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Lawsuit Pushes Back Against California Medical Board’s “Misinformation” Censorship Power

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 12, 2023

A lawsuit has been amended in California against this US state’s medical boards’ “misinformation powers” – based on a law that is soon to be repealed, and which critics – some of them legal plaintiffs – say allowed the government to prevent them from practicing medicine, the way they were trained to do.

It was one of the rules, called Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), introduced to keep medical professionals in check, in case they felt like speaking their minds freely as insights into Covid were developing.

And since the world has now moved on to other crises, the “forgotten pandemic” censorship laws are getting “quietly” repealed.

But not really, the plaintiffs in this case claim – because of the nature of the repeal of the short-lived AB 2098, made null-and-void on September 14 via Senate Bill 815 (SB 815). California Senator Newsom got to sign all three documents.

However, the repeal – which will not be in effect before the start of 2024 – at the same time incorporates Democrat member of California Assembly Evan Low’s provision that doctors who get accused of “misinformation” can still be punished – “held accountable” – regardless of whether the controversial law was actually applicable.

“The Medical Board of California will continue to maintain the authority to hold medical licensees accountable for deviating from the standard of care and misinforming their patients about COVID-19 treatments,” Low said.

How in the world is this political, ideological, pre-election, and legal gymnastics even supposed to work?

The lawsuit against the bill, Hoang et al. v. Bonta et al., has the plaintiffs represented by California attorney Richard Jaffe.

He had this to say: “Because of the repeal of AB 2098, and the board’s position that it can still sanction the speech targeted by the soon-to-be-repealed law, we are pivoting in our lawsuit and arguing to the judge that they can’t do it under their general statute either because the speech does not change just because the legal theory/statute changes.”

The world clearly has moved to other crises – but it seems, not the California Democrats. And so the plaintiffs in the lawsuit’s amended format are also asking to add more to their ranks. One of the original ones is Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

However absurd the “standard of care” argument that supersedes a law may seem to a layperson, Jaffe is obviously taking it seriously.

The court will hear the arguments related to this new development on November 13.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Five questions for the government’s behavioural scientists

Simple questions, requiring simple answers

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | October 10, 2023

As proposed in a previous HART article, state-funded behavioural scientists – via their application of often-covert ‘nudge’ techniques – fulfil a crucial role in imposing the will of a global elite upon ordinary people. Whether it is confining us to our homes, encouraging the ingestion of insects, imposing digital IDs or restricting our opportunities to travel, the nudgers promote the compliance of the masses by a variety of means, including their stealthy harnessing of fear, shaming and peer pressure.

And behavioural scientists are now a prominent occupational grouping within the government infrastructure. The ‘Government Communications Service’ employs more than 7,000 ‘professional communicators’ across the UK, and incorporates a ‘Behavioural Science Team’ (based in the Cabinet Office) with a central goal of embedding behavioural science expertise across the Government Communication profession’. During the covid event, the Cabinet Office granted the Behavioural Insight Team (the original ‘Nudge Unit’) a £4-million contract to furnish the government with ‘frictionless access to behavioural insights to match central priorities’. Recent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Cabinet Office and the Department of Energy Security & Net Zero asking how many behavioural scientists they currently employed were both refused on the grounds that it would take too long to compute the information. Ironically, it seems that taxpayers are generously funding their own manipulation.

A prominent UK behavioural scientist recently acknowledged the impact this intense nudging campaign has had on the British people. In a 2023 interview for the Telegraph, Professor David Halpern (the Founding Director of the Behavioural Insight Team, aka the UK’s Nudge Unit) observed that people are now ‘drilled’ and rightly calibrated to accept further restrictions; ‘once you’ve practised something’ (lockdowns, mask wearing) ‘you can switch it back on … you’ve got the beginnings of a habit loop … we’ve practised the drill’.

HART believes that the general public has a right to be informed about the nature, scale, and intensity of state-sponsored nudging, not least so that they can be furnished with the opportunity to express their opinions about the appropriateness and acceptability of this form of top-down persuasion. Yet, to date, there has been a stark reluctance for any of the behavioural scientists within the government infrastructure to admit responsibility for promoting the fear-inflating messaging witnessed throughout the covid event. Given this lack of transparency in regard to the details of the ongoing behavioural science operation, HART would like to ask the state-employed nudgers the following questions:

1. Do you perceive yourselves as advisors or enablers? Is your primary goal to provide   expert guidance to ministers and civil servants, or to maximise the compliance of the masses with Government edicts?

2. Did you conduct your own independent evidence reviews before promoting the implementation of top-down restrictions such as lockdowns and community masking, or do you presume that all recommendations emanating from national and global public health bodies are for the ‘greater good’?

3. Do you recognise the ethical concerns arising from the Government’s deployment of nudges upon their own citizens? How much time do you devote to discussing the morality of using often-covert, distress-inducing methods of persuasion upon ordinary people?

4. If, as you claim, you have never endorsed the use of fear-inflation as a means of promoting compliance, why did you all remain silent throughout the covid event while our Government was ‘scaring the pants’ off us all?

5. Do you recognise, and allow for, the fact that your own ideological biases will be colouring your judgements & actions?

By answering these questions, and thereby filling in some of the information gaps surrounding the Government’s ubiquitous use of nudging, lay people will be better placed to make an informed choice as to whether they want their taxes spent on this often-clandestine activity.

We look forward to receiving responses from the behavioural scientists concerned.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Hungary should consider leaving EU if Brussels makes drastic treaty change move, argues Hungarian columnist

Hungary has a new red line as Germany and France move in to seize control of the entire bloc, writes Hungarian political analyst.

By John Cody | Remix News | October 10, 2023

Following news that Germany and France are moving forward with reforms that would drastically curtail the sovereignty of EU nation-states, Hungarian columnist Tamás Fricz argued in the Magyar Nemzet newspaper that if such changes really do come to pass, Hungary needs to consider the possibility of leaving the European Union.

All I can say is that if we can really get this through the EU institutions, we really need to seriously consider our role and the conditions for staying in the EU,” wrote Fricz in response to the new reform measures being proposed.

“Once again, the two EU powers have found each other: France and Germany are determined to reform — or, in other words, to curtail — the rights of the member states this year, including the abolition of the veto in the European Council, the only EU body where the member states say still counts,” he wrote.

He described how the move was first discussed by German Minister of State Anna Lührmann and French EU Minister of State Laurence Boone during an interview with Euractiv a few weeks ago. However, since then, the EU has accelerated its plans, with 12 experts commissioned by Germany and France to produce a 60-page draft reform paper detailing how the EU would be “reformed,” most notably by abolishing the veto.

Fricz asks why Hungary should go along with these reforms, and writes if Hungary does not fight back against the abolition of the veto, “we will be permanently at the mercy of the mainstream, liberal, globalist elite in Brussels.”

“That is when a qualified majority, 15 countries and at least 65 percent of the population, is enough for the globalists to impose their will on the member states,” he wrote.

He then details the various areas where Hungary would face serious challenges, writing that Hungary would be “forced to take in tens of thousands of migrants under a mandatory quota” or “pay through the nose” to refuse them.

He also notes that the EU would force Hungary to abolish its child protection laws, thus “opening ourselves up — as already done in Western Europe — to LGBTQI+ propaganda in our schools, in our kindergartens, on our streets, in advertising, in cultural works, on television channels, everywhere and anywhere.”

He then listed various initiatives that Hungary would be powerless to stop, such as the global passport scheme from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the abolishment of cash.

“The European Central Bank wants to abolish the use of cash, one of the main guarantees of individual freedom, and the Union is giving huge amounts to Ukraine to continue fighting the war,” writes Fricz.

“I could go on citing the examples, but if our French and German ‘friends’ are able to abolish the veto, if they can do this feat, then there is nothing more to talk about,” he concluded.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Decades before Snowden, this American patriot waged war against illegal surveillance in the US

In the 1970s, US Army Captain Christopher Pyle blew the lid on government agencies’ domestic spying

Former undercover agent Christopher Pyle testifies in the Senate that the Army has spied on politicians and thousands of ordinary Americans, February 24, 1971. © Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
By Robert Bridge | RT | October 11, 2023

In 1970, a US Army captain went rogue after he discovered that the military was conducting surveillance on dissidents across the country, thus sparking the first effort in modern times to tame US intelligence.

In 1968, almost half a century before the world heard the name of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who blew the whistle on a US-run global surveillance system, Christopher Pyle, an Army captain who taught law at the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Holabird, Maryland, was about to do something no less memorable.

After Pyle had concluded one of his popular lectures on civil disorder, which focused on how the military could better quell riots in those highly volatile times, a military officer directly involved in such operations approached him with the request for a meeting. Several days later, Pyle was escorted into a large warehouse facility that once had been used to assemble railroad engines. In his 2006 book, No Place to Hide, Robert O’Harrow described what happened next.

“Pyle walked into the cage, where an officer showed him books containing mug shots. He looked in the first volume and saw a familiar face. It was Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King’s assistant. Officers called the books the ‘black list.’”

“Outside the cage, Pyle saw more than a dozen teletype machines. The head of the CONUS [acronym for Continental United States] intelligence section told him they were spitting out reports from some fifteen hundred Army operatives about demonstrations with twenty people or more. Pyle was starting to understand how naive he’d been. He began formulating a plan. He would be getting out of the Army soon. He could tell the world about what was going on. When he joined the Army he took an oath to defend the country against all enemies, here and abroad. In his mind now, that included the Army’s intelligence operation. They turned in their security badges and left the building.”

And thus was born one of the most consequential whistleblowers of the post-World War II era.

In January 1970, Pyle, now a full-fledged private citizen, penned an article for the Washington Monthly entitled, ‘CONUS Intelligence: The Army Watches Civilian Politics.’ The explosive opening paragraph said it all: “[t]he U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States. Nearly 1,000 plainclothes investigators … keep track of political protests of all kinds – from Klan rallies in North Carolina to anti-war speeches at Harvard.”

Immediately, some US media swung into action as journalists began hounding the Department of Defense and the US Army to determine the veracity of the claims. Given Pyle’s extreme proximity to the subject matter at hand, however, it soon became clear that Uncle Sam got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

Pyle’s revelations were enough to prompt Congress, as well as a slew of litigation lawyers, to sit up and take notice. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senator Samuel James Ervin, a self-described “country lawyer” from North Carolina, worked together with Pyle to investigate and expose the clandestine domestic spying program.

Pyle and Ervin eventually spent countless hours delivering testimony before various congressional meetings over a span of several years. The first fruit of their labors came with passage of the Privacy Act of 1974. Signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on December 31, 1974, the legislation states: “No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains…” In other words, although the law didn’t actually stop the US Army or intelligence agencies from infiltrating civil action groups and public demonstrations, it did hamper the feds from disclosing the identities of the activists without their foreknowledge.

To this end, Pyle served as a consultant for three Congressional committees: the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights on the Judiciary Committee (1971-1974), the Committee on Government Operations (1974), and the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1975).

According to Pyle, as a result of those successful investigations, “the entire US Army Intelligence Command was abolished and all of its files were burned.” For his actions, Pyle ended up on then-President Richard Nixon’s notorious “Enemies List.”

Given the severity of their overall findings, however, the congressional investigations triggered by the US Army captain did not stop there.

1975, the ‘Year of Intelligence’  

On January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4, the US Senate created the so-called Church Committee, chaired by Democrat Senator Frank Church, to further examine abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The House carried out its own set of investigations with the Pike Commission and the Rockefeller Commission, thereby prompting the media to label 1975 as the ‘Year of Intelligence,’ and not in a way that was flattering to the intelligence community.

Pyle lent his expertise to the ambitious Church Committee, headed by Iowa Senator Frank Church, which discovered a number of questionable, unethical and outright illegal activities by the CIA between 1959 and 1973. Detailed in a series of reports dubbed the ‘Family Jewels’, these activities included conducting physical surveillance on journalists, amassing files on nearly 10,000 Americans connected to the antiwar movement, funding behavior modification research on unwitting subjects, and plots to assassinate foreign leaders, including Cuban President Fidel Castro and DR Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

The most impactful discovery made by the Church Committee, however, was that of Project SHAMROCK. Started in 1940 during World War II and running into the 1970s, the NSA was given secret authority to access all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. At the peak of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages were captured and analyzed by NSA personnel in a month. The pertinent information contained in these messages was then forwarded to other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and the Department of Defense. This formed the basis of the so-called ‘Watch List’ of the 1970s that included thousands of American citizens, including high-ranking politicians, celebrities, academics and antiwar activists.

The findings led Senator Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”

Based on the recommendations of the Church Committee, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. Under FISA, the government is required to obtain warrants to conduct electronic surveillance against individuals from a special court. Such a warrant requires “probable cause to believe” that the surveillance target is a foreign government or organization, or an agent thereof, “engaging in clandestine intelligence activities or international terrorism,” as per a Department of Justice (DOJ) clarification.

Yet, as we shall see, even this minor legislative hurdle would prove too cumbersome for the Bush administration in its war on terror.

Privacy in the age of terrorism

The tireless work of the Church Commission was put to a test in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as US lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle were prepared to sacrifice citizens’ privacy in the name of national security. Thus, less than one week after three hijacked aircraft toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 people in the process, one of the most comprehensive plans for conducting surveillance on American civilians and individuals worldwide – the USA PATRIOT ACT (an acronym for ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act’) – was already being disseminated to members of Congress.

Arguably the most controversial part of the Patriot Act is contained in Section 215 of the 342-page document, which calls for sweeping government powers against private and public enterprises, individuals, and personal privacy. Most crucially, Section 215 did away with the requirement that the target of the records search be a non-US citizen and “an agent of a foreign power.” American citizens were now legitimate targets as well.

In the Senate, the Patriot Act passed in a 99 – 1 vote. The only senator to vote against it was Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold. “There is no doubt,” he declared on the Senate floor before the historic vote, “that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists…But that would not be a country in which we would want to live.”

Even with this widening of surveillance powers, then-US President George W. Bush, as part of the global ‘War on Terror’ that he declared following the events of 9/11, ordered the NSA to tap the communications of an untold number of people in the US, including citizens, without the warrants demanded by the FISA court – despite the fact that between 1979 and 2005, only four out of over 15,000 warrant requests were rejected by the FISA court.

Christopher Pyle, who was still committed to his cause over 30 years after he chose to become a whistleblower, labeled Bush “a criminal” for violating the FISA law and suggested that he should be impeached.

“The Constitution says he must take care that all laws be faithfully executed, not just the ones he likes,” Pyle said during an interview with Democracy Now in 2005. “The statute says … that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive law governing these international intercepts, and he violated it anyway. And the law also says that any person who violates that law is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. By the plain meaning of the law, the President is a criminal.”

More recently, Christopher Pyle, 83, who now works as Professor Emeritus of Politics at Mount Holyoke College, spoke out on behalf of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower who revealed a massive global intelligence program run by the so-called Five Eyes, a once-secretive intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“He’s just an ordinary American,” Pyle explained in 2013. “He’s trying to start a debate in this nation over something that is critically important. He should be respected for that and taken at face value and we should move on to the big issues, including the corruption of our system that is done by massive secrecy and by massive amounts of money and politics.”

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Musk Fires Back at EU Regulator: X Content on Palestine-Israel Conflict ‘Open Source & Transparent’

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.10.2023

A European regulator had issued Elon Musk a warning about the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” on X amid the Mideast escalation, warning that in case of “non-compliance, penalties can be imposed.”

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk went on X (formerly Twitter) to fire back at the EU regulator’s complaint that his platform allegedly spreads “illegal content and disinformation” about the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Responding to the allegations, Musk wrote that the platform’s policy is “everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports.” He also added, “Please list the violations you allude to on 𝕏, so that that [sic] the public can see them. Merci beaucoup.”

Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, had sent a letter to the tech billionaire, claiming that his office has received “indications” that groups are spreading misinformation and “violent and terrorist” content on X, along with “repurposed old images”. Breton urged Musk to ensure “a prompt, accurate, and complete response,” and contact “relevant law enforcement agencies” within the next 24 hours. Breton reminded Musk that he needed to have “proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risks to public security and civic discourse stemming from disinformation”.

Furthermore, the commissioner alluded to the platform’s updated public interest policy that redefines which posts are ‘newsworthy.’

Screenshot of X post announcing the platform’s revamped Public Interest Policy. © Photo : Safety/X

Breton, who had shared his letter via an X post, had also included a hashtag referencing the Digital Services Act, used by the European Commission (EC) to exert pressure on online platforms under the pretext of creating “a safer digital space”.

The tech guru also responded on his social media platform to an X post by Glenn Greenwald. The American journalist and lawyer had tagged the news about the EU commissioner’s warning to Elon Musk, saying that the EU intended to wield its new censorship law to “punish” X. Greenwald referenced the firm “Reset” that the EU had hired as ostensibly “disinformation experts”. Reset is an initiative run by UK-based Luminate Projects Limited, a company owned by Luminate, an organization founded by the Omidyar Group. A study by “Reset”, the American journalist reminded, had accused X of failing to censor “pro-Russia propaganda.”

Replying to Greenwald’s post, Musk wrote that not only must the public “hear exactly what this disinformation consists of and decide for themselves,” but that, “many times, we have found the ‘official fact-checker’ to be the very individual making false statements.”

This May, the social media giant owned by Elon Musk exited the voluntary European Union Code of Practice of Disinformation, launched last June, which presupposes obligations to increase transparency, cooperate with fact-checkers, and track political advertising. Elon Musk insisted there is now “less misinformation rather than more” since he took over the platform in October, 2022. However, Thierry Breton had warned Musk that. “You can run but you can’t hide,” in a nod at the platform’s obligations as a so-called Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

“Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement,” Breton had tweeted.

Under the pretext of shielding Europeans from ‘undesired information,’ the European Commission (EC) conceived the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was signed into law and came into effect in November 2022. With the touted aim of creating “a safer and more accountable online environment”, the new legislation elevated the European bureaucrats to the position of a supervisor of the media sphere on the continent. After DSA entered into law, online platforms and search engines have been required to improve accountability and oversight by, for example, introducing a new flagging mechanism for what the authors of the law deem “illegal content.” Under the rules, digital platforms are obligated to, “increase the protection of minors”, and “give users more choice and better information.” Firms breaching the DSA will face a fine equating to 6% of global turnover. Those who continue to break the EU’s new digital rules may be prohibited from operating in Europe.

However, as part of the EU’s so-called “disinformation crusade,” the bloc stooped to outright censorship of Russian media, banning Sputnik, RT, and their subsidiaries, along with individual media channels of Russian bloggers amid Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. The ban was met with condemnation from members of the European Federation of Journalists and the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) at the time, who decried the fact that Europeans were being deprived of alternative viewpoints.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Israel-Hamas “war” – another excuse to shut down free speech

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 11, 2023

As a brand new war-narrative unfolds, there’s already efforts underway to parlay the conflict into tighter controls on free speech and freedom of expression, both in person and on the internet.

The headlines have been filled with nothing but Israel and Hamas since the “surprise attack” on Saturday, with the predictable back and forth of historical grievances and accusations of racism, punctuated by unsubstantiated claims of atrocities.

“Atrocity Propaganda” is nothing new. It is the opening salvo of every war as state combatants try to win the public to their side.

For example, the totally unsubstantiated claim that Hamas “threw forty Jewish babies out of their cribs and beheaded them”, which was doing the rounds yesterday. As far as atrocity propaganda goes the claim is startling in its unoriginality (Nayirah anyone?)

There’s a lot of that right now, lurid claims of graphic and pointless violence directed against the innocent, most of which survives just long enough to cause some outrage before being “debunked” or walked-back.

Part of that is the general “fog of war”, heightened by the advent of social media. When a lot of people can talk a lot more is said (good and bad).

But there’s another interpretation: That fake war stories are being intentionally seeded onto social media and then “debunked” to discredit platforms and appear to justify digital censorship.

Within the past twenty-four hours Reuters, NBC, YahooNews, The Guardian and the AP have run stories criticising the proliferation of “fake war news” on social media. Al Jazeera joined in too.

Almost all of those accusations have been directed solely at Twitter/X – increasingly the media’s anti-free speech strawman.

Governments have not been quiet on the issue either, with the European Union reportedly “warning” Elon Musk there would be “penalties” for the spread of war-related “misinformation” on his platform.

It’s not just “misinformation” either, but also “hate”. In an unusually subtle headline, NBCNews warns of the “increasingly fraught nature of online speech”. USA Today is more on the nose, claiming “online hate” is “surging”.

Oh, and there are the “unregulated” sites to worry about, where terrorists allegedly upload violent videos, at least so the New York Times says:

“Hamas Seeds Violent Videos on Sites With Little Moderation”

It’s not hard to see where this leads.

And while “misinformation” is used to justify social media censorship, “safety” is used to justify shutting down freedom of assembly.

In the UK and US pro-Palestinian rallies were met with calls for the police to get involved, citing laws that outlaw the public support of “listed terrorist organizations”.

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has told the police that waving a Palestinian flag could be considered a crime. Metropolitan police are engaging in “reassurance patrols”.

In France the police are already more directly involved, shutting down a pro-Palestine demonstration.

… and people applauded.

Many of them the same voices who railed against tyranny in defending the Canadian truckers or anti-lockdown protests. It is disheartening to see.

In short, the “war” is four days old and is already being used to suppress dissent on the streets and argue against free-speech on the internet.

However the war narrative evolves over there, over here it’s just more of the same.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Another Tacit Admission That COVID Mandates Were a Disastrous Mistake

By Ian Miller | Brownstone Institute | October 9, 2023

Pandemic restrictions were an unmitigated failure, and the evidence base against the politicians and “experts” who imposed them and demanded compliance continues to grow.

And it raises some substantial questions about holding those responsible accountable for their actions. Especially as mask mandates return in certain parts of the country, with hints of more on the way.

Recently a new government report from the United Kingdom was released to little fanfare, which not-so-surprisingly mirrors the fanfare resulting from the release of new data from the CDC itself, showing how vaccine efficacy has fallen to zero.

Finally, Rochelle Walensky did acknowledge publicly that the vaccines couldn’t stop transmission. However it was already far too late to matter.

But all along the agency has strongly stated that the mRNA shots were effective at preventing hospitalizations. Or at least that the latest booster was effective, tacitly acknowledging that the original 2=dose series has lost whatever impact it once had.

What The Evidence Says About NPI’s

The UK’s Health Security Agency (HSA) recently posted a lengthy examination on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions at preventing or slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

And at the risk of revealing a spoiler alert, it’s not good news for the COVID extremists determined to bring mask mandates back.

The goal of the examination was laid out succinctly; the UK’s HSA intended to use primary studies on NPIs within the community to see how successful or unsuccessful they were at reducing COVID infections.

The purpose of this rapid mapping review was to identify and categorise primary studies that reported on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in community settings to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK.

Streamlined systematic methods were used, including literature searches (using sources such as Medline, Embase, and medRxiv) and use of systematic reviews as sources to identify relevant primary studies.

Unsurprisingly, they found that the evidence base on COVID interventions was exceptionally weak.

In fact, roughly 67 percent of the identified evidence was essentially useless. In fact two-thirds of the evidence identified was modeling.

Two-thirds of the evidence identified was based on modeling studies (100 out of 151 studies).

There was a lack of experimental studies (2 out of 151 studies) and individual-level observational studies (22 out of 151 studies). Apart from test and release strategies for which 2 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were identified, the body of evidence available on effectiveness of NPIs in the UK provides weak evidence in terms of study design, as it is mainly based on modelling studies, ecological studies, mixed-methods studies and qualitative studies.

This is a key learning point for future pandemic preparedness: there is a need to strengthen evaluation of interventions and build this into the design and implementation of public health interventions and government policies from the start of any future pandemic or other public health emergency.

Modeling, as we know, is functionally useless, given that it’s hopelessly prone to bias, incorrect assumptions and the ideological needs of its creators.

The two paragraphs which followed are equally as important.

Low quality evidence is not something that should be relied upon for decision making purposes, yet that’s exactly what the UK, US and many other countries did. Fauci, the CDC, and others embraced modeling as fact at the beginning of the pandemic. They then repeatedly referenced shoddy, poor quality work because it confirmed their biases throughout its duration, with unsurprising results.

And this government report concurs; stating simply and devastatingly, “there is a lack of strong evidence on the effectiveness of NPIs to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and for many NPIs the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic.”

Of course the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic because, as we learned, it became politically expedient for it to shift.

As their paragraphs on the available evidence show, there was little solid, high-quality data showing that NPI’s were having a significant impact on the spread of the virus, a reality that had been predicted by decades of pandemic planning.

But the consensus shifted towards NPIs and away from something approaching Sweden’s strategy or the Great Barrington Declaration, simply because Fauci, the CDC, and other “experts” demanded it shift to suit their ideological aims.

The few high-quality studies on say, masking, that were conducted during the pandemic showed that there was no benefit from mask wearing at an individual or population level. And that is why the Cochrane review came to its now infamous conclusion.

Instead of acknowledging that they were relying on poor quality evidence, the “experts” operated with an unjustified certainty that their interventions were based on following “The Science™.” At every turn, when criticized or questioned, they would default back to an appeal to authority; that the consensus in the scientific community unequivocally believed that the evidence showed that lockdowns, mandates, travel restrictions, and other NPIs were based on the best available information.

After initially determining that the UK should follow Sweden’s example and incorporate a more hands-off approach that relied on protecting the elderly while allowing immunity to build up amongst the younger, healthy populations, Boris Johnson panicked, at the behest of Neil Ferguson, and terrified expert groups. Tossing out decades of planning out of fear, while claiming publicly to be following science.

Instead, a systemic, detailed review of the evidence base relied on by those same experts has now concluded that there never was any high-quality information suggesting that pandemic policies were justifiable. Only wishful thinking from an incompetent, arrogant, malicious “expert” community, and unthinking, unblinking compliance from terrified politicians using restrictions and mandates without care or concern for adverse effects.

While this new report wasn’t specifically designed to determine how effective NPIs were in reducing transmission, it’s clear and obvious conclusions give away that answer too.

If it were easy to prove that COVID policies and mandates had a positive impact on the spread of the virus, there would be dozens of high-quality studies showing a benefit. And those high-quality studies would be covered in this report, with a strong recommendation to reinstate such mandates in future pandemics.

Instead, there’s nothing.

Just exhortations to do better next time, to follow the actual high-quality evidence and not guesswork.

Based on how little accountability there’s been for the “experts” and politicians who lied about “The Science™,” there’s little doubt that when presented with the next opportunity they’ll be sure to handle it in exactly the same way.

Abandoning evidence in favor of politics.

Ian Miller is the author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates.” 

October 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

FIGHT GENDER IDEOLOGY IN SCHOOLS WITH THIS TACTIC

Amazing Polly | October 1, 2023

Trap them in their own talking points. Let me explain how.

Thank you to all of you who support my work! If anyone would like to send a gift, please go here: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php

October 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Hundreds of Canadians Have Been Debanked In The Last Five Years, Report Shows

An opaque and growing form of censorship

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 8, 2023

A sweeping de-banking wave has swept across Canada, affecting over 800 citizens in its tide since 2018, a number which includes hundreds who rallied behind the banner of the Freedom Convoy. Data unearthed through an access-to-information request by Blacklock’s Reporter unveiled a disturbing pattern where 837 individuals found the doors of their banks slammed shut on them over a span of five years.

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada was brought into the loop through grievances lodged with regulatory bodies, shedding light on financial strangulation that bypassed cases of validated terrorism and money laundering.

In a deeper dive into the numbers, it’s revealed that the financial shackles tightened around 267 bank accounts and 170 Bitcoin wallets belonging to Freedom Convoy supporters, ensnaring an estimated $7.8 million. This exercise in financial censorship spun a web of scrutiny during a hearing on March 7, 2022, where Angelina Mason, representing the Bankers Association, testified. Mason outlined that while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) supplied a list of names, banks were also mandated by separate orders to exercise their judgment in identifying account holders for de-banking.

The narrative grew murkier when New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie queried about the fate of individuals who were debunked but never featured on the list provided to the RCMP, to which Mason’s one-word response was a stark “Yes.”

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

6 takeaways from AfD’s massive gains in Bavaria and Hesse regional elections

By John Cody | Remix News | October 9, 2023

While the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Socialists (CSU) received the most votes in the regional elections of Hesse and Bavaria, the headline news story across Germany is the Alternative for Germany’s (AFD) overperformance in both states. The outcome of the election is reverberating throughout Germany, with implications for the federal level as well. On the issues of immigration, the economy, and green energy, the AfD is pulling ahead, while the ruling left-liberals will be left searching for answers after an election shellacking.

Here are six takeaways from the election results and what they could mean for the future political landscape of the country.

AfD may be stronger than the polls say

With both Bavaria and Hesse combined, the AfD party will now have 70 seats, a 50 percent increase compared to its previous 2018 elections. The party actually did better than the polls said it would, which had already painted a rosy picture for the anti-sanctions, anti-immigration party.

For example, AfD was polling at around 16 percent in Hesse, but actually ended up in second at 18.4 percent, while in Bavaria the AfD is on par with the Greens and Free Voters, where it earned 15.8 percent, making it the third-largest party.

The party has for years had a stable level of support at around 10 to 12 percent, but in the last year, it has soared in the polls up to 23 percent and continues to hover at 21 percent.

Many new potential AfD voters may be “shy” voters who are afraid to express their support to pollsters, meaning that pollsters may not be capturing the full picture. The party is, after all, facing a potential ban, openly mocked and attacked by the political and journalistic establishment, and supporters of the party along with politicians have been physically assaulted in the past.

Furthermore, with the AfD’s success in local elections, it may begin to “normalize” the party in the eyes of voters, which could contribute to more open support for the party — and even a jump in the polls — going into the future.

Germans are fed up with mass migration

In the run-up to the elections, Remix News reported a new groundbreaking poll showing a huge majority of Germans wanted fewer migrants and also saw migrants bringing fewer advantages than disadvantages.

If we look at the polling surrounding these specific elections, it only cements the reality that Germans are remarkably shifting against mass immigration.

For example, in Bavaria, immigration was rated as the second most important factor by voters, behind the economy, with 48 percent of all respondents telling Infratest dimap that they “welcomed” that the AfD wanted to limit the number of foreigners and refugees more strongly. In Hesse, 42 percent backed the AfD’s anti-immigration policies. In Hesse, the issue of immigration was decisive for 18 percent of voters in terms of their vote, meaning that this was their number one issue.

This polling data shows the massive disconnect between the left-liberal mainstream that promotes mass immigration in the media and culture and the actual sentiment of the German people.

The AfD’s Robert Lambrou, who was second on his party’s election list in Hesse, leaned heavily into the issue of migration during the campaign. Notably, he not only called for faster deportations but stated that skilled legal immigrants should only be accepted in exceptional circumstances and then only from “neighboring countries that are culturally close to Germany.”

AfD rises in the west

The AfD has been historically strong in the east of the country, but with a result of over 18 percent in Hesse, it marks the first major breakthrough in the west of the country. The results come as the AfD recently broke the 20 percent mark in wealthy Baden-Württemberg, the first time it has achieved such a result in a western state.

Notably, the German mainstream is now noting that the AfD’s rise in two Western states is not a fluke or a mere protest vote, with Taggeschau writing:

To interpret the strong results in both states as just a protest election would be too short-sighted. More and more people are voting for the AfD out of conviction. The current situation benefits the party: Asylum and refugee policy concerns many people, and support for a more restrictive migration policy is growing, as data from Infratest dimap shows. At the same time, fewer and fewer voters in both states have a problem with voting for a party that is partly right-wing extremist. And it is not just in migration policy that it is increasingly being given authority: more people are also placing their hope in the far-right party when it comes to the issues of internal security, the economy and social justice.

Such an acknowledgment from the state-run Tagesschau regarding the AfD is big news all in itself.

Massive blow to the traffic-light government

Besides the AfD, the other big outcome was how incredibly poorly Germany’s left-liberal government performed in the election. Now, the political fallout could be felt for months and even years.

For starters, the business liberals of the Free Democrats (FDP) were completely wiped out and failed to obtain the 5 percent needed to enter parliament in both states. It follows a long string of election losses for the party, which has been accused of abandoning many of its principles in its coalition alliance at the federal level. The party is now suffering the consequences, with the results likely sending party leadership scrambling to avert all-out disaster. The FDP, which has already criticized its coalition partners at the federal level, will undoubtedly be seeking out a more independent path in the future, which could lead to a serious governing crisis for Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

However, the SPD and Greens also fared poorly, particularly the SPD, which earned an abysmal 8 percent in Bavaria and only 15.1 percent in Hesse, both historic lows. The Greens earned 14 percent in both Bavaria and Hesse, a substantial drop in both instances from their previous election results.

There is in all likelihood trouble ahead for this coalition, and the far-left Interior Minister Nancy Faeser could still lose her job over her party’s election debacle in Hesse, although there are currently denials from top party brass that this is a possibility post-election.

The CDU could shift further right

Of course, the CDU is also taking note of the AfD’s rise. The CSU, the sister party of the CDU, saw 100,000 of its voters shift to the AfD in Bavaria. In short, the AfD could quickly cut into the CDU’s base, especially over the issue of immigration.

According to German state-run media outlet Tagesschau, it also sees the CDU potentially shifting its stance over the issue, writing: “These results may well lead to a shift in the policies of the mainstream conservative CDU towards a stricter stance on migration. The votes — and the preceding campaign largely focused on national rather than regional issues — may also force the government to revisit its policy of phasing out fossil fuels.”

Will anything change?

Despite the AfD’s surge and a mass rejection of the left, the two elections are notable for another key reason. In both Bavaria and Hesse, both governing coalitions survived. In Bavaria, the CSU can continue governing with the Free Voters, and in Hesse, the CDU could form a theoretical coalition with the Greens once again. In other words, the status quo was maintained.

The AfD may have seen a serious boost in both states, but for now, all parties have vowed to never work with the party. In the short term, the AfD is working to create the conditions that make it increasingly difficult for ruling parties to form status quo coalitions. In the long term, it sees the only viable path to power through a coalition with the CDU. The big question mark is if and when that will ever happen.

Many voters may agree with the AfD’s positions on a range of issues, but many are mentally conditioned to never consider voting for the party. The CDU and other parties are aware of this and will continue to hone their message to keep their voters from straying too far away, even if they plan to maintain the status quo once they achieve power.

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Biden has ‘creative ideas’ to keep Ukraine cash flowing – Politico

RT | October 8, 2023

The Biden administration is looking for “creative” ways to secure further military aid for Ukraine amid mounting opposition at home, POLITICO has reported. Meanwhile, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper claimed that the White House is considering the possibility of a mega aid package to the tune of $100 billion.

In its article on Friday, POLITICO quoted President Joe Biden hinting on Wednesday that “there is another means by which we may be able to find funding” for Kiev. According to the media outlet, the US leadership is considering using the State Department’s foreign military financing program. Under this, grants or loans are provided to partner countries to purchase weapons and defense equipment.

Another possible scenario presumably on the table has been floated by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. The scheme envisages a three-way swap in which Poland would get America’s Iron Dome systems and send some of its own air defenses to Ukraine, POLITICO said. Israel, a co-producer of the system, which has veto authority over transfers, has previously refused to supply it directly to Ukraine despite Kiev’s repeated requests, the article explained.

The media outlet quoted the US lawmaker arguing that “Poland may be able to deploy its Patriot systems to Ukraine, where we’ve already deployed Patriot systems.”

The article concluded that the sheer fact that the Biden administration is apparently being forced to resort to such unconventional workarounds points to the fact that support for further military aid for Ukraine is waning among American lawmakers.

Representative Michael McCaul told reporters that “it’s going to be even harder now with [Speaker] McCarthy gone,” adding that supporters of aid for Kiev in the US Congress are “running out of time.”

Meanwhile on Saturday, The Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, reported that the Biden administration was considering a potential “one-and-done” Ukraine aid package totaling as much as $100 billion. The idea is presumably aimed at avoiding the requirement for multiple funding approvals from Congress until after the 2024 presidential election.

Last week, US House lawmakers passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, with new allocations for Ukraine conspicuously absent from it. This came as a growing number of Republicans in the House had been calling into question Biden’s generous aid for Kiev.

Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

House Cuts WHO Funding Through 2024, But Critics Push for Full Withdrawal to Protect U.S. Sovereignty

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 6, 2023

The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a bill that cuts U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The House approved H.R. 4665, the Fiscal Year 2024 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, including the provision that, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available for the World Health Organization.”

The bill’s passage comes as a sharp turnaround after the U.S. in 2022-23 was the WHO’s top contributor, surpassing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and over the past decade provided the WHO between $200 million to $600 million annually.

The bill, which passed by a 216-212 vote, is seen as a partial victory for critics of the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), which would give the global health agency the power to dictate policies during health emergencies.

H.R. 4665 stipulates that the U.S. Senate must first ratify any WHO proposal, including a pandemic treaty, before the U.S. Department of State can use taxpayer dollars to implement it.

The bill also states the Constitution’s Senate treaty ratification requirement applies to “any international convention, agreement, protocol, legal instrument, or agreed outcome with legal force drafted by the intergovernmental negotiating body of the World Health Assembly or any other United Nations body.”

The bill goes next to the Senate, where it was placed on its legislative calendar.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health, praised the bill, telling The Defender, “As WHO is obviously advocating for policies that are contrary to basic principles of democracy, human rights and ethical public health at present, defunding such work is necessary to protect society.”

Bell — who formerly worked as a medical officer and scientist at the WHO — said there are important aspects of cooperation in international health that the U.S. needs to support, but there are “other avenues for this that do not undermine human dignity” instead of working through the WHO.

The WHO’s response to COVID-19 demonstrated that it is “compromised by vested interests that are seeking to profit by imposing human rights restrictions based on false assertions, using fear and coercion,” Bell said. “It is irrational to use taxpayers’ money to support such approaches.”

‘A good start, but not quite good enough’

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender the House bill limits funding but said nothing about preventing the U.S. from signing or adopting documents like critics fear.

“This is a good start, but not quite good enough,” he said.

“The fiscal cut-off and the treaty ratification requirement will only be for the fiscal year,” Boyle said, “but the Globalists will keep coming after us to establish a worldwide totalitarian police state under the auspices and the guise of the WHO.”

In February, the WHO’s intergovernmental negotiating body convened to discuss its latest draft of a pandemic treaty, which the U.N. agency now calls the “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” — or “WHO CA+” (sometimes also referred to as “PPPR”).

WHO CA+ seeks to create a global pandemic authority with the power to enforce universal vaccination and vaccine passports, lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions, establish early warning virus surveillance systems, and roll out “One Health” initiatives and censor “misinformation,” including anything that could induce “vaccine hesitancy.”

The estimated price tag is $30 billion annually.

The president of the WHO General Assembly in September approved a nonbinding pandemic declaration, without a vote of the full assembly and over the objections of 11 countries, aimed at mobilizing the national and global political will for completing the pandemic treaty negotiations by May 2024.

Proposed amendments to the IHR, currently numbering over 300, include recommendations such as:

  • Changing the WHO “from an advisory organization … to a governing body whose proclamations would be legally binding” (Articles 1 and 42).
  • Removing language preserving “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people” (Article 3).
  • Giving the WHO “authority to require medical examinations, proof of prophylaxis, proof of vaccine and to implement contact tracing, quarantine and treatment” (Article 18).
  • Instituting “a system of global health certificates in digital or paper format” (multiple articles and annexes).
  • Empowering the WHO’s Emergency Committee “to override decisions made by sovereign nations regarding health measures” (Article 43).

Pandemic treaty ‘a skillfully crafted decoy’

James Roguski, an author and researcher who has written extensively on stopping a global pandemic treaty and the IHR amendments, wrote that the Zero draft of the pandemic treaty “is a real thing” but also “a skillfully crafted decoy” designed to distract from the proposed IHR amendments, which he called “a clear and present danger.”

Together, the WHO CA+ and IHR amendments represent “a huge grab of power” by “unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats,” warned Andrew Bridgen, a U.K. member of Parliament in April.

Responding to these criticisms, U.N. officials and international public health experts claimed in a Sept. 25 letter appearing in the Lancet that the WHO CA+ does not threaten national sovereignty.

The letter stated as “categorically false” claims the WHO would “deploy troops to enforce the treaty,” dismissing rumors of vaccine mandates and digital passports and the WHO’s purported “authority to sanction countries,” which would cede authority to the WHO.

But Boyle said the WHO was attempting to conceal its true intentions.

In an earlier interview with The Defender, he said the WHO CA+ and IHR amendments — one or both — would set up a totalitarian medical and scientific police state beyond the control of national, state and local government authorities.

Boyle said:

“[Director-General] Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ph.D.] and the WHO … are basically a front organization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and the Chinese Communist government that pays a good chunk of their bills.”

Pandemic treaty drafted to ‘be brought into force upon signature’

Boyle explained that the WHO CA+ was intentionally drafted so that it could immediately be brought into force upon signature.

Boyle, author of several international law textbooks and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said, “I don’t know, in any of my extensive studies of international treaties, let alone treaties setting up international organizations, of any that has a provision like that in it.”

“It’s completely insidious,” he added.

According to Boyle, “The only way to protect the Sovereignty of the United States of America and for other States to protect their own Sovereignty is to pull out of the WHO. The sooner the better!”

Roguski agreed, telling The Defender he believes defunding the WHO is not going to stop the WHO from moving its global agenda forward.

“I advocate that the United States and all other nations exit the WHO,” he said.

‘WHO Withdrawal Act is what we really need’ 

Both Boyle and Roguski said they support a bill called, the “WHO Withdrawal Act,” introduced on Jan. 9 by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), that would repeal the 1948 act establishing U.S. membership and participation in the WHO.

“The Biggs legislation is what we really need to solve all of the problems here,” Boyle said.

Should the Bigg’s legislation be passed, it will be the second time in the last three years that the U.S. has tried to extricate itself from the WHO.

In April 2020, the Trump administration stopped U.S. financial support to the WHO, arguing that the U.N. agency should be held accountable for mismanaging and covering up the spread of the COVID-19 virus after it emerged in China.

Then-President Donald Trump in July 2020 initiated a process to withdraw the U.S. from membership in the organization.

However, President Joe Biden, upon taking office in January 2021, reversed the decision and restored U.S. funding to the WHO.

U.S. taxpayer money still makes its way to WHO

Despite the passage of the appropriations bill, U.S. governmental funding is still making its way to the WHO, Roguski pointed out. He said:

“In the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed in December 2022, the federal government pledged to provide up to $1 billion per year to the World Bank-led Pandemic Fund.

“Earlier this year, several hundred million dollars were allocated from the Pandemic Fund and the WHO was the ‘implementing entity’ in the majority of those projects.”

Roguski said that humanity “survived quite well” for thousands of years before the WHO came on the scene.

“I think that we will do just fine after we permanently abolish the WHO,” he added.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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.

October 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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