Pfizer, Moderna Spend Millions on Ads Featuring Catchy Phrases and Celebrities to Push COVID Shots
By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | November 22, 2023
Facing dramatic stock market declines and growing resistance to their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna are running upbeat TV commercials with jingles and celebrities to push COVID-19 vaccination just in time for the holidays.
The 30-second Pfizer commercial features a cheery, driving tune and smiling celebrities Martha Stewart, singer-songwriter John Legend, professional soccer player and progressive activist Megan Rapinoe, singer-songwriter Charlie Puth and football star Travis Kelce.
All but Rapinoe flash Pfizer’s trademark blue band-aids on a shoulder showing they got Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot.
“Got it,” Stewart says, as the Pfizer ad copy reads, “This season’s updated COVID-19 shots are here,” and “Ask your healthcare provider if getting your COVID shot with your flu shot is right for you.”
“Got yours?” is the Pfizer tagline.
Moderna’s 60-second TV spot wants its audience to “Spikevax that body.”
Spikevax is the brand name of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. It refers to the artificial spike protein the vaccine is designed to stimulate in the body to allegedly trigger protective antibodies to the virus.
The commercial opens with an older man playing table tennis accompanied by a narrator, who says, “When it comes to your health … you ping and pong that body.”
The spot proceeds through a variety of ordinary people practicing their passions, including a woman blending a vegetable shake (“you green that body”), a man plunging into an ice bucket (“you plunge that body”), and a man and woman playing chess (“you brainpower that body).”
It concludes with, “You flu shot that body, and now, you Spikevax that body. Because even though the pandemic is over, COVID-19 isn’t.”
The pharmaceutical trade press portrayed the ads as an attempt by Pfizer and Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccines were injected into more than 5 billion people worldwide during the pandemic, to reverse dramatic losses in their stock prices in recent weeks.
“With hardly any Americans signing up to receive the updated COVID-19 shot, Pfizer is pulling out all the stops to increase uptake,” said Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Mercola reported that Pfizer paid Kansas City Chiefs tight end Kelce an outsized $20 million to promote the drugmaker’s COVID-19 shots, compared to his $5 million-per-year total endorsements from McDonald’s, Papa John’s, Walgreens, Nike and Tide, and was trying to capitalize on the football star’s recent surge in popularity as he dates pop star Taylor Swift.
Other medical trade journals debated whether celebrity endorsements like Kelce’s will actually help or hurt Pfizer’s sales and stock price.
Critic: COVID shot ads don’t meet FDA requirements for biologic side effects
But doctors and scientists interviewed by The Defender were appalled that Pfizer and Moderna, and the governments and media that support them, would continue to push the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines blamed for more than 36,000 deaths reported to the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
A large Canadian study of 17 countries estimated the COVID-19 vaccines killed approximately 17 million people around the world.
Dr. Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist and author with his wife Ginger of “COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey,” said the Pfizer and Moderna commercials draw the audience into “a never-never land of fakers.”
“This is a combination of extreme fraud and sham,” Breggin told The Defender. “We now know from multiple scientific studies that there was a broad panoply of adverse effects to the vaccines as there are with some very potent drugs. That resulted in death in some people, and with more reports to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] of deaths than all the other vaccines in the world combined.”
Breggin, a frequent expert witness in pharmaceutical cases involving dangerous drugs and co-author of the bestseller “Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Today’s Most Controversial Drug,” said the Moderna ad makes a passing reference to possible myocarditis side effects while the Pfizer spot names no possible dangers at all.
“They’re not like ordinary drug commercials,” he said, adding that neither meets the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirement for describing biologic side effects.
Pfizer outspent competitors on digital, TV ads for COVID shots
Big Pharma advertising is big business in the U.S., the only country in the world with the exception of New Zealand that allows direct pharmaceutical advertising to consumers.
Spending on the marketing of prescription drugs, health services, laboratory tests and disease awareness grew from $17.7 billion in 1997 to $29.9 billion in 2016, with the largest increases coming in direct-to-consumer spending, which nearly tripled to 32% of all medical marketing spending.
Between Jan. 1 and May 6, 2021, Pfizer spent $21.5 million on digital advertising alone to push its COVID-19 vaccine, while Johnson & Johnson spent $29.1 million marketing its COVID-19 vaccine.
Big Pharma TV ad spending grew 8% in 2022, reaching a total of $4.05 billion. Much of that was “COVID vaccine-related television commercials” with “companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech” spending “large amounts of TV dollars on campaigns highlighting ‘getting back to normal,’ featuring loved ones reuniting after years apart,” according to Fierce Pharma.
Pfizer was the biggest drug-ad spender at this year’s Oscars, shelling out an estimated $5.7 million for the most expensive spot in the televised event on its new COVID-19 drug ad: “If it’s COVID, it’s Paxlovid.”
Pfizer also aired the second-most-expensive TV ad at the Oscars, spending an estimated $3.8 million on another COVID-19 ad using “star power to emphasize risk factors and COVID-19 in [its] latest vaccine ad push” featuring celebrities including Pink, Questlove, Michael Phelps and Jean Smart.
The fourth-biggest advertising spender at the Oscars was the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which spent an estimated $1.9 million on a 30-second “awareness ad” with no pharma company mentioned “to get people to consider getting the latest COVID boosters amid ‘fading protection.’”
Despite nearly around-the-clock media reports and advertising by Big Pharma and governments urging people to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine and boosters, Pfizer’s September 2023 rollout of its updated 2023-24 COVID-19 shot suffered “abysmal” uptake, with only 7.1% of adults and 2.1% of children receiving the updated COVID-19 shot as of Oct. 14, according to Mercola.
Dr. Pierre Kory was encouraged that vast numbers of Americans, a majority of whom took the experimental mRNA COVID-19 shots during the pandemic, are waking up to the fact the mRNA technology is dangerous and its risk-reward benefit presents potentially frightening risk with little or no benefit, especially for children.
“It appears to me that pharma companies are now desperately marketing the vaccines to consumers via TV ads,” he said. “It looks like their previously winning strategy of fear-mongering via public health agency proclamations and widespread news media behavioral psychology ‘nudging’ tactics is now failing.”
Mike Capuzzo is the managing editor of The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.
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.
Pfizer sues Poland over Covid-19 vaccine
RT | November 23, 2023
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has escalated its feud with Poland over excess Covid-19 vaccine doses that were ordered under a massive contract with the European Union. The company is suing the country over what it claims is an unfulfilled contract for Covid-19 vaccines.
Warsaw was locked into buying tens of millions of doses under a controversial contract the European Commission had signed with Pfizer in 2021 on behalf of EU nations. Pfizer is demanding 6 billion zloty ($1.5 billion) in compensation for 60 million doses that Poland’s government declined, after it stopped taking delivery of the jabs in April 2022.
The entire bloc wound up ordering 1.1 billion doses under the contract, saddling EU states with a vaccine glut as the Covid-19 pandemic waned. The EU prosecutor’s office has already announced an investigation into the procurement process amid allegations of corruption and secret backroom deals while Polish Health Minister Katarzyna Sojka has warned other EU states could be next to face prosecution.
Warsaw has questioned the controversial role of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the Pfizer deal after it emerged she had for weeks privately communicated with the company’s CEO Albert Bourla during the contract negotiations. However, the European Commission claimed last year that her text messages with the big pharma boss on deals worth multiple billions of dollars executive could not be found.
The first hearing in Pfizer’s lawsuit is scheduled to take place in Brussels on December 6. Earlier this year the pharma giant offered to give the EU more time to complete its minimum vaccine purchases under the binding contract, but insisted that the bloc must pay in full for the contractually specified number of doses. Poland since refused to sign a revised EU agreement with the drugmaker.
Sojka told broadcaster TVN24 on Wednesday that there is some hope of resolving the Pfizer lawsuit “in a positive way.”
A Pfizer company spokesman told Politico however that the company decided to go forward with the lawsuit “following a prolonged contract breach and a period of discussions in good faith between the parties”.
Millions of Poles refused to receive Covid-19 vaccines, and Warsaw halted deliveries of the jabs as an influx of Ukrainian refugees in early 2022 strained the government’s finances.
Pfizer Sues Poland, Demanding Money for Undelivered and Unwanted COVID Vaccines.
BY IGOR CHUDOV | NOVEMBER 24, 2023
After achieving a modest 57% COVID vaccination rate and seeing the vaccines not live up to the promise, Poles refused additional Pfizer COVID vaccine doses around April 2022.
“At the end of last week, we used the force majeure clause and informed both the European Commission and the main vaccine producer that we are refusing to take these vaccines at the moment and we are also refusing to pay,” health minister Adam Niedzielski told private broadcaster TVN24.
“Indeed, the consequence of this will be a legal conflict, which is already taking place,” he said.
Poland cannot directly terminate the contract for the supply of vaccines as the parties to the contracts are the European Commission and manufacturers, he said.
The value of the contract for vaccine supplies to Poland up to the end of 2023 with one producer alone was worth over 6 billion zlotys ($1.4 billion), with over 2 billion zlotys of that for supply in 2022.
Pfizer said its agreement over the supply of its COVID-19 vaccine to European Union member states was with the EU Commission.
“Our discussions with Governments and the details of vaccine deliveries are confidential,” it added.
Somehow, Poland is a party to the EU/Pfizer contract that was kept confidential from the country but still obligates it to pay.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and EU’s Ursula von der Leyen negotiated the contract in secret. (see picture below)
Anyway, now in 2023, Pfizer filed a suit, suing Poland for the monies due under the contract that was confidential and unavailable for Poland to even look at.
How a party can be obligated to pay under a contract that could not ever be assented to due to secrecy is a mystery to me, but I guess the legal minds in Europe see it differently.
Pfizer is suing in Brussels because Polish courts cannot see the contract and are unlikely to be very receptive to enforcing a contract that the court can review.
According to Polish newspaper Gazeta Prawa, Pfizer brought the civil case before a Brussels court because the doses were purchased through EU joint procurement contracts, drawn up under Belgian law.
Can Poland, perhaps, bring forth some novel defenses?
Perhaps Poland can ask Pfizer to comment on the dramatic fall in fertility that Poland is experiencing.
Poland may ask its local courts to make Pfizer compensate Polish COVID vaccine victims. (fortunately, there are fewer of them compared to the vax-crazy countries).
Pictures of some of the Polish victims of Covid vaccines, beautiful healthy humans who never needed the “vaccine” and yet died from it, are displayed by their bereaved relatives:
ht tps://twitter.com/DominateREALITY/ status/1488214087259459584/photo/3
Can Pfizer explain, for example, why Sweden’s deaths continued to go up as the country was vaccinated, while Poland’s deaths went down after Poland refused COVID vaccines?
I am not an international lawyer, and I do not specialize in the enforceability of secret contracts that cannot even be seen by the parties which they obligate.
But I expect that Pfizer will lose.
A hard truth about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is finally dawning on the West
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 24, 2023
On November 16, the Wall Street Journal, one of the most prestigious and influential American media outlets, published an essay under the title “It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat.”
The authors, Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss, are influential representatives of America’s national security and international relations establishment. After a career in government service, Rumer now directs the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Weiss is Carnegie’s vice president for studies. This is an important text, and both its message and the timing of its publication matter.
The message is simple: “Putin” (by which they mean Russia) has “withstood the West’s best efforts” to roll back the military operation against Ukraine; Moscow’s political system has proven resilient and even become stronger; and “America and its allies” must now switch to a strategy of “containment.”
The timing is more complex. Clearly, the current Israeli war on Gaza – referred to as “tumult in the Middle East” – is one of three key factors. The other two are the approaching presidential elections in the US, and, of course, the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, by now acknowledged even in gung-ho outlets such as the British Daily Telegraph.
In addition, America’s hold over the non-Western majority of humanity is continuing to decline. China, in particular, is successfully resisting Washington’s pressure. Domestically, President Joe Biden’s government faces tough headwinds from both the official Republican opposition and a growing movement in the American street, where widespread and deep dissatisfaction with politics and the economy is now combining with an unprecedented groundswell of protest against US complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.
American polls are unambiguous. In September, even before the Middle East crisis, the Pew Research Center found that “Americans’ views of politics and elected officials” are now unusually and “unrelentingly negative, with little hope of improvement on the horizon.” By now, a majority of Americans also contradict the Biden administration – and the rest of almost the whole bipartisan political establishment – by wanting a cease fire in Gaza, while the number of those supporting Israel is decreasing quickly and significantly.
Against this background, this Wall Street Journal article clearly serves as an authoritative call for retrenchment. The object of this signal to retreat is the proxy war in Ukraine, that is, the single most aggressive, most risky, and most defeated US foreign policy strategy in the past two years (if we count from the moment Washington recklessly decided to stonewall Moscow’s clear warning as well as its urgent offer to find a grand bargain-style off-ramp in late 2021).
So far, so telling. But not surprising. For two reasons: the turn away from Ukraine is already fairly old non-news. Even mainstream media spotted the onset of a severe, probably terminal, bout of Ukraine fatigue well before the eruption of the fresh war in the Middle East. Secondly, the skeptical insights now given prominence in the Wall Street Journal as reasons to wrap up its proxy war investment in Ukraine are very old hat indeed. As a matter of fact, the most interesting question the essay – inadvertently – raises is what took you so long?
It would be tedious to address every point raised now in the Wall Street Journal. But since they all have in common that they have been predicted or were utterly predictable, a few highlights will do.
We learn, for instance, that the West’s attempts to isolate Russia have failed. Yet how hard was it to foresee that the Global South has no reason to follow the West except fear, and that fear is abating? And was it impossible to know in advance that China would answer “No, thank you very much,” when the US and the EU did two things at the same time: urge it to abandon Russia, which would have meant giving up Beijing’s single most important partnership, and signal that China would be next to be cut down to size? China, in essence, initially gestured a little in the direction of distancing itself from Russia, but the strategic fundamentals of the situation determined its real behavior and have become explicit by now. This outcome was predicted, not by every expert but by enough of them to matter.
We are also reminded that this is a war of attrition, i.e. one favoring Russia by its very nature. Even on CNN, we heard that much as early as April 2022, and the militantly Atlanticist Economist magazine admitted it in a backhanded way (using the euphemism “war of endurance”) in September.
Every war is a matter of competitive military performance. But in a war of attrition, three fundamental things matter the most: the size, productive and technological capacity, and resilience of the economy; the stability of the political system, including its real-life popularity and the elites’ legitimacy; and, of course, demography. The Wall Street Journal observes that Russia’s economy has “been buffeted but is not in tatters” (really understating its success, but let’s not quibble) and that its political system draws on “solid” popular support and elites that have neither rebelled nor deserted.
In the West at least, this was harder to predict. Not because of Russia being so difficult to decipher, but due to Western bias and groupthink, or, bluntly put, wishful thinking. Even before the post-February 2022 Ukraine war, Western politics, media, think tanks, and even academia have rewarded unrealistically pessimistic assessments of both Russia’s economy and political stability. Consider, as a pars pro toto, Western reactions to the Wagner rebellion in June. Quite a few of them predicted the imminent collapse of Russia into anarchy and civil war or, at least, a great and lasting domestic and international weakening of Russia. Yet none of this has come to pass.
The importance of this comprehensive, almost total failure of analysis and prediction lies in how typical it was, reflecting a dominant culture of politicized sloppiness vitiating Western thinking about Russia. A sloppiness that is all the more astonishing as precisely Moscow’s opponents cannot afford it without serious self-harm.
For self-harm is the main result. It is true that Russia has to bear some of the cost of Western shortsightedness. Obviously, Moscow as well would be better off if it could work with reasonable, if competitive, partners instead of irrationally hostile opponents who constantly underestimate Russia and overestimate themselves. Yet the West is suffering even more from its pattern of repetitive mistakes.
The costs of the proxy war in Ukraine demonstrate this fact, and not only in terms of arms and money, but of political prestige as well. Regarding the quantifiable costs, the US Congress, for instance, has approved $113 billion worth of aid for Ukraine since February 2022. Currently, a request for even more is turning into a major domestic headache for the Biden administration, and most likely, a defeat. The EU has shelled out almost €85 billion.
Of course, not all of these funds have really been appropriated, and much of them have really been fueling corruption in Ukraine or served the donors and especially their arms industries, as US politicians have repeatedly pointed out with proud cynicism. Yet the overall picture remains one of severe fiscal overstretch spent on a losing gamble. Add the self-inflicted losses that the EU’s economies in particular have incurred from their misconceived sanctions policy and the picture is grim. Add, moreover, how much the West will have to spend if it really wishes to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine, and the prospect turns catastrophic. Good luck, EU, with those membership plans.
In addition, intangibles matter as well. Clearly, “losing” Ukraine (which the West should not have tried to “own” in the first place) will reveal the bloc’s weakness more sharply than the failures in, for instance, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or Afghanistan. For two reasons. First, unlike these countries, Russia is a great power; that means it is in a position to exploit the Western setback. Moscow, put differently, is big enough to geopolitically counterattack.
Whether or when exactly it will do so, and what shape such a new “snapping back” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s metaphorical “rubber band” will take this time, remains to be seen. What is clear is that such payback is a realistic possibility. Secondly, the West is committed as never before, substantially and rhetorically, when trying to use Ukraine to reduce Russia. Hence, failing to do so exposes Western limits as never before. Rumer and Weiss are not naïve. They cannot say it – and maybe they can’t even quite think it – but in their heart of hearts they know that packaging this defeat as a mere change of strategy to “containment” will not fool anyone who does not want to be fooled.
It is good to finally see some hard facts appear prominently in mainstream Western debates. But it is not enough. For one thing, the West has to ask itself painful questions why it has stayed so obsessively one-sided for so long. Otherwise, the same pattern will be repeated in starting and waging the next war, for instance, against China or Iran. Secondly, a shift to “containment” will not repair the damage but merely stretch it out. What the West really needs is a complete rethinking of not merely its methods but its aims.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Microsoft’s ‘Democracy Forward’ Initiative Aims to Manipulate Our Society
Plans to To ‘Shape Information Ecosystem’, ‘Integrate Into Election Software’, ‘Provide Election Security’, and much more.
BY IGOR CHUDOV | NOVEMBER 24, 2023
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, is a software firm that developed and owns monopoly rights to the famous Windows operating system.
My readers might be surprised to learn that Microsoft’s interests go far beyond the computer software market and involve inserting itself into every aspect of many civil societies’ decision-making. Its plans affect the most essential parts of our collective, democratic decision-making in ways that raise multiple questions.
Take a look at its “Democracy Forward” initiative.
Microsoft is actively doing the following (direct quotes below):
- Deeply involves itself with elections in various countries, emphasizing what it calls “election integrity”.
- Provides software called ElectionGuard to be integrated with all election software systems to be used along with vote counting.
- Preserves and supports journalism (that aligns with Microsoft’s goals) and helps with pre-publication review (!).
- Helps local publications create business models for sustainable journalism, thus sponsoring journalism.
- Partners with NewsGuard, a “trust” service ranking news sources based on highly biased fact-checks.
All of the above efforts are highly partisan and quite peculiar.
Microsoft aims to control discourse and elections in many ways, allowing it to steer our decision-making process to benefit Microsoft or its leadership. Let’s consider their activities a bit more closely:
Microsoft aims to “support trustworthy news sources,” leaving the selection of outfits to be supported mainly to itself.
Working directly in five communities across the country, Microsoft, in partnership with community foundations and other organizations, is providing new tools, technology, and capacity to explore hybrid business models for sustainable journalism to journalists and newsrooms.
I am sure that newsrooms and journalists, generously supported by Microsoft, will gladly provide Microsoft-friendly sustainable journalism.
Microsoft also wants to vet content provenance to filter the content journalists would report. As it proudly explains further, it works on filtering all content, using AI to decide what is or is not trustworthy and, therefore, should not be reported on:
Some 93% of these campaigns included the creation of original content, 86% amplified pre-existing content and 74% distorted objectively verifiable facts. Recent reports also show that disinformation has been distributed about the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to deaths and hospitalizations of people seeking supposed cures that are actually dangerous.
Our readers are very familiar with Covid-19 fact-checking and news-vetting, which never allowed even a bit of criticism of Covid vaccines.
Microsoft is intent on embedding itself into the election process. Many webpages linked by the “Democracy Forward” initiative describe multi-pronged efforts to “help manage elections”.
First of all, Microsoft wants to be in the vote-counting and vote-ascertainment business:
ElectionGuard is a free open-source software developer toolkit (SDK) that, when integrated into a voting system, provides voters and the public with reassurance that votes were counted accurately.
Microsoft hopes that ElectionGuard will be part of every electronic voting system. It wants to track votes.
Microsoft’s plans for election involvement are massive. It also wants to manage cyber security of every election:
Today, we are announcing several steps our Defending Democracy program is taking to help our democratic processes become more resilient in light of all these threats. First, starting today, we’re expanding our Defending Democracy Program to include a new service, Election Security Advisors, which will give political campaigns and election officials hands-on help securing their systems and recovering from cyberattacks.
Microsoft also wants to host election officials, giving it unprecedented access to the daily activities of elections offices:
Second, we are expanding our AccountGuard threat notification service to cover the offices of U.S. election officials and the U.S. Congress as many are working remotely.
Microsoft also wants to host all campaigns, like the Kennedy for President campaign. (I hope RFK sees through this and hosts elsewhere)
Third, we are extending Microsoft 365 for Campaigns to state-level campaigns and parties. And, finally, we are publishing our public policy recommendations for securing elections, including ways to secure them while confronting the COVID-19 public health crisis.
It is very nice how Microsoft wants to manage both cyber security as well as vote counting. Is that a safe idea, though? Shouldn’t these functions be separated?
Microsoft sponsors and supports NewsGuard.
NewsGuard, an expansive initiative to vet news sources and dismiss “untrustworthy” news media, claims to be non-partisan but, in reality, is anything but. As this article explains, it bases its decisions on fact-checks by highly partisan fact-checkers.
NewsGuard, not surprisingly, has always been deferential to all interests of Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, such as climate change, vaccines, and so on.
We have a commercial, public company (Microsoft) that is in the business of selling software and business cloud services.
For some reason, that firm is showing strange interest in inserting itself into the most intimate parts of the democratic process. It seeks to subvert decision-making procedures that our democracies rely on, such as the selection of news outlets to be trusted, vetting of news stories, and sponsorships of journalists.
Microsoft wants to both manage election security as well as be involved in vote counting. This creates unique risks and concerns that we need to understand better.
I do not believe that in a good democratic system, we can allow one big company to be so deeply embedded in the fabric of our social process, essentially allowing it to control our news sources, our thinking, security of elections, and vote counting.
Israel lobby’s war on students won’t end pro-Palestine activism
By Yves Engler | November 24, 2023
The Israel lobby’s contempt for student democracy is striking. In their bid to defend apartheid and genocide they are willing to sue, fabricate, blackmail and more.
Recently, McGill students voted for the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine. In the largest referendum turnout in Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history, 78.7% of undergraduates called on the university administration to denounce Israel’s “genocidal bombing campaign” against Gaza. The resolution also called on McGill to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”
Before the election was completed the genocide lobby had already demanded the student’s vote be ignored. Simultaneously, they pressed McGill’s administration to condemn the resolution and demand SSMU jettison the results. If the student society ratified the results, the administration announced that it would terminate its Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU, which regulates fees, use of name and other matters between the university and student union.
The day after the voting results were announced, but before SSMU had a chance to ratify the resolution, B’nai B’rith brought a legal case to the Quebec Superior Court against it. An unnamed student claimed the resolution was discriminatory and the judge agreed to consider the case. As such, SSMU is restricted from ratifying or implementing the policy until after March 24 when the court will adjudicate the matter. Backed by a well-resourced outside organization, a single individual has been allowed to suppress the overwhelming will of students.
The Israel lobby followed a similar playbook 18 months ago when 71% of McGill undergraduates supported a Palestine Solidarity Policy, which called for boycotting “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians.”
Before students voted on the Palestine Solidarity Policy Israel activists sought an injunction from SSMU’s Judicial Board to block the vote. After the policy was supported the administration, under Zionist lobby group pressure, threatened to terminate its Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU. This led SSMU’s unelected judicial board to reject the constitutionality of the Palestine Solidarity Policy.
Not satisfied with their undemocratic victory, B’nai Brith backed a lawsuit against SSMU, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and McGill’s administration. The Jewish advocacy organization sponsored Jonathan Fried’s bid to have the provincial court block McGill students from being able to collectively take action in support of Palestinian rights. A New York transplant, Fried sought to have Québec’s Superior Court prevent McGill students from exercising their democratic rights in the hopes it would protect a violent, colonial, system in the Middle East.
When the Palestine Solidarity policy passed in March 2022 its opponents highlighted the fact that only 17% of eligible voters cast ballots. But participation more than doubled in the recent referendum — with the proportion of students supporting Palestine increasing — yet the suppression continues.
What’s taking place at McGill’s is egregious but Israel lobby groups have pursued similar policies at other universities. They’ve recently launched lawsuits against Concordia, Queen’s, Toronto Metropolitan, University of British Columbia and York for purported “antisemitism”. They’ve also pushed university administrators to condemn student groups and succeeded in having them reprimand or dismiss medical and nursing students as well as university chaplains and sexual assault centre staff for opposing genocide. At the University of British Columbia, the Jewish Zionist group Hillel was recently caught creating falsely attributed stickers in a bid to discredit the Social Justice Centre opposition to genocide.
An important part of the apartheid lobby’s power within universities is that administrations are obsessed with fundraising and Jewish Zionists donate large sums. Israel lobby activists constantly raise the specter of withdrawing funds from universities that don’t clampdown on students. On November 10 Liberal MP Anthony Hausefather “encouraged donors to contact” Concordia’s administration to pressure them to suppress Palestine solidarity. Ten days earlier he “demanded that university administrators crack down on antisemitism on campus or lose funding.”
Suing, seeking to intimidate students and labeling opposition to genocide “antisemitism” is a tacit admission that you can’t make the case for Israel. Unable to win the argument, the apartheid lobby increasingly relies on smears and legal action. But anti-democratic maneuvers can only stunt Palestine solidarity for so long. It can’t hide the fact that Israel has lost control of the narrative with the younger generation.
Facebook greenlit ads inciting violence against Palestinians
The Cradle | November 24, 2023
The Intercept revealed on 21 November that Facebook has allowed incendiary advertisements that promote violence against Palestinians to appear on its platform; more specifically, several ads calling for a “Holocaust for the Palestinians.”
Even though such derogatory phrases are a direct violation of Facebook’s policies, ads containing phrases such as “wiping out Gazan women and children” were able to pass through moderation filters.
Nadim Nashif, the founder of 7amleh, a Palestinian organization specializing in social media research and advocacy, remarked that green lighting of these advertisements represents yet another misstep by Meta in its dealings with Palestinians, adding that “throughout the crisis, we have seen a continued pattern of Meta’s clear bias and discrimination against Palestinians.”
Advertisements in Hebrew and Arabic, breaching Facebook and Meta’s guidelines, were submitted. Some of these ads overtly promoted violence, explicitly urging the killing of Palestinian civilians.
The initiative to scrutinize Facebook’s automated content moderation system arose after Nashif noticed an advertisement on Facebook blatantly advocating for the assassination of Palestinian rights advocate Paul Larudee.
This promoted content bypassed Facebook’s automated systems to filter out dangerous material. Even though the advertisement was eventually taken down after a complaint was lodged, it raised serious concerns about how such explicit calls for murder, clearly against Facebook’s policies, managed to get approved for display on the platform.
The advertisement calling for the murder of the Palestinian rights advocate was sponsored by a far-right group known as Ad Kan, established by a former Israeli military official.
Over 90% of pro-Palestinian content deleted since Oct. 7 on social media following Israel’s request
The New Arab | November 22, 2023
Social networking sites, mostly Meta-owned, have deleted thousands of pro-Palestinian posts since the outbreak of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, in response to Tel Aviv’s request to do so.
The Israeli Attorney General’s Office has sent approximately 9,500 requests since October 7 to Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – as well as the video-sharing app TikTok, to remove content related to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, according to a recent report published by Forbes.
As a result, around 94 percent of that content has been deleted, digital researcher Mona Shttayeh said in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher, citing the report.
The number of requests to delete such content has increased since the report’s publication, she said.
Shtayyeh said that it is “impossible” to comprehend the magnitude of the large number of Israeli requests to restrict Palestinian content, adding that the number of demands has increased tenfold since Israel’s onslaught on the besieged strip, which has killed over 14,000 Palestinians began.
Last month, Instagram had deleted and later reinstated the Eye on Palestine account, which has been a source of on-the-ground images and videos in Gaza.
Prior to the war, pro-Palestinian content already experienced censorship, restrictions and shadow-banning. In 2021, Facebook was accused by activists for censoring Palestine-related posts on its platform on Israel’s military assault in Gaza and protests against forced expulsions of Sheikh Jarrah families in the same year. The social networking giant was then investigated, and found guilty of violating Palestinian human rights in documenting Israeli atrocities.
Last year, in 2022, prominent Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid said she was shadow-banned when attempting to post Palestinian content relating to the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Instagram Stories feature.
Shttayeh also stressed that incitement and hate speech against Palestinians on social media also increased as Israel’s military campaign in Gaza began.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian censorship online could witness a significant increase following the Knesset’s approval of a draft law banning the consumption of terrorist publications earlier this month.
Digital advocacy group 7amleh told The New Arab in a press release that the bill could pave the way for “the preemptive criminalisation” of people who have neither committed nor planned any crime. The draft law could also increase the Israeli authorities’ surveillance of Arab Palestinian citizens while infringing on their rights to privacy, freedom of expression and the right to access information.
There have been several cases of Palestinian citizens of Israel being arrested for sharing pro-Palestinian content on social media, including singer Dalal Abu Amneh who wrote “there is no victor but God”, in support of Gaza.
Marching for Israel? American and Israeli war criminals celebrate together
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 24, 2023
For those who missed it or chose to ignore it, there was a large demonstration in Washington on Tuesday the 14th dubbed the “March for Israel” with many posters and signs featuring “Israel We Stand With You.” I have no big problem with Americans “standing with Israel” as long as they go over to Israel to do it and in some cases at least put their own lives at risk in so doing, but that is not the way they operate. What I do have a problem with is the cause they are supporting, namely the ethic cleansing of an entire nation or even, if required to do that, a military style genocide of the inhabitants of an area that was entirely populated by an ethnic group called Palestinians before Israel’s mostly European immigrants entered the scene and used foreign provided force majeur to steal the land and property. While so doing they were also killing thousands of locals and forcing three quarters of a million more to abandon their homes and spend their lives in refugee camps, a process of ethnic cleansing that has continued and been expanded through the creation of illegal settlements since the founding of the Jewish state 75 years ago.
The rally was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America in solidarity with Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack. Apart from backing the Israeli government in its devastating counterattack on Gaza, the stated goals of the rally were to support Israel in general, to call for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and to combat antisemitism. “Rising antisemitism” allegedly followed the October 7th Hamas attack and the Israel reaction that marked the start of the war. The usually cited source the Anti-Defamation League has stated that antisemitism has increased 388% in the US since October 6, 2023. Now one must observe that the ADL is not a reliable source when it comes to antisemitism as its agenda is clearly to send the message that Jews as a group are threatened, which is just not true to anything near the extent that is being implied. The reason why antisemitism and holocaust denial are used so often against critics is to discredit them without having to provide any evidence. For ADL, a Jewish college student walking on campus and passing a pro-Palestinian poster and being upset by it is an antisemitic incident. What I am saying is that this is an entirely faked exercise to convince the audience that Israel and Jews are the victims in spite of the fact that many more Palestinians have been killed and dispossessed since the founding of Israel in 1948. If there is any real increase in actual antisemitism it is in response to the highly visible bestiality that the Jewish state has exhibited against the original occupants of what was once Palestine. Israel wants the Pals gone and these are the first steps in what might be termed a final solution, aided and abetted by American monsters like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have made the United States complicit in war crimes.
Many participants in the Israel rally came by charter buses organized by Jewish houses of worship and schools. Most of the crowd appeared to be Jews but there was also a strong Christian Zionist component. Groups came from New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia and Miami plus other domestic and even international locations. US college students were given $250 in travel and expenses money to attend as an incentive. The crowd was considerable though there is some confusion about how many were actually in attendance. The organizers predicted 60,000 which was the number initially accepted, but other estimates of the crowd were as low as 10,000 or 25,000. The numbers quickly grew in some news stories to uncorroborated estimates of 270,000 to 300,000. There is, of course, certain bragging rights in large numbers and the March was in competition with a Palestinian rally that attracted 300,000 the week before, so let’s just accept that there was a large group present on the Mall.
Joe Biden did not personally attend the rally but he said on the following day “[that] Israel’s military operation in Gaza would stop when Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.” He left out the part of continuous abuse of Palestinians, going back 75 years and clearly is not paying attention to senior Israeli government officials who are making comments that indicate that the grand objective is to remove the Palestinians from what will soon be Eretz or Greater Israel.
Speakers at the three-hour long rally included Israel’s self-described protector in Congress Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Joni Ernst, Pastor John Hagee, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (via video from Jerusalem), who praised US President Joe Biden for his “moral clarity and bold actions…” Johnson predictably declared that “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous!” while the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt also delivered on demand a plea “Do not cower, allow no one to make you afraid.” Meanwhile Donald Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served mostly as an apologist for the Jewish state while in office, roamed the Mall expressing his joy at developments. Other notable speakers included Natan Sharansky and actress Debra Messing. Speeches followed the predictable narrative, with descriptions of how Israel had been attacked by terrorists who sought to destroy the Jewish state, that Israel is America’s best friend and closest ally, and how Israel is only defending itself from attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not speak, stated in an interview in Israel that if his country does not succeed in crushing Hamas, the next terrorist attacks would be directed against America, an evidence free claim to strengthen US resolve, but as Netanyahu hardly ever tells the truth it should be taken for what it’s worth.
And, of course, everyone’s openly stated or subliminal message was that the United States must stand by and do whatever it takes to help defend its good friend and ally, including rejecting a cease fire or negotiations and letting the slaughter of Gazan women and children continue. The discredited tales of torture and mass rapes of Israeli women and the killing by beheading of Jewish babies, which are still being replayed by President Joe Biden, were also part of the rally agenda and appeared as the messages on signs and posters. What was not mentioned however was the systematic Israeli bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, and infrastructure, all of which are war crimes, as are the attacks on high density civilian targets which have produced more than 11,000 deaths as of this writing, mostly consisting of women and children. Targeting civilians in that fashion in those numbers can and should be construed as genocide. Israel’s war on hospitals can also be regarded as part of a systematic campaign of genocide. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations, children, medical and aid workers has been elevated to an Israeli government policy to drive the Palestinians from what was once Palestine.
Official Washington was on parade and in lockstep to demonstrate its unshakable loyalty to Israel even as opinion polls suggest that the American public is tired of the charade. A couple of brave peaceniks dared to move on the fringes of the crowd with signs calling for a ceasefire to end the carnage, but they were openly derided and threatened so they kept their distance. One truly shocking attendee at the rally was former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was present and spouting the straight Israel line about how it was the victim of terrorists. Tulsi said “It is inspiring to see how many people are flooding into Washington – understanding the seriousness of this moment, coming from all over the country. Many Jewish people [and] many people who are not Jewish . . . are coming and saying that we must stand up against antisemitism. We must stand up for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we must take a strong stand against the Islamist terrorists who seek to not only exterminate the Jewish people but also to exterminate and kill anyone who does not adhere to their radical interpretation of Islam.” She sounded something like the State Department’s despicable number two Victoria Nuland looking for another country to attack. Now that RFK Jr has also obligingly rolled over for the Jewish state there is no genuine peace candidate anywhere on the horizon with the exception of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the beat of the war drums will continue to sound.
More out of sync perhaps was the presence as an ally of convenience evangelical Pastor John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group which was well represented both at the rally and as the key largest Christian Zionist component of the Israel Lobby in the US. Hagee has said that Hitler was a “half-breed Jew,” created and sent by God as a “hunter” to drive European Jews on a divine mission to fulfill prophecy by creating the state of Israel to bring about the End Time and the Second Coming of Christ followed by the Rapture of all true believers into heaven. Jews will have to convert to participate. One brings someone as controversial as Hagee out of the woodwork only to send a message that this is not about making sure that Jews are safe. It’s about showing solidarity with Israel, no matter what it does. And what kind of rally against antisemitism includes racist signs calling for more war, more bombings, and the destruction of not just Hamas but also the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Or as one sign held by a masked protester read, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you will see.”
The so-called holocaust was evoked a number of times by speakers, particularly when it came time to describe Gaza on November 7th as the biggest killing of Jews since the Second World War. Nor did anyone mention the fundamental dysfunction in the US-Israeli relationship, which is that Israel calls nearly all the shots, including the killing of 34 sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 and the more recent shooting of American citizen journalists covering Palestinian protests by Israeli Army sharpshooters. Israelis who kill Americans are never punished unlike the demands or retribution being made by speakers in Washington at the rally to kill not only all of Hamas but also the Gazan voters who elected Hamas in the first place. Though it is somewhat repetitive to say so, lest there be any confusion, that is referred to as genocide which is regarded as the most serious crime against humanity. And no one spoke up at the rally against the involvement of the US military in the operation against Gaza, which Biden is lying about and which is opposed by a majority of the public. Nor did anyone cite recent comments by US General Richard Clark that American soldiers must be “prepared to die for the Jewish state.”
Perhaps the politicians in Washington should ask US soldiers whether they are “prepared to die for the Jewish state.” Or maybe there should be called a national referendum asking the public whether it wants to continue arming and sending billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine as well. Evidence suggests that a clear majority would oppose both policies, which have hardly been debated at all in any serious way. Americans who want to “stand with Israel” should be allowed to go there with a one-way ticket in exchange for which they have to turn in their US passports as another major issue is “Who are they actually loyal to?” I’ll bet I know the answer to that one!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Spanish PM ‘whitewashing war criminal Netanyahu,’ outspoken ex-minister suggests
Ione Belarra, Spain’s former minister for social rights
Press TV – November 24, 2023
A former Spanish minister, who has been openly censuring the West’s silence over the Israeli regime’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, persists with her outspoken criticism.
Ione Belarra was Spain’s minister for social rights until she was removed from her post by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday over her targeting of the “deafening silence” of her country and the regime’s other Western allies on Tel Aviv’s ferocious ongoing warfare against Gaza.
Belarra, currently secretary-general of Spain’s ruling left-wing Podemos Party, fired her latest jab at Madrid on Thursday.
Posting on X she said she and her colleagues were “concerned” that a trip made by Sánchez to the occupied territories earlier in the day “could be used to whitewash [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who is a war criminal.”
Sánchez should be instead traveling to Brussels, where decisions were made that could “truly exert pressure on Israel and Netanyahu to achieve a permanent ceasefire.”
The Israeli regime launched the war on October 7 following an operation, dubbed al-Aqsa Storm, by Gaza’s resistance groups.
More than 14,800 Palestinians, including over 6,150 children, have been killed in the war so far.
Belarra said, “In Brussels, exemplary economic sanctions against Netanyahu and his political leadership could be agreed upon…”
Sánchez should be working with European leaders in Brussels towards suspension of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, she added.
“From our point of view, people are exhausted, tired of the EU (European Union)’s doing absolutely nothing while a genocide against the people of Palestine is taking place, and we need concrete actions.”
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Can the WHO and the United Nations impose sanctions on your sovereign country for non-compliance?
The UN is a far bigger threat than the WHO, which, although deserving of attention, cannot consume our entire focus.
BY SHABNAM PALESA MOHAMED | JUNE 18, 2024
This updated analysis was written in 2023 (read in full here at CHD Africa)
Sanctions are a powerful instrument of political control and economic profit. One of the rare but critical topics relevant to the international campaign to #ExitTheWHO is whether the World Health Organisation and the United Nations can impose, influence or recommend specific sanctions. The sanctions could be implemented against countries that choose to not comply or cannot comply with International Health Regulations, the proposed new pandemic treaty, or other legislative attempts that curtail rights, freedom and sovereignty.
The accelerating and profitable globalist march towards unprecedented levels of ‘1984’ style totalitarianism – using censorship, vaccine passports, 15 minute cities, and CBDC’s continues. It is plausible that the WHO and the UN will move to impose, influence or recommend sanctions against countries that do not want to or cannot comply with its centralised health agenda and undemocratic legislative attempts. … continue
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