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.
Dr. Mark Trozzi’s Licence Stripped for “Misinformation” & Criticizing CPSO Policy
Dr. Trozzi to appeal after College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revokes his licence
PRESS RELEASE | January 25, 2024
The Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal issued a penalty decision today revoking Dr. Mark’s Trozzi‘s medical licence after ruling in October that he had committed acts of professional misconduct by spreading misinformation about Covid-19 science and making statements critical of Covid-19 public health policies and recommendations. Through his counsel, Michael Alexander, Dr. Trozzi announced today that he will exercise his statutory right to appeal the decision to the Ontario Divisional Court.
In reaching its decision, the Tribunal rejected Supreme Court cases, dating from 1939, which hold that Canadians enjoy an absolute constitutional right to express minority opinions on any subject. This allowed the Tribunal to rule that the College has a right to regulate the expression of its members in the name of the public interest.
The Tribunal’s ruling also rested on the prior discipline hearing decision, where the Tribunal found that Dr. Trozzi had caused harm by spreading misinformation, even though expert witnesses for the College failed to tender evidence that Dr. Trozzi’s statements had caused harm to a patient or a member of the public.
In support of its ruling, the Tribunal also rejected a 41-page report Dr. Trozzi submitted in 2021 in which he defended himself against the College’s initial allegations, citing 29 references from mainstream sources such as Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Public Health Ontario and Statistics Canada. This was done without mentioning that the College’s main expert witness, Dr. Andrew Gardam, had admitted on cross-examination during the discipline hearing that he had never attempted to refute the Trozzi report.
When the pandemic was on the horizon in 2020, Dr. Trozzi, a university professor and 25-year ER veteran, played a leading role in preparing his own ER facility to deal with Covid patients. However, while the press was reporting in late 2020 that ER rooms were overwhelmed, Dr. Trozzi’s ER room was virtually empty. Wondering how this could be, Dr. Trozzi called colleagues around Canada and the U.S. to inquire about their experiences and learned that their ER rooms were empty too.
As a result, Dr. Trozzi began to study Covid-19 science rigorously and soon discovered the government’s narrative regarding the virus was deeply flawed. He then quit his job and devoted himself full-time to exploring the truth about all things Covid on a dedicated site. When a scientist friendly to the government’s narrative alerted the College of Physicians to the site and Dr. Trozzi’s heretical views, the College launched an investigation that resulted in his prosecution for professional misconduct.
Dr. Trozzi’s registration history: no disciplinary issues in 20+ years of medicine since his start Jun. 22, 1990. Issues only began when he, like any other doctors during Covid, spoke out against the unscientific Covid and “vaccine” mandates and, ironically, by continuing to follow the CPSO’s own guidelines prior to Covid, including giving patients informed consent for any medical treatments.
Alexander commented: “Since Dr. Trozzi’s right to appeal to the Divisional Court is based on a statute, the Court will be required to employ the highest standard of review on all legal issues, and that standard is correctness. In other words, the Court will have to determine whether the Tribunal got the right answer on every key legal issue; and where it does not, the Court will be required to correct the Tribunal’s reasoning. The College has never had to face a fundamental challenge to its authority on this basis.”
He added: “On correctness review, it will be very hard for the College to justify its initial decision to investigate Dr. Trozzi. Under the legislation, the College must have reasonable and probable grounds, which is the criminal standard, for believing that a member has committed an offence before it can launch an investigation. However, in its orders, the College did not describe any evidence to support the probable belief that Dr. Trozzi had done something wrong, and even failed to cite a specific offence. The appeal should succeed on this point alone.”
Finally: “The Court of Appeal’s recent decision to refuse to hear Jordan Peterson’s case does not mean, as some have speculated, that freedom of expression is dead in Ontario. The Peterson case turned on the issue of whether the College of Psychologists could regulate the form of Dr. Peterson’s expression, not its content. In Trozzi, the Divisional Court must decide whether to recognize the right of every citizen to express an alternative opinion, even if it offends censorious bureaucrats.”
To support Dr. Trozzi, DONATE HERE.
US NSA Purchasing Web Browser Data Without Warrant – Letter
By Mary Manley – Sputnik – 27.01.2024
Amid rising concerns that foreign governments may be purchasing the personal data of citizens, this recent disclosure is the latest evidence of the US government doing such.
The US National Security Agency is buying Americans’ internet browning information from commercial brokers without a warrant, according to a letter between US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
Wyden, who made the letter from Thursday public, called for US intelligence officials to cease purchasing Americans’ data unless it has been obtained in a “lawful manner”.
“As you know, U.S. intelligence agencies are purchasing personal data about Americans that would require a court order if the government demanded it from communications companies,” writes Wyden.
“Such location data is collected from Americans smartphones by app developers, sold to data brokers, resold to defense contractors, and then resold again to the government. In addition; the National Security Agency (NSA) is buying Americans’ domestic internet metadata,” he continues.
He added that “until recently, the data broker industry and the intelligence community’s (IC) purchase of data from these shady companies has existed in a legal gray area”. And that app and advertising companies did not disclose their sale and sharing of personal data with brokers nor did they “obtain informed consent”.
“The secrecy around data purchases was amplified because intelligence agencies have sought to keep the American people in the dark. It took me nearly three years to clear the public release of information revealing the NSA’s purchase of domestic internet metadata,” the senator emphasized.
The senator then points out that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought an action against the data broker X-Mod Social earlier this month. Wyden says that lawyers for the company admitted that they were selling data collected from phones in the US to “US military customers, via defense contractors”.
The FTC then emphasized that the sales of location data is dangerous as it can be used to track people to “sensitive locations, including medical facilities, places of religious worship, places that may be used to infer an LGBTQ+ identification, domestic abuse shelters, and welfare and homeless shelters”. They add that consumers should be made aware that their data is being sold to “government contractors for national security purposes”.
Under Secretary of Defense Ronald S. Moultrie defended the methods of government data collecting in a separate letter released by Wyden.
“I am not aware of any requirement in U.S. law or judicial opinion… that DOD obtain a court order in order to acquire, access or use information, such as CAI, that is equally available for purchase to foreign adversaries, U.S. companies and private persons as it is to the U.S. government,” he wrote.
Army General Paul M. Nakasone, the director of the NSA, also justified the agency’s actions by explaining that the NSA acquires “commercially available information” but that those acquisitions are limited. Adding that they don’t include location data from phones “known to be used in the US”, and that the “non-content” data they do buy is located abroad and is critical for the US Defense Industrial base, according to a separate letter.
“NSA understands and greatly values the congressional and public trust it has been granted to carry out its critical foreign intelligence and cybersecurity missions on behalf of the American people,” Gen. Nakasone wrote.
In the end of his letter, Wyden wrote that the US government should not be “funding and legitimizing shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal”. He then requested that Haines direct each IC element to take on a list of actions he outlined, including taking an inventory of the information they have already collected and to discard any information that does not meet consent laws.
The Hospitals Clinging to Covid Masks Despite All Evidence
BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 17, 2024
Like those famous Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II on a remote island decades after everyone else had ended hostilities, a minority of healthcare settings in the U.K. enter 2024 with local managers attempting to insist that visitors and patients wear “face coverings” into a fourth consecutive year. For allowing the dogged persistence of this superstitious practice we can thank the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), despite the fact its own boss, Dame Jenny Harries, made a series of incredible admissions about the value of masking at the recent Covid Inquiry. There was no solid proof masks ever slowed the spread of Covid, Harries explained. The advice to the public to make their own “face coverings” was “ineffective”. Worst of all, by creating a false sense of security, masking may have actually made things worse, she said. Of course, if you’d been paying attention, you’d know Harries was really just coming full circle.
On March 11th 2020, in her previous role as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, less than two weeks before the first lockdown Harries was telling the public in a televised interview with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “for the average member of the public” masks “are really not a good idea… people can put themselves at more risk than less… you can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in”. Harris was far from alone in dismissing the value of mask-wearing, of course, because in the early spring of 2020 the public health experts spoke with one tongue. “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that,” Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, had told Sky News on March 4th. “We do not recommend masks for general wearing,” echoed England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van Tam, on April 3rd. On the same day, Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s Clinical Director said, “the global evidence is masks in the general population don’t work”.
The experts were so clearly united in their anti-mask stance that, around this time, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) banned the advertisements of two companies because of spurious claims that their face coverings would protect against coronavirus. The intervention by the ASA won the unequivocal support of NHS Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis who said, “callous firms looking to maximise profits by pushing products that fly in the face of official advice is outright dangerous and has rightly been banned”.
On April 16th, then-Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had told ITV that wearing masks would be “counterproductive… the suggestions people would make their own masks; whether it’s clothing and that sort of thing which doesn’t really provide that much protection. Secondly, the way people take it off can sometimes do the reinfection [sic]. Thirdly, it can provide a false sense of security”. But only 49 days later, on June 4th 2020, Shapps announced that “face coverings – not surgical masks – the kind of face covering you can easily make at home” – would be compulsory on public transport from June 15th, on pain of fines of up to £100. A day later, Government announced that, effective June 15th, staff would be required to wear surgical masks – and visitors and outpatients “face coverings” – in all NHS hospitals, a state of affairs that would persist by law for almost two entire years.
Some may argue that, as there is no longer a legal requirement, there is therefore no problem. But there is no shortage of commentators periodically agitating to make the practice a legal requirement again. And in any case, healthcare settings see us at our most vulnerable. Why should we even be asked to live out an intrusive, dehumanising charade? Especially off the back of two years of state-driven hysteria and an unprecedentedly draconian global restriction regime that achieved the grimmest of logical conclusions when one victim, Stephanie Warriner, was choked to death by hospital guards for the ‘crime’ of wearing a mask too low on her face.
It has long been recognised that masks achieve no appreciable reduction in the transmission of respiratory viruses. We knew this in 2015-16 with regard to surgeons and their patients (here and here). We knew this in 2020 from a gold-standard Cochrane review, an analysis of 14 studies on influenza and a healthcare investigation that concluded that masks “may paradoxically lead to more transmissions”. The amount of robust evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of face coverings has only increased since this time, culminating in the 2023 Cochrane review. On healthcare settings specifically, a study in April 2023 concluded that mask requirements in a large London hospital made “no discernible difference” to Covid transmission rates. UKHSA guidance acknowledges that the evidence of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (including masks) is “weak” and “would be graded as low or very low certainty”. Even when masks were legally required in healthcare settings, no quality standard was ever specified – we were asked to swallow the absurdity that strapping any old bit of rag to our faces was to ‘Follow the Science’. Refer to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and you will find that even surgical masks are not regarded as personal protective equipment (PPE) under the European Directive 89/686/EEC (PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144). HSE notes that surgical masks “are normally worn during medical procedures to protect not only the patient but also the healthcare worker from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids and particulate matter generated from any splash and splatter. Whilst they will provide a physical barrier to large projected droplets, they do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols”.
Even leaving aside Harries’s now repeated suggestions that masks can cause more harm than good when it comes to Covid, health is of course about much more than attempting to avoid one virus, and masking has never been a benign intervention.
Routine masking, particularly for long periods of time, is increasingly recognised to be associated with a wide range of physical, psychological and social harms (see here for an overview). A recent research study highlighted the potential risks of elevated carbon dioxide levels associated with long-term mask wearing, particularly for children, adolescents and pregnant mothers.
Then there are the human costs of routine masking in healthcare settings: the exclusion of the hard-of-hearing; the re-traumatising of the historically abused; the increased risk of falls in the elderly; the exacerbation of confusion in the already confused; the aggravation of the autistic, anxious and panic-prone; the marginalisation of already stigmatised groups; and the impediment to the goal of soothing the frightened child or suicidal teenager. Faceless interactions impede the development of healing relationships. Humane healthcare, delivered with demonstrable warmth and compassion, will always be more effective than the robotic version emitted by a faceless professional hidden behind a veneer of sterility.
But patients in healthcare settings aren’t the only victims of the mask farce. Respect for institutional science has rightly taken a knock as well, as Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of Oxford, conveyed to the Covid Inquiry. During peak Covid, Horby chaired NERVTAG, a high-profile group of scientific experts who routinely provided advice to SAGE. Appearing before the Inquiry on October 18th 2023, he confirmed that “NERVTAG had looked at the issues of face masks in the past… and had taken quite a stringent scientific view that the highest quality evidence is randomised controlled trials… and those data were fairly clear… that the evidence was weak. And we maintained that position on how we saw the evidence, focusing on the data from randomised controlled trials.”
Lady Hallett (the less-than impartial Chair of the inquiry) interrupted, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
“The downside is that you are making a population-wide recommendation based on weak evidence which may weaken trust in your scientific independence and integrity,” Horby replied.
Why would scientists and public health experts risk this very obvious downside? The most obvious explanation is that forcing the public to wear masks was a highly visible way to be seen to be ‘doing something’ that came with at least a couple of attractive bonuses to politicians and bureaucrats. One, the practice had superficial ‘gut feel’ appeal to the layperson – if you didn’t think about it very much, and never looked at the evidence, masking felt like it should work. Two, as with most of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) it shifted blame for Covid impacts away from the state and health service and onto individuals. ‘Rule breakers’ among the public – now easily identifiable by sight – made for convenient folk devils and scapegoats.
On June 1st 2022, in a letter co-signed by the same Professor Stephen Powis who had been so withering about “callous firms” promoting face masks to stop the spread of Covid, new guidance from NHS England – referencing “updates from UKHSA” – effectively passed the buck for masking down to local healthcare managers, amid general talk of “transitioning back” to pre-Covid policies.
At the time, the Smile Free campaign wrote:
Two years after the imposition of masking in English hospitals, it is most regrettable that NHS England and the authors of this latest guidance could not simply have signalled a clean break and consigned this unprecedented, poorly evidenced and ultimately failed policy to history. Since they have chosen not to, by far the most likely outcome is that masking in English hospitals will now become a ‘postcode lottery’ based on the whims of local staff.
In an open letter co-signed by over 2,200 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals in summer 2022, we had called on the NHS Chief Executives in each of the home nations to revise the guidance for doctors, nurses and other health professionals with immediate effect, leaving the individual – whether a professional or service user – to decide whether he or she wanted to wear a mask or not, thereby bringing healthcare into line with other community settings. But with the Government having terrified the public with lurid fear campaigns, advised gravely that masks would “keep everyone safe” and endorsed this claim with the law and eye-watering fines of up to £3,200 for non-compliance, perhaps we should not be surprised that simply pulling the comfort blanket away again was rather too rich for the NHS’s blood.
A reply, dated October 4th 2022, from Dame Ruth May, Chief Nursing Office and national lead for infection control at NHS England, justified current mask advice to hospitals with a computer modelling report linked to Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College that by its own admission was “highly uncertain”. We were startled to find the report was also literally labelled “Should not be used to inform clinical practice” on page one.
Despite masks never having actually gone away in many healthcare settings, the following day, news outlets were reporting the “return of the mask”. Between the Mail and Sun’s accounts, eight different NHS Trusts were reintroducing a range of measures, prominent among which were mask “requirements” for patients and visitors.
In all cases, these measures were apparently being introduced as a result of “Covid’s resurgence” with “surveillance data suggesting Covid is on the rise in England”.
Were those trusts imposing mask “requirements” in areas of above-average Covid prevalence? It appears not; there was no discernible pattern and, in fact, glaring contradictions. For example, Barnsley, with continuing significant restrictions, had a catchment area with the lowest daily new cases per 100,000 people; while Swindon and surrounding areas, served by the Great Western Trust that had reduced its mask restrictions, had the highest rate.
In investigating one trust, ESNEFT, the 10,000 patients reportedly seen every day were still being subjected to “safety theatre” going into a third year of the Covid saga, seemingly driven by a very small and unaccountable infection control team, if not in reality the whims of one man.
Even into autumn 2023, ESNEFT’s website giving advice for visitors to wards and to Accident & Emergency still states that people are required to wear “surgical face masks covering their nose and mouth” where there is a “high-risk of transmission of contagious respiratory infection” or if clinical staff ask them to wear one.
On September 26th 2023 the Smile Free campaign submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to ESNEFT, seeking three pieces of information:
- Within the geographical boundaries covered by ESNEFT, COVID-19 case numbers (per 100,000 people) by month since October 2022.
- A copy of the full risk assessment document used to determine that it is necessary for ESNEFT to keep “mandating” the wearing of face masks.
- The most recent date that these mandates were subject to risk assessment and updated.
ESNEFT replied a month later, saying that it “does not have access” to any data related to Covid case numbers within its locality. Obviously, this raises the question as to how its staff ever knew whether ‘Covid cases’ were increasing, decreasing or staying flat? It further raises the question as to how they were ever able to make any decisions on mandating, or even recommending, the wearing of face coverings as ‘protection’ against a respiratory virus? It also throws into doubt ESNEFT’s operational competence. ESNEFT also claims that, as it hasn’t operated a “universal mandate” since May 2023, it doesn’t have a risk assessment. ESNEFT never answered the final question, concerning the most recent date at which it conducted a risk assessment. Should we conclude it has never done one?
In response to a similar FOI request around the same time, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which had reintroduced masking “requirements”, told us it doesn’t “hold the data for regional/community Covid data”, nor “a formal risk assessment” that would justify reintroduction of mask-wearing. In fact, it doesn’t have any “formal risk assessment” used to justify the mandating of masks at all, from any time. Instead it claims it has “a trust-wide expert group which reviews and agrees all actions required depending on the Covid prevalence level which includes the wearing of COVID-19 face masks”. In other words, unilateral decisions are made by a group of staff who don’t feel it necessary to follow the prescribed decision-making processes within their organisation (the NHS) and who don’t record their findings and document them in any formal way. We therefore followed up, asking for the roles of the individuals in this group. At time of writing, the trust had not provided an answer despite being long overdue based on FOI requirements.
In a second open letter in summer 2023, this time co-signed by over 2,500 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals and 7,500 members of the public, we called on the NHS Chief Executives to immediately issue clear new guidance explicitly discouraging any routine requirement for staff, patients or visitors to cover their faces in healthcare settings.
This time, NHS England’s Dame Ruth May specifically referenced UKHSA guidance as the reason for the ongoing “postcode lottery”, stating “the current UKHSA guidance… sets out that in health and care settings, non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as mask wearing and enhanced ventilation) may be used, depending on local prevalence and risk assessment, with the aim to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2”. It is interesting that “local prevalence and risk assessment” should be emphasised as the key considerations, since our investigations show hospitals unable to provide any evidence of increased local prevalence, nor risk assessments, to underpin their arbitrary decisions.
On November 2nd 2023, a few weeks before Harries’s appearance at the Covid Inquiry, we wrote an open letter to her at UKHSA asking her to explain the discrepancy between UKHSA’s current guidance, which, while broadly recommending a return to pre-pandemic normality, continues to allow re-imposition of masks where there is a local appetite for it, and its recent literature review, which concluded the evidence for masks reducing viral transmission was, at best, very weak.
We asked Harries to immediately update UKHSA guidance so as to:
- Acknowledge the ineffectiveness of masks as a viral barrier;
- Explicitly recognise the range of harms associated with the masking of staff, patients and visitors in healthcare settings;
- Actively discourage the routine wearing of masks in all clinical areas.
At time of writing, we still await a reply – though we note that via her Covid Inquiry testimony Harries has clearly conceded point one above, and identified one extremely significant harm – the false sense of security engendered by masking – from point two.
In everyday life, it only makes sense to initiate a new action if we are reasonably confident it will not result in more harms than benefits. The importance of this notion is amplified manyfold when it is powerful actors – politicians and their public health experts – forcing the change on their citizens. The ‘Precautionary Principle‘ in its original form endorsed this important rule and complemented the Hippocratic oath of our medical doctors to “first do no harm”. Yet throughout the Covid saga we have witnessed a total disregard for this principle with the imposition of a series of non-evidenced restrictions, driven more by politics than science, where the resulting collateral damage – to both the public and to the reputation of medicine and institutional science – has dwarfed any benefits. A prominent example of such absurdity has been the mask requirement in community settings.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates.
Federal Court Judge Pulls Canada Back from the Brink
By Bruce Pardy | Brownstone Institute | January 25, 2024
The Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. The Trucker Convoy did not constitute a national emergency. So said a judge of the Federal Court on Tuesday. The decision may help to pull Canada back from the brink of authoritarian rule.
The Federal Court decision contains four conclusions. Two prerequisites for invoking the Emergencies Act, said Justice Richard Mosley, were not met. Moreover, the two regulations issued under it were unconstitutional. Predictably, the government has promised to appeal. For the government to prevail, an appeal panel would have to overturn all four. But there is a wrinkle, which I will get to momentarily.
Between 1963 and 1970, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a separatist organization in Quebec, committed bombings, robberies, and killed several people. In October 1970, they kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross, and then kidnapped and killed Pierre Laporte, a minister in the Quebec government. In response, Pierre Trudeau’s government invoked the War Measures Act, the only time it had been used in peacetime. In the years that followed, the invocation of the Act became regarded as a dangerous overreach of government powers and breach of civil liberties.
The Emergencies Act, enacted in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, had higher thresholds. It was supposed to be more difficult for governments to trigger. Before Covid and the trucker convoy, it had never been used.
The Freedom Convoy arrived at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on January 29, 2022 to protest Covid vaccine mandates. The truckers parked unlawfully in downtown Ottawa. They violated parking bylaws and probably the Highway Traffic Act. Authorities could have issued tickets and towed the trucks away. But they didn’t.
In the meantime, protests in other parts of the country emerged. Trucks blocked border crossings in Coutts, Alberta and at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. Local and provincial law enforcement dealt with those protests and cleared the borders. By February 15, when Justin Trudeau’s government declared a public order emergency and invoked the Emergencies Act, only the Ottawa protests had not been resolved.
The government issued two regulations under the Act. One prohibited public assemblies “that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” The other outlawed donations and authorized banks to freeze donors’ bank accounts. On February 18 and 19, police brandishing riot batons descended on the crowd. They arrested close to 200 people, broke truck windows, and unleashed the occasional burst of pepper spray. By the evening of the 19th, they had cleared the trucker encampment away. Banks froze the accounts and credit cards of hundreds of supporters. On February 23, the government revoked the regulations and use of the Act.
Governments cannot use the Emergencies Act unless its prerequisites are met. A public order emergency must be a “national emergency” and a “threat to the security of Canada,” both of which are defined in the Act. A national emergency exists only if the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” “Threats to the security of Canada” can be one of several things. The government relied upon the clause that requires activities “directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective.”
The trucker protests were neither a national emergency, Mosley concluded, nor a threat to the security of Canada.
There was no national emergency:
Due to its nature and to the broad powers it grants the Federal Executive, the Emergencies Act is a tool of last resort. [Cabinet] cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient, or because it may work better than other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces.…in this instance, the evidence is clear that the majority of the provinces were able to deal with the situation using other federal law, such as the Criminal Code, and their own legislation…For these reasons, I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires.
A threat to the security of Canada did not exist:
Ottawa was unique in the sense that it is clear that [Ottawa Police Services] had been unable to enforce the rule of law in the downtown core, at least in part, due to the volume of protesters and vehicles. The harassment of residents, workers and business owners in downtown Ottawa and the general infringement of the right to peaceful enjoyment of public spaces there, while highly objectionable, did not amount to serious violence or threats of serious violence…[Cabinet] did not have reasonable grounds to believe that a threat to national security existed within the meaning of the Act and the decision was ultra vires.
Nor were the regulations constitutional. The prohibition on public assemblies infringed freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Empowering financing institutions to provide personal financial information to the government and to freeze bank accounts and credit cards was an unconstitutional search and seizure under section 8. Neither was justified, Mosley concluded, under section 1 of the Charter, the “reasonable limits” clause.
To prevail on appeal, the government would have to reverse all four conclusions. Justice Mosley did not make obvious errors of law. But there are a couple of odd bits. In particular, Mosley admits to doubts about how he would have proceeded had he been at the cabinet table himself:
I had and continue to have considerable sympathy for those in government who were confronted with this situation. Had I been at their tables at that time, I may have agreed that it was necessary to invoke the Act. And I acknowledge that in conducting judicial review of that decision, I am revisiting that time with the benefit of hindsight and a more extensive record of the facts and law…
Which brings us to the wrinkle. In April 2022, Richard Wagner, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, gave an interview to Le Devoir. Speaking in French, he characterized the protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa, where Parliament and the Supreme Court are located, as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” Wagner said that “forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters… should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.” He did not mention the Emergencies Act by name. But his comments could be interpreted as endorsing its use.
The government’s appeal will go first to the Federal Court of Appeal but then to the Supreme Court of Canada. Its chief justice appears to have already formed an opinion about the dispute. Having made his public comments, the chief justice should announce that he will recuse himself from the case to avoid a reasonable perception of bias. That too would help bring Canada back from the brink.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Only Democrats are allowed to question election validity
By Drago Bosnic | January 26, 2024
Ever since Joe Biden took the presidency in the United States, the mainstream propaganda machine has been absolutely merciless toward anyone who’d dare to question the validity of the 2020 presidential election. The DNC-dominated federal institutions, particularly the highly politicized Department of Justice (DoJ), offered full support in this regard, looking to suppress any attempts of “undermining American democracy”, which is just another lifeless euphemism used against anyone daring to expose lies and outright voter fraud. However, this sort of behavior uncovers another form of hypocrisy and double standards in American politics (not that those were ever in deficit). Namely, the Democratic Party never had any qualms about questioning the validity of the 2016 presidential election, as well as countless other instances when elections on state and other levels weren’t beneficial to them.
In fact, it could easily be argued that the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that has been recycled over and over in the last well over half a decade is a prime example of questioning the validity of elections by the Democrats. What’s more, this laughable claim was even used as a pretext to change the geopolitical landscape by bringing the relations between Russia and the US to (First) Cold War levels, perhaps even worse, pushing the world to the edge of an abyss. Of course, no such concern was shown during the much more controversial 2020 election that saw actual mass voter fraud committed, as evidenced by recent findings. However, that’s a forbidden topic for the DNC, the so-called “Big Tech” and the mainstream propaganda machine. God forbid anyone would ask any questions about it, as they’d get nothing but open hostility or even get prosecuted.
Steve Watson of the Modernity News recently covered this topic, showing the case of the Fox News reporter Peter Doocy who confronted the troubled Biden administration’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over this practice. Namely, on January 24, he pointed out the recent footage of Joe Biden calling Democrat Terry McAuliffe “the real governor of Virginia”. Doocy asked whether questioning election validity is a joke now, resulting in an awkward exchange with Jean-Pierre, who was clearly agitated by the question. Her rather clumsy attempt to play ignorance didn’t last long and she soon found herself having to defend Joe Biden’s statement as a supposed “joke”. When Doocy asked for further clarification, Jean-Pierre failed to provide one, trying to go around the question. However, the Fox News reporter refused to back down and stood his ground, asking the following:
“How are you going to convince people, though, that this idea of denying election results is very bad if President Biden is going out and making jokes like this?”
Jean-Pierre kept insisting that this was “merely a joke”. However, as Watson pointed out, this wasn’t the first time Joe Biden questioned election validity. He previously called former president Donald Trump “an illegitimate president”. Biden’s practice of denying election results goes back decades, as evidenced by his claim that “Al Gore really won the 2000 election”. There are numerous other examples of the DNC’s top people questioning election validity, perhaps best illustrated by this video showing 24 minutes of footage proving it. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is “worried about our democracy” whenever the Republicans question election results. Apparently, claiming that Trump is supposedly “illegitimate” and even “Vlad’s pal” is perfectly fine and doesn’t constitute any sort of “danger for American democracy“. However, similar criticism of the DNC is “deplorable“.
Worse yet, these same people are demanding Trump be prosecuted and even jailed for “undermining our democracy” by refusing to acknowledge that the 2020 election was valid. What’s more, on December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court banned Trump from running for presidency under the pretext that he led the so-called “January 6 insurrection”. Although he was never formally charged (let alone convicted) for that highly controversial event, the Court made its decision based precisely on that premise. On the other hand, the DNC-aligned judges probably didn’t expect this obviously partisan decision would open up a political “Pandora’s box” in the US. Namely, in response to the ruling, high-ranking officials from Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania suggested taking Biden off the ballot. Such developments could even lead to America’s collapse along state lines.
As for election validity, recent findings show that the public’s trust in the impartiality of federal institutions has been severely undermined. The latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admitted to participating in voter fraud. However, such findings aren’t limited to polls, as evidenced by a recent court ruling in Connecticut. Namely, according to the Epoch Times, Superior Court Judge William Clark overturned the results of a Democrat mayoral primary in November 2023 and ordered a new election. The ruling was based on hours of video evidence showing hundreds of illegally harvested absentee ballots being stuffed into drop boxes in the city of Bridgeport. Clark called the videos shocking and warned they “should be shocking to all the parties”.
The report further points out other instances when election results were nullified by lower court decisions across the US, including the 2021 Compton City Council run-off race that was initially decided by a single vote. The judge tossed four fraudulent ballots cast by people not legally registered in the jurisdiction, while five people pleaded either guilty or no contest to conspiring to commit election fraud. The report cites an even worse case in Mississippi, where both state and federal institutions were deeply involved in election fraud and attempted cover-up. There are dozens of such cases across the country, many still pending for court proceedings. The Epoch Times also pointed out the thousands of court convictions for election fraud in the last two decades. This is yet another proof that the “rule of law” in the US is nothing but a myth that not even Americans themselves believe.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The DOJ Quietly Prosecutes the Covid Resistance
Brownstone Institute | January 24, 2024
Midwives in New York and plastic surgeons in Utah didn’t close schools, shutter businesses, or add trillions of dollars to the national debt, yet they are the primary targets of the Biden DOJ’s Covid prosecution.
Court documents reveal how the Department of Justice has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources to prosecuting Americans who forged Covid vaccination statuses, according to a new report from David Zweig.
The feds have used undercover agents to take down midwives and local doctors who forged vaccine cards. Many of the “criminals” had no profit motive; they objected to the mandates based on ideological principles or medical concerns, and they needed cards to participate in society.
Zweig highlights cases that have been brought as late as spring 2022, “long after it was widely known that the vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, which was the only ethical and logistical justification for mandates.”
More than ever, it is clear that the calls to “move on” from Covid are reserved for protecting those who implemented tyranny.
Politicians like Gavin Newsom, who celebrated their acquisition of dictatorial powers in 2020, demand forgiveness for eviscerating the Bill of Rights. In the Atlantic, Professor Emily Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” after advocating for vaccine mandates for employees and students, school closures, “full lockdowns” over the holidays, and universal masking. “Let’s focus on the future,” she insists.
The Biden White House has largely adapted this strategy; substituting foreign conflicts as its new justifications for exorbitant foreign spending and widespread domestic censorship.
With the presumptive nomination of President Trump in the Republican Party, citizens’ hope for answers on the Covid response hinges on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s participation in the presidential debates. Both parties will work to ensure that does not happen.
In effect, the powerful have already enjoyed a pandemic amnesty. Politicians have not lost their power nor faced a serious inquiry into their malfeasance. Pharmaceutical companies received government-sponsored immunity from lawsuits while pocketing billions of dollars from federal, state, and local mandates. The apparati behind the Covid response remain intact with little threat to their continued acquisition of power.
But the “focus on the future” does not extend to those who resisted the Covid hegemon. “The mandates were so feared and loathed by significant and diverse numbers of citizens that they were willing to become criminals rather than comply,” Zweig explains.
The Biden Department of Justice will not give dissidents the courtesy of a pandemic amnesty. Instead, the targets of the regime will join the ranks of Americans punished by the Department of Justice for their resistance while nondescript bureaucratic tyrants continue their careers unscathed.
The damage to the nation, however, cannot be glossed over. Learning loss, business closures, vaccine injuries, the erosion of trust in all major institutions, trillions of dollars added to the national debt, trillions more in collateral damage, and the institution of a censorship state will take decades to fix, if possible at all.
But there is no indication that the powerful will be held accountable for the damage they imposed. Instead, the Biden Administration has decided to target citizens who resisted its irrational edicts. The same edicts for which they insist they must be granted an “amnesty.” Such actions only increase the devastation from a disastrous policy response.
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What is the Israeli Lobby in Australia Doing in Interfaith Dialogue?
By Ali Kazak | Dissident Voice | October 11, 2015
For years Israel and its lobby around the world have been trying to normalise their relations with Arabs and Muslims without solving the Palestine Question.
One of the methods they resorted to in the last few years is using human rights and community organizations such as interfaith dialogue and Multiculturalism to achieve this objective and to: isolate the Palestinians, marginalise the Palestine question, end Israel’s isolation, and prevent criticism of Israel, knowing that these organisations will be the first to stand against Israel’s violations, racial and religious discrimination.
The group responsible for this task in Australia is The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC); its Director of International & Community Affairs, Jeremy Jones is in charge of lobbying religious community organizations, specifically Muslims and Christians. Consequently he convened the Faith Communities for Reconciliation, founding participant in the Australian Partnership of Religious Organisations and the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims & Jews.
AIJAC is a private political propaganda group. It is recognised as the main Israeli lobby in Australia. It coordinates its activities and works intimately with the Israeli embassy in Canberra and different institutions in Israel. It is privately funded by some Jewish businessmen. It monitors closely Australian politicians, the media, ethnic and religious groups, (especially Arabs and Muslims), unions and academics on their stands towards Israel and the Palestine question. … continue
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