magazine Nexus to his old PhD examiner. In a Kafkaesque turn, the complaint lacked a single concrete accusation of wrongdoing that Coles could defend himself against, instead equivocating around familiar “conspiracy theorist” tropes.
At any rate, no one had thought to consult Coles, perhaps believing him to be a disgruntled ex-student trading on his old university email rather than a researcher whose work at the university was funded by an outside trust and had nothing to do with his political writing. Rather than pause for clarification, his PhD examiner appeared to jump in with both feet, urging tech staff to help get Coles “off [the university’s] books.”
While a prolific writer on many controversial topics – US funding and training of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the West’s neocolonial plunder of Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism, and Big Pharma’s giant power-grab under cover of Covid-19 unholy alliance of Big Pharma and Big Tech amid the coronavirus outbreak are just a few – Coles believes he ran afoul of the university censors with a series of articles about intelligence agencies blackmailing people with child sexual abuse that ran in Nexus not long before the cancellation effort began. That particular subject has a tendency to get journalists killed, and Coles wonders if his ejection from Plymouth might be a warning shot from groups displeased with his inquiries. He acknowledges, however, that the timing may be a coincidence – Hope Not Hate and other intelligence-controlled censorship advocates were apparently trying to have Nexus banned in the UK around the same time for its publication of unorthodox views on Covid-19.
While he believes the evidence in the email chain is enough to prove wrongdoing by the university, Coles couldn’t even file a complaint through the normal channels, as his inquisitors had roped the complaints department into their conspiracy by including them in the email chain. He has considered releasing the messages publicly as a last resort, but first plans to employ an outside arbitrator and give the System one last chance – more than he was given, at any rate.
Dr. Coles is far from the first to be booted from a British university campus for thoughtcrime. He sees parallels between his case and that of David Miller, the University of Bristol sociology professor who was subjected to a ferocious academic inquisition and ultimately drummed out of his post in late 2021 after the Board of Deputies of British Jews deliberately misinterpreted comments he had made about Israel weaponizing Jewish students abroad. The university’s Union of Jewish Students had been attacking him for years before seizing upon the supposedly discriminatory comment, which they only heard because they had sent in an activist ’spy’ to monitor one of his classes – ironically validating the professor’s claims better than his own arguments could have.
Like Coles, Miller was never directly confronted by his accuser, who opted for mealy-mouthed pseudo-accusations (“conspiracy theorist,” “inciting hatred”) over potentially-disprovable crimes. Like Plymouth, Bristol took the side of the accuser against its employee almost reflexively. Former Labour MP Chris Williamson, himself a victim of the Israeli lobby’s devastating smear machine, joined the Support David Miller campaign in warning that the university’s failure to stand up for the professor would only encourage “bad faith actors” to pursue further censorship.
Shortly before the lobby finally convinced Miller’s university to mount an investigation into his supposed bigotry, he observed that such pressure tactics were imported from the Israel lobby in the US and pointed out that if any other foreign lobby attempted to wage such total war on its critics, they would be “laughed out of the room.” But Coles’ experience suggests other groups have taken lessons from the Israelis – and that Williamson’s warning was prescient.
Academic “cancel culture” is a well-known scourge of American campuses, where careless tweeting costs lives and professors can be axed for using the wrong pronouns. But while most discussion of the phenomenon centers on the targeting of conservative professors, it has targeted left-wing heterodoxy with equal fury, as tenured New York University media studies professor Mark Crispin Miller discovered when a student demanded his firing via Twitter after taking offense to a discussion questioning the utility of masks in his 2020 class on Propaganda.
Like Coles and his fellow Miller across the pond, Miller was attacked by university colleagues with vague allegations of “attacks on students and others in our community,” “aggressions and microaggressions,” and “explicit hate speech” and an investigation was launched behind his back even in the absence of any specific forbidden act. Administrators went one step further and contacted all his students to remind them of the CDC’s mask guidance, lest their fragile minds have been corrupted by the conspiracy theorist in the classroom. They couldn’t fire him – he was tenured, after all – but they did their best to make his life so miserable that he would leave, forbidding him from teaching his beloved Propaganda class, and he has been on sabbatical since.
Even Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, was recently denied a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights, part of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, on the basis of wrongthink – what its dean described as his “anti-Israel bias.” Roth has toed the line on foreign policy groupthink elsewhere, dutifully demonizing Putin, Assad, Trump, and so on as the needs of Empire demanded. But his refusal to ignore Israel’s increasingly bold apartheid policies got him the David Miller treatment despite years of faithful service. If Roth isn’t safe, many academics have begun to wonder, what the hell are they going to do to me?!
While Dr. Coles questions if universities were ever really the freethinkers’ utopia so many academic misfits yearn for, there is no denying groupthink has tightened its hold in recent years. While an academic might once have been left alone to research controversial subjects on his own time so long as he didn’t embarrass his employer, this laissez-faire approach has been replaced by an administrative panopticon that is both hyper-responsive and reflexively condemnatory – a “cottage industry of shutting people down.” Censorship has been outsourced from the state and its corporate minions to “academics and think tanks who are given a well-funded government hammer so they see everything as a nail of disinformation,” Coles explains. Not simply salaried, they are financially incentivized to bag-and-tag as many pieces of “disinformation” as they can, essentially bounty hunters for inconvenient truths, enabling a much tighter, more granular control of information than was ever possible under a traditional totalitarian model.
These programs and campaigns – with names like Integrity Initiative, Center for Countering Digital Hate, Trusted News Initiative – initially appear to be independent nonprofits that just happen to share a common devotion to fighting fake news. However, their cooperation is more than superficial, with many of the same entities ultimately directing their actions as they work together to artificially muscle the discourse in the desired direction, choking off competing narratives while maintaining plausible deniability regarding their connections to the state.
In this model of soft totalitarianism, the dissident is not so much ordered to cease publishing objectionable ideas, or even threatened with execution or creative torture. He is merely subjected to mounting insults, ‘nudged’ in certain directions, and gradually stripped of resources, especially any public platform he may have had in accordance with his refusal to follow the rules. Amid this complex ballet of carrot and stick, he is constantly reminded that these are his decisions, making him (in his own mind, at least) a willing participant in his own spiritual suffocation.
Fact-checkers, once mere newsroom employees tasked with verifying the details of major stories, have been artificially elevated into a caste of gatekeepers, deemed impartial arbiters of truth even as their donor lists burst with conflicts of interest from Pierre Omidyar to Bill Gates to George Soros. This veneer of independence allows them much greater latitude than any equivalent government body, as the ignominious collapse of the US’ Disinformation Governance Board last year proved. This official Ministry of Truth, which would have operated out of the Department of Homeland Security, was a bridge too far even for the American media establishment, which had long since embraced its unofficial equivalent censoring tweets and Facebook posts to keep the world safe for democracy.
All it took to get English-speaking countries to accept the need for these newly-minted (the International Fact Checking Network was only launched in 2015) cognitive babysitters was for a few pathological liars to blame Trump’s 2016 electoral victory and Brexit on Russian disinformation. Never mind that neither hypothesis was ever substantiated, or that both have since been thoroughly discredited – unfiltered access to information has joined the lengthy list of threats to social harmony, and the fact-checkers, having tasted power, are unlikely to return to the newsroom. Given that a free press is integral to a functioning democracy, it goes without saying that any regime looking to dismantle the latter would want to get the former out of the way.
No sooner had Dr. Coles been chased out of his university for his writing in one Australian alt-media magazine then he was engulfed in a censorship firestorm over another. An article appeared earlier this month in New Zealand news outlet Stuff excoriating bookstore chain Whitcoulls for carrying the latest edition of New Dawn, a publication which proudly bills itself as a “forum for alternative, non-mainstream ideas that question consensus reality.” Stuff’s coverage berated the bookstore for exposing unsuspecting customers to the jungle of “conspiracy theories” barely restrained within its pages (full disclosure: I have also contributed writing to New Dawn), focusing its rage on Coles’ “The curious case of Brenton Tarrant,” about the Christchurch mosque shooter.
When Whitcoulls did not immediately capitulate, “disinformation expert” Kate Hannah was called in to warn Kiwis who picked up the magazine that they were enabling “dark agendas” seeking to “destabilize liberal democracy.” Reading Coles’ article wasn’t just engaging in wrongthink, but actually committing a crime, she explained, because the article included information on how to access the illegal-in-New-Zealand helmet-cam video Tarrant recorded while shooting his way through the mosque. Just reading about where to find the video might run afoul of hate speech laws, she mused in a radio interview.
Of course, the article includes no such instructions, nor does it – as Hannah claimed – claim Tarrant didn’t shoot anyone. Coles is baffled by the disinfo expert’s disinfo, but suspects the reason they didn’t include his name (standard practice in establishment hit-pieces) in the pressure campaign is that he could justifiably sue for libel. But the mere threat of legal repercussions was sufficient to keep 99.9% of Kiwis away from the forbidden magazine, and perhaps sensing no sales in its future, Whitcoulls finally pulled the issue from its shelves.
New Zealand’s size and isolation make it a perfect experimental laboratory, and the other Four Eyes haven’t hesitated to use it as such. Nor have the Israelis, whose operation was exposed during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The 2019 shooting that launched the current touchless torture regime was preceded as such events often are by a series of odd ‘coincidences’ and foreshadowings. Just a few months before the massacre, a group of American survivors of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting visited the city to discuss “living through a tragedy” with their Kiwi counterparts; two Parkland survivors and a Sandy Hook survivor allegedly committed suicide in the months following the mosque killings. A police drill just happened to be taking place near the fleeing gunman, allowing participants to “heroically” capture him in what media dutifully described as a “hell of a coincidence.”
The speedy gun-grab that followed the tragedy left citizens helpless in the claws of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and the subsequent clampdown on the internet was unprecedented in any other western “democracy,” with prison sentences meted out for merely sharing a link. Ostensibly to prevent anyone from reading Tarrant’s manifesto or watching the curiously videogame-like footage of the killings, the rules had the effect of banning access to entire video archives, international forums, and other information resources that might have helped the country’s residents make sense of what had just been done to them, and they were designed to be copied by the other four Eyes – or any other country that should want them.
While all five Eyes adopted unprecedented controls on social media during Covid-19, New Zealand went much further than its peers in controlling the actual publication of news. In March 2020, facing rumors that lockdown was imminent, Ardern warned upstanding citizens to avoid all unauthorized sources of information, urging them to stick with the government’s official site as “your single source of truth.” The message didn’t age well – New Zealand was locked down within the week – but her point had gotten across loud and clear. Arrested while protesting Auckland’s return to lockdown in 2021 over just three “cases,” popular radio host and pandemic dissident Vinny Eastwood was only released on the conditions that he remain under house arrest 24/7 and stay off the internet – draconian requirements for a man who made his living live-streaming. He was later permitted back online, but only on the condition that he not advocate against Covid-19 restrictions – a deliberately subjective line in the sand meant to encourage self-censorship above all.
While the media establishment overflowed with praise for Ardern over her iron-fisted suppression of the population – er, pandemic – no one has thought to ask why, if the West questions all Covid-19 stats coming out of China due to government control of all information sources, they believed the numbers coming out of New Zealand. Even news sites like Stuff, which describes itself as “fiercely independent,” are actually public-private partnerships – in this case funded by the New Zealand government and the Google News Initiative, powered by the bonanza of helicopter money that was dumped on the news media in 2020 to fight the “infodemic” of Covid-19 “disinformation.” That the campaign against New Dawn was no organic outrage was clear – Coles’ article is the last in the issue, and the likelihood of an indignant civilian pawing through 70 pages of conspiracy contraband just to find something they can claim is illegal approaches zero. Its favorable result means it will likely become the blueprint for future book-burning campaigns.
But why go after a couple of obscure Australian conspiracy magazines? Especially in New Zealand, but increasingly in the US and Europe, Big Tech no longer allows the average user to stumble upon the kind of content published by New Dawn or Nexus. Even non-Google search results from once-reliable alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Brave have been scrubbed clean of all deviations from the establishment line on topics like Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine, let alone the Christchurch shooting, and as Coles remarked, the censorship is even creeping through time into the Wayback Machine, the internet researcher’s go-to that once contained archives of much of the internet dating back decades – but now increasingly turns up error pages or sloppily retconned fact-checks. However, Kiwis browsing at Whitcoulls had at their fingertips a powderkeg of new information, rendered all the more volatile by three years spent in informational quarantine. Just as a person locked down for months will see her immune system suffer for lack of outside stimulation, any novel pathogens hitting her much harder when she finally goes outside, the Good Citizen who imbibed only Ardern-approved data for three years will likely be unable to muster even the slightest argument against whatever outrageous claims she finds in New Dawn and perhaps become lost to the weak grasp of establishment propaganda forever.
There’s an easy solution to this problem, should New Zealand want to solve it. Teach children to think critically, instead of the dumbed-down “media literacy” programs being promoted by every self-proclaimed “disinfo expert” this side of PropOrNot. Thought-stopping “information hygiene” techniques (Google it! Look it up on Wikipedia!) and reflexive appeals to authority (only a scientist can interpret that study for you!) do not help an individual resist persuasion. But a population armed with the ability to recognize an official lie and dismantle it would not allow themselves to be locked down over a few cases of a disease they were almost 100% certain to survive anyway – so of course New Dawn couldn’t be permitted to question Christchurch. It is the (shaky) foundation on which Ardern’s hastily-constructed police state was built. As rumors fly about her surprise resignation on Thursday and the media establishment rends its garments over how “unfairly” this “icon of many” was treated by “far-right extremists,” it seems clear her departure will be weaponized to further crack down on the increasingly nebulous specter of “hate speech.”
Americans who believe the New Dawn affair could only have happened in an unarmed, isolated nation like New Zealand should pay attention to what their Congress is up to. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) earlier this month introduced a bill that would criminalize the publication of “antagonism based on ‘replacement theory’” and “hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group” on social media if it can be said that the perpetrator of a “white supremacy inspired hate crime” had encountered the material before committing the crime – or that if they had encountered the material, it could conceivably have motivated them to take such actions.
Without bothering to define such critical terms as “hate speech” or even “replacement theory,” often trotted out for effect when the speaker needs to strike an emotional chord, the bill leapfrogs pre-crime to a total reversal of cause and effect. A content creator can be charged with conspiracy to commit a white supremacy motivated hate crime so long as the actual criminal can be shown to have engaged with their content before committing the crime. In fact, they don’t even need to engage with it – so long as the content could theoretically motivate a “person predisposed to engaging in a white supremacy inspired hate crime” to, well, you know. It’s completely subjective, based on what a “reasonable person” would do when no “reasonable person” would be caught dead in the same room as this bill. This means if someone reads the nursery rhyme “Baa baa black sheep” – declared ‘problematic’ nearly a decade ago for its racial overtones – then picks up an AR-15 and shoots a black family at church, the nursery rhyme writers could be charged with conspiracy to commit a white supremacy-motivated hate crime. Jackson Lee herself cited the example of “someone making a post online that catches the attention of someone who then drives to North Texas and kills 20 Mexican Americans” to make clear precisely how unhinged she is.
It’s doubtful that such a case would make it to court, or lead to a conviction if it did, but public opinion – a product of think tank fellows rather than crowds – can turn on a dime. What sorority girl getting sloshed on margaritas in an oversized Cinco de Mayo sombrero in 2012 would have thought she’d be sentenced to remedial readings of “White Fragility” in 2022? The aim is not to create more work for the official censors but to spook the target into silence with fear of what could happen. Leaving the definition of “white supremacy” open-ended allows an ever-larger spectrum of opinion to be cordoned off as toxic, banned from university campuses and social media, and finally memory-holed as unthinkable. At the same time, actual racists like Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion are invited with open arms to travel the US speaking on university campuses, swastika tattoos and all. While the Anti-Defamation League is quick to tar and feather any academic who points out Israeli war crimes, the censorship-loving Jewish organization has issued what amounts to an official indulgence for Ukraine’s biggest Third Reich fanboys.
I know what would look great with that swastika – another swastika!
Given the FBI’s penchant for crafting terrorism plots out of whole cloth, it would be a simple matter to take out all online wrongthinkers in one fell swoop under the white supremacy conspiracy law – just set up the usual militia honeypot for disaffected white boys, hand them the gear and point them at the minority in question, and make sure a manifesto is found nearby conspicuously listing the websites of every influential dissident in America. While last year’s Missouri v. Biden lawsuit proved – and the Twitter Files confirmed – that social media platforms were being used by a dozen or more government agencies to circumvent First Amendment prohibitions on state censorship, this new arrangement would eliminate even the need for that end-run, requiring only the fig leaf of Unacceptable White Supremacist Beliefs™ to justify the most egregious constitutional abuses.
“Replacement theory” – the idea that white Americans and/or Europeans are being deliberately supplanted in “their” nations by swarthy foreign hordes to suit nefarious ruling class purposes – first entered the mainstream discourse when Tarrant, who titled his manifesto “The Great Replacement,” supposedly set out to kill as many Muslims as possible because they were out-breeding Europeans. Tarrant’s manifesto would have gotten quite a few people in trouble as white-supremacy conspirators, many of them dead – it includes poems from Dylan Thomas and Rudyard Kipling, memes, Wikipedia articles, and an infamous passage explicitly citing black conservative commentator Candace Owens as his ideological inspiration. Tarrant and copycats like Payton Gendron (the Buffalo supermarket shooter and friend of the FBI whose manifesto borrowed liberally from Tarrant and others) have helped transform the epithet “conspiracy theory” from CIA-sponsored smear to precursor of violent extremism, though they couldn’t have done it without UNESCO, the World Jewish Congress, and the Council of Europe, who recently joined forces to remind humanity that “conspiracy theories cause real harm to people, to their health, and also to their physical safety.”
Europe has taken the legal lead in equating conspiracy theory to terrorism, banning author David Icke from the entire Schengen Area last year because his scheduled speech at a peace rally in the Netherlands posed a potential “threat to public order.” Rather than stand up to the police state, the media eagerly flew to its side, quoting “experts” who sagely opined that the “danger” posed by Icke’s “conspiracy ideology” was both clear and present and could inflict “lasting harm” upon the country. This is in keeping with the refrain the WHO has kept up all alongside Covid-19 – that a deadly “infodemic” is spreading through sharing unapproved information about the virus, and that good citizens refrain from posting conspiracy theories online because words are equivalent to violence. This is a central part of children’s “media literacy” classes, aimed at building the perfect content filter directly into the child – because Big Brother can’t be everywhere. The idea is to graduate a generation for whom privacy is alien, dissent is criminal, obedience is a competitive sport, and turning in your parents for wrongthink is second-nature, all justified by the vague nonspecific crisis that has been looming in the background since they were born.
The censorship of New Dawn, the university witch-hunts against Dr. Coles and both Millers, the absurd white supremacy conspiracy bill, are all symptoms of the same totalitarian virus gradually sucking the will to resist out of humanity. Just as viruses need host cells to multiply, so does this one require an army of facilitators – “fake news” bounty hunters, “disinformation experts,” and the like – to smooth out humanity’s rough edges into blissful obedience. A pandemic – even an artificially-inflated synthetic one like Covid-19 – has to end, but an infodemic is forever, and this one has proven 100% fatal to human rights.
Meta gave the CDC de facto power to police Covid “misinfo”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 20, 2023
The mask is slipping (pun fully intended), all over the place – regarding the Big Tech/Big Government collusion. Now it’s time to pay close attention to the role played by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
We’ve already been awed – just by the magnitude of the whole thing – if not exactly “shocked” by the Twitter Files.
After all, while it was happening, a whole lot of observers surmised that something of the sort had to be behind the unprecedented and, seemingly inexplicable levels of censorship on the platform.
But – what in the world was happening at Facebook, around the same time? After all, Facebook is an almost orders of magnitude bigger and more influential social network than Twitter.
For the time being, we don’t have the same “direct line” to internal documents as is the case with Twitter, which was made possible by the dedication to transparency by the new owner himself.
However, what could be dubbed as the “Facebook Files” are based on credible sources, too – Reason is coming out with a story based on confidential emails that emerged thanks to a court case – the state of Missouri suing the Biden administration.
The emails show that Facebook (and by extension Instagram) representatives and the CDC not only kept in touch at all times, but that the tech giant also “routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.”
In turn, the CDC kept a watchful eye on what speech was allowed on Facebook, what policies toward censorship of “inconvenient” Covid topics applied, and this government agency had no problem instructing the social network behemoth how to behave in these instances.
Robbie Soave, a senior editor for Reason, revealed some examples of what was happening in a series of tweets citing the emails and providing screenshots. One shows that in May 2021, CDC started to get involved in “vetting” content on Facebook that concerns Covid vaccines. And CDC had the last word on what was allowed to remain online as “accurate.”
Other emails show that Facebook (Meta) made sure the CDC was given de facto power to police Covid “misinformation,” while at the same time flagging content for the CDC, consulting with it on claims that could “contribute to vaccine refusals.”
At the same time, Reason is acknowledging that this was by no means the only federal agency to engage in similar activities, all aimed at pressuring some of the world’s biggest social platforms to allow only a certain narrative, and discredit any skepticism, even that coming from medical professionals and scientists.
Even President Biden made sure to “contribute” to this effort, when he in June 2021 bizarrely accused Facebook of “killing people.”
This was really meant to say that the giant had better not dare allow any Covid content the White House failed to “vet” behind the scenes – one way or another.
And the giant obliged, sometimes probably even exceeding the level of compliance expected from the administration. An internal email now reveals that Facebook went as far as to “snitch” on its own users making fun of Anthony Fauci, apparently in a bid to defend his reputation – again, at the expense of free speech.
“One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was ‘very helpful’,” Soave, the magazine’s senior editor and host on The Hill TV channel, tweeted.
The upcoming, March issue of Reason delves into how the CDC turned into the speech police when it came to pressuring social media to block content that the government agency decided was Covid “misinformation.”
And this was online speech that this, and other government agencies, have no constitutional way of directly suppressing without breaking the law.
“There is a word for government officials using the threat of punishment to extort desired behaviors from private actors. That word is: jawboning,” Soave remarked in one of the tweets.
And one can imagine – and the emails now show – just how gun-shy and ready to please those in power Facebook had become, after years of public vilification, and who knows what kind of pressure behind the scenes in the wake of the 2016 US election.
Saudi Crown Prince defies the US policy against Syria
By Steven Sahiounie | Free West Media | January 22, 2023
In November 2022, Saudi Arabia formally changed its stance on Syria. Saudi Arabia is the political powerhouse of the Middle East, and often shares positions on foreign policy and international issues with the UAE, which has previously re-opened their embassy in Damascus.
“The kingdom is keen to maintain Syria’s security and stability and supports all efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the November Arab League summit in Algeria.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 following the outbreak of conflict instigated by the US, and portrayed in western media as a popular uprising of pro-democracy protesters.
Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “The developments in Syria still require a pioneering Arab effort. It is necessary to show flexibility from all parties so that the economic collapse and political blockage can be dispelled. Syria must engage in its natural Arab environment.”
The next Arab League summit will be held in Saudi Arabia, and there is a possibility of Syria once again taking its seat at the round table.
On January 16, the Syrian Foreign Ministry agreed to resume imports from Saudi Arabia after over a decade of strained relations, and Syria planned to import 10,000 tons of white sugar. This development signals a new beginning between the two countries.
Saudi and the Syrian tribes
The Arab tribes in the north east of Syria have traditionally had strong ties with Saudi Arabia, and have received support from the kingdom. The tribes have opposed the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Arab villages which the US-led YPG militia has conducted for years. Even though Saudi Arabia has been viewed as a US ally in the past, this has changed since the US military has supported the Marxist YPG who have oppressed Syrians who are not Kurdish.
The US occupied oil wells in north east Syria may come under attack by Arab tribes who are demanding their homes, farms and businesses back from the US-supported YPG. Some analysts foresee the US troops pulling out of Syria after the Kurds find a political solution with Damascus.
Turkey and Syria repair relationship
Turkey and Syria have begun steps to repair their relationship, which ended after Turkey supported the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change, and hosted CIA operations funneling weapons and terrorists into Syria, under the Obama administration.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently demanded the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria to begin to repair the relationship.
Russia is brokering the reconciliation between Erdogan and Assad, which began with the Moscow hosted meeting of the three defense ministers, and a meeting between the three foreign ministers is upcoming.
The developments between Turkey and Syria are being watched by Iran. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said his country was “happy with the dialogue taking place between Syria and Turkey.” Amirabdollahian will travel to Damascus on Saturday for talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Mekdad.
Iran is looking to establish a new role in the recovery process in Syria. President Ebrahim Raisi will visit both Turkey and Syria soon, his first visit to Turkey since taking office two years ago. While analysts see Saudi Arabia and Iran as antagonists, some feel the kingdom will ultimately realize they have to work with Iran in Syria and Lebanon. Iran is part of the region and can’t be excluded from the geo-political sphere.
Saudi Arabian reforms
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said on April 27, 2021 that the country was undergoing a sweeping reform which would restructure the role of religion in Saudi politics and society. The process began a few years before he became crown prince, but under his leadership it has accelerated. Islamic institutions in the Kingdom have seen changes in procedure, personnel, and jurisdiction. All of these reforms are in line with the future vision of the country.
Some analysts feel the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s eventually gave rise to support for domestic religious institutions, and eventually led to funding of religious activities abroad, while religious leaders at home wielded power over public policy.
Vision 2030
Saudi King Salman, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and his son, MBS have a plan for the country which is known as Vision 2030. MBS is also Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs.
The days of unlimited oil and markets are in the decline. Education, training, and employment opportunities are the stepping stones to building a thriving country and MBS is determined to plan for a long future of growth and innovation.
MBS
The Crown Prince is young and has new ideas. He is instituting sweeping reforms to the society which have included more rights and freedoms for women. He has championed projects to place Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination, year round golf and soccer venue, and encouraged cultural arts such as musical productions. MBS is breaking the mold: no longer will Saudi Arabia be a breeding ground for Radical Islam.
Extremist preachers
Saudi Arabia had hosted many extremist preachers. Some were featured on satellite TV channels located in Saudi Arabia, and others were local preachers, authors, or scholars. Some had traveled abroad preaching in pulpits and exporting their hatred and sectarian bigotry.
One of the most famous preachers was Muhammed Al-Arifi, who has had an electronic surveillance device attached to him by Saudi intelligence agents, after they seized all of his social media accounts. His last tweet is said to be on May 6, 2019, when he had 20 million followers, and 24 million likes on Facebook, which ranked him as tenth in the Arab world and in the Middle East. The kingdom is shutting down clerics who are extreme.
In 2014, Great Britain banned Arifi from entering the UK following reports that was involved in radicalizing three young British citizens who went to Syria as terrorists.
A YouTube video in 2013 showed Arifi preaching in Egypt and prophesying the coming of the Islamic State. Egyptian TV reported Arifi meeting with the former Muslim Brotherhood prime minister Hisham Qandil in his office.
Arifi is best remembered for his statement on the media Al Jazeera in which he called for jihad in Syria and supported Al Qaeda.
Adnan al-Arour is another extremist preacher who had appeared regularly on two Saudi-owned Salafist satellite channels. Arour was originally from Syria before settling in Saudi Arabia, and in the early days of the Syrian conflict he would stand up on camera, shake his finger, and call for his followers to ‘grind the flesh’ of an Islamic minority sect in Syria and ‘feed it to the dogs’.
These extremist preachers made it clear that the battles being waged in Syria had nothing to do with freedom or democracy, which the western media was pushing as the goal. The truth was the conflict in Syria was a US-NATO attack for regime change and utilized terrorists following Radical Islam, who fought a sectarian war with the goal of establishing an Islamic State in Syria.
The previous Crown Prince
Muhammad bin Nayef Al Saud (MBN) served as the crown prince and first deputy prime minister of Saudi Arabia from 2015 to 2017. On June 21, 2017 King Salman appointed his own son, MBS, as crown prince and relieved MBN of all positions.
MBN met with British Prime Minister David Cameron in January 2013. He then met with President Obama in Washington, on 14 January 2013. The discussion focused on the US-NATO attack on Syria and its support from Saudi Arabia.
In February 2014, MBN replaced Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, and was placed in charge of Saudi intelligence in Syria. Bandar had been in charge of supporting the US attack on Syria. Bandar had been trying to convince the US in 2012 that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons. However, research has shown that the terrorists used chemical weapons to push Obama into a military invasion, based on his speech of ‘The Red Line’.
In March 2016, MBN was awarded Légion d’honneur by French President François Hollande, another partner in the US-NATO attack on Syria.
On February 10, 2017, the CIA granted its highest Medal to MBN and was handed to him by CIA director Mike Pompeo during a reception ceremony in Riyadh. MBN and Pompeo discussed Syria with Turkish officials, and said Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the US was “historic and strategic”. Just months later in June MBS would depose MBN and strip him of powers, in a move considered to be “upending decades of royal custom and profoundly reordering the kingdom’s inner power structure”.
US diplomats argued that MBN was “the most pro-American minister in the Saudi Cabinet”. That is what brought MBN down. The days of blindly following the US directives are over in Saudi Arabia. MBS has refused to bow down to Biden when he demanded an increase in oil production. The Vision 2030 that MBS developed does not include financing failed wars in the Middle East for the benefit of the Oval Office. MBS has a strained relationship with Biden, and he wears it as a badge of honor.
Saudi role in the Syrian war
Saudi Arabia played a huge role in the large-scale supply of weapons and ammunition to various terrorist groups in Syria during the Syrian conflict. Weapons purchased in Croatia were funneled through Jordan to the border town of Deraa, the epi-center of the Syrian conflict.
At the height of Saudi involvement in Syria, the kingdom had their own militia in Syria under the command of Zahran Alloush. The Jaysh al-Islam are remembered for parading women in cages through the Damascus countryside prior to massacring them.
In summer 2017, US President Donald Trump shut down the CIA operation ‘Timber Sycamore’ which had been arming the terrorists fighting in Syria. About the same time, Saudi Arabia cut off support to the Syrian opposition, which was the political arm of the terrorists.
Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, expressed his view at the time that “Saudi Arabia is involved in the ISIS-led Sunni rebellion” in Syria.
Syria has been destroyed by the US and their allies who supported the attack beginning in 2011. Now, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are looking to find a solution which will help the Syrian people to rebuild their lives. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have turned away from past policies which found them supporting the conflict in Syria at the behest of the US. There is a new Middle East emerging which makes its own policies and is not subservient US interests.
FM: Iran to Possibly Quit NPT if Europe Not Stop Hostile Stances
Al-Manar | January 22, 2023
If the Europeans do not change their anti-Iran positions, Iran will possibly withdraw from the NPT as a countermeasure, the Iranian Foreign Minister said on Sunday.
Reacting to a recent move by the European Union to designate the IRGC as a “terrorist” entity, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters on Sunday, “Parliament’s Sunday measure that binds the government to designate the armies of the European countries as terrorist is a countermeasure.”
Referring to his conversations with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, Amir-Abdollahian said that the resolution is not binding and it’s just an expression of the feelings of a part of the European Parliament representatives.
Answering a question about whether withdrawal from the NPT would be one of Iran’s countermeasures, Amir-Abdollahian said, “A small number of European political leaders, including the German Foreign Minister, have no experience in the field of diplomacy.”
Therefore, if they do not move in the direction of rationality and do not correct their positions, any measure is possible, he noted.
Corruption thriller: Zelensky’s deputy minister arrested
Free West Media | January 22, 2023
Just 14 days after the President of the Ukrainian National Bank (who is said to have embezzled 5,42 million euros) applied for asylum in Austria, Deputy Minister Wassyl Losynsky was arrested.
Those who are familiar with the EU Court of Auditors’ report on Ukraine from autumn 2021 will not be particularly surprised by the current events in Kiev: Deputy Minister Wassyl Losynsky has been arrested for accepting a six-figure bribe.
“The National Anti-Corruption Bureau searched the home of Deputy Minister for Municipal, Territory and Infrastructure Development Vasyl Losynsky and arrested him,” Ukrayinska Pravda reported.
The ministry has already responded to the report and fired the top official. Losynsky is accused of having received a bribe of 400 000 euros when buying electricity generators. The investigations have been ongoing since September, the government employee apparently wanted to enrich himself by the fact that his compatriots were facing an electricity crisis.
Warrant issued for the Ukrainian bank boss
The latest chapter in the corruption thriller was exposed just 14 days after Austrian daily the eXXpress reported on the President of the Ukrainian National Bank who had fled to Austria. Kyrylo Shevchenko (50) is currently hiding in Vienna because the government in Kiev has accused him of having embezzled 5,42 million euros. In the Ukraine, an arrest warrant has been issued for the bank manager.
As reported, Shevchenko has now applied for asylum in Austria.
The Ukrainian bank boss, who managed the national bank of the warring country until October 4, has excellent international connections: Shevchenko was invited by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on April 21 of the previous year to Washington, right after the start of the Russian operation.
He is not the only Ukrainian fleeing justice: President Zelensky suspended the Constitutional Court’s chairperson Oleksandr Tupytsky in 2020 in an effort to overturn the court’s October decision on corruption.
In December 2020, the Ukrainian parliament reauthorised the government’s decision, ignoring the court. Tupytsky, the former President of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court and declared opponent of the Ukrainian leader, currently also lives undisturbed in Vienna.
Allegations against the Ukrainian Minister of Defense
According to official information, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov is suspected of overpriced food purchases for the army, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported. Resnikov has been summoned to appear before parliament, Vice-Chair of the Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Reconnaissance Marjana Besugla told national broadcaster Suspilne Media on Saturday.
In addition, the Court of Auditors announced a special audit in the Ministry of Defense.
Earlier, media reports in Kiev caused a stir that the Defense Ministry was buying food to feed its soldiers at prices up to three times higher than retail prices in stores. The contract for 13 billion hryvnia – 300 million euros – is not about feeding the soldiers at the front, but enriching kleptocrats in the rear.
Ukraine was granted EU candidate status in June, four months after the war began. The requirements for accession include the rule of law and progress in the fight against corruption, where Ukraine, despite numerous efforts in recent years, still ranks among the lowest in the world.
Press spokesman also fired
Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych was forced to resign after stating that the recent strike on an apartment building in Dnepropetrovsk was caused by a Ukrainian SAM missile, not a targeted Russian attack. He quickly became another casualty of Kiev’s information war.
On the evening of January 14, Arestovich said the partial destruction of a residential building in the city was the result of a projectile shot down by Ukrainian air defenses which fell on it. Following this, he was sharply criticized by government supporters and put on the infamous Ukrainian Myrotvorets kill list.
On January 16, Ukrainian legislator Alexey Goncharenko reported that a petition was launched to fire him.
Notably, Arestovych has slammed the political war the Ukrainian leader has waged on Ukraine’s Russian speaking population and Orthodox Church: “Zelensky has declared war on Christianity. This is when [the Ukrainian secret service, the SBU] entered…the Ukrainian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate…”
The Davos establishment reveals whom it truly fears
By Rachel Marsden | RT | January 22, 2023
The World Economic Forum at Davos used to be THE place to see and be seen, but the idea of the richest and most influential people in the world hobnobbing around a common agenda for the world has lost its luster as the policies peddled by its attendees spark increased skepticism among average citizens.
Forum founder Klaus Schwab, the de facto frontman of the organization, has cranked out one distasteful hit after another in recent years. He has spoken of how the organization “penetrates the cabinets” of governments in its recruitment efforts. He coined the term “The Great Reset,” about which he published a book just a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020, advocating that the pandemic be used as inspiration to “reimagine our world” at a time when much of the globe was locked down on orders of their governments – many members of which were Davos regulars. There was little appetite to turn lockdowns into a permanent lifestyle change, but here was Klaus promoting the benefits of burying the old life – all under the pretext of an event that the WEF had already wargamed in October 2019 in New York, just ahead of the crisis, in an exercise called “Event 201.” “The exercise will bring together business, government, security and public health leaders to address a hypothetical global pandemic scenario,” the WEF announced at the time. It’s all just a bit too creepy.
It’s the constant effort of top-down global coordination around murky financial interests laundered through the Davos agenda that irks the common person. The fact that just a single leader of a G7 country attended this year’s event speaks volumes about how poorly it’s now viewed. The premier of the western Canadian province of Alberta, Danielle Smith, said of the WEF after her cabinet’s swearing-in ceremony last October: “I find it distasteful when billionaires brag about how much control they have over political leaders. That is offensive… the people who should be directing government are the people who vote for them. Quite frankly, until that organization stops bragging about how much control they have over political leaders, I have no interest in being involved with them.”
Those invited to preach at the altar during the high mass of globalism this year seemed to know exactly what kind of sermon the crowd wanted to hear. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was apparently the only G7 leader who thought it would be a good look to be seen hanging out with the unelected masters of the planet while Westerners – and Europeans in particular – grapple with the high cost of their governments’ policies in their daily lives. Scholz doubled down on the same green dreams that put Germany’s economy in peril with no viable backup plan once the European Union had effectively cut off Russian energy through sanctions. “Most importantly, our transformation toward a climate-neutral economy, the fundamental task of our century, is currently taking on an entirely new dynamic. Not in spite of but because of the Russian war, and the resulting pressure on us Europeans to change. Whether you are a business leader or a climate activist, a security policy specialist or an investor, it is now crystal clear to each and every one of us that the future belongs solely to renewables. For cost reasons, for environmental reasons, for security reasons, and because in the long run, renewables promise the best returns,” Scholz said in his address. Meanwhile, Germany is firing its coal power plants back up and reconsidering its nuclear power phase-out. How about worrying about how German industry is going to function in the next year when green initiatives, such as hydrogen imports from Portugal and Norway, aren’t set to even get off the ground until at least 2030? Scholz used his time at the podium at Davos to greenwash the economic uncertainties that Germany faces as a result of the EU’s energy sanctions on Russia. In other words, green hopes and dreams took center stage in this pitch to global investors, thus providing a convenient distraction from the more worrisome current realities.
Greenwashing was joined at Davos by the pitching of anti-democratic initiatives via concern trolling. During a panel discussion dedicated to “disrupting distrust” – which really should have been called “How can we get people to better swallow our nonsense?” – Richard Edelman, the CEO of the eponymous global communications firm, blamed the derailments on right-wingers. “My hypothesis on that is that right-wing groups have done a really good job of disenfranchising NGOs. They’ve challenged the funding sources. They’ve associated you with Bill Gates and George Soros. They’ve said that you’re world people, as opposed to what you are, which is local,” Edelman lamented, ignoring the fact that they wouldn’t have needed to fly their private jets to a “local” event. What he’s really attacking are dissidents, many of whom just happen to be populists and right-leaning. And no doubt the fact that they’re digging into the special interests laundered through many NGOs makes the job of PR pros such as Edelman more challenging.
“Edelman is a despicable human being – his job is literally being a professional liar!” Tweeted billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, whose controversial purchase of the social media platform and subsequent reversal of its heavy-handed censorship policies haven’t exactly endeared him to the Davos crowd. Mocking Schwab’s call to “master the future” in the opening keynote, Musk tweeted, “’Master the Future’ doesn’t sound ominous at all … How is WEF/Davos even a thing? Are they trying to be the boss of Earth!?” Musk then took a Twitter poll that found that 86% of 2.4 million respondents answered ‘no’ to the question of whether the WEF should “control the world.”
A WEF spokesman said that Musk hasn’t been invited to the gathering since 2015. Musk confirmed his lack of interest in attending: “My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol.”
Boring, indeed – in the same way that a cult meeting where everyone nods their heads in agreement is a snooze fest. The last time things were even remotely interesting at Davos was when former US President Donald Trump showed up and rejected the Davos mantra of climate change doom. “The message represents a sharp departure from the official playbook at the World Economic Forum, where this year’s theme is ‘Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World’,” wrote CNN in January 2020.
Who asked them, though? These elites represent no one’s interests but their own, which are economic and are for the benefit of their shareholders – hence the forum’s name. If the average citizen is now waking up to the fact that anything coming out of Davos should be scrutinized through that lens, then it can only be a good thing for freedom, democracy, and national sovereignty.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.