West knows Ukraine weapons leaking to black market – Seymour Hersh
RT | April 23, 2023
Western-supplied arms are being sold by Ukrainian commanders to smugglers in Poland, Romania and other states, veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed.
The Pulitzer Prize winner, speaking to Afshin Rattansi on his program ‘Going Underground,’ said the West is aware of this black market trade, as some reports about missing arms shipments have even appeared in the US media.
Hersh claimed that, according to his data, almost immediately after the conflict broke out between Kiev and Moscow last February, “Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine.”
“Often, it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them… to the dark market,” he explained.
The journalist noted that there was concern in the West last year that some of the arms sent to Ukraine, such as Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, could be used to “shoot down an airplane at considerable height.”
As for Western-supplied weapons ending up on the black market, “CBS wrote a story about it that they were forced to retract,” Hersh said.
When asked about why the piece was retracted, the journalist said the media is supporting the stance of the US government that “we’re on the side of Ukraine. We all hate Russia.”
Hersh was likely referring to the documentary “Arming Ukraine,” which CBS aired last August. The promo for the film, which included a claim by the founder of pro-Ukraine NGO Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman, that only 30% of military aid actually reached the frontline, was removed, while the documentary itself and the story accompanying it were redacted.
Russian officials have on many occasions warned about Western-supplied arms being smuggled outside Ukraine, thus deteriorating the security situation elsewhere around the globe.
“NATO military supplies intended for the Kiev regime end up in the hands of terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, Southeast Asia,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in October. At the time, she estimated the black market turnover at $1billion per month.
An investigation by RT last summer also revealed how various weapons supplied to Kiev by the West were being sold on the dark net. The journalists were able to swiftly negotiate to the purchase of a US-made kamikaze drone with smugglers. However, it impossible to confirm whether the sellers actually had the weapons in stock, as the reporters did not complete the purchase.
The full version of Going Underground’s interview with Seymour Hersh will be aired on RT on Monday.
Orbán says the US cannot push Hungary into war – the rest of Europe would be wise to follow his policy
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | APRIL 20, 2023
The relentless criticism by the Biden administration towards the incumbent Hungarian government is entirely disproportionate and unjustified, and does little to separate the current U.S. regime from the malign superpowers it seeks to distance itself from. Hungary’s leader recognizes this and is putting his own country’s interests ahead of those of the United States, a stance that Europe would be wise to follow.
Despite pressure from the U.S., Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said his country cannot be pushed into joining the war on the side of Ukraine.
“The United States has not given up its plan to squeeze everyone, including Hungary, into a war alliance, to go with the crowd,” Orbán told a press conference last week.
“But I have made it clear several times, and Hungarian diplomacy has also expressed this, that the will of the Hungarian people is clear, and our knowledge of history is quite solid, so we will not allow this.
“We will not allow them to squeeze us into a war. We will not send any weapons, and we will not be involved in a conflict that is not our war,” the Hungarian premier added.
Orbán made the remarks amid growing tension with the U.S. Recent disparaging remarks by David Pressman, Biden’s top diplomat in Budapest, have been dismissive of a country which, whilst remaining on many issues a conforming ally to the United States, has had the audacity to form its own view on matters unfolding on its doorstep, and opted not to become entirely subservient to U.S. interests when the two countries have vastly different worldviews and face inherently different geopolitical threats
“We have concerns about the continued eagerness of Hungarian leaders to expand and deepen ties with the Russian Federation, despite Russia’s ongoing brutal aggression against Ukraine and threat to transatlantic security,” Pressman told a news conference in Budapest last week after criticizing the Hungarian government for retaining its stake in Russia’s International Investment Bank (IBB) upon which the U.S. government imposed sanctions last week.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán berated the shortsightedness of the U.S. decision on state radio, explaining that the Russian-controlled financial institution based in Budapest “could have played a serious role in developing Central European economies,” and expressed concern that the United States simply doesn’t understand the geopolitical climate and should stop acting like it does.
US Ambassador Pressman would push Hungary into war
The intention of Joe Biden’s man in Budapest is to drag Hungary into the conflict in Ukraine, writes József K. Horváth for the Magyar Hírlap newspaper
The Hungarian government withdrew its membership of the IBB the day after the sanctions were imposed, with Orbán stating the U.S. action had rendered the bank’s operations impossible.
“It can’t serve its function,” Orbán said. “We decided that under these circumstances, Hungary’s participation in the bank’s further work has become pointless.”
It’s not the first time the Hungarian government has been frustrated by decisions made in far-away Washington without an understanding of the nuanced consequences for the region.
U.S. government officials have regularly criticized the Hungarian administration for not following suit with the U.S. approach to the conflict in Ukraine, criticism which the Hungarian premier considers to be misguided.
“When I hear about nuclear weapons, or that a Western European country is taking depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine, I think of Chernobyl,” Orbán said while referring to Britain’s decision to send depleted uranium tank ammunition to Ukrainian forces.
“An American would never think of this, but we know that if something happens in Ukraine it’s best if people don’t go out into the streets, so we know what happened then.
“Or if in America they hear that someone died on the Ukrainian-Russian front, they obviously sympathize because it’s a loss, but it is not the same feeling as ours, because I immediately think that the person who died could be a Hungarian person from Transcarpathia.
“Everything that happens there becomes a part of our lives that very day.
“The dimension of the Americans is quite different, so I say that we rightly expect the United States to take note of Hungary’s special situation, its proximity to Ukraine, and to understand that we are therefore on the side of peace and want to stay there.”
Given the continued animosity from the U.S. towards the Orbán administration, it could be assumed that Hungary was an active belligerent nation in the conflict, and yet Budapest has complied with every anti-Russian sanction approved by the European Union, despite voicing its opposition to these actions.
“We have never agreed with sanctions, but we do not dispute anyone’s right, including the United States to impose sanctions if they see fit. We acknowledge these sanctions and roll with them,” Orbán said recently.
Hungary has welcomed tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and provided humanitarian aid to Kyiv and the affected areas, and it has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine from day one.
As is its right, Budapest has maintained its neutrality with regard to military intervention and assistance, and has refused to change its stance despite U.S. protestations.
Orbán added that his administration is mature enough to retain the longstanding Hungarian-U.S. alliance despite a difference in approach to the conflict in Ukraine.
“The American-Hungarian friendship must endure this difference of opinion,” he stated last week.
Whether Joe Biden and his politically-appointed diplomat in Budapest is willing to accept a difference of opinion and move on remains to be seen.
However, if the recent anti-Russian poster campaigns dotted across Hungary with the support of the U.S. embassy are anything to go by, it is difficult to see a reconciliation in the immediate future between the two countries, at least not while Joe Biden’s Democrats remain in the White House.
Beware Perfidious Albion as Britain Takes Lead Role in War Provocation
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 23, 2023
The much-vaunted Anglo-American “special relationship” is gaining a new dubious meaning as Britain emerges as an adept agent provocateur for inciting a wider NATO war against Russia.
Warmongering British lawmakers are this week demanding a more robust NATO response over an alleged “act of war” by Russia involving a Royal Air Force spy plane and a Russian fighter jet.
Recent documents leaked from the Pentagon have indicated that a British recon plane was nearly shot down by a Su-27 over the Black Sea. Following the incident last September, the British Ministry of Defense played down the encounter as a “technical malfunction”.
It appears now, however, that the British RC-135 spy plane was fired on by the Russian jet, but that the missile missed. It may have been a deliberate warning shot as the British surveillance aircraft is understood to have been near the Russian territory of Crimea. The British and the Americans are supplying the Kiev regime forces with targeting information. So Russia is arguably entitled to take defensive measures against belligerents, as it did when an American MQ Reaper drone was intercepted last month over the Black Sea. The U.S. has reportedly restricted its surveillance flights in the area since that incident.
Now that it is being reported that a Russian missile was fired, some British politicians are demanding a response to “an act of war”.
This particular incident may well blow over. But it raises concern that British forces are playing an incendiary role in the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. With that country already pumped up with NATO weapons, and the Black Sea and Baltic region packed with NATO forces conducting massive war maneuvers over the next weeks and months, the danger is heightened for an accidental or even intended escalation. Given NATO’s common defense commitments, an incident involving one member of the military alliance would inevitably trigger the other 30 members into an all-out war-footing.
Britain’s treacherous role has recently taken on a routine, calculated character in Ukraine.
As NATO has stepped up arms supplies to Ukraine over the past year, it is London that seems to have upped the ante all the way. It was the British that broke the taboo over sending battlefield tanks when they announced earlier this year the supply of Challenger 2 tanks. That move then put the onus on Germany and the United States to accede to supplying the Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks.
The Brits then went a step further by announcing they would supply Ukrainian forces with depleted uranium artillery shells. Russia condemned that move for its known environmental contamination hazards as well as breaching the line for using radiological/nuclear weapons. Moscow and others contend that depleted uranium shells are a form of “dirty nuclear bomb”.
In any case, technical quibbling aside, the move to supply depleted uranium weapons by London is seen as a particularly gratuitous provocation toward Russia.
The recent Pentagon leaks, which appear to be authentic albeit distorted by U.S. media spin, also confirmed previous separate claims that NATO special forces are operating on the ground in Ukraine fighting against Russian military.
Significantly, it is the British who have deployed the biggest number of special forces compared with other NATO members. What these commandoes are doing in Ukraine is not clear. As the BBC reported:
“According to the document, dated 23 March, the UK has the largest contingent of special forces in Ukraine (50), followed by fellow Nato states Latvia (17), France (15), the U.S. (14) and the Netherlands (1). The document does not say where the forces are located or what they are doing.”
Without a hint of irony, the BBC added: “UK special forces are made up of several elite military units with distinct areas of expertise, and are regarded to be among the most capable in the world.”
Distinct areas of expertise, most capable, indeed! That’s classic British euphemism for you.
It is alleged that British operatives have been helping Ukrainian artillery hit the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant – Europe’s largest civilian nuclear power plant – as a way to escalate the war.
It is also alleged by Moscow that it was members of the British Special Boat Service (SBS) that orchestrated the mass drone attack on Russian bases in Crimea last November. The air raid was thwarted by Russian defenses, but if it had succeeded the response from Russia would have been geopolitically explosive.
It should also be recalled that even before Russia launched its military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, there was a serious provocation involving a British warship in the Black Sea.
HMS Defender infringed on Russian territorial waters south of Crimea on June 23, 2021. After ignoring Russian verbal warnings, the British destroyer was fired on. A Russian Su-24 fighter jet dropped bombs in the ship’s path.
Similar to the more recent incident involving the Royal Air Force RC-135 spy plane, the British Ministry of Defense tried to play down the naval incident. But it later transpired from secret documents that London sought to deliberately provoke Russia in a show of support for Ukraine.
For the most part of the past century, the failed British empire was assigned the junior role as the butler to service the needs of the American empire. This special relationship involved London giving political and diplomatic cover for its American boss, as well as military services when required for one dirty war or another.
It is axiomatic that a dying empire is a dangerous beast, liable to lash out to salvage its waning power. The American empire has reached its death throes moment. But perhaps more dangerous than a dying imperial power is a dying imperial side-kick flunky.
Today, Britain is a broken-down impoverished de-industrialized wasteland whose shocking numbers of poor are like an army of living dead. It has long ago lost former colonies to parasite off. But there is one former colony – the United States – that might just be stupid enough to allow Perfidious Albion to manipulate a catastrophic war.
The tensions over the NATO proxy war in Ukraine with Russia are a powder-keg situation. And the British dirty-tricks brigade are the past masters that merit being closely watched.
Russia-China border region sees surge in investment
RT | April 23, 2023
Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Russia have failed to stop the flow of investment in the country’s far-eastern Khabarovsk Region, bordering on China, Governor Mikhail Degtyarev said this week.
According to the official, a total of 26 new investment projects worth 133 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) were launched in the area in 2022, including a large-scale infrastructure project to build the Pacific Railroad.
“It is comparable to the historical construction of the BAM (Baikal–Amur Mainline railway). It is the first private railroad in Russia to have a length of 500 kilometers. In a short period of time, we have already built 100 kilometers,” Degtyarev stated.
Local projects launched in 2022 include a mining and processing plant at the Kutyn gold deposit in the Tuguro-Chumikansky district, and also the Solnechnaya tin ore processing station. A copper and tin producing plant in the Solnechny district is also nearing completion. The region has also started the development of the Malmyzhsky copper deposit.
Degtyarev also noted that the region last year successfully introduced a simplified procedure for granting land to businesses without them having to bid for import substitution projects, particularly in agriculture, which also drew investors to the area. This year the opportunity was extended to individual entrepreneurs and legal entities involved in import substitution, who can buy a land plot for these purposes for the symbolic sum of 1 ruble.
In his earlier interview, Degtyarev noted that Khabarovsk has been actively boosting cooperation with neighboring China over the past several months, with trade between the region and the Asian powerhouse up 31%, and cargo turnover up by 106% year-on-year as of the end of 2022.
The region also continues working on the Russo-Chinese joint trans-border development territory on Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, where both Russian and Chinese companies can be residents. They will receive significant benefits for export-import operations, making the territory a de facto free-trade zone.
“We are seeing a turn to the East. There is growth in cargo turnover, growth in industrial production as a whole, and growth in the gross regional product. The Eastern part of the country is now pulling the economy, because the Western regions, unfortunately, faced treacherous sanctions and the collapse of logistics chains,” the official stated.
Broken Trust
Can the relationship with state healthcare ever be repaired?
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 21, 2023
For many people, the words ‘trust the experts’ now invoke a sort of pavlovian horror response. This trope serves as a visceral reminder of 3 years’ constant gaslighting for daring to question the narrative, the relentless stream of celebrity medics repeating the ‘safe and effective’ mantra and the bullying and coercion to take a ‘vaccine’ that millions of people didn’t feel they needed or wanted. It had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Core medical ethical principles were destroyed, the weaknesses of protocolised top-down healthcare delivery were exposed and of course there was direct harm to individuals. Is it any wonder that a great many of the British public never want to hear the words ‘our NHS’ ever again, cringing as they remember the weekly clapping ritual.
An inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater is now a strong instinct for many who feel completely let down. If the relationship with state healthcare stands any chance of being repaired, harms enacted in recent years need to be properly acknowledged and people’s concerns carefully listened to. The uncomfortable question as to whether the NHS can function in its current incarnation should be aired. For a lot of people a ‘great reset’ of the medical profession would be a necessary condition of return. Indeed, many medics wonder if they can remain in a system that is clearly failing those it is supposed to serve.
As one doctor with decades of experience laments:
“If I continue to practise conveyor belt and recipe book medicine under the current system, the benefit is only to the Medical Business Model; hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic centres and the pharmaceutical industry all benefit in a model designed to keep the patient sick.”
Another consultant doctor reflecting on the past few years, had the following comments:
“The most odious revelation to me was when early on the directive came forth forbidding doctors, on pain of GMC punishment, to use their own initiative to treat a Covid patient with any other substance, drug, or agent whatsoever than that which was approved officially (of course at this point there was nothing in that category), save only for using it in an officially approved Clinical Trial. I felt utterly betrayed as a doctor. The whole essence of the doctor-patient relationship was abruptly abolished. We were now in the CMO-patient relationship. My role was merely to be a minor minion box-ticking algorithm slave. No clinical discretion. No discussion along the principles of best interest of the patient with informed consent. Oh no, that’s old hat! I saw the moral authority and overshadowing support of the entire medical establishment wither up like Jonah’s gourd.”
Multiple articles are now appearing reporting that morale for those working within the NHS is at an all-time low.1,2,3 One can only imagine that bearing witness to some of the most inhumane policies in NHS history for 3 years straight has not helped. Add to this the long hours on low pay, with increasingly limited time to spend with patients due to unmanageable waiting lists, and you have a perfect recipe for abysmal job satisfaction. Do we really want those in charge of our healthcare decisions to be forced to work under these conditions?
So now to the question of trusting medical advice that has been co-opted, protocolised and politicised, not to mention censored and distorted by financial interests. The UKHSA is supposed to be the government gatekeeper that is ‘responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases’. Just yesterday the agency was still urging people on Twitter to go and get their first and second covid vaccine. This is now so ludicrously at odds with the available evidence that any sane member of the public should conclude that the regulatory system in the UK is officially broken. It is worth taking the time to read the comments under the tweet to see that the public’s natural survival instincts seem to have well and truly kicked in. This random selection suggests the UKHSA may need to read the room:
If you tuned in to the Twitter Space on Sunday ‘Are mRNA injections causing cancers?’ hosted by Dr Kat Lindley and Neil Oliver, you would have heard a heated exchange between consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmad Malik and London-based oncology professor, Angus Dalgleish. Dr Malik wanted to get to the bottom of why Professor Dalgleish felt moved to write an article advocating for young people to take the covid vaccine in July 2021 entitled:
What every young person who fears the jab MUST be told: Vaccine expert ANGUS DALGLEISH dismantles beliefs that have seen rates stall among the 18-30s
Well that seems like a pretty clear message. Get the damned vaccine.
Given his background in vaccine research, Prof Dalgleish would have been very clear that long-term safety data is not an optional extra when injecting young people or pregnant women. When questioned, Prof Dalgleish revealed that he did not actually write the article himself. There was a phone interview with a Daily Mail journalist, which he described as ‘bullying’ and the article was an entirely perverted representation of that call. Nonetheless, his name appears alongside the article with the effect that the message therein appears to come from a distinguished professor of medicine.
Professor Dalgleish dramatically revised his position on covid injections after his son suffered acute myocarditis following the shots. Whilst it is obviously a good thing that he was courageous and open-minded enough to change his stance, it is very worrying that he is still an outlier. One can count on one hand the working medics willing to speak out on this issue. And it begs the question, what if Professor Dalgleish’s son hadn’t been injured? Would there have been more advertorials in the Daily Mail with his name alongside? Why are journalists ‘bullying’ through a particular narrative on medical matters? This rather suggests they have a particular agenda. As one Dr Roger Hodkinson, an eminent Cambridge educated pathologist says, “when politics plays medicine, that’s a very dangerous game.” Notably Dr Hodkinson is now only available to view on Bitchute, having been deplatformed from the more mainstream channels such as YouTube. More media censorship of highly qualified counter-narrative voices.
Working for a monopoly such as the NHS, with a mortgage and a family to feed, one might well find medical ethics end up somewhere below personal financial obligations. This is regrettable but understandable. Medics are human beings. Perhaps it is the fault of an increasingly secular society that somehow medics have been elevated to demi-gods and as a result their word is often deemed infallible. However, many more people now realise that this is simply not the case. If this disordered power dynamic is to be realigned, certain conditions need to be met:
- A genuine admission that mistakes were made. Not that ‘The Science™’ changed. It did not change and millions of people who resisted the military grade psy-op are fully aware of this;
- An overhaul of medical training so that clinicians do not feel afraid to speak out when they see something is wrong, and in fact should be encouraged to do so;
- The gaslighting must stop altogether. Those who have suffered injury or trauma need to be given proper air time and have their concerns addressed. They also need to be properly and fairly compensated.
- Open and unfettered discussions need to take place, allowing medics to speak freely about what has happened during the past 3 years, identifying with honesty and integrity what must not be repeated.
Taxpayers spend in excess of £220 billion per annum on the NHS. Weekly excess deaths are presently consistently way above average, whereas after a period of high mortality in the frail and elderly it should be well below normal levels. The public (and indeed the staff) deserve better. If this is impossible, perhaps the entire system needs to be completely reimagined.
Footnotes
Tennessee Says ‘No’ to Vaccinating Children Without Parental Consent
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 21 , 2023
The Tennessee Legislature on Thursday passed a law that prevents healthcare providers in the state from vaccinating minors without parental consent. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Bill Lee’s signature.
The “Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act,” passed in the Senate last week and in the House Thursday, requires healthcare providers to obtain informed consent from a parent or legal guardian before vaccinating a minor.
During its COVID-19 vaccination campaign in 2021, the Tennessee Department of Health (DOH) invoked the “‘mature minor’ doctrine” — which says children of different ages have different maturities and capacities to consent to medical treatment.
The DOH used this doctrine to justify allowing minors ages 14 and older to consent to vaccination without informing their parents, as long as the child is deemed “mature” by their physician.
But Rolf Hazlehurst, senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the DOH’s vaccination policy was based on a “dangerous oversimplification” of the mature minor doctrine.
Many Tennessee lawmakers agreed. During an April 10 subcommittee meeting, bill sponsor Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) said the new law, then a bill, clarified the mature minor doctrine, which he said, “has been misinterpreted and shall we say, abused somewhat.”
Ragan added that by passing this law, legislators would be “giving parents back their rights to make medical decisions for their children.”
Hazelhurst told The Defender the law is “extremely important because it closes a legal loophole, which endangered parents, children and healthcare providers.”
In a Feb. 21 hearing of the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee, Hazelhurst testified that the law’s importance goes beyond Tennessee, because “nationwide, people are still relying upon Tennessee’s misinterpretation of the mature minor doctrine” to vaccinate children without parental consent.
Hazlehurst was the senior attorney in a lawsuit brought by CHD against the District of Columbia, seeking an injunction to block enforcement of a law passed in 2020 allowing children 11 and older to consent to vaccination.
In that case, Hazlehurst said, the district based the arguments in its briefs in part on the Tennessee DOH’s interpretation of the mature minor doctrine as legal precedent for its law.
The federal judge in the district case sided with the plaintiffs and issued an injunction against the law in March 2022.
The “mature minor” doctrine
The “mature minor” doctrine invoked by DOH is based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court case, Cardwell v. Bechtol, where the court ruled in favor of a doctor accused of medical malpractice for treating a 17-year-old girl for a herniated disk.
In that case, the court said the common law “Rule of Sevens” established that children have different capacities to consent to different medical treatments as they grow up, differentiating among children under the age of 7, ages 7 to 14 and over 14.
The Tennessee DOH summarized the “mature minor” doctrine in a memo on its website, interpreting it to mean that children under age 7 cannot consent to treatment. For children between the ages of 7 and 14, “a physician generally should get parental consent before treating.”
And for children ages 14 to 17, “The physician may treat without parental consent unless the physician believes that the minor is not sufficiently mature to make his or her own health care decisions,” it says.
In all cases, there are certain statutory exemptions where physicians can treat children without parental consent, including in situations involving emergencies, drug abuse, and contraception and prenatal care.
Based on this summary of the doctrine, the DOH concluded that county health departments follow Tennessee law and “provide medical treatment and vaccinations to patients as young as 14 without parental consent if the individual provider determines that the patient meets the definition of a ‘mature minor.’”
But the DOH’s summary of the doctrine “omit[s] critical elements of the mature minor doctrine,” CHD argued in a letter sent in August 2021 to Ragan and Sen. Kerry Roberts.
The Cardwell v. Becthol ruling explicitly stated that the “adoption of the mature minor exception to the common law rule [used in the ruling] is by no means a general license to treat minors without parental consent.”
Rather, the application of the mature minor doctrine is dependent “on the facts of each case,” to be determined by a jury. In other words, the DOH was taking a jury instruction in a medical malpractice case and stating it was a statewide standard for vaccination, contrary to the spirit of the ruling, the CHD letter said.
“We do not, however, alter the general rule requiring parental consent for the medical treatment of minors,” the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling states.
History of the controversy
The Tennessee DOH fired Dr. Michelle Fiscus, medical director of Tennessee’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program, in the summer of 2021, in part in response to an email she sent on May 12, 2021.
Fiscus sent the email to COVID-19 vaccine providers across Tennessee informing them that according to Tennessee’s “mature minor” doctrine, they could provide vaccinations to minors as young as 14 without parental consent if they deemed that patient to be a “mature minor.”
The email stated: “There is no federal, legal requirement for parent or caregiver consent for COVID-19, or any other, vaccine.”
Fiscus sent the email the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 12 and up, a decision she references in the email.
A few weeks after the letter went out, in the Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Government Operations Committee meeting on June 16, 2021, Dr. Lisa Piercey, health commissioner and Fiscus’ boss, came under fire by Republican legislators for the email and the DOH’s targeting of children more generally.
Piercey confirmed in her testimony that based on the “mature minor” doctrine, the state of Tennessee treated 14-year-old children as capable of making decisions themselves as to whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine that was under Emergency Use Authorization.
Sen. Mark Pody responded, “I don’t know the terms that I could use to express my extreme disappointment, that in the state of Tennessee, where the majority of adults said no, to think that a 14-year-old child could say yes.”
At that time, only 37-39% of Tennessee residents were vaccinated, according to Piercey.
At the June 16, 2021, meeting, Rolf testified that the memo was clearly written by a lawyer — which Fiscus later confirmed in defending the email — in order to set a statewide locality rule that children 14 and up could be vaccinated without their parents’ consent.
“If a parent brings a lawsuit based on lack of consent, I have no doubt whatsoever that that letter will be attached as an exhibit in the motion to dismiss and the motion for summary judgment,” he said, adding, “I can’t stress enough that this letter has tremendous legal effect.”
The DOH fired Fiscus on July 12, 2021.
The Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act, which clarifies the rules about minor consent with respect to vaccination, was filed in the Tennessee General Assembly on Jan. 31.
‘Minor consent’ laws failing across the country
In March 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the mayor of the District of Columbia, the D.C. Department of Health and D.C. public schools from enforcing the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020 (D.C. Minor Consent Act), The Defender reported.
That law allowed a minor, 11 or older, to receive a vaccine, “if the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard” and the vaccine is recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and provided according to the childhood immunization schedule.
The injunction stemmed from two lawsuits filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act.
CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation filed one lawsuit, and the Informed Consent Action Network filed the other.
During oral arguments in the case, Hazlehurst argued the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it contains multiple provisions that strip away the meager protections guaranteed to parents under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The preliminary injunction, which the defendants did not appeal within the required 30-day period and therefore remains in place, reverted the district to the standard age of consent of 18, at least until the conclusion of the case.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
Facebook Should Keep Removing COVID ‘Misinformation,’ Oversight Board Says
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 21, 2023
The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on Thursday recommended the social media giant “maintain its current policy” of removing COVID-19 “misinformation” from its platform until the World Health Organization declares an end to the global pandemic.
The board made the recommendation despite widespread outcry about social media censorship after the Twitter Files and several ongoing lawsuits revealed collusion between state actors and social media companies to censor dissenting opinions and factual information that contradict official narratives, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recommendation came in response to a request by Meta in July that the oversight board — an independent panel of tech and legal experts selected by Meta to weigh in on content policy issues — assess whether “a less restrictive approach” to censoring misinformation might “better align with its values and human rights responsibilities.”
Meta’s current misinformation policy sets different categories of harm content might cause, making that content subject to removal. Content is censored if the platform deems that it contributes to the “risk of imminent physical harm,” could cause “interference” with the functioning of political processes or contains “certain highly deceptive manipulated media.”
But the board didn’t find inconsistency between Meta’s “misinformation policy” and its “values and human rights responsibilities.” Instead, it said Meta’s current “exceptional measures” of eliminating disinformation are “justified.”
The board also urged Meta to “begin a process” to reassess which “misleading claims” it removes, to be more transparent about government requests for information, to consider making its “misinformation” policies more localized and to investigate how the architecture of the platform facilitates the spread of misinformation.
Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations within 60 days.
Suzanne Nossel, a board member and CEO of PEN America, told The Washington Post that the board’s recommendations are not just relevant to COVID-19, but could shape Meta’s approach to anticipated future global health emergencies.
“The decision is less perhaps about the COVID pandemic per se or exclusively than about … how Meta should handle its responsibilities in the context of a fast-moving public health emergency,” she said.
How Facebook and Instagram censor COVID ‘misinformation’
The recommendation specifically assessed Meta’s “misinformation about health during public emergencies” policy, under which it removes 80 distinct “COVID-19 misinformation claims” posted on its platforms, such as claiming masking or social distancing lack efficacy or that the vaccines can have serious side effects.
Between March 2020 and July 2022, Facebook and Instagram, also owned by Meta, removed 27 million instances of COVID-19 “misinformation,” 1.3 million of which were restored on appeal.
The social media giant also designates a second type of COVID-19 “misinformation,” which does not reach the standard of removal, but is still subject to manipulation by the platform.
For example, information in that category is “fact-checked” where it is labeled as “false” or “missing context,” and then linked to a fact-checking article. That content is then also demoted so that it appears less frequently and prominently in users’ feeds.
Meta also treated other information with what it calls “neutral labels,” where it labeled posts with statements such as “some unapproved COVID-19 treatments may cause serious harm” and then directed people to Meta’s COVID-19 information center, which provides approved information from public health authorities.
Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to “trustworthy information” through the portal. But it decided to stop using the neutral labels in December 2022, to ensure they would remain effective in other health emergencies, according to the oversight board’s report.
The basis for determining what is misinformation is whether the information conforms to what public health authorities deem to be true, according to the board’s recommendation and the Facebook policy page.
But throughout the pandemic, public health authorities have had to concede they were wrong about things — and that they lied about things — they had previously pronounced to be science-backed facts.
These “facts” include, for example, flip-flopping on masks, the lab-leak hypothesis, the effectiveness of natural immunity and numerous claims about vaccine efficacy, including that it stops transmission.
That means the platforms eliminated and demoted facts and information that were true. Even CNN conceded that “the company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.”
‘This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us’
The board recommendations don’t mention the events that led Meta to consider changing its policies — controversy over recent revelations about how government officials coerced social media companies into toeing the government line.
In 2021, President Biden directly criticized Facebook and other platforms, saying they allowed “vaccine misinformation” to spread and they contributed to deaths from COVID-19.
He said they were “killing people” and that the pandemic was only “among the unvaccinated.”
Biden’s accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory action from from high-ranking members of the administration — including White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — if the social media companies did not comply.
Psaki said government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what — and in some cases whom — to censor, Jenin Younes reported.
DHS even created a video in 2021, since removed from youtube, encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for ‘disinformation’ if they challenge U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.
Writing in Tablet Magazine this month, civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes recounted the story of a Facebook support group for people who experienced adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines being shut down for spreading harmful “misinformation.”
Last month, in the Twitter Files release about Stanford University’s Virality project, Matt Taiibbi revealed that Stanford, with the backing of several government agencies, had created a cross-platform digital ticketing system that was processing censorship requests for all of the social media platforms, including Meta’s.
The Virality Project claimed its objective “is to detect, analyze, and respond to incidents of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines across online ecosystems.”
Taibbi said the Virality Project was “defining true things as disinformation or misinformation or malformation,” which he said signifies “a new evolution of the disinformation process away from trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not and just going directly to political narrative.”
That reflects Meta’s policy to censor statements that don’t conform to official public health authority doctrine as “misinformation.”
Meta’s policies do not mention the tips and directions it receives from government agencies about misinformation.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday published an op-ed in The Hill calling for an end to censorship practices, pointing out that statements about COVID-19 made on platforms like Facebook that are now supported by evidence were flagged as disinformation.
”Statements including my own, that our government once labeled as ‘disinformation,’ such as the efficacy of masks, naturally acquired immunity, and the origins of COVID-19, are now supported by evidence,” he said.
“In reality, the most significant source of disinformation during the pandemic, with the most influence and greatest impact on people’s lives, was the U.S. government,” he added.
Rand pointed to critiques of DHS’s “abusive practices” by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and highlighted a Brennan Center for Justice report published last month that found at least 12 DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online.
“This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us regardless of which side of the aisle you are on,” he said.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
The Tower for Twitter? UK Minister Calls for Jailing Social Media Bosses Who Do Not Censor Speech
By Jonathan Turley | April 21, 2023
As previously discussed, after Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans. The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.
Donelan is seeking speech arrests under the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a draconian censorship bill that would effectively ban end-to-end encryption for private internet users.
The bill uses Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism. So the government can censor anyone who it views as promoting or justifying hatred against virtually any group. Those who do not censor can now be rounded up by Donelan and her minions.
According to a report by The Telegraph, companies will also face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue should they dare to ignore Britain’s demands to preemptively delete or obscure posts violating its coming censorship regime.
The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”
Recently we discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech.
Donelan is only the latest voice of a rising generation of censors. These officials proudly parade their intent to silence or jail those with dissenting views. Yet, they do so in the name of tolerance. This is why free speech is in a free fall in Europe and why we must remain vigilant in this country to resist figures like Clinton who want to bring European censorship to our shores.
‘Growing Frustration’ At FBI Over Failure to Charge Hunter Biden – Report
© AFP 2023 / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 22.04.2023
There’s “growing frustration” among the FBI as US President Joe Biden’s unruly son Hunter has yet to be charged in multiple felonies and misdemeanor investigations over a year after agents concluded the bulk of their research, US media is reporting.
Investigators in the FBI “finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago,” according to NBC News, which noted that “a senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago” as well.
Per the outlet, “the possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge,” which is “also a potential felony.”
The revelation comes just two days after a lawyer representing an anonymous IRS employee wrote in a letter to Congress that his client, a “career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high profile, controversial subject since early 2020,” is seeking to testify before the legislators as a protected whistleblower.
According to the lawyer, the IRS Special Agent, who’s reportedly spent over a decade on the job, is seeking to provide information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” “clear conflicts of interest” in the case, and specific instances of “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols.”
It’s unclear whether authorities are still considering charging the younger Biden with money laundering and failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as well. But over the past several years, the Justice Department has seriously ramped up prosecutions of alleged FARA violations – though so far they’ve largely focused on those politically opposed to the Biden family.
In 2018, Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to 60 months in prison for supposed FARA violations relating to work carried out in Ukraine. He was hit with a further 30 months for other charges as well.
This week, several Black socialists in Florida were indicted for allegedly failing to register under FARA by prosecutors who accuse them of not telling US officials they received funds from someone supposedly acting on behalf of the Russian government, further fueling suspicions that the Biden administration’s prosecutions are politically motivated.
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With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | April 29, 2020
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”
In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”
However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself. … continue
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