Parents in Scotland could soon be sentenced to seven years in prison if they refuse to allow their children to change their gender under plans proposed by the Scottish government.
A public consultation was launched on Tuesday on legislation designed to end conversion practices for both sexual orientation and gender identity and includes widespread measures to criminalize parents who refuse to engage in their children’s desire to not just undergo gender transitions but to identify as another gender by, for example, dressing as the opposite gender.
The consultation proposed by Equalities Minister Emma Roddick would criminalize “coercive” behavior by parents that intends to “change or suppress” a child’s gender identity and consequently causes “harm” to the child.
“Coercive” behavior is broadly defined in the plans and ranges from “violent, threatening, or intimidating” behavior towards the victim to “controlling the victim’s day-to-day activities” or “pressuring the victim to act in a particular way.”
It states the behavior needs to be sustained but subsequently explains that such behavior need only happen “on at least two occasions” to meet this criteria.
Harm is also defined loosely as either “physical or psychological,” and the latter must be shown to have caused the child “fear, alarm, and distress.”
The draft legislation includes a defense if the parent can prove their actions were objectively reasonable.
For Women Scotland, a campaign seeking to protect women’s and children’s rights in the country, expressed their concerns about the draft legislation.
“We have grave concerns that these plans will criminalize loving parents, who could face years in jail simply for refusing to sign up to the gender ideology cult,” spokesperson Marion Calder said.
“They will also hand activists and social workers unprecedented powers to meddle in family life, while having a chilling impact on therapists and counselors.
“If the SNP and Greens insist on pushing this through, it is likely to go the same way as the toxic self-ID and named person laws and be blocked in the courts,” she added.
The left-wing Scottish National Party (SNP) has come under fire for pushing through several controversial progressive policies relating to transgender issues, the most recent being last year’s decision to remove the requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to apply for a gender recognition certificate to legally change one’s gender.
The reforms also slashed the time an applicant must live in their preferred gender before legally changing it from two years to three months and lowered the minimum age at which a person can apply for a gender recognition certificate from 18 to 16 years.
January 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Scotland, UK |
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Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton (who goes by “Kelly”) on Oct. 30 lost her license to practice medicine in New York for writing eight vaccine exemptions in California between 2016 and 2018. New York was the third state to enforce this penalty, after Massachusetts and California. Sutton is now no longer able to practice medicine anywhere in the U.S.
Both the New York and Massachusetts medical boards adjudicated Sutton’s case on the basis of “reciprocal discipline,” rubber-stamping the Medical Board of California’s 2021 decision without allowing her to challenge the validity of the original findings.
Reciprocal discipline avoids the time and costs of relitigating. Therefore, like the Massachusetts Board of Medicine hearing last July, the October hearing in New York was just theater and the board never intended to allow Sutton to defend herself.
Instead, the New York board maintained that the purpose of the hearing was limited to determining what penalty should apply to Sutton’s state license in light of the findings already established in California.
Medical Board of California misinterpreted the law
Sutton, an integrative medicine physician practicing since the early 1970s, told The Defender that the Medical Board of California misinterpreted the law when it determined she violated “standards of care” when writing the vaccine exemptions.
Those exemption-specific standards — which came into effect in 2016 via Senate Bill (SB) 277, a California bill that stripped parents of the personal belief exemption for rejecting vaccines for their children — only stated it was up to the physician to decide on a medical exemption based on the needs of the child.
However, in 2019, California passed two more bills — SB 276 and SB 714 — designed to make vaccine exemptions even more difficult to acquire.
Specifically, when a doctor writes more than five medical exemptions per year (as of Jan. 1, 2020) or a school’s immunization rate falls below 95%, the California Department of Public Health (CPDH) has the right to review the medical exemptions.
Physicians since January 2021 are also required to use a standardized electronic exemption form submitted to a statewide database, and CPDH may revoke exemptions that do not conform to vaccination guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Sutton claimed the Medical Board of California applied its own definition of “standards of care,” in direct contravention to the standard established by SB 277.
“In California, any time a standard of care is written into statutory law, it is more preeminent than a community standard of care that is just held among the general opinion of doctors in practice,” she said.
Sutton believes the Medical Board of California was also applying laws derived from SB 276 and SB 714 that went into effect well after the date she wrote the exemptions.
The CDC’s and ACIP’s vaccine recommendations do not constitute mandates or requirements. According to Sutton, during the lobbying phase of SB 277, a doctor called ACIP and asked whether its recommendations should be considered mandates, and was told that they were only guidelines.
The ACIP guidelines do not mention the word “exemption,” according to Sutton, nor were the guidelines mentioned in SB 277.
“That’s the way guidelines have always been used in standards of care,” Sutton said, calling them “indicators, supports, references — but not mandates.”
Sutton said the mood of medicine is shifting away from a doctor exercising his or her own training and experienced judgment towards doing what the standards and guidelines say.
“This is decidedly against the quality of medicine because there’s no freedom to individualize for the patient,” she said.
Dissecting the California case
The California board revoked Sutton’s license for “gross negligence” and “repeated negligent acts” in issuing permanent vaccine exemptions for eight pediatric patients, saying the exemptions did not comply with standards of care and vaccine guidelines at the time.
The board’s sole expert witness, Dr. Deborah Lehman, infectious disease physician at the University of California, Los Angeles, dismissed Sutton’s claim that SB 277 clearly articulated standards of care regarding exemptions, saying those were not the “community standard of care,” Sutton recounted.
Sutton explained:
“SB 277 was brief and direct to the point. It said that if a child who is required to have vaccines receives a note from a physician stating that it is in the child’s best interests to not be vaccinated, then that suffices to fulfill the requirement and the child can go to school without having the required vaccines. The deciding factor is the physician’s discretion.”
The relevant clause from the bill states:
“If the parent or guardian files with the governing authority a written statement by a licensed physician to the effect that the physical condition of the child is such, or medical circumstances relating to the child are such, that immunization is not considered safe, indicating the specific nature and probable duration of the medical condition or circumstances, including, but not limited to, family medical history, for which the physician does not recommend immunization, that child shall be exempt from the requirements.”
Lehman said doctors must only grant an exemption when there is a contraindication to a vaccine and at no other time.
Lehman claimed the standard of care was determined by whether another physician would treat the medical issue the same or similarly. However, according to Sutton, she omitted the all-important phrase “in the same community.”
In the integrative medicine community in which Sutton practices, it is common for patients to receive more individualized treatments rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
“It was kind of a force-of-personality situation that was successful in the setting of the courtroom hearing at the administrative level,” Sutton said. “And the board witness prevailed upon the judge to believe that the law had no meaning and that community opinion was higher.”
The California board also questioned Sutton’s decision not to request patients’ medical files or perform physicals in the cases for which she wrote exemptions.
“If I required a physical exam for every vaccine exemption, I could be accused of ‘padding the bill’ because the physical exam contributes nothing to the decision about the risk for a vaccine injury,” Sutton said.
Instead, Sutton’s process was primarily to review patient histories to understand if the child or a family member had suffered a negative reaction to vaccines.
She said:
“From my understanding and from the group of physicians that I worked with at the time — Physicians for Informed Consent — the risk factors for vaccine injury lie completely in the story of what’s happened to the child when they have had vaccines and what has happened to their blood relatives when those people had vaccines.”
After the passage of SB 277, Sutton said there was “a great deal of conversation” among doctors about how the law could be read and interpreted and how exemptions could be constructed rationally based on the scientific literature.
That literature showed several different areas of concern around vaccinations, including “The aluminum contained in vaccines can trigger neurologic issues and autoimmune disease,” Sutton said, adding, “There is the question of regression after vaccines and neurodevelopmental delays such as autism.”
“There’s also a higher risk of allergies, and then there’s the immediate reactions where a person collapses or has a seizure after a vaccine,” she said.
“A doctor has to make an extra effort in order to understand the historical pattern of vaccine reactions that would indicate risk of vaccine injury, or how to diagnose mitochondrial dysfunction,” Sutton said.
During the California hearing, Sutton shared extensive scientific citations supporting her medical decision-making, including research by Dr. Chris Exley on the dangers of aluminum in vaccines.
She told the board that it was neither intelligent nor humane to force a family to continue to vaccinate after one of their children had already died or been injured by a vaccine, and shared her clinical observation that unvaccinated patients are healthier than those who are vaccinated.
The California board also claimed Sutton neglected to provide informed consent to her patients requesting vaccine exemptions.
Sutton was uncertain exactly what the board meant here but surmised it was saying she did not adequately highlight the diseases that could develop if the parents failed to vaccinate their children.
Deeming the real issue with informed consent to be advising patients about the potential harms of vaccination, Sutton said, “I don’t think I repeated the CDC bylines.” Instead, she believed the parents who came to her for exemptions were already “more than aware” of the risks of childhood diseases.
From her point of view, there was already enough vaccine promotion happening with mainstream media and schools “echoing over and over” how “vastly dangerous chickenpox” and the other childhood diseases were.
The California board’s concern about Sutton not requesting previous medical records is based on the notion of “Don’t trust a single word the patient says,” Sutton said, an attitude that necessitates getting “every documentation” about adverse vaccine reactions before making a decision.
“That’s not the way medicine works,” Sutton said. “But that’s what was expected in terms of a medical exemption interview. It’s like building a legal case instead of a medical case.”
Further wrongdoing was implied by the California board in pointing out that a number of the exemptions Sutton wrote were for patients for whom she was not the primary care provider.
“That is implying that the primary care doctor knows the patient best,” Sutton said. “And that is good in a lot of ways, but it can be a problem for the patient if it’s a large practice that has been forbidden to give vaccine exemptions.”
Sutton said that if a patient’s need cannot be addressed by that group, even if it’s their primary care group, then it is akin to patient abandonment.
SB 277, the law in effect during the period Sutton wrote the exemptions, never had a requirement that exemptions be written by the primary care physician, or even by a pediatrician or pediatric infectious disease expert, according to Sutton.
“So their [Medical Board of California’s] statements were beyond the law and that’s what they were enforcing against doctors,” she said.
Although the board improperly focused on laws that went into effect in 2019 and later, Sutton said, “That very argument could not be persuasively made by the attorneys at the time.”
Board expert: ‘Science has been decided’ on vaccine risks
The Medical Board of California conducted a three-day “trial” for Sutton in June 2021 in an administrative court with a single judge and no right to a jury.
Three experts spoke on behalf of Sutton, while Lehman, the board’s single expert, testified against her.
Lehman lacked basic knowledge of vaccine risks and stated that all doctors should follow the CDC’s vaccine schedule.
When asked to quantify the risk of vaccine injuries, Lehman said, “I don’t need to cite articles in my report, because the science has been decided … If you want answers to these questions, I would refer you to the CDC.”
After denying any knowledge of Dr. Peter Aaby’s more than 400 articles on PubMed analyzing vaccine dangers, Lehman characterized the journal as “low impact” and Aaby as “anti-vax.”
Sutton’s witnesses were Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, pediatric neurologist, Dr. James Neuenschwander, family physician with vaccine expertise and Dr. LeTrinh Hoang, integrative medicine pediatrician.
They skillfully articulated the heterodox perspectives on vaccine dangers and referenced a number of recent studies on vaccine adverse effects, while noting the lack of data on vaccine safety or government studies comparing health outcomes for vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals.
“And on this very little evidence, people like the board expert are proclaiming to the high heavens these are safe and effective,” Sutton said. “All of these other concerns are irrelevant.”
Administrative court structure promotes ‘raw power’
In Sutton’s interactions with California, Massachusetts and New York, she observed a notable lack of due process when compared with civil and criminal courts.
In the proceedings with the Massachusetts board, one of the documents filed against her did not list any specific complaints, making it difficult for Sutton to defend herself. “I had to intuit what they were complaining about and then make up the answers,” she said.
When she brought this shortcoming to the magistrate’s attention, he confirmed that such detail is not required in administrative courts.
“The structure of the administrative-level courts promotes the raw power that’s exercised by the medical boards,” Sutton said, adding, “It’s not an exercise within the law and it doesn’t benefit the people, but only the administrative state itself.”
Sutton mentioned the Federation of State Medical Boards, which coordinates all of the medical boards in the U.S., sent out warnings to doctors about misinformation, masks, vaccines and exemptions related to COVID-19, she said.
“It’s a private, unelected group that’s been around for over 100 years,” she said. “It’s not visibly related to any government entity.”
Together with its partner agency, the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities, it forms an integral part of the administrative state that is undermining the doctor-patient relationship and helping to delicense doctors like Sutton.
Sutton said, “They are both in the same building at the same address in Euless, Texas. So there is a centralized organ to control medical boards around the world, which means controlling doctors around the world.”
“The coordination of COVID happened through organizations like that,” she added.
Doctors incentivized to ignore vaccine injuries
Sutton said the financial incentives to vaccinate everyone within a medical practice discourage doctors from connecting adverse health outcomes to the vaccines.
“The Blue Cross Blue Shield Provider Incentive Program manual of 2016 listed a $400 bonus to the doctor for every two-year-old who was on the CDC vaccine schedule on time,” she said, “as long as 63% of the practice was vaccinated.”
“That’s going to influence how you respond to a parent when they say, ‘Johnny had a seizure after the MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine,’” Sutton said, adding, “Do you put that in the chart as an MMR vaccine reaction? Or do you say, ‘Oh, it must be something else’?”
If a child has a febrile seizure, the doctor may well chalk it up to normal childhood fever rather than to a recent vaccination, Sutton said. “So we bias our own literature, our own notes, by the things that have been allowed in terms of financial incentives.”
Sutton said financial incentives must be removed from medicine to restore its integrity.
“It’s too much impact on physician judgment and motivations are not angelic,” she said. “We’re humans. So if somebody says ‘If you just get 10 kids vaccinated you’ll get $4000,’ I’m going to be looking for those 10 kids to vaccinate and I’ll be rationalizing to myself why that’s okay.”
Part of the problem, according to Sutton, is the state of the vaccine research literature that keeps doctors in the dark about the reality of adverse events.
“Vaccines have been very poorly studied,” she said. “Some of them were approved, like hepatitis B, after only four days in one case and five days in another brand’s case study — and it was approved for use in every newborn baby.”
Other vaccines have been studied for as long as 42 days, but none long-term, which is necessary to see the development of autoimmune diseases like asthma that don’t show up immediately after vaccination, she said.
“So the board expert could say there’s no evidence that an adverse event is related to vaccines, which is not accurate because the evidence is there — but it’s not in the evidence that the CDC accepts,” Sutton said.
According to Sutton, the CDC “very carefully curates” the articles and studies it puts on its website to support its own policies. If a CDC-sponsored study shows adverse vaccine reactions, it won’t appear on its website, she said.
Sutton shared the story of a former cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic who was training to do heart transplants when her 12-month-old daughter received an MMR vaccine and immediately regressed with severe autism. The woman had to leave the cardiology program and return to her home in Europe to care for her child.
Sutton said this woman claimed the CDC was researching a lot of topics, including that the rubella virus in the MMR vaccine persists in the body for a long time and results in granulomas in the case of immune-deficient children and sometimes immune-competent adults.
“This is not on the CDC website,” Sutton said. “So if we look at the nature of the research supporting our vaccine program, we would be astonished and staggered and ashamed because we’re injecting our children with very little evidence that these vaccines are safe or effective.”
Financial incentives in research and drug approvals are also highly problematic, according to Sutton.
“Medicine is no longer medicine,” she said. “It’s become co-opted as another business. Sickness is more profitable than health and mandates are more profitable than choice.”
“Otherwise, despite the efforts of individual doctors, the profession will be working against humanity and really becomes organized brutality instead of healthcare,” Sutton said.
‘The whole storm is not finished’
Sutton has exhausted or curtailed her administrative appeals with the states that have removed her license to practice medicine.
However, she and several doctors are planning to file a collective action in federal court in the spring. They are being supported by the nonprofit Physicians & Patients Reclaiming Medicine, where Sutton’s story is currently featured.
Meanwhile, Sutton keeps in touch with many of her colleagues who have suffered the same fate.
“They are recouping from the reputational and financial losses after being attacked,” she said. “So people don’t quit, but there is a lot of sadness about medicine.”
Sutton talked about the “diaspora” away from the state of California because of the discrimination that’s happened to families who had a health concern about a vaccine for their child.
“There’s been a lot of pain. So the whole storm is not finished,” she said.
Lacking a medical license, Sutton has turned to offering health education for a small group of clients. They meet monthly over Zoom, and individuals can discuss their concerns privately with her. But she no longer diagnoses, treats or does physical exams.
Sutton is currently preparing a course about integrative medicine to present to a group of acupuncture students.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
January 9, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | CDC, Human rights, United States |
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Those who have experienced serious health issues following their Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccination are raising more concerns about censorship on social media platforms. These individuals, who consider themselves victims of the vaccine, report that their attempts to share their experiences and symptoms online are being stifled.
Among these is a father of two who suffered a life-altering blood clot, leading to permanent brain damage, after receiving the vaccine in spring 2021. He is currently pursuing legal action against AstraZeneca in the High Court in London. Similarly, a lawsuit has been filed by the husband of a woman who tragically died following her vaccination.
Others who believe they have suffered adverse reactions to the jab, yet are not involved in any legal battles, have expressed frustration over the suppression of their voices on platforms like Facebook.
They claim that they are being pushed towards using cryptic language and self-censorship to evade group shutdowns, as reported by the Telegraph.
UK CV Family, a private Facebook group founded by Charlet Crichton, serves as a support network for over 1,000 members who feel they have been harmed or bereaved by the Covid vaccines. Crichton, who experienced a severe reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine, had to abandon her 13-year-long Sports Therapy business due to prolonged bed rest. The group, which was established in November 2021, has earned the status of core-participant in the Covid Inquiry, allowing members like Crichton, who claims to have suffered myocarditis post-vaccination, to testify in the inquiry.
Crichton revealed that her comments had been blocked to prevent misuse, and she even faced a temporary ban from Meta for allegedly not meeting their standards.
She also noted that some members have experienced shadow banning, where their posts are obscured from public view.
Further, YouTube attempted to censor a video featuring lawyers discussing vaccines at the Covid Inquiry, citing a breach of their medical misinformation policy. A video of Stephen Bowie, a Scottish Vaccine Injury Group member who suffered a spinal stroke and blood clots post-vaccination, received a similar warning.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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In 2015, the “Defend the Guard Act” was introduced in the West Virginia legislature, aiming to bring sanity to our nation’s foreign policy and the legal abuses foisted upon our servicemen within our state’s National Guard.
This proposed law emerged from long forgotten principles, pieced together into legislation that was committed to the idea that our troops ought to only be sent into foreign wars with a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress—a constitutional mandate forsaken for over eighty years now.
With the Congress renouncing its solemn responsibility, over time, the process of throwing American troops into foreign wars has become a matter of unilateral decree by the president, an office swayed carelessly by the administrative state and impulsive bureaucrats from the Pentagon.
The consequences of this radical departure from our nation’s traditional governance have been predictable: a catastrophic state of “Forever Warfare,” financially and morally bankrupting our country.
The Defend the Guard Act, then, is a last-ditch effort to reassert legislative oversight before it’s too late, and force Washington to confront the neglected ethics long held by the Western “Just War Tradition”—that armed conflict should always be a measure of last resort.
The legislation, however, is more than just a simple procedural check. A crucial aspect is its focus on keeping our Guard units at home, where they’re needed most. A state’s National Guard is essential for handling local emergencies like floods and storms or securing our borders.
Over the years, a troubling trend has emerged: many of the National Guard members who have been cut down on the front lines of Washington’s perpetual foreign wars hail from rural states akin to West Virginia—states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Kentucky, or Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
This disproportionate burden of foreign wars borne by our country’s rural regions—areas often dismissed by the elites of this nation as “flyover country”—is not just a tragedy, it’s an outrage. To the ruling coastal elite, our servicemen from such states are seen as expendable.
During the height of the Iraq War, for instance, nearly half of all combat brigades were National Guardsmen, a great many from rural states held in contempt by the managerial ruling class, who don’t think twice about them or their families.
Central to this entire affair has been the incredible efforts of Sgt. Dan McKnight (Ret) and the organization he formed, Bring Our Troops Home. Dan’s leadership and organizational skills have propelled this idea from a meager initiative in West Virginia to a national movement.
Dan’s devotion to the cause, coupled with his talent to articulate its urgency, has galvanized massive support and brought critical attention to the subject—amplifying the voices of combat veterans everywhere and motivating state legislators across the country to take action.
Each year, as we’ve fought to advance this ‘Defend the Guard’ legislation, formidable resistance is encountered, primarily from the Pentagon and their bureaucratic lackeys. The “Brass” and the useful idiots sent to carry out their bidding employ a wide range of sordid tactics; from disingenuous accusations of “failing to support the troops,” to more aggressive methods behind closed doors—like threats of federal-funding cuts and hints of public defamation against those who support the legislation—the hostility has only intensified.
The escalation of these schemes if a sign of their growing desperation. It’s quite common now for uniformed general officers to patrol the halls of state capitols, lobbying state legislators against the bill with Machiavellian tactics.
These blatant measures on behalf of public “servants” attached to the Pentagon pose a direct challenge to the fundamental American principle of civilian authority over the military—raising questions as to who really controls the armed forces of this country anymore.
Despite this ordeal, the Defend the Guard Act has begun to spread like wildfire, thanks again in large part to Dan McKnight’s heroic efforts. This once-regional idea has now found resonance in dozens of state capitols across the nation.
Huge victories have been achieved with the bill’s passage in the Arizona Senate, and—as of four days ago—its success through the New Hampshire House, marking an even bigger milestone. With the potential to reach up to 40 states this coming year, a pivotal turning point is at hand.
The success of this movement underscores a very critical moment for our states to leverage their inherent powers within our country’s federalist framework, compelling the federal government in Washington to adhere to its foundational principles.
Paramount in this endeavor is the protection of our courageous servicemen within the National Guard—along with the prudent treatment of all of our country’s warriors, who honor their sacred oaths they swore to the Almighty when they donned the uniform.
By reviving long-neglected political principles and promoting the classical virtues, true leaders can be encouraged to emerge and drive efforts that can also safeguard our nation as a whole.
Next week, for the tenth consecutive year, I’ll re-introduce the Defend the Guard Act here in West Virginia. As the idea spreads, I’m hopeful a growing resolve to uphold the virtues our country was founded upon will as well.
Pat McGeehan is a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing the first district.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism | United States |
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“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election.
At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” A few minutes before that uplifting assertion, Biden accused Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported last week that Biden campaign aides plan to go “full Hitler” on Trump, making “a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.” A few weeks ago, the Biden campaign posted a graphic on Twitter comparing Trump and Hitler’s rhetoric.
Biden continually equated democracy with freedom. And whatever is good for democracy is “close enough for government work” to freedom. Biden declared, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” Unless Team Biden disapproves of your thoughts, of course.
Biden neglected to explain why his vision of democracy justifies the near-total suppression of freedom of speech for his opponents. On July 4, Federal Judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” and a federal appeals court condemned Team Biden for “suppressing millions of protected free-speech postings by American citizens”—mostly by conservatives and Republicans.
“If only Uncle Joe had known about that abuse,” right? Like hell. Biden’s Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail at the Supreme Court to preserve his power to secretly censor anyone the feds claim is spouting disinformation, perhaps including denying that Biden is God’s gift to America.
Another key to Biden’s vision of democracy is that the president is entitled to imprison peaceful protestors who opposed him. Biden proved the villainy of Trump supporters by touting case numbers from January 6: “Since that day more than 1,200 people have been charged for the assault on the capitol, and nearly 900 of them have been convicted and they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”
Biden neglected to quote the bombshell Washington Post report today revealing that vast numbers of the January 6 charges have been crap cases. Federal judges have rejected Biden Justice Department sentencing demands in almost 90% of the January 6 cases—an astounding record. If those cases were not being tried by juries overstocked with federal employees and NPR devotees, the prosecutions would have crashed and burned long ago.
The Supreme Court may obliterate many of the cases. More than 320 of the convictions against J-6 protestors hinge on a bizarre contortion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after corporations destroyed documents sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The average sentence for those convicted of obstructing an official proceeding has been 39 months,” the Post reported. Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi warns that the Supreme Court taking that case is a “red flag and a loud gong” because that law was the “North Star” used by prosecutors. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden twist of the 2002 law, that will make the January 6 prosecutions look like one of the worst witch hunts in American history.
Yet, according to Team Biden, the real problem is that not enough lives have been ruined for sinful thoughts on January 6. Last Thursday, Matthew Graves, Biden’s chief prosecutor for the District of Columbia, issued a warning of potentially thousands of more January 6 indictments: “If a person knowingly entered a restricted area [near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021] without authorization, they already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake: Thousands of people occupied that area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.” Talking about hounding people who merely were in the general vicinity of the Capitol confirms that for Team Biden, “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism.”
Actually, Biden’s FBI already classifies all the people arrested for January 6 Capitol clash offenses as domestic terrorists—even people busted for “parading without a permit.” The FBI presumes that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI whistleblower revealed in congressional testimony in May 2023 that FBI headquarters pressured FBI agents to treat anyone who attended the January 6 protests as a criminal suspect. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to unjustifiably conduct warrantless searches on 23,132 Americans citizens suspected of January 6 offenses “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras.
Biden assured the audience that “we still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.” Okay, but what if the president or the vice president uses the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware as email aliases to hustle business deals for a family member? Is it OK for them to slip the law then?
The only way to assume that Biden is not “above the law” is to assume that his decrees alone are the law. The Supreme Court struck down his COVID vaccine mandate, his moratorium for evicting deadbeat renters, his $500 billion federal student loan forgiveness scheme, and numerous other Biden policies.
Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This is the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.
Biden castigated Trump as the “Election Denier in Chief,” a new offense not yet been codified in the statute book. Biden endlessly warned that Trump posed a deadly threat to both freedom and democracy. Biden campaign masterminds were clever enough to permit an unknown local politician to deliver the “takeaway” from the day’s events. Biden was preceded at the podium by Dauphin County commissioner candidate Justin Douglass, who proclaimed that “Donald Trump represents a clear and present danger” to democracy. Since Trump is the ultimate enemy of the Constitution, anything that Biden and his campaign does to banish Trump from the ballot will be pro-democracy.
Obviously, if Americans value democracy, then the presidential candidate favored by the most voters in recent polls must not be allowed on the ballot. Team Biden favors a version of “Guardian Democracy” where voters are only permitted to cast ballots for candidates that the ruling class approves. This is part and parcel with the Democratic Party’s plan to let all future elections be determined by ballot harvesting and tsunamis of unverified mail-in ballots.
Why should we believe that democracy dies unless Biden gets four more years to violate the Constitution, censor and jail his opponents, and domineer practically every aspect of Americans’ lives (“step away from that gas stove before we have to hurt you”)? As Thomas Jefferson declared long ago, “An elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | FBI, Human rights, United States |
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The line is clear
We are now approximately four years removed from the unleashing of the covid so-called pandemic and the consequential measures adopted and enforced world-wide that created terror in the global populace, imposed unprecedented strictures, subverted foundational principles of medicine and foisted an unnecessary and dangerous inoculation upon a mostly unwitting public.
Some of us, at the very outset, upon hearing the mainstream messages of bat-inspired trans-species migration of a respiratory virus, suspected that things were amiss. The frenzied media, however, with their ‘case’ counts, death counts and fraudulent reporting about the actual lethality of the pathogen, were unstoppable and relentless, and I can forgive the many who began to shudder at this unexpected turn of events and who lined up for the dubious polymerase chain reaction ‘test’ and who, ultimately, placed every hope upon an emergency so-called vaccine, convinced as they were that our world was engulfed by an incomparable threat.
I have a harder time forgiving doctors who threw their senses and duties out the window, were unperturbed by the omission and suppression of attempts to treat and prevent the pathogen before hospitalization was required, abandoned informed consent, pushed the covid jab and regarded those who preferred to keep their minds and bodies and general health intact by not receiving the jab as a dangerous entity.
I frankly cannot forgive those physicians who, wielding considerable influence in establishment media, used this influence to sway their followers to accept something that has now been shown demonstrably and repetitively to be a health disaster
Perhaps, however, under the unnerving full-court press of a rabid and unchecked propaganda campaign waged by once highly-regarded journalistic authorities, everyone can be forgiven for having, essentially, lost their wits. Perhaps.
But now, four years hence, as the general picture has clarified itself, anyone with a sentient eye or ear not wedded to mainstream pulp can conclude that there never was a genuine pandemic, there never was a need to lock and shut down the entire world, and there never was or will be a need to inject billions with a gene-altering concoction that has hurt and killed too many to pass muster as a real and viable vaccine. We can further conclude that the preposterously tremendous control over people exhibited by the roll-out of the covid campaign, and the submission of people to the evisceration of their unalienable rights — these were not organically evolved developments, but consequences of a highly orchestrated deployment of power.
In short, all things covid was a strategically planned operation — a war-crime — the likes of which are unprecedented, and the consequence of which is to move the world towards some kind of autocratic fiefdom wherein we ‘little people’ surviving the first waves of the onslaught will be subjugated to the whims and directives of The Few.
I don’t care how many X followers one may have, or how many Sierpinski triangles one may conjure, how many high-profile interviews one has done, how many conferences one has attended, how many grants one has received, or how many plaudits one has obtained from our freedom-loving community: unless one can see the line and step across it, I regard you as an Enemy.
What line? The line that separates those who understand the concerted efforts of a Global Cabal to inflict the covid mess upon us for purposes of control, versus those who assert that this mess was essentially the result of unfortunate circumstances complicated by greed, incompetence, opportunism, corruption, human error and the like. To espouse the latter is untruthful and enervating: it takes the life out of our tenuously cobbled opposition and plays into our opposition’s hands.
Pick a side. To deny that the genocide visited upon us has been deliberately perpetrated, regardless of what you may invoke in the way of prudence, reason and thoughtful consideration, is to join the ranks of its perpetrators.
Pick a side, the line is clear, and time is short.
Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.
January 2024
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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In words often wrongly attributed to Voltaire, Kevin Alfred Strom asserted that ‘to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise’.
Since the Hamas attack on 7th October, this has been made very clear. Influential Zionist activists, who exert phenomenal influence on western politics, governments, and media, have ensured that only the one version of events, the Israeli version, is socially acceptable. This political reality was demonstrated in grave detail in Al Jazeera’s multi-part investigative documentary, The Lobby -Britain and The Lobby – USA. Of course, a different truth is known by any objective observer, especially millions of Palestinian people, and also by the millions who march worldwide against the brutal military bombardment and massacre of civilians in Gaza. But the BBC and The Daily Mail still refuse to broadcast or publish the widespread and justified disgust at the actions of the Israeli government.
Disturbingly, the British mainstream media have been actively shilling for the Israeli government, as their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continuing the annihilation of Gaza. A prime asset of the campaign to cast Israelis as the oppressed, and the Palestinians as the oppressor is British media pundit Douglas Murray. Writing in the Spectator, Why I’m considering a life of crime, Murray denounced posters at Heathrow Airport inviting travellers from the ‘Israel/Palestinian territories’ who have ‘witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity’ to report to it police, in potential pursuance of a case by the International Criminal Court. This call for international justice deeply offends Murray, who asserts that ‘there is no country called Palestine’. Why not, Douglas? My old atlas from the 1930s clearly shows a land of this name, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea and bordering on Trans-Jordan.
Curiously, Murray is not sure what status to give the remaining Palestinian area. As he explains, ‘there is the disputed territory of the West Bank and there is Gaza, which was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 and which promptly became a ‘terror state’. Hold on, Douglas, don’t you deny such statehood? It seems that Murray wants Gaza to have responsibility without any sovereign recognition or power, and the inverse for Israel.
But their journalists and commentators are not only concerned with what’s happening in a narrow strip of land invaded by Israeli troops. They portray all Jews living in Britain as victims of hate, because supporters of the Palestinian cause are railing against the murderous exploits of a state that claims to represent Jewish people worldwide. Meanwhile our police and judiciary appear bent on protecting a foreign jurisdiction two thousand miles away; for example, arresting UK protestors with placards likening the Knesset to the Third Reich.
INFOGRAPHIC: Latest number in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in Gaza (Source: EuroMed)
The lead opinion piece in the Daily Express (4th January 2024), by the chairman of Glasgow Friends of Israel, shows the way that the wind is blowing. According to Sammy Stein, anti-Zionism is nothing but rebranded anti-Semitism. Although Stein acknowledges the right to criticise Israel and its leaders (as do many Israelis), he smears the regular large pro-Palestinian rallies in Glasgow as “anti-Semitic,” based on his experience in running a market stall in the city centre adorned with Israeli flags. He believes that flying a national flag (of a country that is clearly committing crimes against humanity) is somehow defending the rights of Jews. Within reasonable limits, criticism of his stall is an expected and justifiable act of free speech, a fundamental right in a free society.
Stein confines the concept of anti-Semitism to dislike of Jews, despite the broader meaning of Semitic peoples (including the Semitic Palestinian people, the targets of Israeli bombs and bullets). He claims that this ‘is a term established specifically for the hatred of the Jewish people and not, as some believe, hatred against people who can be described as Semites, such as Muslims’. The expanding scope of anti-Semitism, as determined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), is now sufficiently wide enough to quell any opprobrium towards Israel, while there is no equivalent protection for the native Palestinian people and their diaspora. Shamefully, nearly all major Western political parties have signed up to this blatantly one-sided censorship.
Despite the efforts of these Western institutions to impose an arbitrary definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime,’ the fact remains that Jews are not the same as the state of Israel, and both of which is not the same as the ideology known as Zionism. But the distinction between Zionists and the Israeli leadership is becoming blurred. As the Palestinians and their supporters chant of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, treated by many Western authorities as a potentially hateful message, Netanyahu’s administration seems to be aiming for that very same outcome – capturing the whole land for Israel and evicting the Palestinians from their homeland. Stein notes that ‘today, Zionism refers to support for the continued existence of Israel, in the face of regular calls for its dissolution’. The Israelis have a right to self-determination, Stein believes, but not the Palestinian inmates trapped in the world’s largest concentration camp.
Stein also reminds us that ‘Jesus was a Jew,’ who, ironically, was persecuted by the Jews, leading to his crucifixion under the aegis of Roman authority at the time. But for Stein and Zionists, the land of historic Palestine belongs to the Jews because some Jews have continuously inhabited the area for thousands of years, after having first established their presence thousands of years ago. Also, they believe that this homeland was supposedly promised to them as a fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham. This is a simplistic and convenient reading of history. There is no straightforward link between Judah of the Bible and present-day Zionists. Regardless, should Israel really be allowed to run an exclusionary ethno-nationalist and inhumane Apartheid state (as Western societies simultaneously promote multiculturalism, diversity, equity and inclusion)?
Stein regards anti-Zionism as ‘unique in demanding the dismantling of an existing state after over seventy years of independence.’ Palestinians would splutter over such hypocrisy. For Stein, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are now the same thing, being slightly different ‘ways of saying that Jews have no right to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as other humans’. Perhaps Stein should spend a few days on the Gaza strip to learn whose hate is most powerful – that of desperate, bombed-out Palestinians or that of the American-backed Israeli branch of the military-industrial complex.
***
Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018).
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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January 6th WAS an insurrection.
But it was not Trump supporters who overthrew the United States. It was intelligence assets who entrapped Trump supporters in a planned false flag event, to justify certifying a stolen election without hearing evidence of fraud in Congress.
Pence promised electors they would have their day in court in Congress to air the widespread evidence of voter fraud. Those grievances were never heard, because Pence decided to certify the election the next day, and stated he did not need to give electors their day in Congress, because the actions of Trump supporters were so heinous on January 6th.
Then they intentionally withheld the footage from you, only showing the negative optics, so they could shape the perception of the event, and use it to prevent Trump from becoming POTUS in 2020 AND in 2024.
Then they used the “insurrection” as justification to purge virtually all Trump supporters from all social media, and censor ANY talk of election fraud.
You witnessed an insurrection that day, but it was the Deep State who undermined, conspired against, and overthrew the duly elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Our country was stolen from us, but we are about to take it back. And swift retribution is the first thing on the agenda.
TREASON!
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | United States |
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Democrats have resorted to nothing short of “ballot cleansing” as they try to bar Republican candidates for Congress under the 14th Amendment theory, writes renowned American legal expert Jonathan Turley, warning against placing the US on a slippery slope to political chaos.
Several US voters in Illinois and Massachusetts have filed motions seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from each state’s primary ballot for the 2024 election. Earlier, Colorado and Maine moved to disqualify the ex-president.
Jonathan Turley, a renowned US legal scholar, raised the red flag over Colorado’s Supreme Court decision to bar Trump from the 2024 election last month, stressing that the state’s justices “put this country on one of the most dangerous paths in its history.”
The unusual initiative is driven by Democrat politicians who decided to utilize Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that any candidates who have engaged in acts of insurrection after vowing to defend the US Constitution should be barred from holding political office. The amendment was ratified in 1868. Now, the Dems are arguing that the January 6 riots were a full-fledged “insurrection” and that the law could be applied to the former president.
“In December 1865 many in Washington were shocked to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s onetime vice president, waiting to take the same oath that he took before joining the Southern rebellion,” Turley wrote on December 22. “So Congress declared that it could bar those ‘who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.’”
According to the legal expert, the January 6 events – no matter how bad they were – cannot be compared to the US Civil War (1861-1865) and qualified as an “insurrection.”
“It was a protest that became a riot, not a rebellion,” Turley highlighted, arguing that the Civil War-era amendment should not be used in this case.
He warned that the Colorado court’s undemocratic decision and clear defiance of the First Amendment could result in a domino effect “where red and blue states could now engage in tit-for-tat disqualifications.”
Turley’s concerns aren’t unjustified given that Democrats have decided to bar not only Trump, but all Republican candidates for Congress who have dared to question the fairness of the 2020 elections. Some Democratic lawmakers have called for the disqualification of up to 126 Republican colleagues as “insurrectionists.” What is especially chilling is that many have supported them.
Thus, on December 11, US Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) called on House leaders to remove congressional lawmakers who were “supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 presidential election.”
“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend,” claimed Pascrell, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) introduced a similar initiative which was supported by 63 Democratic co-sponsors, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ritchie Torres, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.
Meanwhile, Turley drew attention to an obvious double-standard approach exercised by Democrats: previously, some of them have openly challenged and even sought to block certification of election results.
“Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election,” the legal scholar recalled on January 5, adding that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result.
According to Turley, Democrats are increasingly using labels of “insurrectionists” and “Putin lovers” to cancel their political rivals, opponents, and even journalists. However, if the trend turns into some sort of a legal precedent, nothing would stop overzealous lawmakers from expanding this cancellation spree, according to the expert.
“That is why the [US] Supreme Court needs to take up this issue and put this pernicious theory to bed once and for all,” Turley concluded.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | United States |
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When I read an article yesterday by a man named Edwin Rubis, I sat there, shook my head, and asked myself how any government could do such a thing to anyone.
The reason that Rubis’s article caught my attention is captured in the title of his article: “I’m Serving 40 Years in Federal Prison. Here’s a Glimpse Into My World.” That title intrigued me because I have often wondered what daily life is like for prison inmates. Do they sit around all day reading books? Do they work out? Do they have jobs inside the prison? What type of food do they eat? Are they constantly getting harassed by prison guards? Are they raped or beaten up by other inmates?
That “40 Years” in the title of the article also caught my attention. Imagine: 40 years in jail! As a former criminal-defense attorney, I figured that Rubis had most likely been convicted of a serious federal offense, such as bank robbery or kidnapping, perhaps even felony-murder.
Not so. After describing what his daily life in prison is like, Rubis included a tagline at the bottom of his article that stated that he was serving a 40-year jail sentence for a non-violent marijuana offense.
Yes, you read that right! 40 years! For … a … non-violent .. marijuana … offense.
That’s incredible. After all, we’re not talking Turkey or North Korea. We are talking about the United States.
40 years for a non-violent marijuana offense. Just let that sink in. Not heroin. Not cocaine. Not fentanyl. Not opioids. Just marijuana.
What would motivate any federal judge to issue such a horrific jail sentence for a non-violent marijuana offense? I did some online research but I could not find the name of the federal judge who issued that sentence. But whoever he is, he ought to hang his head in shame. In fact, if he’s still serving as a federal judge, he ought to resign his position and return to practicing law. It would be the right thing to do.
My research did reveal that Rubis was convicted in Houston of distribution of marijuana rather than possession.
Ever since the start of the war on drugs, possession of drugs has been considered less grave than distribution of drugs. But that always has been a ridiculous distinction. Both possession and distribution are entirely peaceful acts. Unless one is growing his own marijuana, in order to possess a drug, one must receive it. So, why should the one who is selling or delivering the drug be treated more harshly than one who receives or possesses the drug?
The purpose of meting out high jail sentences to marijuana distributors is to dissuade people from distributing drugs. If people are deterred from distributing drugs, the argument goes, then people won’t be able to consume or possess them.
How’s that working out for you drug warriors, including you federal judges who are convinced that you have the responsibility of helping “win” the war on drugs? I’m sure that that federal judge who meted out that 40-year jail sentence to Rubis figured that he was doing his part to “win” the war on drugs. That’s certainly what federal judges were doing back when I was practicing law on the U.S. Mexico Border back in the 1970s. It’s one thing for a judge in the 1970s to have such a mindset. But how in the world could later judges — and judges today — have that same mindset? Their obtuseness boggles the mind.
Edwin Rubin began serving his jail sentence in 1998. He’s been in jail for some 25 years. For a non-violent marijuana offense. He is set to be released in 2032.
How in the world can the American people permit this drug-war madness to continue? How many more lives must be destroyed before a nationwide crisis of conscience forces federal officials to bring it to an end?
January 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, United States |
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WASHINGTON – New York Attorney General Letitia James wants to make former president Donald Trump and his fellow defendants pay nearly $370 million for their alleged financial fraud, court documents filed on Friday showed.
“Defendants reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains through their unlawful conduct. Record evidence, including the substantively unrebutted testimony of Plaintiff’s banking expert Michiel McCarty, supports disgorgement of $370 million, plus pre-judgment interest,” New York Attorney General Letitia James argued in the filing.
Additionally, the attorney general asked for Trump and his co-defendants, including Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney, to be barred permanently from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation.
“Lifetime injunctions barring Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from participating in the real estate industry in New York State or from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity are necessary and appropriate,” the documents read.
Two of Trump’s sons, however, were offered a less stringent outcome, with the AG’s office asking for a five-year ban on participating in the real estate industry in the state of New York or serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or legal entity.
The document, which spans almost 100 pages, proceeds to summarize evidence from court, including incidences when both Trump and his associates testified during trial.
James brought the civil fraud case against Trump and his associates for allegedly lying about the value of Trump properties.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing, characterizing the case as a political witch hunt to prevent his re-election. His attorneys have also argued in separate briefs that no fraud has occurred, instead blaming misstatements on accidental accounting errors.
The filing comes less than a week before closing arguments in the ongoing civil fraud trial are set to begin on January 11. Penalties are expected to be decided by the presiding judge some time afterward.
January 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | United States |
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The time for tyranny has arrived, and this time, it’s unfortunately real. No government in Poland since 1989 has come as close to sliding into actual tyranny as the current one, nor has any other given itself such broad permission to become tyrannical. Moreover, none have been as effective in practically eliminating the safeguards that constrain them.
Let us start with a few questions.
Firstly, if the Law and Justice (PiS) party governed recklessly, what do we call the actions of their successors? Super-reckless? Turbo-reckless? Mega-turbo-reckless? Secondly, if PiS disregarded all “safeguards” or “minority rights,” where do ministers like Culture Minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, responsible for the attack on public media, and Justice Minister Adam Bodnar stand on these issues? Serious suggestions only, please.
Thirdly, the previous regime was accused daily, both domestically and internationally, for eight long years of harboring an “authoritarian gene.” It was said that PiS would never relinquish power once gained, that they would not respect the election results, that they would imprison opponents, and strip the opposition of its last media strongholds. Those who do not remember should remind themselves, read up, watch again. How then, against the backdrop of these accusations, should we describe those who govern now?
How can we even comment on declarations like: “We are restoring constitutionality and looking for a legal basis to do it,” by Adam Bodnar? Or “Lawful is what we understand as lawful” by Donald Tusk? Or “The constitution is a trap that PiS sets for democracy,” as the academic lawyer and staunch PiS critic Wojciech Sadurski was kind enough to comment?
How can the constitution, the anchor of democracy, especially in its liberal interpretation as advocated by Sadurski, become a trap for democracy? It would be different if PiS had changed the constitution, stripping it of its power, sanctity, and authority.
But that didn’t happen. It’s the same fundamental law that Sadurski himself cited just a few months ago in his fight against PiS. Yesterday, it was his shield in the battle against democracy’s enemies. Today, it evidently chafes him (and the entire ruling camp). So, politicians circumvent it, and lawyer Sadurski loudly applauds them for it.
There are two options to consider: Are these people truly “democrats” as they have long pretended to be? Or did they only invoke democracy when it suited them? If so, who are they really?
The good news is that time will answer this last question. In the next few years, we will learn the true stance of the aforementioned individuals on democracy, rule of law, human rights, and freedom of speech. We will know them by their fruits. That is for sure.
Now, there are, broadly speaking, two potential scenarios. The first is an optimistic one. In this scenario, disenchanted sympathizers of the so-called democratic camp console themselves with the thought that this is just political theater — a reaction to years of humiliation. They hope that eventually, reason will prevail. The public television TVP, the Constitutional Tribunal and other PiS institutions will be cleansed, and all will be well. Right now, it might not look pretty, but peace will return to our land. And the current situation? At worst, Sienkiewicz, Bodnar, and the unfortunate liquidators of public media will serve as scapegoats, to be replaced by newer models.
Unfortunately, there’s also a second, more likely possibility. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that the current rulers won’t be able to stop their anti-PiS crusade. The path of force, revenge and reckoning will be too easy, and the conviction of their moral righteousness too intoxicating. Then, it will be too late. There is no turning back from a web of lies, as one falsehood leads to another, creating increasingly complex structures where removing one element then threatens a collapse and loss of credibility. They must keep going and certainly not back down. On the contrary, full steam ahead.
This is already evident. Doubts about their media policy within their own camp are covered up with bold offensives on other fronts: the war against a president signaling readiness to compromise, or intrigues against the National Bank of Poland President Adam Glapiński. It’s an old and tested method, especially characteristic of authoritarian environments. There’s always some “last unconquered village of Gauls” to conquer before laying down their arms. But not before, oh no! There’s always some PiS remnant threatening a resurgence of PiS-ism. And so, the cycle continues.
Until the end.
This second path is all the more likely because the new power faces almost no oversight. PiS had powerful foreign adversaries: the European Union, liberal Western media, Soros’s network. At home, they faced a strong opposition, media friendly to it, and opinion-forming elites. Paradoxically, this served PiS. It kept them in check, ensuring that even if they had an authoritarian gene, it would be constantly fought against, never taking full control.
The anti-PiS doesn’t have any of these checks on its power. They won’t be watched by foreign powers or liberal media in conjunction with filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. And after taking over public media from PiS, there will be even fewer safeguards.
This is the tragedy of our new rulers. This is their curse. It already makes them tyrants — real tyrants and not the imagined ones they projected onto PiS. It also makes them extremely dangerous.
January 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights, Poland |
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