University professor sacked for anti-Zionist views wins discrimination case
Press TV – February 5, 2024
A sociology professor sacked by the University of Bristol over his anti-Zionist comments has won a landmark decision by an employment tribunal, which decided that he was discriminated against because of his beliefs.
In its judgment on Monday, the Bristol employment tribunal ruled that Professor David Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a philosophical belief, which are protected under the Equality Act 2010.
It added that Miller was subject to direct discrimination because of his anti-Zionist beliefs.
Rahman Lowe Solicitors, who represented Miller at court, called the judgement a significant triumph, establishing that anti-Zionist beliefs are legally protected in the workplace.
“Prof. Miller successfully claimed discrimination based on his philosophical belief that Zionism is inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial, [which is] a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, alongside a finding of unfair dismissal,” a statement issued by the solicitors said.
“This judgement establishes for the first time ever that anti-Zionist beliefs are protected in the workplace,” they added.
“I am extremely pleased that the tribunal has concluded that I was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed by the University of Bristol. I am also very proud that we have managed to establish that anti-Zionist views qualify as a protected belief under the UK Equality Act,” Miller said.
Professor Miller was fired by the University of Bristol in October 2021 after he made statements about the role of the Zionist movement in promoting Islamophobia.
Following his dismissal, Miller asserted that he was subject to an organized campaign by groups and individuals opposed to his anti-Zionist views, which was aimed at getting him sacked.
He took the University of Bristol to the Employment Tribunal on the basis of unlawful discrimination for his beliefs in breach of the Equality Act 2010.
In a post on X social media platform after winning the case, Miller said, “This is not just a victory for me, but also a victory for pro-Palestine campaigners across Britain.”
“Over many years, anti-Zionists have faced harassment and censorship in Britain due to the efforts of the Israel lobby. Many people have faced disciplinary procedures and lost their jobs for manifesting their anti-Zionist beliefs,” he added.
Miller expressed hope that “this case will become a touchstone precedent in all the future battles that we face with the racist and genocidal ideology of Zionism and the movement to which it is attached.”
“This verdict is also a vindication of the approach I have taken throughout this period, which is to say that a genocidal and maximalist Zionism can only be effectively confronted by a maximalist anti-Zionism,” he noted.
Microsoft CEO Says the Company Is Working To Address Election “Disinformation and Misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2024
Concerns are growing over the role of Big Tech companies in moderating “misinformation,” particularly due to the fear that these corporations already wield significant power and influence which could potentially sway political outcomes, including elections.
Many worry that the concentrated power in these tech giants allows them to arbitrarily define what constitutes misinformation, leading to a situation where they could suppress certain viewpoints or information. This raises questions about the impartiality and fairness of such moderation, especially in the context of political discourse and the democratic process. The debate is fueled by the concern that these companies, due to their size and reach, could have a disproportionate impact on public opinion and electoral processes.
In an AI-focused interview with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, it was revealed that Microsoft intends to combat alleged “disinformation” throughout the 2024 elections.
During his conversation with NBC’s Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News’ January 30 edition, Nadella was questioned about how AI might either assist or endanger the future election.
However, Nadella’s response seemed to imply a willingness to use technology for censoring content in pursuit of fighting what he identified as disinformation.
Nadella stated, “This is not the first election where we dealt with disinformation or propaganda campaigns by adversaries and election interference.
“We’re doing all the work across the tech industry around watermarking, detecting deep fakes and content IDs. There is going to be enough and more technology quite frankly in order to be able to identify the issues around disinformation and misinformation.”
EU Leaders Squander Another €50 Billion on Propping up Kiev Regime… and Self-Destruction
Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2024
Finally, the European Union’s threats, blackmail, and arm-twisting have paid off to push through a giant €50 billion aid package to the hopelessly corrupt Kiev regime. This is while European farmers revolt against the EU leadership over higher energy costs and cheap imports from Ukraine that are putting them out of business and wiping out their livelihoods.
The EU leaders are committing the entire bloc of 500 million people to political suicide. The reckless cavalier attitude is something to behold. Bring on the pitchforks, Merci!
The 27 leaders of the European Union met in an emergency summit this week not to deal with the bloc’s mounting internal political, economic, and social problems but rather to lavish mountains of more aid on non-member Ukraine.
When the leaders held their last summit in December, it was a spectacle of back-biting and sordid wrangling. At that gathering, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed the allocation of more funds to the Ukrainian regime amid bitter recrimination and bickering. This time around, however, Hungary caved in to the intense pressure to agree on the package.
Days before the summit in Brussels this week, it was reported by the Financial Times that the European Council had drawn up plans to sabotage the Hungarian economy if Budapest persisted in not signing up for the massive aid plan. That speaks volumes about the perverse mindset at the apex of the EU bureaucracy. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the bloc despite pretentious claims to the contrary.
Brussels had already frozen up to €10 billion in central funding for Hungary and there were reported threats to remove Budapest’s voting rights in the bloc’s decision-making which would have been a blatant violation of the EU’s declared principle of unanimity.
The allocation of €50 billion to a non-member state is astounding. Even more bewildering is that the latest largesse is only a fraction of the total aid that the EU leadership has pumped into Ukraine since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. Over the past two years, the European Union has given the Kiev regime an estimated €100 billion.
The United States and other Western allies have also plied Ukraine with another €100 billion. About half of this goes on weapons, while the other half pays for state financing.
As we have noted here previously, the cumulative funding by the West to Ukraine has far exceeded the historic Marshall Fund that the U.S. allocated to all of Europe for reconstruction following World War Two (about €170 billion in today’s money).
There is simply no precedent or justifiable rationale for this mobilization of financial support for Ukraine. This has all been done as a fait accompli by an elite class with no democratic mandate. No referenda have been conducted to consult the public about the inordinate expenditure. Indeed, polls indicate that the European public – like the American public – is opposed to their governments supporting Ukraine.
The Biden administration is vying with growing resistance in Congress to send Ukraine an additional $60 billion.
To boot, the Kiev regime under the puppet president Vladimir Zelensky is a byword for rampant corruption and repression. It is admitted by Pentagon sources that something like $400 million of military spending has been siphoned off by the Kiev junta. The real figure is plausibly even greater.
The grotesque allocation of financial resources to Ukraine has nothing to do with supporting democracy or defending the country from alleged Russian aggression.
EU leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen keep repeating a mantra about defending Ukraine because, they say, if it is defeated then all of Europe is in danger of Russian invasion. This is the most preposterous scaremongering by politicians who are ideologically blinded by Russophobia and slaves to propagating Western hegemony.
The latest €50 billion injection to a war-addicted Ukrainian regime is openly said to be for sustaining its government and paying for salaries and services. In other words, Ukraine is a failed state, and yet European citizens, workers, and farmers – who themselves are subsisting in hard economic times – are expected to bankroll a corrupt cabal.
Furthermore, the hardship that tens of millions of European citizens are enduring is a direct result of their political leaders and the Brussels bureaucratic elite pandering to the United States’ agenda of hostility towards Russia.
That U.S.-led aggression, which can be traced back to the CIA-instigated coup in Kiev in 2014 to bring a NeoNazi regime to power, has sabotaged Europe’s economy. European leaders have treasonously served Washington’s geopolitical interests and not those of ordinary Europeans. The insane imposition of sanctions on Russia has led to huge hikes in energy prices which has decimated European businesses and the living standards of consumers, workers, and farmers.
The higher costs of production are a major factor in the surging protests across Europe by farmers. Another factor is the EU’s undemocratic import of cheaper agricultural produce from Ukraine as a sop to the Kiev regime. Those imports have undermined farmers all across Europe, in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic countries.
The scandalous abuse of European funds to prop up a corrupt fascist regime that violently suppresses political opponents, media, and the Orthodox Church, and glorifies Nazi collaborators, has one fundamental purpose – to prolong a proxy war against Russia. That war’s objective is for eventual strategic subjugation.
The Western regimes are so bankrupt and impotent in the face of their broken capitalist economies that they are seeking to exploit Russia’s vast natural wealth. This is the continuation of the Lebensraum policy of Nazi Germany by Western imperialists.
Ukraine has lost the proxy war against Russia. It is a shameful, criminal debacle. Up to 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the past two years by superior Russian forces. The vile Kiev regime, of course, wants to keep the war racket going for its insatiable grifting. Washington and its European vassals in high office want to keep the war going out of elitist imperial ambition, an ambition that is ultimately futile in the new emerging multipolar global order.
While European leaders were ensconced in the European Council in Brussels, the parliament was blockaded by angry farmers from all over Europe. Protesters were calling out politicians by name. The contempt is palpable. Paris and other capitals across Europe are being besieged by motorway chokepoints. National economies are on the brink as a result.
One might even perceive that European farmers in France, Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere, are implementing tactics similar to the Yemenis in the Red Sea. Squeeze the chokepoints and watch the empire writhe.
You couldn’t make this farce up. European elitist regimes are waging war in Europe against nuclear-powered Russia by wasting the public’s money to lavish a Neo-Nazi mafia in Kiev and by doing so making the lives of European citizens even harder. The upshot is political and economic suicide for the European Union.
The EU is holding parliamentary elections in June amid the dramatic rise of anti-EU or Eurosceptic parties. Two years of senseless war in Ukraine is fomenting popular disgust with the elite class. The anger out there may not even be contained by voting in elections. The fury seems to be beyond making little Xs in a box. A collapse is coming and heads are going to roll.
ADL defines genocide and civil disobedience within the FBI
The looming threat to Middle East peace activism
By Grant F. Smith | IRmep | February 2, 2024
As politicians and the Anti-Defamation League call for crackdowns on Middle East peace protesters, the ADL’s undue influence within the FBI as a trainer is finally exposed.
Basic Field Training Course
The Department of Justice released the Anti-Defamation League’s Basic Field Training Course (PDF). The course is mandatory for all FBI New Agent Trainees (NATs) and New Intelligence Analyst Trainees (NIATs). This release follows a decade of Freedom of Information Act requests and denials by the Department of Justice (PDF) and evasion by publicly funded content contributors.
The ADL course is developed and conducted by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) instructors. It selects materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Marcus Appelbaum, Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives in 2014 resisted any public review of the curriculum, stating, “Unfortunately we do not randomly send out the curriculum.” Appelbaum also denied that any of the large amounts of U.S. taxpayer funding supporting the museum paid for the curriculum.
Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives Marcus Appelbaum denied curriculum release in 2014.
The ADL course facilitates a discussion of the USHMM video The Path to Nazi Genocide by asking trainees to watch and then consider “the challenges that police officers faced, and decisions they made in Germany during the Nazi era.” The video depicts the rise of Nazi Germany from WWI to the final WWII liberation of concentration camps replete with emaciated images of the dead and barely living.
The final question the video puts to agents in training is why the word “genocide” had to be coined in the aftermath. “As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide, was needed for these crimes — crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike our own.”
The ADL training also requires viewing the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk. Supplemental reading exposes new FBI agents to the bureau’s past role undermining Martin Luther King Jr. and documents Bull Connor’s relentless fire hosing and mass arrests of black protesters engaged in civil disobedience. The video ends with the triumphant 1963 March on Washington and JFK’s proposal for a Civil Rights Act.
Taken in context, the entirety of the Basic Field Training Course makes it clear that FBI trainees are ADL subordinates who must strive to meet with its approval. Page 9 of the guide even states, “as a new hire, we would like you….”
The unstated purpose of the course is positioning Israeli activities in the US and the ADL itself outside the purview of law enforcement and especially FBI counterintelligence. The ADL today is framed as trusted trainers and civil rights partners. That was not always the case. The ADL’s current privileged insider role training all new FBI special agents is the result of a secretive influence campaign that began more than eight decades ago. Internal FBI files about that campaign reveal the ADL’s true reasons for infiltrating the FBI.
In 1940 the ADL launched an intense effort to liaise with the FBI by offering a list of undercover ADL investigators to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was reluctant to accept the ADL list. One FBI special agent told Hoover he found a proposed investigator resource to be “mentally unbalanced.” Others offered up by ADL, such as longtime political campaign donation bundler Abraham Feinberg, was known to the FBI as a WWII surplus conventional weapons smuggler for Israel and alleged unregistered foreign agent. Feinberg later financed Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.
The ADL offered to investigate persons of interest to the FBI. FBI Assistant Director P. E. Foxworth nixed that idea, telling Hoover the ADL was engaged in “shakedowns” of “loyal and innocent” Americans and “interested only in their own material benefit…”
This did not keep the ADL from announcing in 1942 it had conducted “373 investigations” on behalf of the FBI. This prompted Hoover to respond that private investigative agencies had “no excuse for existence” and that the FBI “had never asked the ADL to conduct an investigation.” On June 30, 1943, Luigi S. Crisculo, an American investment banker involved in Italian American causes, reported being baited by Anti-Defamation League operatives who claimed to be “unofficial auxiliaries of the Department of Justice” and were attempting to link him to Nazism.
The ADL also wanted to directly seed its operatives into the FBI. Arnold Forster (AKA Fastenberg) began developing ADL’s legal team in 1938 while simultaneously applying to become an FBI special agent in 1937 and 1939. Forster was formally rejected because in the view of the FBI he “dressed poorly, did not appear resourceful and would probably not develop.” Forster then became ADL’s chief investigator in 1940 and held formal and informal positions until 2003. Another longtime ADL investigator and operative named Frank Prince even campaigned to replace Hoover as FBI director. When caught out in 1942, the ADL offered to “disband within 24 hours.” The FBI did not take the ADL up on this offer since “we [the FBI] are not running the Anti-Defamation League.”
Throughout the 1940s the ADL continuously lobbied FBI field offices for meetings and joint events which befuddled some bureau insiders. One special agent in command reported to Hoover he could not “understand the insistence of the ADL that a representative of this Bureau address this group.” He felt, “there is some ulterior motive that causes them to be so insistent.”
One ADL motive was gaining privileged access to FBI files. In 1944 ADL’s Nissan Gross asked to periodically check FBI files to avoid “duplication of investigation.” Special Agent in Command Drayton rebuffed the ADL because “under the procedure…ADL would have an opportunity to learn of the informants being utilized…and those under investigation.”
In 1968 FBI Director J Edgar Hoover finally dropped his longstanding opposition and ordered field offices “to immediately make certain that you have established liaison with the head of the ADL regional office in your territory…” Such liaisons continue to this day. Since then, joint public events, training sessions and even FBI director “love letters” to the ADL have been ongoing.
Given its insider status at the FBI, growing piles of Palestinian corpses in Gaza and resultant mass protests and civil disobedience in the U.S. may not be a challenge for the ADL which, along with other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem, works to censor open debate and protests of concern to Israel. As an FBI trainer, the ADL has finally transcended scrutiny. The FBI previously, acting on credible evidence, investigated ADL for domestic spying before political pressure on former Attorney General Janet Reno quashed the investigation. Such investigations of the ADL today would be unthinkable.
Even before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s attack on Gaza and settler rampages in the West Bank, the ADL was seeding the FBI with false threat reports conflating peaceful US based Palestinian rights groups with white nationalist movements.
ADL statistics and reports also attempt to reframe pro-Palestinian protests and civil disobedience in the United States as Antisemitism and “hate crimes” rather than anything resembling legitimate Civil Rights era nonviolent action. Under its forced “liaison” with the ADL, the FBI must pay close attention to and respond to all the ADL’s false and misleading allegations lest other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem work in concert to threaten its funding, political appointees or mundane issues such as a new headquarters.
The ADL and Israel lobby ecosystem acted quickly to compel Congressional “genocide threat” hearings—focused not on the reality of tens of thousands of dead in Gaza, but rather the discomfort felt by American Zionist students at elite Ivy league universities encountering campus cease fire rallies.
Following the ADL worldview, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently alleged that pro-Palestinian protesters picketing her home were acting on behalf of Russia and China and demanded that the FBI investigate them as foreign agents.
It is ironic that Pelosi, who has benefited all her career from support from AIPAC, an Israeli foreign influence operation set up with $60 million in foreign funds laundered into the US in the 1950s and 1960s, hurls foreign agent accusations at peaceful protesters.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaking at Israel’s Knesset in 2022
However, the threat of looming FBI crackdowns, covert or overt, on protesters calling for Middle East peace should not be discounted given the ADL’s success infiltrating its worldview into the bureau. Although FBI Director Christopher Wray has promised the FBI will not investigate or surveil peaceful pro-Palestine protests, his promise leaves out entrapment operations. The pressure for the bureau to “get results” by seeding plots, weapons and entrap mentally unbalanced individuals in “Palestinian terror plots” may soon become overwhelming. Such “successes” would instantly gain uncritical, widespread mainstream media diffusion and touch off more congressional hearings for further operations and funds to Israel.
One certainty is that even as the International Court of Justice demands Israel refrain from violations of the Genocide Convention, the ADL will certainly not teach such relevant current day lessons to new generations of special agents.
Review primary sources referenced in this article at the Israel Lobby Archive.
Von der Leyen celebrates ‘a great day for Europe’ as farmers trash Brussels
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 2, 2024
“Agreement! The European Council delivered on our priorities. Supporting Ukraine…. A good day for Europe,” tweeted unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, as EU farmers “high-fived” her by throwing eggs, lighting fires and dumping manure in Brussels, where a reported 1,300 tractors gathered in protest.
Surely it must have been in anticipation of this “great day for Europe” that Brussels rolled out the barbed wire to keep the bloc’s own struggling farmers at bay while its leaders cut yet another check for Ukraine — after threatening the one anticipated holdout with national economic “blackmail,” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban qualified it. It’s hard to believe that this meeting actually took place in Brussels. These officials are so disconnected from reality that it may as well have been held on a whole other planet.
Unlike the Ukrainian products making their way onto Western European dinner plates to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin (because turtlenecks and short, cold showers apparently failed to do the job), this crisis is certifiably EU-made. No one knows this better than the farmers, who also realize that it makes more sense to blockade the streets of Brussels than the national highways of their home countries, which they’ve been doing with overwhelming public support – from nine out of every ten citizens in the case of France, according to a recent Odoxa poll.
It was the EU with its climate change obsession that imposed a Common Agricultural Policy on farmers across the entire bloc, managed by bureaucrats divorced from the reality on the ground. Pencil pushers use EU Copernicus satellite images to spy and crack down on farmers whose paperwork doesn’t match – even if any discrepancies can be chalked up to uncontrollable but temporary conditions like the weather.
It was also the EU that piled on regulations under the pretext of ensuring the quality of farm products, while at the same time flooding the bloc with grain, poultry, and other imports from Ukraine. Does “Chernobyl chicken” mass-produced by workers who are paid a pittance represent a threat to the physical health of citizens and economic health of farmers? If not, then why can’t Brussels take its jackboot off the necks of its own farmers so they can compete on a level playing field? The EU has also suddenly decided to ease up on some pesticide bans, angering greens. Paris is promoting the idea that ideologically-driven bans need to end, which seems like a tacit admission of their uselessness. So what should we be more worried about now – ideologically-driven authoritarianism under the guise of health consciousness, or an actual health threat?
And what about that Ukrainian grain that EU officials demanded Russia unblock to feed the poor in developing countries? It turns out that Turkey and Russia were right when they raised the alarm about it just being dumped right next door in Europe, and it sounds like Russian President Vladimir Putin was effectively a bigger defender of EU farmers’ interests than Brussels was. But who’s even surprised anymore by Brussels’ misplaced priorities, given the image that has now emerged of another €50 billion ($54 billion) going out the door to Kiev, in support of a country that’s undercutting the EU’s own farmers without even being in the EU itself?
It was also the EU that screwed itself, its entire population, industry, and farmers out of cheap Russian energy, driving inflation that caused consumers to turn to cheaper food products and, in turn, driving industrial distributors to buy more cheaply, favoring Ukrainian imports. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he’d now be merciless with those industrials, as he limbers up to toss them under the tractors instead of taking responsibility for his own inaction or blaming Brussels for a top-down anti-Russia policy that’s doing far more harm than good.
The farmers’ problems are existential. And while some French farming union chiefs have called for the suspension of blockades in light of the most recent series of promised reforms announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, it’s not clear whether the rank and file will actually listen in the long term. These are people who don’t talk much, but when they do, they’re direct and concrete. As one farmer told me, “Our feet may be in the dirt, but the dirt is clean” – in contrast to some politicians who have different narratives depending on their audience. Even with the suspension of the blockades on Friday, union reps admit that if government action and implementation doesn’t follow shortly, then the blowback from the same farmers risks being “catastrophic.”
For many farmers I’ve spoken with, it’s far too little, and way too late. The average French farmer’s income, estimated by government statistics back in 2021 at around €17,700 a year (for people who regularly work 70 hours a week), has since been subjected to even more blows. Yet governments have insisted on milking this particular cow until there’s nothing left. How else to explain the careless decision to raise taxes on farm fuel by 3 cents a liter, every year, and the insistence on maintaining such a policy at a time when the price of energy had skyrocketed as a result of knee-jerk anti-Russian ideological choices imposed by the EU? Until the tractors spilled onto the highways in France, Paris showed no interest in reversing this tax policy, which was implemented to drive the “green transition” away from conventional energy, and against all pragmatic reality. Clearly French officials knew of its devastating impact, as it was one of the very first concessions that Attal tried tossing like a speed bump in front of the advancing tractors on January 26 – and which the farmers rolled right over, demanding more.
Then there’s Queen Ursula briefly breaking from her fawning over the EU farmers’ current nemesis, Ukraine, to propose easing their “administrative burden.” Too bad she didn’t do that before letting Ukraine into the market in the first place. Guess she could always just blame Putin for making her do it. The bureaucracy is so overwhelming at this point that her proposal to the farmers is like offering to save people drowning in the ocean by tossing them a bucket. She could have stopped the paperwork pile-on at any time, but didn’t.
And how exactly could she know this demagoguery was killing European farming? You’d think that the first clue would have been the fact that EU policies ended up strong-arming Dutch farmers to sell their land to the government because their cattle’s nitrogen emissions exceeded climate policy limits.
Macron has now started to lobby the EU to restrict Ukrainian imports. Wow. You’d think these tractors were Decepticon Transformers about to rise up and kick their behinds, the way that all these EU leaders are suddenly springing into action. But the fact that an elected president even has to go cap in hand to plead with unelected Brussels bureaucrats, rather than make sovereign decisions in the best interests of his own country, is pathetic. Like, what if they say no? Then what? Does Macron think that he’s going to single-handedly and permanently derail the new Mercosur free trade deal, ready for signature, and set to flood the EU with even more farm products from Brazil and the rest of South America?
If Macron, or any other EU leader had any courage, they would have vetoed the €50 billion for Ukraine and demanded that it be used in consultation with EU farmers to ease their burden and “unscrew” the bloc. That’s a lot of bought time for the EU to figure out how to deconstruct the mess that it has made of its own house through corruption and special interests – all in hope that one day, people doing honest work can also make a commensurately decent living.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
INTERVIEW: OMALI YESHITELA, FACING 15-YEARS FOR “PRO-RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA”
Glenn Greenwald | January 31, 2024
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Transparency troubles: The Global Disinformation Index faces scrutiny over government ties and biased practices
More controversy surrounding the pro-censorship group
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | January 31, 2024
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a US government-funded pro-censorship organization, has come under fire for lacking transparency, ironically the same issue it labels non-mainstream websites for.
Despite hypocritically casting aspersions on sites that reject the mainstream narrative on many issues, the GDI, as per a report by the Washington Examiner, exhibits a conspicuous absence of this very transparency in its operations.
Billing itself as nonpartisan and objective while routinely favoring leftist narratives, the GDI has received over $100k from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Part of the score it assigns to online platforms stems from the possibility of controversial interests emerging from shadowy ownership structures—a principle it doesn’t appear to abide by itself.
According to Mike Davis, founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, the GDI is in breach of the law by keeping its disclosures hidden. The Washington Examiner also mentioned that the GDI is currently under congressional investigation. Adding to the mystery is the GDI’s refusal to disclose its “dynamic exclusion list,” a tool reportedly used by businesses like Microsoft and Oracle to hamstring ad placements on right-leaning outlets, thereby achieving a sort of financial strangulation of these sites.
Despite providing heavily concealed tax information for its two U.S. subsidiaries, Disinformation Index Inc. and the AN Foundation, upon request from the Examiner, details from the GDI’s tax filings on ProPublica reveal a closer relationship between the organization, the US Government, and left-wing donors.
The report discloses that the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy and the billionaire George Soros together donated a grand total of $465,750 to the GDI in 2022.
In 2023, Texas along with media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist started legal proceedings against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, alleging governmental attempts to silence the American press through funding the GDI. The action taken was based on GDI’s activities which reportedly included blacklisting conservative media.
German “Fact Checker” That Received Funding From Government, Facebook, Omidyar Network, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Dismisses German Farmers As “Conspiracy Theorists”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 31, 2024
The expression is, “you can’t make that up” – to signal the level of the absurdity of a situation.
Meanwhile, groups calling themselves “fact checkers” and those bankrolling them keep making things up. And becoming used to it aside, their work still feels as if – “you can’t make that up.”
When names like the Omidyar Network, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and Meta start cropping up in the same sentence, you start believing anything could come out of an “alliance” of the sort.
Here we have yet another supposedly “fact-checking” effort that turned into a smear campaign against people engaged in lawful protest regarding economic, social, and political issues.
In this instance, in Germany. There the economy, and with it the government, has been in serious trouble ever since Germany, for political reasons, cut itself off from affordable gas. Those with the most to lose, such as farmers, have been hit the hardest.
One of the recent consequences, though you may not hear much about it in legacy media, have been mass and ongoing farmer protests. At the same time, efforts are under way to ban one of the country’s most popular parties, AfD. Both have been labeled as right-wing conspiracy theorists, Covid “misinformationists,” and even Russia supporters.
And this labeling work is being done by something called “Correctiv” – a group that says it is a news and fact-checking site. Correctiv gets its money from Omidyar, Soros, Meta, but also the current German government.
In a report on Public, US-based author Gregor Baszak goes into the weeds of the situation, that shows a beleaguered government resorting to decidedly undemocratic moves and pondering shockingly undemocratic ideas, such as banning political opposition.
Baszak talks about a Correctiv article that goes after the farmers as some sort of right wing menace, supposedly spreading not only Russian propaganda and Covid disinformation – just because of expressing anger over their business becoming unsustainable with the government’s fuel and vehicle subsidy cuts.
“The (Correctiv) article does not specify what ‘Covid disinformation’ the farmers spread,” Baszak writes. “Nor does it offer any evidence of ties between the farmers and the Russian government, only that ‘some X accounts’ that support the farmers wrote posts that ‘coincided with the methods of a pro-Russian propaganda network.’”
However, at least for the time being, what left-leaning German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has described as “the stupidest government in Europe” is succeeding in keeping its opponents divided by throwing damning, even false, accusations their way.
IMF accused of domestic meddling after telling UK to reach net zero targets by raising taxes
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | JANUARY 30, 2024
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accused of intervening in the U.K.’s domestic politics by warning Chancellor Jeremy Hunt against tax cuts so that net zero targets can be achieved.
In the latest update to its economic forecasts, IMF analysts said that the U.K. Treasury should not be considering cuts to taxation — as hinted at recently by Hunt ahead of March’s budget statement — and should instead raise it in particular areas — all at a time when ordinary Brits continue to struggle with the cost of living.
“Preserving high-quality public services and undertaking critical public investments to boost growth and achieve the net zero targets, will imply higher spending needs over the medium term than are currently reflected in the government’s budget plans,” an IMF spokesperson said.
“Accommodating these needs… will already require generating additional high-quality fiscal savings, including on the tax side.
“The IMF has recommended strengthening carbon and property taxation, eliminating loopholes in wealth and income taxation, and reforming the pensions triple lock.
“It is in this context that staff advises against further tax cuts,” they added.
U.K. conservatives, however, hit back at the global financial institution and accused it of meddling in domestic affairs ahead of a general election expected later this year.
Speaking to Remix News, Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns said: “It is simple, as Conservatives we should have lox taw and freedom of choice.
“We cannot be telling people how to heat their homes or what cars to drive. Say no to net zero!” added the former government minister.
Former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney accused globalist elites of wanting ordinary people to be “poorer, colder, and hungry to fund their eco-vanity projects and keep the taxes rolling in.”
“Supranational super-quango interferes in British domestic affairs in an attempt to keep us saddled with high taxes. Globalism is awful,” added the London-based Bruges Group think tank.
Ahead of the Spring Budget, Chancellor Hunt reiterated his desire to cut taxes but added that “it is too early to know whether further reductions in tax will be affordable.”
“We continue to believe that smart tax reductions can make a big difference in boosting growth,” he added.
MMR Vaccine Debate Heats Up as Media Claim ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ to Blame for Recent Outbreaks
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 25, 2024
Measles outbreaks are in the news again.
In the U.S., local health departments and media reported about 16 cases of measles between December 2023 and January. The outbreaks occurred in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Georgia and Washington.
In the United Kingdom, the UK Health Security Agency reported 209 cases between January and November 2023 and about 319 cases between October 2023 and the present.
Media blamed international travel and declining vaccination rates among children as “probably” behind the outbreaks.
But Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, told The Defender it doesn’t make sense to assume the unvaccinated are to blame. She said cyclical outbreaks still occur even in populations with nearly 100% vaccination, such as college students.
Dr. Paul Thomas, a retired pediatrician and author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years Paperback,” told The Defender some cases of measles are reported every year. Despite the hype around the recent outbreaks, he said, “There have not been any significant measles outbreaks in the U.S. for decades.”
The largest recent national spike in measles cases occurred in 2019 when 1,274 cases were reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was the worst year for measles in the U.S. since 1992.
Since 2019, the number of cases reported has been significantly lower: In 2020, there were 13 cases, in 2021, 49 cases, in 2022 there were 121 cases and in 2023, there were 56 cases. The post-2019 numbers also tend to be lower than the numbers from 2000-2018, which averaged around 200 per year.
Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Measles is a contagious childhood viral disease characterized by a cough, runny nose and fever, followed by a generalized rash.
It was declared to be eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 — meaning there was no continuous transmission.
Mortality from measles in the U.S. declined significantly during the 20th century — 98% from 1900 to 1963, before the measles vaccine was introduced — due to advances in living conditions, healthcare and nutrition, according to Physicians for Informed Consent.
Since 2000, there have been only four measles deaths in the Americas — three in 2000 and one in 2022, according to a November 2023 CDC report.
The overwhelming majority of the approximately 130,000 measles deaths annually occur in countries in the global south that have weak health infrastructures, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Those deaths, along with measles hospitalizations in the global north, are associated with vitamin A deficiency.
“Measles can be deadly if a child does not have access to safe water and medical care,” Mumper said. “In developed countries, fatalities from measles are very rare.”
Effective treatments include vitamin A in high doses and attention to hydration status, Mumper said.
“Many natural methods to help the body fight viruses, like extra vitamin D and vitamin C are effective but not widely recommended by mainstream medicine,” she added.
Prior to the introduction of the vaccine in the U.S. in 1963, most people contracted measles and gained lifetime immunity, and the number of deaths had dropped to 0.9 per 100,000 for children under age 10.
The vaccines significantly reduced the number of reported measles cases, with efficacy rates that can be upwards of 95%, Thomas said. However, he added immunity from the vaccines wanes over time.
“From a mechanistic standpoint, the lifelong 100% natural immunity comes when measles is caught through respiratory spread. Giving a vaccine by injection may be an inherently poor substitute for Mother Nature,” Mumper said.
Approximately 83% of children globally received one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine by their first birthday in 2022.
Hotez, Offit blame the ‘anti-vaxers’ for measles outbreaks
Although case numbers have declined in the U.S. since 2020, and the recently reported cases were either among adults or children who may be too young to have completed the MMR vaccine schedule, news reports about the outbreaks consistently link them to lower post-pandemic vaccination rates among kindergarteners.
The CDC recommends two doses of the MMR vaccine, with the first dose at 12 to 15 months old and the second dose between ages 4 and 6.
The agency reported that from the 2019-20 school year to the 2021-22 school year vaccination rates for state-required vaccines among kindergarten children declined from approximately 95% to approximately 93%, and the exemption rate increased to 3.0%.
CDC data going back to 2011 show that rates typically vary from year-to-year, but consistently stay above 93%.
Thomas said the drop has been minimal and “given the loss of immunity in both children and adults in the vaccinated, this minor reduction in MMR uptake by children is not going to make a difference [in infection rates].”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a go-to “expert” for mainstream media on vaccines — and a vaccine developer and patent holder himself, who has repeatedly smeared vaccine safety advocates as “anti-science aggressors” — told ABC and CBS News that he thought the sporadic outbreaks were likely a result of lowered vaccination rates and that they were going to get worse.
“We’re just seeing now, this is the tip of the iceberg,” Hotez said. “We’re going to be seeing this in communities across the United States in the coming weeks and months because of the spillover of the U.S. anti-vaccine movement of childhood immunizations.”
According to ABC — quoting Hotez, Dr. Paul Offit and the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Gregory Poland — this is due to vaccine “misinformation” linking vaccines and autism, combined with the politicization of the COVID-19 vaccines, which Hotez said caused “an acceleration of anti-vaccine sentiments.”
Hotez has been making these arguments for years, writing a New York Times op-ed in 2020 claiming there is no link between vaccines and autism and blaming unvaccinated people for infectious disease outbreaks.
Offit said given the vaccine’s efficacy, it was “unconscionable” for parents to forgo vaccination for their children.
But there is a significant and growing body of evidence suggesting the MMR vaccine can cause autism in certain susceptible children. That includes evidence that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers suppressed testimony by their own expert witness making the link, and evidence from whistleblower William Thompson, Ph.D., that the CDC covered up its own data showing a link between vaccines and autism.
In a Substack post from 2022, Dr. Peter McCullough evaluated a study on the “Association Between Vaccine Refusal and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States,” namely measles and pertussis.
The study indicated that since measles was declared eradicated in 2000, there have been 18 published studies of 1,416 measles cases — 43.2% of the cases occurred in vaccinated people and no hospitalizations or deaths were reported.
McCullough concluded:
“Large fractions of ‘preventable disease outbreaks’ involving measles and pertussis occur because vaccines fail to provide adequate protection. Given the neuropsychiatric concerns over the MMR vaccine and the stochastic risk of allergic/immunologic reactions to any injection including components of (DTaP, Tdap) or MMR, the parental movement for vaccine choice is well justified.
“For measles and pertussis, the vaccines convey imperfect protection and breakthrough infection (vaccine failure) should receive considerable ‘blame’ by public health researchers.”
Mumper said the vaccine schedule has changed, lowering efficacy. “Vaccine efficacy was calculated to be ~94% when the first dose was given at 15 months,” she said.
“Now babies are scheduled to get the first dose at 12 months (only 85% efficacy) and their second dose at kindergarten.”
Mumper added, “People with different genotypes respond differently to MMR vaccines, so there is variable measles transmission depending on the individual’s immune response. Up to 10% of the population does not develop enough protective antibodies.”
New outbreaks lead push for adults to get another MMR
Derek Gatherer, Ph.D., a lecturer in biomedical and life sciences at Lancaster University who is funded by the U.K. government to study “vaccine hesitancy,” said the solution to the problem of measles outbreaks is more vaccination — for adults.
Gatherer published a recent article in The Conversation blaming the vaccine-hesitant for the outbreaks. He argued that even adults who are already vaccinated should consider getting more MMR jabs.
“Measles is the most infectious disease known to science — adults should consider getting another MMR vaccine,” he declared.
Gatherer conceded that the measles risk to adults is extremely small, but said “adult MMR is still worthwhile as it goes beyond just protecting the person who receives the vaccination,” stopping asymptomatic infections from spreading.
Thomas said it is not common to recommend booster shots to adults for illnesses they were vaccinated for as children. “However,” he added, “the pharmaceutical industry, backed by the CDC, has been looking at the adult population as an untapped resource to expand market share and penetration.”
Reports of cases rising in the UK
In the U.K., measles was considered eliminated in 2016, but it resurfaced in 2018.
U.K. MMR vaccination rates average 85%, down from a peak of 88.6% in 2014, with some locations reporting rates as low as 74%.
According to The Guardian, “Most experts agree that misinformation about the MMR jab is very unlikely to play a significant role in declining vaccination rates.
“It is too easy to blame anti-vaccine sentiment for the measles outbreaks,” Helen Bedford, professor of children’s health at the University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health told the paper. “Although some mistrust of vaccines may play a small part, research shows that parental vaccine confidence remains high.”
Experts there pointed to pandemic disruptions in vaccination, concerns among Muslim and Jewish communities about the use of porcine gelatin in the vaccine, and also the fact that because the disease is so rare, people are less concerned about possible risks.
England’s National Health Service is launching an MMR vaccination campaign, the BBC reported, contacting 4 million parents via text, email or letter to inform them their child has not had one or two doses of the vaccine.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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The Dirty Little Secret behind the “Global Terrorism Index”
The Omission of Israeli Terrorism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
By Karin Brothers | Global Research | December 6, 2014
… The Israeli settlements — all of which are illegal – have been identified as a major impediment to peace. The refusal of a major “global” terrorism report to name the Israeli settlers as one of the groups most responsible for terrorism not only misrepresents a major source of regional violence but exposes the Global Terrorism Index as a propaganda tool that supports a U.S. agenda.
In recent years, governments have been attempting to thwart terrorism by blocking supportive fund-raising. When it comes to Israeli settlements, however, the US and Canada actually encourage fund-raising by giving organizations (such as Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and the Jewish National Fund) financial support in the form of donor tax-deductions.
Charities which provide funds for the Israeli settlements should be regarded as terror-financing organizations. They should not only lose their tax-deductible status, but they should be banned because they support the violation of international humanitarian law. The terror-financing laws that are being strictly enforced for Muslim charities should be applied to Christian and Jewish charities as well. … Read full article
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