Pro-EU Czech PM concedes election defeat
RT | October 4, 2025
The right-wing party of agricultural tycoon Andrej Babis, branded the ‘Czech Trump’ by local media, has come out ahead in the Czech general election with 97% of the vote counted, according to official results.
The ANO movement is now set to replace the current center-right cabinet led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala. He has already congratulated Babis, conceding defeat and stating the outcome of the vote must be respected.
Speaking to reporters after his victory became evident, Babis once again rejected longstanding accusations of being anti-EU and insisted he merely wants to “save” the bloc.
“We want to save Europe… and we are clearly pro-European and pro-NATO,” Babis told Reuters.
ANO will seek a one-party cabinet but will have to enter talks with two minor parties to secure an outright majority, Babis said. One of the parties is believed to be the far-right SPD, which has long been considered a potential coalition partner.
“We went into the election with the aim of ending the government of Petr Fiala and support even for a minority cabinet of ANO is important for us and it would meet the target we had for this election,” SPD deputy chairman Radim Fiala said in a televised speech. In contrast to ANO, his party maintains an explicit anti-EU and anti-NATO stance.
Another potential coalition partner is the Motorists, who strongly oppose the EU’s environmental policies. They and the SPD received nearly 7% and 8% of the vote respectively, and joining forces with ANO would be sufficient to secure a majority.
During his campaign, Babis repeatedly criticized the EU’s handling of immigration and the Green Deal, as well as opposing EU membership for Ukraine. He also pledged to drastically cut aid for Kiev, promising more domestic spending instead. Babis signaled he would end the so-called ‘Czech initiative’ project, dedicated to supplying ammunition to Ukraine, calling the scheme overpriced.
Election without voters: Most Syrians ‘unaware’ about Sunday’s parliamentary election
The Cradle | October 4, 2025
Many Syrians are unaware that the first parliamentary elections since the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad are about to take place, AP reported on 4 October, in part because the Syrian public will not be allowed to cast votes.
“There were no candidate posters on the main streets and squares, no rallies, or public debates. In the days leading up to the polling, some residents of the Syrian capital had no idea a vote was hours away,” AP reported on Saturday.
“I didn’t know — now by chance I found out that there are elections of the People’s Assembly,” said Elias al-Qudsi, a shopkeeper in the famed markets of old Damascus.
“But I don’t know if we are supposed to vote or who is voting,” he added.
The US, Israel, and allied powers succeeded in December 2024 in toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a decade of war under the pretext of replacing his authoritarian rule with a “democratic system.”
The multi-billion-dollar regime change operation, known as Timber Sycamore, installed former Al-Qaeda and Islamic State commander Ahmad al-Sharaa in power in Damascus as Assad fled to Moscow.
After appointing himself president, Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani) began to establish an informal extremist Islamic regime in Syria, in which a religious sheikh leads each ministry, government department, and military unit.
Rather than allow the Syrian public to vote in Sunday’s election to form a new parliament, Sharaa himself will appoint 70 of the 210 parliament members.
The remaining 140 will be elected by subcommittees of Syria’s Supreme Committee for People’s Assembly Elections, which Sharaa also appointed in June.
A subcommittee was established for each governorate. However, Syrian authorities say that no vote for parliament will take place in Suwayda Governorate, which is under Druze control, and Raqqa and Hasakah Governorates, which are under Kurdish control, citing “security reasons.”
The lack of a popular vote has been overshadowed in the western media by the candidacy of Henry Hamra, a Jewish former resident of the neighborhood who emigrated to the US as a teenager and only returned after Assad’s fall.
Nawar Nejmeh, spokesperson for the committee overseeing the elections, claimed a popular vote was “impossible” because large numbers of Syrians were displaced or lost their personal documentation during the NATO-backed war.
But Syrian activists who opposed Assad have criticized Sharaa for organizing the parliamentary vote in this way, forbidding the formation of political parties, and consolidating his own authoritarian and extremist religious rule indefinitely into the future.
“Are we going through a credible transition, an inclusive transition that represents all of Syria?” asked Mutasem Syoufi, executive director of US-funded The Day After project.
“I think we’re not there, and I think we have to take serious and brave steps to correct all the mistakes that we’ve committed over the last nine months,” since Assad’s fall, he stated.
US strikes another vessel off Venezuela, killing four
Al Mayadeen | October 3, 2025
The United States has escalated its military campaign in Latin America, carrying out yet another deadly strike off the coast of Venezuela under the false pretext of fighting narcotics trafficking.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the latest strike in a post on X, celebrating the destruction of a small vessel that US officials claimed was carrying drugs. A video accompanying the post showed the boat erupting into flames, a scene observers say reveals Washington’s growing reliance on extrajudicial force and its willingness to kill without evidence, trial, or accountability.
“Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Hegseth wrote, asserting that it “was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics — headed to America to poison our people.” He vowed, “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
The latest strike brings the death toll to at least 21 people across four attacks in recent weeks, none of whom have been positively identified as traffickers. Washington has offered no independent proof linking the victims to drug networks, raising concerns that the US is unilaterally executing individuals in foreign waters under a fabricated pretext.
This new military doctrine stems from President Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States is now in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, reclassifying them as “terrorist organizations”, a move legal scholars have condemned as an attempt to bypass international law. A Pentagon notice sent to Congress, obtained by AFP, claimed: “The president determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.” The same document described alleged smugglers as “unlawful combatants”, stripping them of legal protection under the Geneva Conventions.
Rights groups have warned that such terminological manipulation echoes past US practices, from the “war on terror” to the invasions of Panama and Iraq, where legal gray zones were exploited to justify preemptive violence and regime change.
Political Theater and Extrajudicial Killings
The Trump administration has openly celebrated these operations as demonstrations of strength rather than law enforcement. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, declared that traffickers had been “turned into stardust.” On Truth Social, Trump himself echoed the narrative, writing: “A boat loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE was stopped, early this morning off the Coast of Venezuela, from entering American Territory.”
But independent analysts and international law experts argue that the campaign bears all the hallmarks of a covert regime change operation. The strikes come amid an unprecedented US military buildup near Venezuela, including the deployment of F-35 warplanes to Puerto Rico, marking the largest show of force in the Caribbean in more than three decades. Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino condemned the presence of US jets near Venezuelan airspace as “a provocation” and “a threat to our national security.”
UK Digital ID Scheme Faces Backlash Over Surveillance Fears — Is a Similar Plan Coming to the U.S.?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender |October 2, 2025
The U.K. plans to introduce a nationwide digital ID scheme that will require citizens and non-citizens to obtain a “BritCard” to work in the U.K., which includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Government officials say the plan, to take effect no later than August 2029, will help combat illegal immigration.
But critics like U.K. activist and campaigner Montgomery Toms said the scheme, “far from being a tool for progress,” is instead a “gateway to mass surveillance, control and ultimately the rollout of a centralised social credit system.”
The plan faces broad opposition in the U.K., according to Nigel Utton, a U.K.-based board member of the World Freedom Alliance, who said, “the feeling against the government here is enormous.”
A poll last week found that 47% of respondents opposed digital ID, while 27% supported the ID system and 26% were neutral. The poll was conducted by Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now, on behalf of GB News.
A petition on the U.K. Parliament’s website opposing plans to introduce digital ID may force a parliamentary debate. As of today, the petition has over 2.73 million signatures.
According to The Guardian, petitions with 100,000 signatures or more are considered for debate in the U.K. parliament.
As opposition mounts, there are signs the BritCard may not be a done deal. According to the BBC, a three-month consultation will take place, and legislation will likely be introduced to Parliament in early 2026.
However, U.K. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the government may push through its digital ID plans without going through the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
Protesters plan to gather Oct. 18 in central London.
Digital ID will ‘offer ordinary citizens countless benefits,’ U.K. officials say
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the digital ID scheme last week in a speech at the Global Progress Action Summit in London.
“A secure border and controlled migration are reasonable demands, and this government is listening and delivering,” Starmer said. “Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the U.K. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.
The plan “will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly,” Starmer said.
According to The Guardian, digital ID eventually may be used for driver’s licenses, welfare benefits, access to tax records, and the provision of childcare and other public services.
Darren Jones, chief secretary to Starmer, suggested it may become “the bedrock of the modern state,” the BBC reported.
Supporters of the plan include the Labour Together think tank, which is closely aligned with the Labour Party and which published a report in June calling for the introduction of the BritCard.
Two days before Starmer’s announcement, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, led by Labour Party member and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, published a report, “Time for Digital ID: A New Consensus for a State That Works.”
Blair tried to introduce digital ID two decades ago as a means of fighting terrorism and fraud, but the plan failed amid public opposition. According to the BBC, Starmer recently claimed the world has “moved on in the last 20 years,” as “we all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Blair endorsed a global digital vaccine passport, the Good Health Pass, launched by ID2020 with the support of Facebook, Mastercard and the World Economic Forum.
According to Sky News, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the BritCard for its ability to help fight illegal immigration into the U.K., much of which originates from France.
Critics: Digital ID marks ‘gateway to mass surveillance’
The BritCard, which would live on people’s phones, will use technology similar to digital wallets. People will not be required to carry their digital ID or be asked to produce it, except for employment purposes, the government said.
According to the BBC, BritCard will likely include a person’s name, photo, date of birth and nationality or residency status.
Digital wallets, which include documents such as driver’s licenses and health certificates, have been introduced in several countries, including the U.S.
Nandy said the U.K. government has “no intention of pursuing a dystopian mess” with its introduction of digital ID.
However, the plan has opened up a “civil liberties row” in the U.K., according to The Guardian, with critics warning it will lead to unprecedented surveillance and control over citizens.
“Digital ID systems are not designed to secure borders,” said Seamus Bruner, author of “Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life” and director of research at the Government Accountability Institute. “They’re designed to expand bureaucratic control of the masses.”
Bruner told The Defender :
“All attempts to roll out digital ID follow a familiar pattern: corporate and political elites wield crises — such as mass migration, crime, or tech disruptions — as a pretext to expand their control … over private citizens’ identities, finances and movements into a suffocating regime.
“Once rolled out, these systems expand quietly, shifting from access tools to enforcement mechanisms. Yesterday it was vaccine passports and lockdowns; tomorrow it is 15-minute cities and the ‘universal basic income’ dependency trap. ‘Voluntary’ today becomes mandatory tomorrow.”
Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, said digital ID is “not about tackling illegal immigration, it has nothing to do with job security and it definitely won’t protect young people online. Digital ID is all about surveillance and control through coercion and force.”
Hinchliffe said:
“Illegal immigration is just one excuse to bring it all online. Be vigilant for other excuses like climate change, cybersecurity, convenience, conflict, refugees, healthcare, war, famine, poverty, welfare benefits. Anything can be used to usher in digital ID.”
Twila Brase, co-founder and president of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, said governments favor digital ID because it allows unprecedented surveillance.
The ID system “notifies the government every time an identity card is used, giving it a bird’s-eye view of where, when and to whom people are showing their identity,” she said.
According to Toms, “A digital ID system gives governments the ability to monitor, restrict, and ultimately punish citizens who do not comply with state directives. It centralises power in a way that is extremely dangerous to liberty.”
Experts disputed claims that digital ID is necessary to improve public services.
“The ‘improved efficiency’ argument is a technocratic fantasy used to seduce a public obsessed with convenience,” said attorney Greg Glaser. “Governments have managed to provide services for centuries without a digital panopticon. This is not about efficiency. It is about creating an immutable, unforgeable link between every individual and the state.”
Digital ID technology may create ‘an enormous hacking target’
London-based author and political analyst Evans Agelissopoulos said major global investment firms, including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, could combine their financial might with the power of digital ID.
“BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are on a mission to buy properties to rent to people. Digital ID could be used against people they deem unfit to rent to,” he said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the same firms supported digital vaccine passports in major corporations in which they are among the top shareholders. Some experts suggested digital ID may institutionalize a vaccine passport regime and central bank digital currencies.
“Digital identity is the linchpin to every dystopian nightmare under the sun,” Hinchliffe said. “Without it, there can be no programmable digital currencies, there can be no carbon footprint trackers, no social credit system.”
Other experts suggested that a centralized database containing the data of all citizens could be monetized. “By centralizing everything, they will have access to health, criminal, financial records. This data can be sold,” Agelissopoulos said.
According to Brase, those who will benefit from the centralization of this data include:
“Anybody who’s going to be the third-party administrator, academia and companies who are building biometric systems and what they call ‘augmented authentication systems’ that provide the cameras, the back system operations for biometric identification and for digital systems.”
Several major information technology (IT), defense and accounting firms, including Deloitte and BAE Systems, have received U.K. government contracts totaling 100 million British pounds ($134.7 million) for the development and rollout of BritCard.
U.S. tech companies, including Palantir, Nvidia and OpenAI, “have also been circling the UK government,” The Guardian reported.
Digital ID also raises security concerns, with IT experts describing the U.K.’s plan as “an enormous hacking target,” citing recent large-scale breaches involving digital ID databases in some countries, including Estonia.
“Government databases are frequently hacked — from healthcare systems to tax records,” Toms said. “Centralizing sensitive personal data into a single mandatory digital ID is a disaster waiting to happen.”
The public may also directly bear the cost of these systems. Italy’s largest digital ID provider, Poste Italiane, recently floated plans to levy a 5 euro ($5.87) annual fee for users.
Switzerland to roll out digital ID next year, amid controversy
In a referendum held on Sunday, voters in Switzerland narrowly approved the introduction of a voluntary national digital ID in their country.
According to the BBC, 50.4% of voters approved the proposal. Biometric Update noted that the proposal received a majority in only eight of the country’s 26 cantons, though the country’s government campaigned in favor of the proposal.
Digital ID in Switzerland is expected to be rolled out next year.
Swiss health professional George Deliyanidis said he “does not see any benefits for the public” from the plan. Instead, he sees “a loss of personal freedom.”
“There are suspicions of election fraud,” he added.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the Swiss government, a copy of which was reviewed by The Defender, the Mouvement Fédératif Romand cited “significant statistical disparities” in the referendum’s results and called for a recount.
In 2021, Swiss voters rejected a proposal on digital ID under which data would have been held by private providers, the BBC reported. Under the current proposal, data will remain with the state.
According to the Manchester Evening News, countries that have introduced nationwide digital ID include Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, India, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. Other countries with similar systems include France, Finland and Norway.
In July, Vietnam introduced digital ID for foreigners living in the country. In August, the Vietnamese government helped neighboring Laos launch digital ID.
The New York Times reported that, in 2024, China added an “internet ID” to its digital ID system, “to track citizens’ online usage.”
Bill Gates has supported the rollout of digital ID in several countries, including India.
The European Union plans to launch its Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026.
“When you see a nearly simultaneous worldwide push, like this digital ID agenda, people in all nations need to expect to be impacted to some extent,” said James F. Holderman III, director of special investigations for Stand for Health Freedom.
Is national digital ID coming to the U.S.?
Although the U.S. does not have a national identification card, the U.K. did not have one either — until digital ID was introduced. The U.K. scrapped national ID in 1952.
In May, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began Real ID enforcement for domestic air travelers in the U.S. In the months before, TSA engaged in a push to encourage U.S. citizens to acquire Real ID-compliant documents, such as driver’s licenses. Full enforcement will begin in 2027.
The REAL ID Act of 2005 established security standards for state-issued ID cards in response to the 9/11 attacks and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. In the intervening years, its implementation was repeatedly delayed.
Last year, then-President Joe Biden issued an executive order for federal and state governments to speed up the adoption of digital ID.
Brase said Real ID “is really a national ID system for America, currently disguised as a state driver’s license with a star. The American people really have no idea that what’s in their pocket is a national ID and they have no idea that the [Department of Motor Vehicles offices] are planning to digitize them.”
Hinchliffe said 193 countries, including the U.S., accepted digital ID last year when they approved the United Nations’ Pact for the Future.
Earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the Safeguarding Personal Information Act of 2025 (S 2769), a bill to repeal the REAL ID Act of 2005.
“If digital ID is allowed to spread globally, future generations will never know freedom,” Hinchliffe said.
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.
32% of Mass Shooters Are Veterans. 0% of Media Outlets Will Say So.
By David Swanson | Let’s Try Democracy | September 29, 2025
Two U.S. military veterans allegedly shot and killed at least three people each this past weekend, Thomas Jacob Sanford in Michigan, and Nigel Max Edge in North Carolina. So, it is a safe bet that they will both be added (with, almost certainly, no mention of their status as veterans) to the database maintained by Mother Jones that I have for years been using as a starting point to track statistics on mass shootings.
It’s been almost two years since I posted an update. In that time, Mother Jones has added seven mass shootings to its database. These two new ones will make nine. Of those other seven, one of the shooters — bizarrely, and I hope nobody gets reprimanded — is actually identified as a veteran by Mother Jones. Another of the seven was 14 years old and yet another was 67; they don’t factor into calculations about men under 60. Another was a veteran of an institution that uses the word “veteran” to associate itself with the military: football. He blamed his football injuries for his crime. He counts statistically as NOT a military veteran. In a quick internet search, I’ve been unable to identify any of the others as military veterans either, so will count them as non-veterans. But it’s worth noting that often in the past I’ve managed to find out about veteran status only after lengthy searching.
So, the data has now changed from 40 of 127 mass shooters (who are men under 60) being military veterans when last I wrote about this to now 43 of 134 mass shooters being military veterans. That’s 32%, up from 31%. That figure has been between 31% and 36% for as long as I’ve been doing these calculations
In the United States, only a very small percentage of men under 60 are military veterans.
In the United States, at least 32% of male mass shooters under 60 (which is almost all mass shooters) are military veterans.
As I reported in June 2023, a University of Maryland report touching on this topic was virtually ignored by media outlets.
But here are the facts:
Looking at males, aged 18-59, veterans are well over twice, maybe over three times as likely to be mass shooters compared with the group as a whole. And they shoot somewhat more fatally.
The numbers have changed slightly since I began writing about this:
- October 28, 2023: ABC News Report Claims No Past Mass Shooters Have Been Veterans; At Least 31% Have Been
- October 26, 2023: At Least 31% of Mass Shooters Were Trained to Shoot by the U.S. Military
- May 10, 2023: At Least 32% of U.S. Mass Shooters Were Trained to Shoot by the U.S. Military
- March 23, 2021: At Least 36% of Mass Shooters Have Been Trained By the U.S. Military
- June 4, 2019: Updated Data: Mass Shooters Still Disproportionately Veterans
(At this point it was 35%) - November 4, 2018: Mass Shooters’ Histories in the U.S. Military Most Amazing Coincidence
(At this point it was 35%) - November 14, 2017: U.S. Mass Shooters Are Disproportionately Veterans
(At this point it was 34%)
The training and conditioning and arming of shooters is of far less interest to media outlets than “motivation,” but what we should actually know about shooters’ ideology is not unrelated to the disproportionate presence of military veterans in the list of mass shooters. These are people who have been armed and trained and conditioned at public expense and then generally thanked for the supposed service of what they’ve done when it has not yet included shooting any of the wrong people.
All sorts of correlations are carefully examined when it comes to mass shooters. But the fact that the largest institution in the United States has trained many of them to shoot is scrupulously avoided.
Many of those mass shooters who are not military veterans tend to dress and speak as if they were. Some of them are veterans of police forces with military-sounding titles, or have been prison guards or security guards. Counting those who’ve been in either the U.S. military or a police force or a prison or worked as an armed guard of any kind would give us an even larger percentage of mass shooters to consider. The factor of having been trained and employed to shoot is larger than just the military veterans, yet carefully ignored by every single U.S. corporate media outlet (that sounds like an exaggeration, but can you prove it wrong?).
Some of the non-military mass-shooters have worked as civilians for the military. Some have tried to join the military and been rejected. The whole phenomenon of mass-shootings has skyrocketed during the post-2001 endless wars. The militarism of mass-shootings may be too big to see, but the avoidance of the topic is stunning.
Needless to say, out of a country of over 330 million people a database of 134 mass shooters is a very, very small group. Needless to say, statistically, virtually all veterans are not mass shooters. But that can hardly be the reason for not a single news article ever mentioning that mass shooters are very disproportinately likely to be veterans. After all, statistically, virtually all males, mentally ill people, domestic abusers, Nazi-sympathizers, loners, and gun-purchasers are also not mass-shooters. Yet articles on those topics proliferate like NRA campaign bribes.
There seem to me to be two key reasons that a sane communications system would not censor this topic. First, our public dollars and elected officials are training and conditioning huge numbers of people to kill, sending them abroad to kill, thanking them for the “service,” praising and rewarding them for killing, and then some of them are killing where it is not acceptable. This is not a chance correlation, but a factor with a clear connection.
Second, by devoting so much of our government to organized killing, and even allowing the military to train in schools, and to develop video games and Hollywood movies, we’ve created a culture in which people imagine that militarism is praiseworthy, that violence solves problems, and that revenge is one of the highest values. Virtually every mass shooter has used military weaponry. Most of those whose dress we are aware of dressed as if in the military. Those who’ve left behind writings that have been made public have tended to write as if they were taking part in a war. So, while it might surprise many people to find out how many mass shooters are veterans of the military, it might be harder to find mass shooters (actual veterans or not) who did not themselves think they were soldiers.
There seems to me to be one most likely reason that it’s difficult to find out which shooters have been in the military (meaning that some additional shooters probably have been, about whom I’ve been unable to learn that fact). We’ve developed a culture dedicated to praising and glorifying participation in war. It need not even be a conscious decision, but a journalist convinced that militarism is laudable would assume it was irrelevant to a report on a mass shooter and, in addition, assume that it was distasteful to mention that the man was a veteran. That sort of widespread self-censorship is the only possible explanation for the complete whiting out of this story.
The phenomenon of shutting down this story does not exactly require a “motive,” and I would like to recommend to reporters on mass shootings that they, too, devote a bit less energy to the often meaningless hunt for “a motive,” and a tad more to considering whether the fact that a shooter lived and breathed in an institution dedicated to mass shooting might be relevant.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 29, 2025:
Shockingly, CBS News did one article on this topic two years ago. Here it is. The seven people who wrote it used a database from the Violence Project and did not separate out men or men of any particular age. They concluded that 26% of mass shooters were veterans, as compared to 7% of all people. In other words, a mass shooter is over 3 times as likely to be a veteran.
It’s always seemed more relevant to me to remove the very few mass shooters who are female or young or old, and then compare to 18-59-year-old men in the general population. The closest I can come to putting an exact number on that is like this. The U.S. Census says that in 2024, males 19-59 were 88,300,644 or 25.96% of the population. (This is imperfect because it looks at only one year, because it is an estimate, because it leaves out 18 years olds, and because it includes non-citizens who were not eligible for or did not live in the United States at the age for being in the U.S. military.) According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, of men aged 20-59 (so, missing 18-19-year-olds), 6,565,138 as of 2024 were veterans. That’s 7.43% of all men aged 19-59. If we compare 32% with 7%, mass shooters are over 4.5 times more likely to be veterans.
CANADIAN BILL EXPOSES DARK EUGENICS HISTORY
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 2, 2025
Canada’s new bill banning forced sterilization of First Nations women shines a light on a chilling global pattern of modern-day eugenics, from Kenya’s tetanus vaccines to Colombia’s HPV programs.
Larry Ellison funded Rubio’s political rise after vetting him for ‘loyalty to Israel’
The Cradle | October 3, 2025
Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of tech giant Oracle, vetted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his support of Israel before making large donations to the senator from Florida’s 2016 presidential election campaign, Drop Site news reported on 3 October.
Leaked emails released by an Iranian hacker group, Handala, show that Ellison discussed Rubio’s loyalty to Israel with Ron Prosor, who at that time served as the Israeli ambassador to the UN.
In April 2015, Ellison and Prosor exchanged several emails discussing Rubio and whether the senator would be an advocate for Israel.
After Ellison met Rubio for dinner, Prosor sent a message to Ellison asking how their meeting went.
“How was the conversation with Mario Rubio. [sic] Did he pass your scrutiny? Did you have a chance to talk about Israel? Would love to chat.”
Ellison responded by saying, “Hi Ron. Great meeting with Marco Rubio. I set him up to meet with Tony Blair,” adding, “Marco will be a great friend for Israel.”
At the time, Rubio was seen as a strong challenger in the Republican presidential primary, which was ultimately won by upstart candidate Donald Trump.
Ellison then donated $4 million to Rubio’s presidential campaign, making him among the top donors of the 2016 cycle.
Since that time, Rubio has been a staunch advocate for Israel and is currently helping Ellison in his goal of building a media empire and taking control of Gaza.
Drop Site notes Rubio has played a role in helping Ellison take control of TikTok, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views as crucial to influencing young people in the US to support Israel.
While under Chinese ownership, TikTok allowed relatively free criticism of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Ellison is seeking to expand his influence over the traditional media in the US as well. His son David is moving to take control of CBS News, CNN, Warner Brothers, and Paramount, and will reportedly install pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss as editor of CBS News.
Ellison is also seeking to benefit from post-war Gaza reconstruction through former UK prime minister Tony Blair and the institute he heads.
Blair is seeking to lead a committee that US President Donald Trump plans to establish to rule Gaza and oversee the reconstruction of the enclave once it has been emptied of its roughly 1.7 million Palestinian inhabitants.
Drop Site notes further that Trump’s son-in-law, New York real estate investor Jared Kushner, tasked the Tony Blair Institute this spring to develop a plan for post-war Gaza.
As Secretary of State, Rubio is in a position to influence the plans for Gaza and help determine who will benefit financially from Trump’s plan to build a high-tech city, the “Riviera of the Middle East,” on stolen Palestinian land.
If Blair is given the role of overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, Ellison will have strong influence in the enclave. Drop Site observed that the “Tony Blair Institute has effectively become an offshoot of Oracle,” following donations of $350 million from Ellison.
Ellison has long been a supporter of Israel. At a 2014 fundraiser attended by other pro-Israel billionaires, he declared that “there is no greater honor” than supporting the Israeli military.
In 2017, Ellison donated over $16 million to the Friends of the IDF, the largest-ever donation to the organization. Ellison is also good friends with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been a guest at Ellison’s private island in Hawaii.
How a low-key remark by Putin reveals a deeper economic shift
By Henry Johnston | RT | October 3, 2025
During his Valdai speech on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made the following rather dry statement:
“It’s impossible to imagine that a drop in Russian oil production will maintain normal conditions in the global energy sector and the global economy.”
It certainly wasn’t the highlight of the night, and I haven’t seen it in the headlines of any of the recaps. The statement is, of course, true. Putin is in a sense saying: “you can’t kick us out.”
But let’s unpack this a bit and try to get a bird’s eye view of what this mundane statement implies in a much deeper sense – not in the sense of counting barrels of oil and the Brent price, but in terms of understanding the shifting tectonic plates.
Let’s first imagine what a Western leader might have said in the same tone, circa January 2022.
“It’s impossible to imagine that a country that loses access to dollars and Western capital markets will maintain normal economic conditions.” I don’t know if anybody actually said such a thing in as many words, but that’s exactly what many were thinking.
Now, recall the G10 Rome meetings in late 1971, as the Bretton Woods-established gold peg of the dollar was being dismantled, when US Treasury Secretary John Connally famously told his European counterparts: “The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” It is an oft-cited instance of American hubris.
In other words, despite its global use in trade and finance, the dollar would be managed for American economic interests.
When the collective West placed what were supposed to be crushing sanctions on Russia in 2022 in light of the Ukraine crisis, the idea was, again, “our currency (system), your problem.”
The message: the dollar will be managed for American geopolitical interests.
According to the conventional thinking, being cut off from the dollar system should have spelt doom for Russia. The many forecasters predicting exactly such a dire outcome weren’t necessarily simply Russophobes. They were working within a certain paradigm. Without access to its now frozen central-bank reserves, how would Russia stabilize the ruble? Without access to correspondent banking in dollars/euros, how would trade be settled? And without access to foreign capital markets, wouldn’t a funding crisis ensue? This type of thinking gave rise to these types of comments:
“We will provoke the collapse of the Russian economy,” in the words of French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire about ten days into the war.
But the Russian economy didn’t collapse and in fact stabilized far faster than anyone expected. The thing is Russian oil and gas was still needed. And those who thought they didn’t need it (read the EU) found out the hard way that they did – even if the Europeans obscured the ramifications as much as possible through large fiscal support and subsidies. But it is no coincidence that ‘deindustrialization’ has become a household word in Europe. And somehow the political will to really clamp down hard on Russian energy never seems to materialize.
All of a sudden we have, from a Russian perspective: “Our commodities, your problem.”
The question now is: does this mean we’ve suddenly awoken to a strange new world? Are we now in a system where access to real things (like commodities) now trumps access to paper promises (like dollars)? Western policymakers’ futile attempts to cut Russian energy out of the world economy show that they understand only the monetary side of things. They see energy as a source of revenue for the Russian state – revenues thanks to which Russia is able to sustain its war effort. That the economy might actually fundamentally be an energy system and not a monetary system is incomprehensible to them. It is, in the strict Kuhnian sense, a different paradigm.
The BRICS countries talk a lot about a monetary reset being underway and about how new financial architecture is being created. It is fair to say that some of this rhetoric has been premature and that reports of the demise of the dollar system have been overstated. There have been a lot of checks written that BRICS and the Global South aren’t ready to cash.
Nevertheless, change is afoot, and what is taking shape has roughly the following contours: commodities are beginning, at the margins, to act as system-level collateral. By contrast, up to now, the system relied on trust in the issuer of paper claims (dollars, US Treasuries, euro-denominated assets). Gold accumulation by central banks has been massive – it is a quiet de-dollarization of reserves. Oil-for-yuan deals are modest but growing. And what can the commodity seller do with the yuan it receives? Convert it to gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. This may not yet be widespread, but the plumbing is there.
The anchor is shifting from debt claims to real assets – and this is bad news for countries whose economies are perched precariously atop a mountain of debt claims. Think of this as part hedge against Western sanctions and weaponization of the system, and part recognition that commodities have intrinsic durability that paper claims can’t always guarantee.
Ultimately, of course, paper promises can be inflated. It’s not lost on anybody in the Global South that the dollar is down some 111% against gold in just two years and that US debt seems to be spiraling to infinity.
If the current system is one where money, credit, and financial assets are king, this means the constraints in this system are money-related. The crises tend to start with something like a spread blowing out, liquidity drying up, or collateral chains breaking. This is basically a money problem, not a real-economy problem. Remember the 1998 Asia currency meltdown; or the Global Financial Crisis of 2008; or Covid; or the UK gilt crisis of 2022; or the various US repo spikes. Such dislocations are dealt with by throwing balance sheet at them – swap lines, quantitative easing, backstops, emergency loans.
In 2022, we suddenly found out that Russian energy is not just another financial dislocation that can be covered with a swap line or emergency loan. From this, it follows that we need to think in terms of two economies: the real economy of energy, resources, goods and services, and a parallel financial economy of money and debt. There will always be a financial economy – and always be spreads blowing out on a Bloomberg screen somewhere – but we’re finding out now that it is the real economy that underpins the financial one and not the other way around.
But here’s the catch. When energy is abundant and cheap – and when money holds its value against energy – this energy foundation to the economy can be disregarded. The peak of renewables-based energy transition euphoria in Europe coincided with the peak of Russian supply of cheap hydrocarbons to Europe. A coincidence?
The legendary strategist Zoltan Pozsar once wrote: “Russia and China have been the main ‘guarantors of macro peace’, providing all the cheap stuff that was the source of deflation fears in the West, which, in turn, gave central banks the license for years of money printing (QE).”
I would add that this also gave the West license to dwell comfortably in the illusion that the economy is primarily a monetary system and not an energy-and-real-stuff system. Ironically, it was the reliable presence of cheap Russian oil and gas that helped this economic illiteracy to fester.
Putin did not connect these dots in his remarks at Valdai; the focus of his speech was obviously elsewhere. But the dots are there to be connected. And there are a lot of people in Moscow and Beijing to whom these dots are very apparent.
Henry Johnston is a Moscow-based editor who worked in finance for over a decade.
The Nature of hypocrisy: pharma-funded journals smearing independent voices
Nature alleges that I endanger public health, but it is the journal — steeped in pharma money — that ought to be looking inward.
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | October 1, 2025
When an editor from Nature emailed me this week, it wasn’t a neutral request for comment. It was a prelude to a hit piece — filled with defamatory accusations and framed around a predetermined narrative.
According to the email, I was being lumped into an “anti-vaccine movement,” accused of “endangering public health,” and “profiting from disseminating misinformation.”
No evidence was provided. No articles were cited. No definition of “anti-vaccine” was offered. No complainants were named. Just blanket accusations intended as a character assassination.
Conflict of interest at the heart of Nature
And who is casting these stones?
Nature — a journal that publishes vaccine research while pocketing revenue from pharmaceutical advertising and sponsored content.
To then assign an editor to target independent journalists who scrutinise that very industry is a glaring conflict of interest.
A medical journal acting as both mouthpiece and judge of what counts as “misinformation” is like a tobacco company funding lung health studies while attacking anyone who questions them.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
On its own website, Nature boasts of partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AstraZeneca and other vaccine companies, dressing them up as “pioneering collaborations” to “support science.” It even publishes paid advertising features.
Meanwhile, I’ve never taken a cent from the drug industry. My work is sustained by readers who choose to support independent journalism.
Yet Nature accuses me of “profiting” — as if being funded by the public is more corrupting than raking in thousands, if not millions, from the very companies you’re supposed to scrutinise.
To test how deep the rot runs, I’ve requested that Nature disclose its advertising revenue for the past decade, broken down by pharmaceutical corporations, government agencies, and NGOs.
I will publish those figures if and when they are provided.
Loaded language
Nature’s email branded me part of an “anti-vaccine movement.” But what does that actually mean?
Is questioning regulatory capture “anti-vaccine”?
Is demanding the timely publication of safety signals “anti-vaccine”?
Is exposing the failures of the vaccine injury compensation scheme “anti-vaccine”?
Is pointing out the poor oversight of vaccine trials “anti-vaccine”?
By that logic, critics of arsenic in drinking water would be “anti-arsenic,” and anyone calling for safer driving would be “anti-car.” The absurdity is obvious, yet the label is useful to silence debate.
And the email’s language was revealing.
Phrases like “scientific consensus” and “peer-reviewed science” are waved around like trump cards, but in practice they are red flags — appeals to authority rather than evidence.
‘Consensus’ can be manufactured. And ‘peer review’ is no shield against corruption when journals themselves are compromised.
I have documented journal–pharma ties, the retraction of inconvenient studies, and the use of pharma-funded “fact checks” masquerading as science to discredit politically uncomfortable findings.
So when an editor of Nature hides behind these clichés instead of addressing the evidence I present, it tells you everything. This isn’t about protecting science, it’s about protecting a narrative.
And I’m clearly not the only target.
Dr Robert Malone — also a Substack publisher and now a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practice — received the same media request from Nature.
The journal’s smear campaign extends even to those who now sit on America’s top vaccine advisory body.
Nature insists that “anti-vaccine stances are supported by a small body of evidence compared to the larger weight of evidence for vaccination.”
But that’s probably because journals act as gatekeepers, blocking challenges to orthodoxy and shutting out novel viewpoints. Studies that raise concerns are rejected, buried or retracted, while industry-friendly findings sail through unopposed.
It isn’t the science that’s lacking — it’s the willingness of journals to let inconvenient results see the light of day. The house of cards is collapsing, and that is why the attacks on dissent are more aggressive than ever.
And those attacks often come from self-proclaimed experts who are themselves conflicted, embedded in institutions sustained by the teat of industry, and unwilling to disclose their own conflicts.
Pot calling the kettle black: the Proximal Origin scandal
Notably, while Nature postures as a guardian against “misinformation,” it bears responsibility for one of the pandemic’s most notorious scandals.
In March 2020, Nature Medicine — part of the Nature portfolio — published “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which declared the virus could not have been engineered in a lab.
The paper was splashed across headlines and weaponised to dismiss the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy.”
But private emails and Slack chats told another story. The authors harboured serious doubts and admitted a lab origin could not be ruled out.
Hundreds of scientists now call the paper a ‘political tract’ dressed up as science, and thousands have petitioned for its retraction. Yet Nature Medicine refuses, brushing it aside as a “point of view” piece.
If that isn’t misinformation, then what is?
Even the White House has distanced itself. Its website now acknowledges that the Proximal Origin paper was used to suppress debate, and alleges the authors were nudged by Dr Fauci to push the “preferred” zoonotic origin narrative.
Time for accountability
Make no mistake, this is ‘the system’ at work.
Powerful journals with financial ties to industry unleashing hatchet men to smear independent journalists and scientists, rather than engaging with evidence.
I won’t play along. My job is to hold institutions accountable, not to curry their favour. If Nature wants to brand that “misinformation,” so be it. History shows that today’s heresy is often tomorrow’s truth.
This goes to the heart of the corruption of medical publishing — a system Robert F. Kennedy Jr has repeatedly warned about, and one that now demands scrutiny at the highest levels.
With Dr Jay Bhattacharya at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, there is finally an opportunity to investigate the conflicts of interest, selective censorship, and financial entanglements that journals like Nature have normalised.
When those who profit from pharma partnerships claim the authority to police what lies “outside the scientific consensus,” public trust in science collapses.
And that collapse is not the fault of independent journalists asking hard questions. It is the fault of journals that serve industry interests over science.
Australia’s “eSafety” Commissioner Holds 2,600+ Records Tracking Christian Media Outlet
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 3, 2025
Australia’s online safety regulator is refusing to process a Freedom of Information request that would expose how it has tracked the activity of a prominent Christian media outlet and its leaders, citing excessive workload as the reason for denial.
The office of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has confirmed it is holding more than 2,600 records connected to The Daily Declaration, its founding body The Canberra Declaration, and three of its editorial figures: Warwick Marsh, Samuel Hartwich, and Kurt Mahlburg.
Despite admitting the existence of these records, the agency says reviewing them would take more than 100 hours and would therefore unreasonably impact its operations.
In a formal response dated 29 September, the regulator explained that it had identified thousands of documents referencing the group and its members. “Processing a request of this size would substantially impact eSafety’s operations,” the notice read.
The documents include media monitoring reports automatically generated whenever The Daily Declaration or its editors have posted online about the regulator or been tagged in relevant conversations.
Every mention gets captured by automated tracking tools, creating a growing pile of files that the agency now claims is too large to review.
After filtering for duplicates, around 650 documents were considered potentially relevant.
Yet the agency still refused, estimating that sorting and redacting them would consume over 100 hours. That figure triggers what the law defines as a “practical refusal,” giving agencies legal cover to reject the request altogether.
Government departments are allowed to deny FOI requests if they consider them too broad or resource-heavy.
But in this case, the regulator’s own mass monitoring appears to be the reason it can now avoid public scrutiny.
A system that routinely generates digital records of online commentary is then used to block access to those very records, effectively protecting the agency from oversight.
Mahlburg, senior editor at The Daily Declaration, called out the move, saying, “The very mechanism designed to protect Australians ends up shielding the government from scrutiny.”
The Commissioner’s office has given a deadline of 13 October for the request to be narrowed.
If that does not happen, it will be treated as withdrawn, and none of the 2,600 documents will be released.
Suggested limitations include trimming the date range, excluding auto-generated reports, or focusing only on specific individuals.
Although The Daily Declaration has said it will resubmit the FOI request with a more restricted scope, the case raises broader concerns. The regulator has amassed a significant database tracking Christian organizations and individuals who speak on topics such as faith, freedom, and family.
By leaning on its own volume of monitoring data to block transparency, the agency sets a dangerous precedent.
While the public is told this is a matter of efficiency, the reality is that routine surveillance of dissenting voices is being shielded from exposure. The more the agency monitors, the easier it becomes to deny public access.
New York Imposes Law Forcing Social Media to Justify Speech Policies to State Authorities
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 3, 2025
Social media companies operating in New York are now under fresh legal obligations as the state enforces the so-called “Stop Hiding Hate Act,” a new compelled speech law that forces platforms with annual revenues exceeding $100 million to hand over detailed reports on how they handle various forms of speech, including speech that is legally protected under the First Amendment.
The legislation went into effect on October 1 and has already triggered a constitutional showdown in court.
The law, officially Senate Bill S895B, demands biannual disclosures to the state Attorney General’s office.
These reports must outline how platforms define terms such as “hate speech,” “misinformation,” “harassment,” “disinformation,” and “extremism.”
Companies are also required to explain what moderation practices they apply to those categories and to provide specifics about actions taken against users and content.
Platforms that fail to comply face penalties of up to $15,000 per violation, per day. Injunctive action can also be taken against non-compliant entities.
Attorney General Letitia James declared that the law is about transparency and oversight.
“With violence and polarization on the rise, social media companies must ensure that their platforms don’t fuel hateful rhetoric and disinformation,” she said in a public statement, reinforcing her view that private companies should be accountable to the state for how they manage user expression.
“The Stop Hiding Hate Act requires social media companies to share their content moderation policies publicly and with my office to ensure that these companies are more transparent about how they are addressing harmful content on their platforms.”
Governor Kathy Hochul voiced similar sentiments, saying the legislation “builds on our efforts to improve safety online and marks an important step to increase transparency and accountability.”
The reporting rules, however, do not simply demand that companies disclose general moderation policies. They compel platforms to state clearly how they define some of the most politically charged and subjective categories of online content. These include terms that do not have universally accepted definitions and that often serve as the basis for viewpoint discrimination.
This government demand for compelled speech is at the heart of a legal battle now playing out in federal court.
In June 2025, X Corp., the company behind the X platform, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
The company’s complaint argues that Senate Bill S895B is a direct assault on editorial discretion and a violation of free speech rights enshrined in both the US and New York Constitutions.
According to the complaint, the law imposes “an impermissible attempt by the State to inject itself into the content-moderation editorial process.” X warns that the statute operates as a tool to pressure platforms into adopting government-favored positions on disputed topics.
Key to X’s legal objection is what it refers to as the “Content Category Report Provisions.” These provisions, the company argues, effectively force platforms to accept the state’s framing of controversial topics, including “foreign political interference” and “hate speech,” regardless of how a private entity might choose to treat or define such categories independently.
The lawsuit also highlights the heavy financial threat tied to non-compliance, noting that fines can reach $15,000 per day for every violation. In addition, platforms could face legal action from the Attorney General’s office.
In defending its position, X Corp. references a victory it recently secured in a separate First Amendment case involving a similar law in California. There, the Ninth Circuit ruled that forced reporting of this nature likely constitutes compelled non-commercial speech and does not hold up under strict scrutiny.
The court concluded that forcing platforms to adopt state-defined language “amounts to compelled speech,” a stance X Corp. is urging the Southern District of New York to follow.
The company’s lawsuit goes a step further, pointing to legislative bias as motivation for the law’s passage.
According to the complaint, New York lawmakers refused to engage with X’s representatives in the wake of the California ruling, explicitly citing their disapproval of Elon Musk’s public statements and use of the platform.
In correspondence included in the court filing, lawmakers dismissed the company’s concerns because, in their words, Musk had used X to promote content that “threatens the foundations of our democracy.”
That remark, X argues, reveals a plainly unconstitutional motive rooted in viewpoint discrimination. “The government cannot do indirectly what [it] is barred from doing directly,” the complaint states, referencing controlling Supreme Court precedent.
Despite the ongoing litigation, New York officials are moving forward with the law’s enforcement.
Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, one of the bill’s sponsors, defended the policy as a necessary countermeasure to what he described as real and potential violence driven by online speech. “The Stop Hiding Hate Act will ensure that New Yorkers are able to know what social media companies are doing (or not doing) to stop the spread of hatred and misinformation on their platforms,” he said.
The outcome of the lawsuit could have wide-reaching implications not only for companies operating in New York but also for how much power states can exert over online speech. For now, platforms face a stark choice: speak as the state demands or risk steep penalties for silence.
Will California Zionise K-12 Education?
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | October 2, 2025
Factual information about Israel and Palestine may soon be outlawed in the California K-12 school system. Assembly Bill 715 is currently on Governor Newsom’s desk. The legislation was recently rushed through the California legislature, amended just days before passage, and voted on at 1 a.m. with almost no time for public comment.
The hurry is intentional because opposition grows whenever people learn about it. AB715 is opposed by educators across the spectrum, including the California Teachers Association, California Faculty Association, Association of School Board Administrators, California School Boards Association, and Council of UC Faculty Associations. Civil rights organizations, such as ACLU Action, also oppose the legislation.
What It Purports to Do
Assembly Bill 715 aims to “prevent antisemitism.” It asserts, “Jewish and Israeli pupils are facing a widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying. In many cases, such discrimination, harassment, and bullying has been so severe and pervasive that it has placed Jewish pupils at risk, or completely impeded their ability to learn or engage in school programs or activities.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is the main source for the claim that there is a “widespread surge” in antisemitism. Their accuracy is widely disputed. As the Jewish Currents publication reports, “A line-by-line reassessment of the organization’s data illuminates the flaws in its methodology.”
There is already protection in the California Education Code for genuine cases of discrimination or bullying. Section 220 of the code specifies that “No person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that is contained in the definition of hate crimes.” Through their ethnicity and religion, Jewish students are clearly a protected group. So are Israeli students. They can file claims of discrimination under existing legislation.
What It Will Actually Do
AB715 aims to expand the definition of “discrimination” and outlaw any textbook, instructional material, or course content that “would subject a pupil to unlawful discrimination.”
But what is “unlawful discrimination”? AB715 specifies that the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism is the basis for identifying antisemitism. That report asserts, “Jewish students and educators are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses, often because of their real or perceived views about the State of Israel. When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism.” The document claims, “an unshakeable commitment to the State of Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, and its security. In addition, we recognize and celebrate the deep historical, religious, cultural, and other ties many American Jews and other Americans have to Israel.”
The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism embraces the controversial “working definition” of antisemitism advanced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). This definition has been widely criticized for its conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism and criticism of the State of Israel. Over 100 human rights and civil society organizations reject the IHRA definition. Yet this is the definition which AB715 is based on.
If passed, AB715 will result in strict regulation of education and educational material that might subject Jewish students to “unlawful discrimination”. Facts and informed opinions about the reality in Israel and Palestine may be considered “antisemitic” or likely to cause discomfort. For example, students will not learn:
- The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Netanyahu charging him with crimes against humanity.
- The International Association of Genocide Scholars determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s B’Tselem have ALL independently investigated and determined that Israel is an apartheid state.
- The greatest scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, was against the creation a Jewish state and sought a binational Arab Jewish state in Palestine.
- In 1948, Einstein, Hanna Arendt, and other Jewish leaders denounced Menachim Begin as a Nazi and fascist.
- The Israeli newspaper Haaretz documents a Jewish scholar who was zionist but now supports Hamas and considers their armed resistance legitimate and legal.
All of the above are facts and assessments by credible organizations and individuals. AB715 is so vague yet sweeping that such education about Israel and Palestine may be considered “unlawful discrimination” against a pro-Israel student and therefore prohibited.
The Costs of AB715
If passed, AB715 will cost Californians dearly. It mandates the creation of a new Office of Civil Rights with an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator and staff producing regular reports, investigations, etc. Incredibly, AB715 allows any member of the public to file a complaint, even anonymously. These complaints must be investigated and responded to within time requirements. School boards and superintendents, already busy, will have to spend precious time and resources investigating each and every complaint in a timely manner. The predictable result will be fear or prohibition on saying anything about Israel or Palestine. The Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator is also mandated to provide antisemitism education to teachers, administrators, and school boards.
Under California’s “Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism,” millions of dollars are appropriated for education about the genocide which ended 80 years ago. Meanwhile, there is no funding and it appears the California legislature seeks to prevent education about the genocide happening today in Gaza.
Making it even worse, AB715 invites lawsuits which will further burden the education system. The legislation says, “Civil law remedies, including but not limited to injunctions, restraining orders, or other remedies, may also be available to complainants.” Under AB715, as a gift for zionist activists, any member of the public can be a complainant.
AB715 Should Not Be Signed into Law
The organizations representing California teachers, adminstrators, school superintendents and school boards are ALL against this legislation. AB715 will be costly, wasteful, and damaging to K-12 education in California. Where there are genuine cases of discrimination or bullying, existing legislation is adequate. All students are protected against discrimination or bullying under section 220 of the California Education Code. Where Jewish or Israeli students have been victimized, they have the same recourse as all students. They do not need preferential treatment.
Teaching facts and expert opinions about Israel and Palestine is not antisemitic. It is history and current events.
Feeling uncomfortable when learning some facts or opinions is not being a victim; it is being educated. People can disagree and have different perceptions; they should not be prevented from hearing facts and different perspectives.
The intent of AB715 is clear: to restrict factual information about an important region of the world and to punish educators who present the Palestinian and anti-zionist Jewish perspective. Governor Newsom should not sign the legislation. To encourage him to make the right decision, contact him via this link.
This legislation does not prevent antisemitism; it actually promotes it by demonstrating that major Jewish organizations and the Jewish Legislative Caucus have the power to push this legislation which will deny the history and current reality of the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace and organizations across the education profession are working hard to stop this assault on the California education system.
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From the Archives
On ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ and ‘genocide’: Time for new language on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2021
On 25 May, famous US actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologise for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding: “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of “hyperbole”? … continue
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