Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Rogan’s RFK interview is full of vitally-important taboo info

BY BILL RICE, JR. | JUNE 26, 2023

Yesterday, I spent several hours reading the transcript of the 3-hour interview RFK, Jr. recently did with Joe Rogan. The conversation was fascinating. Any U.S. citizen interested in more detailed information on Kennedy’s thoughts can simply watch this interview (a link to the Rogan episode and a transcript are included in this article which summarizes the interview).

I particularly recommend the final paragraphs of the CHD article, where Kennedy talks about the mothers of autistic children who finally convinced him to look into a possible connection between vaccines and autism.

Here are highlights that jumped out to me after reading transcripts of the entire interview:

  • Kennedy said (again) that he’s NOT running on the “vaccine issue” and only talks about vaccines when specifically asked a question about them by an interviewer.
  • However, he did say he’s not going to dodge a legitimate question when asked. He also said that he didn’t plan on doing any more in-depth interviews like this in the future, suggesting this conversation with Rogan should provide sufficient answers on why and how he got so interested in the vaccine issue … an intellectual quest which later informed his conviction that the entire public health establishment has become brazenly and shockingly corrupt and captured. 
  • Kennedy said alarms went off when he had a phone conversation with Dr. Paul Offit about mercury in vaccines and caught this extremely-influential vaccine booster in an obvious lie. Kennedy also noted that this man said he would get back to him with specific scientific studies that backed up his vaccine autism point (that there was bad “mercury” and “safe” mercury). Kennedy said this revered scientist never did provide the promised study(ies).
  • Kennedy also recounts a similar conversation with Dr. Fauci, who told Kennedy that he would provide germane studies on some topic Kennedy had challenged Fauci on …. and Fauci never followed through.

One of Kennedy’s main points is that whenever he wanted to see the published peer-reviewed scientific studies backing different conclusions of the Science Establishment … the members of the Scientific Establishment couldn’t and didn’t do this.

Kennedy also notes he personally knows and had spoken to many leading authorities in the public health bureaucracies and he always got the impression these leaders had not read any of the scientific studies that Kennedy had read. They weren’t even familiar with these studies.

On censorship and no debates …

  • Rogan talked a good bit about censorship and how he (Rogan) had been maligned and intentionally discredited for comments he’d made. Almost as an aside, Kennedy noted that he had been censored for “18 years” (!)
  • … Kennedy also said that nobody has ever debated him on these topics, and cited examples of “debates” or events that were supposed to happen and never did.
  • One such “debate” was supposed to be Kennedy vs. one of these alleged science authorities at a hearing in the Connecticut Senate (if memory serves, on the autism question).
  • According to Kennedy, a Connecticut elected official asked Kennedy to participate in a hearing with this other authority. Later, Kennedy was told it would be him vs. two executives, then three, then four.
  • Kennedy, as it turns out, would only get six minutes to make his points. Still, Kennedy  said (paraphrasing): “This is not fair, but okay. I’ll be there.” The debate/testimony was later cancelled – after Kennedy had flown “on the red-eye” to Connecticut on his own dime to participate. Nobody told him why this hearing with him was cancelled. Kennedy just assumes someone told these people to NOT debate RFK, Jr. This scenario should sound very familiar today. (Think the “Hotez debate.”)
  • I found Kennedy’s points about the explosion of autism to be very convincing. His main point is that nobody his age (or my age) grew up with anyone who had the severe autism that is common with many children today.Kennedy does note that observations such as this do NOT equal scientific “causation” or “correlation” … but when so many mothers of autistic children keep reaching the same conclusion, this should be enough anecdotal evidence to launch serious and real scientific studies and genuine scientific investigations, Kennedy argues.
  • Kennedy’s points about VAERS picking up only a tiny fraction of vaccine injuries and deaths are very persuasive and important. (This is the topic of one of my next articles, which will highlight the fact Ed Dowd’s work on “all-cause excess” deaths is STILL being ignored by the mainstream media – 18 months after Dowd, among others, began to highlight this.)

Regarding Kennedy’s book on Dr. Fauci ….

  • Regarding his book The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy notes that the book sold more than one million copies in its “first three months.” Oddly (to me), Kennedy said he doesn’t know how many copies this book sold after this because he hasn’t looked at the numbers.
  • I’ve been curious about the book’s cumulative sales figure as every story I can find on the book says only that it “sold more than one million copies.” 
  • This is certainly a true statement, but I wonder if the book might have sold at least two million copies by now. Kennedy also points out that nobody at mainstream “news” organizations reviewed the book and very few “independent” book-sellers ever stocked the book in their stores (a point I made in a recent column.) Also, for some reason, lists of “best-selling” books often omitted The Real Anthony Fauci from these sales rankings.
  • The above anecdotes should tell the public that most owners of book stores (and the “free press”) believe in banning certain books (more specifically, they don’t stock or mention books that question the prevailing orthodoxy).
  • Question: How many copies of The Real Anthony Fauci would have been sold if this book had been available in bookstores all over the world (like other big best-sellers)? Would this have made a difference and perhaps saved lives?

Note: Joe Rogan said his entire thinking about vaccines, public health and Kennedy changed dramatically after he did read this book. Question: Think if Rogan had not read this book. He probably would have never had Kennedy on his show and Rogan probably would never have become one of the leading contrarian voices on the “authorized narrative.” This shows the power of the written word or of one book … and why such a book had to be censored.

  • According to Kennedy, the vast majority of the book’s sales came from just one source – Amazon. (Authors like Naomi Wolf and many other skeptics of the official narratives have also published “taboo” Covid books. This question also occurs to me: How many additional copies of these books would have been sold if readers interested in these topics had seen them and been able to buy them if they had been available in local bookstore? (I guess this is another “unknown unknowable.”)

* Rogan made interesting points about how other podcasters are seemingly being bullied with the threat of “de-platforming” or “de-monetization” if the hosts of these shows invite contrarian Covid speakers onto their shows as guests (including Rogan himself).

* Rogan mentioned that he knows several comedian friends who think like he does, which he suggests helped him maintain his sanity in these New Normal Covid times. Kennedy later asked Rogan (paraphrasing), “Who are these people? I haven’t heard any stand-up comedians doing gigs where they poke fun of this Covid madness.” The Kimmels and Colberts of the world were (and still are) all singing from the same “authorized narrative” hymnal.

  • Kennedy provides a good bit of detail about his life as an environmental lawyer and how he and his allies in his cause helped clean up the Hudson River waterways. It was his belief that mercury was getting into fish that later led him to believe that the same toxic mercury (far more dangerous than lead, according to Kennedy) was being injected into children with their mandatory vaccines.
  • According to Kennedy, this was a point that mothers kept making to him at Kennedy’s speaking engagements. Finally, one of these mothers showed up at his house, dropped an 18-inch pile of documents on his door step and told Kennedy she wasn’t leaving until he read these documents.
  • Kennedy read them … and the rest is … history … History that also explains why Robert Kennedy, Jr. is now the No. 1 threat to the Big Pharma/Medicine/Science establishment. It also explains how a once popular liberal environmental lawyer almost instantly became a pariah to the Establishment and a conspiracy-spreading, wacko kook.

Defining “the experts,” and which ones we’re not supposed to listen to …

  • Kennedy notes that he has filed “hundreds” of lawsuits and every one of them deal with “science.” Regarding the narrative that everyone should “trust the science and the experts,” Kennedy makes a great point in his conversation with Rogan:
  • Every lawsuit he has ever been a part of includes “experts” … from both sides. Kennedy gives an example of one big environmental lawsuit where the defendants called experts from prestigious academic institutions like Harvard, Stanford and Yale as witnesses. But the plaintiffs also called “expert” witnesses who were professors at the same colleges. So the obvious question is: What “experts” are more credible? This, Kennedy says, is for a jury to decide (and plenty of juries sided with Kennedy’s experts).

Kennedy also pointed out that almost all of the “new” vaccines since the late ’80s allegedly “protect” children from diseases that do not pose a real health risk to them. He gave the example of the Hepatitis B vaccine newborns get at the hospital. Kennedy pointed out this is a “vaccine” to allegedly provide “protection” against a disease that might affect only a few of these children 16 to 30 years later – if they became a prostitute or a needle drug user.

I thought Kennedy was also very persuasive, making his point that advancements in nutrition, sanitation and “engineering” almost completely explain the disappearance of most childhood or adult diseases in the last century or so (for example, refrigeration.)

This leads people like me to conclude that the Mother of All medical scams might be the one that tells us that  “vaccines” are the wonder-drug of our times and have saved millions of lives. This is almost certainly a “false” or at least “dubious” narrative. (But a profitable one for Big Pharma).

The “95-percent effective” canard …

Yet another fascinating segment was when Kennedy explains the “95 percent effective” canard. He points out that the best metric flowing from Pfizer’s limited safety trials should have been the conclusion that it takes 22,000 doses of Covid vaccine to (maybe) prevent one “Covid” death.

If this is the case (and it apparently is), “You better be sure that vaccine isn’t causing any deaths,” Kennedy states. As Kennedy points out, in the Pfizer trials only three people died from Covid in the ensuing six months – one person in the “vaccinated” group, and two in the “unvaccinated” group.

However, four or five more people in the “vaccinated” group later died from “all causes.” But identifying deaths from “any cause” was not a goal of the study. (It took a Freedom of Information request and a judge’s ruling to release this key information to the public … something Pfizer didn’t want to do for 75 years).

So trial participants had a much greater chance of dying (from any cause) if they’d received the Covid vaccine than if they had not been vaccinated. Question asked by Kennedy: Shouldn’t this data point/finding have been the big headline and enough to stop the vaccines?

Regarding the “vaccines-cause autism” theory, Kennedy does not definitively or categorically blame just vaccines. He seems to be saying many factors probably explain this – including vaccines.

Kennedy notes that when he was a child he received three childhood vaccines. Today, children MUST get 72 shots (from 16 vaccines). Kennedy also noted that five of his children suffer from food allergies, something that also was almost unheard of when Kennedy was growing up.

1986 law changed everything that followed …

Kennedy also did a great job explaining how Big Pharma got immunity from vaccine lawsuits, per hugely-significant legislation passed in the Reagan administration in 1986. This gave Big Pharma a license to make “billions of dollars,” Kennedy argues.

All Pharma companies had to do was come up with a new “vaccine” and make sure this vaccine got placed on the childhood immunization schedule (which apparently was a sure-thing).

I also found it interesting that RFK, Jr. acknowledges that his own uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy – who was chairman of an important Senate Health Committee at the time – helped pass this world-changing legislation. That is, it wasn’t just President Reagan who made this possible; it was the Democrats in Congress too – including his own uncle.

Kennedy also debunks the accepted wisdom that vaccines are “safe” by pointing out the whole reason this legislation was passed into law was because vaccines are obviously not (always) safe. Vaccines are inherently unsafe – this is why the industry needed legal immunity from lawsuits to keep producing them, says Kennedy.

Main take-away …

My main-take away from this in-depth interview is how well Kennedy knows this material. During this 3-hour interview, Kennedy didn’t refer to any notes. He cited study after study from memory. He had read these studies – critically – and quickly identified the holes and likely cover-ups in them.

I’m convinced this is the real reason no expert or authority will debate someone like Kennedy (or, for example, Steve Kirsch). They all know Kennedy knows this material better than they do. And they all know that they can’t answer Kennedy’s key questions.

Hopefully, more people will take the time to watch this 3-hour interview or read the transcripts. If they do, they’ll see that Kennedy is not some crazy “kook.” I also commend Joe Rogan for giving RFK, Jr. this 3-hour platform to express his views and more fully discuss these life-and-death public health issues.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

Religious Exemption Form for Parents of School-Age Kids in D.C. ‘Intentionally Misleading and Unlawful’

The Defender | June 27, 2023

A form provided by the District of Columbia Department of Health for parents seeking a religious exemption for mandated vaccines on behalf of their minor children is “intentionally misleading and unlawful,” according to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Staff Attorney Rolf Hazlehurst.

A letter from Hazlehurst and CHD Acting President Laura Bono to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and school and health department officials states there is “no legal basis or requirement” for parents to use the newly revised “2023 Religious Exemption Request Process for Families” posted on the DC Health website.

According to the health department, “In consideration of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for eligible students, and the need to ensure all students in the District remain up to date with all necessary or required vaccinations to attend school,” health officials revised the religious exemption form “to include a section to document a strongly held religious belief opposing vaccination.”

Parents and guardians are instructed to request the form and return it directly to DC Health/Immunization Division after carefully reading and completing it in its entirety. “incomplete or non-compliant forms will be returned before being sent for review, the department said.

But the updated form contains at least two subsections that are “unlawful as written and applied,” Hazlehurst said.

In the first part of Section 2, parents and guardians are required to initial to acknowledge that “by not vaccinating their child for one or more of the listed vaccinations, they are placing their child at ‘increased risk,’ thus implying that they are unfit parents or guardians.”

And, according to the letter, the second part of Section 2 requires each parent or guardian to:

“Please provide a written statement on a) why you do not get vaccinations based on your sincerely held religious beliefs, b) the religious principles that guide your decision not to get vaccinated, and c) whether you are opposed to all vaccinations, and if not, d) the religious beliefs you follow that will not allow you to get the COVID-19 vaccination.”

In their letter, Bono and Hazlehurst said this language “intentionally misleads those parents or guardians seeking religious exemptions into believing they must comply with these instructions or their request will be denied.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” they wrote, adding that according to the law, Code of the District of Columbia §38-506, entitled “Exemption from Certification” states:

No certification of immunization shall be required for the admission to a school of a student:

(1) For whom the responsible person objects in good faith and in writing, to the chief official of the school, that immunization would violate his or her religious beliefs.

In other words, parents and guardians are not required to complete the updated form — they can simply write a letter to the chief official of the child’s school certifying that in accordance with the Code of the District of Columbia §38-506, they object in good faith that immunization(s) violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.

If DC Health officials wanted to create a new process in which parents and guardians must comply to receive a religious exemption, the agency is required by law to promulgate the new rule by complying with the administration process and allowing the public the opportunity to respond — neither of which were done, Hazlehurst and Bono wrote.

D.C. Council weighs bill to remove COVID vaccine mandate for schools

Hazlehurst and Dr. Elizabeth Mumper last week submitted written testimony to D.C. Council members in support of Bill 25-0278, the School Student Vaccination Amendment Act of 2023, which would remove the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students attending D.C. schools.

Both commended the council members for introducing the amendment. In his written statement, Hazlehurst called on the council to expedite passage of the bill “to avoid parents unnecessarily getting their children the COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend school.”

He also outlined his legal objections to the health department’s newly revised religious exemption form.

Mumper, a pediatrician, also showed support for the bill. In a lengthy written statement, she said:

“As a pediatrician with 43 years of experience in pediatrics and 24 years of experience identifying and treating children with vaccine injuries, I oppose giving COVID-19 vaccines to infants and children.

“Having carefully studied the risks and benefits, I conclude unequivocally that the risk of harm outweighs any potential benefit. Multiple sources of scientifically sound data support my position.”

In July 2022, The Washington Post said the district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schoolchildren was “among the strictest in the nation.”

CHD last year represented a group of parents challenging the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act, which would have allowed children as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge or consent.

CHD fought, and the court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the law and the district was forced to repeal it.

In his ruling, Judge Trevor N. McFadden said:

“States and the District are free to encourage individuals, including children, to get vaccines. But they cannot transgress on the Program Congress created. And they cannot trample the Constitution.”

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.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Ed Dowd was dead wrong on one prediction

Massive excess deaths is far too shocking a scandal to be ‘exposed’

BY BILL RICE, JR. | JUNE 27, 2023

Ed Dowd, among many other “alternative media” or “citizen journalists,” has been trying to highlight the shocking story of a huge and sustained spike in “excess deaths” since the roll-out of the Covid vaccines in December 2020.

Dowd has been screaming this since at least January 2022 – 16 months ago.

He, among others, highlighted the remarks of a life insurance company CEO who said his company is seeing excess deaths of 40 percent (!) in life-insurance policy holders aged 18 to 64 (clarification: “death rates” 40 percent higher than expected).

Dowd, with help from a team of analysts, even wrote a book on the topic, which has sold quite well in the Covid skeptic community despite widespread censorship of this taboo topic.

Needless to say, a massive spike in all-cause deaths should be the No. 1 story in the world right now.

But it’s not.

As far as I am aware, no big mainstream news organization has run any story telling the public that hundreds of thousands (or millions) more people are dying compared to the mortality numbers before 2020.

When Dowd began making the alternative media rounds in January or February 2021, I watched his interviews with great interest. Like everyone else who reads Substack newsletters like my own, I applauded him for pointing this out.

However, I disagreed with one of Dowd’s main points/conclusions.

Dowd said the evidence of these excess deaths was so great that this data couldn’t be hidden.

Even the mainstream news organizations (especially the business and finance organizations like Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal) would have to write big articles on this at some point, Dowd stated.

This is because the life insurance companies have to make annual reports to shareholders and these reports would show these companies were getting ready to take a bath from paying out far more early-death claims than they did in the past.

Also, someone has to insure the insurance companies against such once-in-a-millennium type events and these companies would be on the hook for many billions of dollars in unforeseen death benefits.

Dowd’s confident conclusion was such “news” could NOT be hidden from the world, or at least serious financial analysts and the journalists who report on the conclusions of such analysts.

“Not so fast, my friend …”

I wasn’t a Substack author at this time, but I distinctly remember making posts in Reader Comments sections saying, “Not so fast, Ed … or you better check your assumptions here.”

My contrarian take was that, yes, this was huge news and, yes, it does seem almost impossible this wouldn’t become a massive story at some point … but I was very confident that this would NOT become a major, “narrative-changing” story.

I’m sure I posted something like this:

“I don’t know exactly how these life insurance companies will cover-up this news or how this won’t become THE Covid story of our times … but this will somehow happen.”

Re-stated: Nothing would happen.

Skip forward 16 months and these “sudden” deaths are still taking out people aged 18 to 64 every single day all around the world …. But has anyone seen any major expose from the mainstream press on the explosion of “all-cause” deaths?

So far at least, it looks like I was right and Dowd, at least on one point/prediction, was wrong.

So how did I know what wouldn’t happen?

Which brings me to this question: Why did I get this prediction right and Dowd got it wrong?

After all, Dowd’s “logic” seemed sound. The life insurance executives and the analysts couldn’t hide a story this startling forever, right? It would affect too many businesses.

Here, I argue that when it comes to deductive reasoning or “logic,” one must factor in the most important “known knowable” before making a prediction that flows from some observable data.

The most-important point about Dowd’s research is that the Covid vaccines (as well as iatrogenic deaths and lockdown deaths) were/are killing huge numbers of people around the world.

That is, our government – and all its many sycophant crony partners in the fields of medicine and science – had committed massive “crimes against humanity.” 

Everything they said about the “safe and effective” vaccines was a brazen lie. Every response they mandated ended up killing far more people than these “mitigation” measures saved.

As “crimes” or “scandals” go, they don’t get any more shocking than these.

Given this knowledge, all I did was use a little “logic” of my own and quickly reached the conclusion that such a massive scandal could NOT be exposed.

If it was exposed, the entire government might collapse. Millions of people with proverbial pitch forks in hand would march on Washington D.C. demanding a little justice. The “swamp” probably would be drained.

Not only this, but every Big Business, Big Finance and Big Media “partner” of Big Government would also be exposed (since they all went along with the crimes and false narratives).

Furthermore, if this scenario unfolded we’d probably experience a giant financial meltdown of a scale that would make the 2008 stock market collapse seem like a nothing burger.

(Here, think about the “reparations” and the lawsuits – not for Big Pharma, which, perhaps, can’t be touched, but for all the institutions that pushed this toxic poison on their employees and undergrads).

Maybe I’m wrong, but every company and industry that’s protected from competition by politicians, or that gets its cut of “tickle-down” money printing …. would also suddenly be in dire jeopardy.

One can only assume these industries would also include all the big life insurance companies.

It also occurred to me that many of these life insurance companies – which are some of the biggest institutional investors in the world – probably mandated “vaccines” for their own employees, and might have continued to do this even though their own actuarial data showed the shots were killing people in epic numbers.

Here’s the key point …

What I think I “get” that Dowd (and many others) might not fully appreciate is how intertwined all these “club members” really are.

If one member of “the crony fascist or corporatist club” goes down, they all go down.

Another way to express this thought: They all know they have to hang together. Otherwise, they all might … hang together (as in, from the end of a noose).

Even today, I don’t know why or how the life insurance executives aren’t holding big press conferences on excess deaths or why all the “analysts” aren’t mimicking Paul Revere and screaming their warnings.

I would note that the same analysts and “watchdog” journalists somehow all missed the sub-prime mortgage scandal that led to the 2008 stock market meltdown and economic recession.

They also (except for one person) missed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme for a couple of decades.

Apparently, when everyone is able to afford second homes in the Hamptons and can pay their children’s private school tuition, these alleged “smartest people in the room” have a fairly large incentive to “miss” or “ignore” major scandals.

And millions-of-people-dying-early is a far bigger scandal than those two financial scandals, scandals that would impact virtually every business, all of which might be devastated if the truth came out.

It’s just much easier to leave certain stories be.

One can only assume the life insurance companies are raising their policy premiums by huge percentages and these companies have been assured fellow “club members” will take care of them even if they are paying XX percent more in death benefits.

It’s also a given that the analysts and reporters know what stories not to report.

Anyway, some of this conjecture must explain how a potentially Holocaust-level or War type casualty event … isn’t even a “story.”

You’ve got to know what The Current Thing is …

I figured out this would remain a non-story by simply understanding what “The Current Thing” was and that any scandalous Current Thing could never be exposed. Too many people, businesses and organizations would suffer great harm if this thing called “the truth” was ever fully and definitively exposed.

Another post I’ve made many times is this one: The key to perpetrating a massive conspiracy is to actually recruit as many “stakeholders” as possible.

When all the key players have “skin in the game” (and could all go down together), the probability any of these entities will play “whistleblower” and throw other club members under the bus is practically nil.

So here it is in late June 2023 and “massive deaths” caused by the vaccines and other iatrogenic reasons is still not an “official” story (read: one reported by The New York Times or Washington Post).

Anyone can test my prediction or my “confidence level” in said prediction. Simply save this column. Twelve months from now we can re-visit this topic.

Prediction: By June 2024, excess death numbers will still be stunning and this will still be a story no members of the mainstream media or government committees have investigated or exposed.

The “authorized narrative” is that the vaccines were “safe and effective.” Protecting this epically-false narrative is the “most important thing” to the Powers that Be. This means said narrative WILL be protected.

(I do admit the “effective” part of the “safe and effective” mantra has been debunked, but even this hasn’t mattered to anyone who spouted this criminal disinformation a million times).

All of this written, I greatly appreciate Ed Dowd and others for trying to bring this scandal to the world’s attention. The work of Dowd and other noble writers has no doubt prevented many people from getting “boosters,” which will end up saving many lives.

It’s not Ed Dowd’s fault one of his predictions was wrong.

It’s really our fault as citizens for allowing every important institution in the world to become so thoroughly corrupt and captured.

But this is the key point to always remember: If every important organization is a stake-holder in protecting a massive lie, don’t expect any big truth bombs to detonate.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

House Weaponization Committee Concludes DHS Agency Colluded With Big Tech To Facilitate Censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 28, 2023

With the publishing of a new report, a House Judiciary subcommittee disclosed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been engaging in censoring online content and conducting domestic surveillance in conjunction with Big Tech companies and other private groups.

This report, released on Monday, is titled “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans.”

CISA, founded in just 2018, was originally envisioned as an auxiliary agency focused on safeguarding critical infrastructure and fending off cybersecurity threats.

The report asserts that CISA morphed into “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media” by 2020. It accuses CISA of systematically reporting social media posts that it believed disseminated “disinformation.”

Adding to the alarming developments, the report unveils that by 2021, CISA established a formal “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation” (MDM) team. In the ensuing years, the agency faced escalating criticism from both public and private quarters, which led it to clandestinely downplay its activities by portraying itself as solely informational in nature.

The report particularly highlights an instance in which, following lawsuits from Missouri and Louisiana contesting CISA’s censorship tactics, the agency allegedly sidestepped the allegations by transferring its censorship undertakings to a non-profit organization, the Center for Internet Security (CIS), which it financially supported.

Further, the report divulges an email from a CISA advisory board member and former assistant general counsel for the CIA, Suzanne Spaulding, to her colleague, revealing concerns about the potential public discovery and scrutiny of their activities.

CISA has been accused of attempting to obscure its activities in response to growing scrutiny, such as erasing mentions of its domestic surveillance and censorship operations from its website.

The report argues that CISA’s focus on “malinformation” is worrisome. The agency defines malinformation as factual information used out of context to mislead or manipulate, but the subcommittee report challenges whose context is being used, and questions the government’s role in deciding this context.

Despite these allegations, CISA denies any involvement in censoring or facilitating censorship.

With the unveiling of this report, questions surrounding the extent of CISA’s involvement in domestic surveillance and online censorship have become central in a broader debate on the role of government agencies in relation to civil liberties and constitutional rights.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Celebrities and Online Personalities Sign Letter, Telling Social Media Platforms To Crackdown On “Hate”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2023

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has rounded up a bunch of celebrities to bolster a letter to social media platforms, asking them to censor “hate” towards the LGBT community.

With the signatures of over 250 celebrities and community leaders, the organization has directed its fervor toward the giants of the digital world. Addressing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.

In the public letter the organization charged that the platforms were nurturing platforms where “high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts” proliferated. A group of celebrities, including the likes of actors Elliot Page and Jameela Jamil, alongside singer Ariana Grande, lent their ink to this plea.

The offending content, as per the letter, was outlined as speech that makes what they allege are falsehoods about gender-based procedures for minors, specifically “content that spreads malicious lies about medically necessary healthcare for trans youth.”

“Directing hate toward queer and trans public figures online is a vehicle to promote hate and violence against all LGBTQ people,” the letter states. “This translates to real-world harm.”

GLAAD’s post elaborated, saying, “This is leading to real-life harm, like death threats against healthcare providers and violence against trans and LGBTQ people.”

The group also complained about “Anti-trans hate speech, including targeted misgendering, deadnaming, and hate-driven tropes.”

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Palestinian journalist wins wrongful termination appeal against DW

The Cradle | June 29, 2023

Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Farah Maraqa on 28 June announced winning an appeal filed by Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) media network over her unlawful dismissal for alleged “antisemitism.”

The decision comes nine months after the German judiciary ruled that her dismissal by state-owned broadcaster DW on charges of anti-Semitism was “legally unjustified,” which the German broadcaster appealed.

“It is a relief that the judge ruled in Farah’s favor and held Deutsche Welle accountable for this illegal dismissal,” Giovanni Fassina, director of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which advocates for the legal rights of Palestinians in Europe, said at the time.

In February 2022, DW fired Maraqa alongside five other Arab journalists – all Palestinian or Lebanese – accusing them of “antisemitism” in social media posts and articles they had written for outside publications.

The charges were based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial extended definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land and the system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians.

The definition, which Germany adopted, has been criticized as a means of silencing pro-Palestinian support and dissent against Israeli policies.

In May 2021, DW reportedly sent an internal two-page memo to employees banning them from using terminology such as “colonialism” and “apartheid” when describing Israel.

Over the past few years, western outlets have come under fire for firing or suspending Arab journalists over alleged “antisemitism.”

In March, France24 suspended four journalists from their Arabic branch at the behest of the pro-Israel media monitoring organization, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

Last October, the New York Times (NYT) fired Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salam over social media posts supporting Palestinian resistance factions.

The freelance journalist was dismissed after the Israeli lobby organization Honest Reporting alerted the NYT of his posts.

Social media giants like WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok have also been accused of silencing or “purging” Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the occupied West Bank who report on Israeli war crimes.

Furthermore, Google employees accused the tech giant of censuring them for protesting against a controversial $1.2 billion contract signed with Israel to provide the country with advanced artificial intelligence (AI), which many fear will worsen human rights abuses in Palestine.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 2 Comments

Iran takes Canada to court for violating sovereign immunity

The Cradle | June 29, 2023

Iran has filed a legal case against Canada at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the pretext of violating Iran’s sovereign state immunity by designating the country as a “sponsor of terror.”

The Hague-based court confirmed in a statement that Iran launched the case against Canada on 26 June.

A statement on the official website of the Iranian government said that Canada presented these accusations under “false and wrongful” pretenses.

In the press release by the ICJ, Iran contends that “Canada has adopted and implemented a series of legislative, executive, and judicial measures against Iran and its property [since 2012] in breach of its international obligations.”

Iran argues that “as a sovereign state, it is entitled to sovereign immunities from jurisdiction and from enforcement under customary international law” and requests the Court to adjudge and declare that “by failing to respect the immunities of Iran and its property, Canada has violated its international obligations towards Iran.”

In 2021, a Canadian court awarded 107 million Canadian dollars ($84m) to the families of six victims who were killed when Iranian forces shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight near Tehran in January 2020, which was labeled an “act of terrorism” by Ontario judge Edward Belobaba.

Iranian officials have said the shooting of the plane was an accident caused by “human error” in operating a surface-to-air defense system due to being on “high alert” following retaliatory strikes on US bases for the killing of Top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

In May of 2021, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Saeed Khatibzadeh described the application of Canadian judicial procedures as a “quite political approach,” saying: “the Canadian court, following the US courts, first identifies the accused, then resorts to any relevant or irrelevant information in public sources, especially cyberspace, to find a reason for its biased and predetermined mentality.”

Canada listed Iran as a “sponsor of terror” in 2012 and broke diplomatic ties as relations frayed over Tehran’s support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, its nuclear program, and its stance on Israel.

On 13 March, 2012, Canada amended section 6 of the State Immunity Act (SIA) to remove the immunity from the jurisdiction of a foreign State listed by Canada as a supporter of terrorism, the application for the legal case states.

Following the amendment, section 6.1 of the SIA provides that “a foreign state that is set out on the list referred to in subsection (2) is not immune from the jurisdiction of a court in proceedings against it for its support of terrorism on or after January 1, 1985.”

The ICJ was set up after World War II to resolve disputes between UN member states. Its judgments are final but can take years.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | 1 Comment

EU to renew Iran sanctions under defunct nuclear deal: Report

The Cradle | June 29, 2023

European officials recently informed Iran that they plan to renew EU ballistic missile sanctions set to expire in October, according to sources in the know that spoke with Reuters.

The renewal will be conducted under the parameters of the defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which officials say Iran “violated” by moving forward with developing its nuclear energy program after the US unilaterally exited the deal in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions.

Other reasons the EU is giving for renewing the sanctions are Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine and “the possibility of Iran transferring ballistic missiles to Moscow.”

“The Iranians have been told quite clearly [of plans to keep the sanctions], and now the question is what, if any, retaliatory steps the Iranians might take and [how] to anticipate that,” a western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The decision to uphold the sanctions would be the first significant instance of the E3 group of nations — France, Germany, and the UK — not abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal.

EU mediator Enrique Mora, who co-ordinates talks to restore the 2015 deal, raised the issue of keeping the sanctions when he met Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani in Doha on 21 June, but the latter reportedly refused to discuss the matter, according to an unnamed Iranian official who spoke with Reuters.

“Maintaining sanctions, in any capacity and form, will not hinder Iran’s ongoing advancements,” the Iranian official is quoted as saying. “It serves as a reminder that the west cannot be relied upon and trusted.”

Since 2017, the Islamic Republic has significantly advanced with its ballistic missile and satellite launch programs. The country last month made waves by revealing a hypersonic missile with a potential 2,000-km range.

This progress, on top of Tehran’s enrichment of uranium at 60 percent purity and a China-brokered détente with Saudi Arabia, set off alarms in the west and pushed Washington to begin ‘de-escalation talks‘ with Iran.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

China: Guantanamo prison just tip of iceberg in US’ ‘deplorable’ record of rights violations

Press TV – June 29, 2023

China says the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is just the tip of the iceberg in human rights violations committed by the United States, weeks after the United Nations slammed Washington for inhumane treatment of prisoners at the notorious offshore military prison.

In February, UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain granted unprecedented access to the US-run detention center in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay and released her report on her four-day visit to the infamous prison on Monday.

Ni Aolain, who became the first UN human rights investigator allowed to visit the camp, harshly criticized the White House in her scathing report for continuing to subject the 30 men held at the prison, commonly known as Gitmo, to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, when asked to comment on the 23-page report, said at a regular briefing that for the past two decades, the Gitmo has repeatedly been exposed for its abuses, but Washington persistently refused to shut it down despite making promises to do so.

“In the past two decades and more, it has been revealed many times that inmates were abused in the detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay, causing outrage in the international community. The US has promised time and again to close the detention center, yet till today dozens of individuals are still imprisoned in the facility at the Guantanamo Bay and only few of them have been indicted or convicted,” she said.

“Over the decades, the US has set up ‘black sites’ in at least 54 countries and regions in the name of the “war on terror” to secretly detain ‘suspected terrorists’, carry out arbitrary detention and use torture to extort confessions.

“The detention center at the Guantanamo Bay is just the tip of the iceberg. The ‘black sites’ are a typical example of the US trampling on the rule of law and infringing on human rights,” Mao further said.

She also stressed that Washington needed to “earnestly reflect upon its deplorable record on human rights, apologize and provide reparation to the victims and hold those who authorized and inflicted tortures on detainees accountable.”

During her visit to the Guantanamo prison, Ni Aolain, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queens University in Belfast, met with a range of the 34 prisoners who were then detained. The number has now dropped to 30, including the five inmates accused of plotting the attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11.

“After two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound, and it’s ongoing. Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention,” she said at a press conference on Monday.

Ni Aolain, who visited the notorious prison as an independent UN monitor, did not, however, express harsh criticism for the fact that 19 of the 30 inmates had never been charged with any crime, some of whom have been held there for two decades, and only said their situation was a matter of “profound concern.”

The Gitmo opened in 2002 under the-then US president George W. Bush to held detainees captured during the so-called “war on terror” after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.

It became synonymous with prisoner abuse by the US in the early years of “war on terror”, gaining global notoriety for the widespread use of torture and other violations of human rights that took place in it.

Many detainees were reportedly subjected to psychological and physical abuse — including waterboarding, beating, exposure to deafening noise, and sleep and food deprivation — as part of their “enhanced interrogation,” the accounts of which were gradually leaked to the outside world by the few lawyers who visited the prison and the inmates who have since been released.

Washington’s promises of closing down the site go back to the first tenure of former President Barack Obama, between 2009 and 2013.

Obama had made the closing of Guantanamo one of his top priorities and issued an executive order to do so soon after taking office in 2009. However, he failed to achieve that goal by the end of his second term in the face of stiff opposition in Congress. His successor, Donald Trump, rescinded Obama’s order to close Guantanamo.

Officials of President Joe Biden say they aim to close the infamous prison but the detention facility remains in operation as the administration has transferred several detainees in recent years.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Nicaragua takes complaint to UN over US refusal to pay compensation for backing death squad

Press TV – June 28, 2023

Nicaragua has lodged a complaint with the UN against the US for its refusal to comply with a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering it to compensate Managua for its support of a notorious death squad in the 1980s.

The announcement was made by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega at a ceremony in Managua commemorating the 37th anniversary of the ruling by the International Court of Justice, which condemned the US for carrying out military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua.

“We will go to court to accuse the United States so that they repair the damage they have done to Nicaragua as much as possible,” said Ortega.

He said the decision was made despite friendly nations advising him that taking the matter to the UN will be an exercise in futility.

“When we talked about going to court to sue the United States, even brotherly nations, friendly nations, told us: that is a lost case, you will not even be able to make any progress there in court.”

“The Court has undoubtedly been a point of reference in the battle for independence, for the sovereignty of Nicaragua, in the face of the recourse of the powers, of the use of force, we have defended ourselves with the force of law.”

The Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry has written a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres, calling on the body to make the US pay its long-overdue debt to Nicaragua.

The United States has long been accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Nicaragua, as well as many other Latin America nations.

President Ortega came to power in 1979 with the victory of the Sandinista Revolution that toppled US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza.

Then-US President Ronald Reagan, citing the threat of an expansion of Cuban and Soviet influence in the region, signed off on US financing for a right-wing militia, called the Contras, to launch cross-border attacks against the Sandinistas.

The ICJ in 1986 held that the US had violated international law by supporting the Contras and by mining Nicaragua’s harbors.

The United States refused to participate in the proceedings, and following the judgment withdrew from the ICJ.

The US also blocked enforcement of the judgment by the UN Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from receiving any compensation.

Ortega, who helped depose the Somoza dictatorship in the late 1970s, has been in power for 16 consecutive years. He served as president in the 1980s before losing power in 1990. He, however, staged a stunning comeback in 2007.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

EU delivers ‘neither peace nor prosperity’ – Hungarian PM

RT | June 29, 2023

The Hungarian government has blasted the EU, declaring that in its current state it brings “neither peace nor prosperity” to member states. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was attending a summit of bloc leaders in Brussels, offered a similar assessment of the bloc.

Orban’s position was relayed via his government’s official Facebook account on Tuesday, the first day of the high-profile two-day gathering in Brussels. The statement apparently came from an interview that the Hungarian leader had given to the German media earlier in the week.

Asked by the German tabloid Bild whether he could explain the rising popularity of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing political party, the prime minister cited disillusionment with the EU as a possible cause.

“The European Union was created for two reasons. The first is peace – and now there is war. The second is prosperity – the economy is in an increasingly worrying state, it is difficult to maintain competition and it is increasingly difficult to ensure prosperity for people,” Orban argued.

“That is why I see the so-called protest parties gaining strength everywhere in Europe. I’m not talking about Germany alone, I’m talking about Europe in general,” he added.

Hungary stands out among EU members for having consistently criticized the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict. Arming and training Kiev’s troops and punishing Russia with economic sanctions have not brought a truce any closer and have caused serious damage to the bloc itself, according to Budapest.

Ukraine is one of the top items on the agenda of the EU summit. The bloc’s leaders are expected to offer some form of security guarantees to Kiev and provide assurances of continued military assistance.

Orban told Bild that Ukraine has no chance to win against Russia regardless of the amount of Western money that is poured in, because eventually Kiev will run out of manpower.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The disgrace of Australia’s pandemic betrayal

By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | June 27, 2023

What exactly do you do when your country betrays you and disgraces itself before the world?  When you find out that it is run by thugs and goons? When just about no one in the political class has the moral compass and the spine to stand up for you? When your fellow citizens turn on you if you dared to question things?

If you are John Stapleton, a retired Aussie journalist, you write a 450-page book about it. You call it Australia Breaks Apart. You write uncomprehendingly, elegantly, passionately, even elegiacally, ashamed, still shaking your head in disbelief, three years after a ho-hum virus called by the powers-that-be ‘Covid’ reached our shores.

Surely these words could be written about just about every country in the world, you might think. Two quick responses – we were the worst, and surely we, of all places, should have been above all this.

Whether the book explains to international readers how this all happened, I’m not sure. I am far from certain that anyone could explain it. But let us explore what the book does do.

The title suggests one of the main themes, that of division and enmity. There were members of the dobber class, the Covid winners (largely in the employ of government or corporates), the lap-top class, the blatherers. People on ‘the other side’ were routinely demonised. Granny killers, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis and so on. Many of these folks were morally upright, seasoned professionals, not rent-a-crowd ideologues. Australia did indeed break apart, literally as well as socially. State and territory borders were closed by spooked politicians on a whim and for very few Covid cases. Fear and derangement were everywhere. Subjugation.

There are things in the book that even those who lived through the nightmare will not have known. These matters should have been known, and most likely would have been, if not for the cover-ups and the wilful non-reportage of stories in the interest of defending ‘the narrative’.

The book tells not only the story of Covid policy excesses, but also of a resistance movement that grew into something astonishing. This underground, though in plain sight, movement of angry men and women became hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It has remained invisible only because the quisling Covid class and their corrupt media puppets refused to acknowledge that it even existed, other than being a ‘tiny’ bunch of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists to be ignored.

John Stapleton doesn’t ignore them. He tells their story. This makes his book unique. The expected villains are all there, in graphic detail – Victoria premier Daniel Andrews, a truly appalling political figure, the thug police, the slippery bob-each-way villain-prime minister Scott Morrison, the other premiers and chief ministers, the unaccountable bureaucrats, the public health gauleiters, the Pharma-funded academics, the media shills. But what emerges in the book is an account of how resistance to tyranny can form and grow. This will be an invaluable resource when the medical totalitarians come for us next time, as surely they will.

The story is told through the eyes of Old Alex (the author), an old-time ‘pressman’ with a nose for a story and an unquenchable desire to unearth the truth. And, importantly, an open mind and no corporate constraints. Like many Covid dissidents, Stapleton made new friends during the Covid years, just about all of them independent truth-tellers. Citizen journalists. And he lost all sense of mainstream journalism having a soul and a purpose. Silent journalists were high up on Stapleton’s list of Covid criminals to be despised. But the stories of new voices and new connections among the refuseniks show the book to be about heroes as well as villains.

Journalism had very few dissidents who spoke out. Nor did the public servants or politicians or the police, but there were a few brave souls among the latter (for example) who broke ranks and saw Covid police brutality as a hill on which (professionally) to die. There was Andrew Cooney in New South Wales and Krystle Mitchell in Victoria.   

These brave hearts were not willing to go along to get along, as rubber bullets penetrated backs, grandmothers were shoved to the pavement then pepper-sprayed, and the heads of mentally challenged innocents were smashed against concrete floors in downtown Melbourne. These stories of fascist policing were systematically smothered by the legacy media and the protesters pilloried and defamed.

The book details so much more. The scandal of the quarantine camps, for example. Those gazillion-dollar, Orwellian white elephants. The bullshit Covid-speak pronouncements from on high. The thousands upon thousands of (often massive) fines for Covid misdemeanours. The National Cabinet mutual protection narratives. All based on lies. Deadly lies. Some of the Covid class still promote the shots. Amid the ever-rising, murky waters of excess deaths. Including, perhaps, that of the Australian legend Shane Warne. Deaths still unexamined by the Covid class.

We need this book, and those like it. More straight history than exposé, but no less significant for this. True crime reporting, if you will. And if you didn’t hate the Covid class before you open the book, I guarantee you will by the end, if not sooner.

There are those who might say, why dredge it all up again since we have ‘moved on’? Well, among those that Covid refuseniks detest the most, the ‘let’s just move on’ types rank pretty high. This book should be for them to read and to reflect upon. To contemplate the massive pain caused, and to ponder the fact that it is all likely to happen again, what with the great reset people and the pandemic planning industry already on high alert for the first opportunity to crank up the machine again. Moving on, not holding ‘them’, the Covid class, to account, will only make the next instalment all the more likely.

Oh yes, for those who lived through the nightmare, John Stapleton’s gripping book, while reviving painful memories in great detail, is a must-read account of the evil that men (and women) do. It is a thundering reminder, too, of the need for Covid accountability, and a spur to further action among a new Coalition of the Willing minded to pursue it, and who simply must not give up the fight in the face of performative Covid class insouciance. It is ironic, too, that Australia Breaks Apart has been published just as the stampede for the exit door by Covid’s decision-makers has reached a crescendo.

In the dying days of the narrative, there was a national election, with one party of despised Covideers replaced by another, and around a third of now largely unrepresented voters, many of them the deplorables featured in Stapleton’s book, refusing to support either major party. The great political escape raises the question, was all the protesting worth it? I recently put a similar question to Ian Plimer, the doyen of Australian climate sceptics – why does he keep writing books when the climate writing seems to be on the wall? He replied that it was critical that when the history of all this comes to be written one day, there will be a record of the madness.

Buy this book, this chronicle of the new totalitarianism, the definitive account of Covid Australia, then circulate it widely among those might think it didn’t really matter what they did to us. A short review cannot do justice to this deeply authentic, often transcendent and, indeed, magisterial work. An astonishing achievement. An Australian story.

See also:

Essential Reading for the Dissident, the Disenfranchised, the Disillusioned

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries