Study Finds Platform is Cleansing Side Effect Information and Promoting Unbridled Use of Experimental Products
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | September 19, 2023
YouTube is the most utilized video platform in the world. Many of my patients ask “doctor, why don’t we hear about vaccine side effects?” People feel blind-sided when they develop myocarditis, stroke, blood clots, or other common vaccine side effects but can can find no information on them with standard Google searches landing on YouTube.
Ng and colleagues performed a rigorous analysis of YouTube COVID-19 vaccine content and found that the platform is having effective content moderation. This means when you do a search, they are wiping vaccine safety information off the platform as “anti-vaccine” and replacing it with either irrelevant health information or pro-vaccine content.
The authors declare this a “success” of content moderation. Others would say this is censorship of valuable health information replaced with propaganda promoting novel, experimental unsafe, ineffective, genetic vaccines. What YouTube is doing is very scary, the authors self-expressed virtuosity is even more alarming.
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
President, McCullough Foundation
Millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on programs that target speech
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 19, 2023
Since the start of September, the Biden administration’s National Science Foundation (NSF) and State Department have awarded grants totaling more than $4 million to programs, studies, and other initiatives that target “misinformation” — a term that the Biden admin has used to demand censorship of content that challenges the federal government’s Covid narrative.
The NSF has awarded the following nine grants since September 1:
The State Department has awarded the following five grants since September 1:
These awards were granted as the Biden admin faces a major lawsuit for pressuring Big Tech to censor content that it deems to be misinformation.
An appeals court recently stated that the Biden regime violated the First Amendment when pushing social media platforms to censor and in an Independence Day ruling on this case, a judge described the Biden admin’s actions as “Orwellian.” The Supreme Court is now considering whether to hear the case.
While some of the grants focus have been awarded to non-American organizations, whose misinformation targeting efforts don’t fall under the scope of the First Amendment, these types of programs can result in the speech of Americans being targeted.
For example, Biden’s State Department has previously funded foreign think tanks that created “disinformation” blacklists. These blacklists were used to target American conservative media outlets.
Both of the agencies that awarded these grants have been involved in prior censorship controversies.
In addition to funding groups that created disinformation blacklists, Biden’s State Department has flagged thousands of accounts to Twitter, now known as X, for censorship.
Meanwhile, the NSF has been accused of funding programs that develop tech that targets vaccine dissent and has funded research on correcting “false beliefs” online.
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 18, 2023
A legal challenge has been launched this week by the O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) against Josh Green, the Democratic Governor of Hawaii, as well as the County of Maui. Triggering the lawsuit were restrictions which prohibited OMG from capturing images or footage on public lands as they sought to investigate the aftermath of devastating wildfires that have ravaged the area.
The suit alleges that these restrictions, demanded under the governor’s statewide emergency decree, went far enough to threaten the arrest of James O’Keefe, founder of OMG, should he persist with his recording activities and reporting on the wildfires and their origin.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
In a concealed camera footage captured during their investigative excursion, officers of law enforcement relayed this mandate to the journalists.
In a bold statement captured in the video, O’Keefe disclosed his motivation for filing the lawsuit as an effort to “… invalidate the criminalization of protected First Amendment activity and to also strip Maui County of any ability to criminally charge anyone who exercises their First Amendment rights.”
This legal action seeks to block attempts from the governor to criminalize the fundamental rights of free speech and press freedom protected by both the US and Hawaii constitution.
OMG’s legal pursuit, lodged in the United States District Court of Hawaii, also encompasses the case of John Doe, another plaintiff. During the investigative visit to the wildfire-struck Lahaina on September 1, 2023, somehow John Doe found himself facing criminal charges for his journalistic activities in the stricken region by Maui County through its Sheriff’s Department (MCSD), despite his legally recognized First Amendment rights.
In the suit, it has been noted that Doe was notified by the MCSD that his journalistic work was not criminalized by a law but through “Emergency Proclamations” issued by Governor Green in response to the Maui wildfires. As a result of this pronouncement, OMG sought clarification on this seemingly perplexing overreach on the rights of Doe and all Hawaiian citizens who demand answers to their growing concerns about the handling of the response to the wildfire and its implications on their lives on the island.
The MCSD then cited HRS § 127A-29(a), which concerns emergency period transgressions, misdemeanors and petty crimes in reference to violations committed by the plaintiff. The lawsuit brought forward by OMG argues that Governor Green lacks the authority to issue his own rules.
In essence, OMG’s lawsuit alleges that the enforcement of the governor’s order, which seemingly curtails constitutional privileges and liberties, violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
The experts from OMG allege that the photography ban is not about restricting one form of expression, but a larger undermining of press freedom and the loss of the ability to keep our ruling class in check.
“The First Amendment is a built in ‘check’ on the Government because citizens can openly report government wrongdoing,” the complaint reads. “The freedom of the press acts as a bright beacon of light. It is an essential mechanism through which Americans can hold the government directly accountable. Democracy dies in the darkness.”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 18, 2023
Legislation that seeks to tie the hands of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from setting up another Disinformation Governance Board is being launched by House Republicans. Brought about by Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, and August Pfluger, this move is viewed as the Party’s effort to block limitations on what it deems to be free speech by federal agencies.
The DHS had originally set up a Disinformation Governance Board with a view to counteract, as it claimed, misinformation, malformation and disinformation. Yet, the initiative was met with criticism from conservative groups, leading to the body’s disbandment in 2022. Concerns centered around allegations of stifled free speech and political bias, rather than a focus on national security issues.
Representative Pfluger, who is part of the Homeland Security Committee along with Greene, expressed his skepticism about the previous governance board to The Washington Examiner.
According to him, it was less about maintaining factual discourse and more about controlling public discourse. He described the administration’s attempt to oversee American’s speech as discouraging, adding that the DHS’ energy should rather be directed to improving national security.
“Partisan government officials running a ‘disinformation board’ sounds ridiculous to most people, but yet the Biden administration tried to control the speech of American citizens… DHS should be focused on securing the border and preventing terrorist attacks, not fact-checking social media and censoring Americans.”
Republicans are progressively striking back against attempts by the current administration to regulate alleged disinformation. They are backing funding bills that effectively cut the government’s opportunities to bankroll these programs. This resistance to censorship extends beyond domestic boundaries, with the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee considering refusing authorization to the Global Engagement Center, a State Department-associated body.
It was revealed that this body had funneled $100,000 towards the British-based Global Disinformation Index which allegedly stealthily blacklisted conservative channels. Moreover, this isn’t the GOP’s debut attempt to disable the DHS from governing a disinformation board.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 14, 2023
After shunning COVID vaccines during the early pandemic response, Tanzania became a natural experiment for all-cause mortality rates. Compared to large U.S. states like Texas and California, Tanzania, with one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the world, succeeded in having one of the lowest all-cause mortality rates on earth, through the worst of the pandemic.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 14, 2023
Citing a public health emergency, New Mexico governor Michelle Grisham revoked the 2nd amendment rights of residents of her state this week. After citing that constitutional rights and oaths taken by public officials were not “absolute”, she was quickly condemned by some of the highest officials in the state.
RT | September 17, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were both killed on the campaign trail, had a tense moment at a rally in Los Angeles when a heavily armed man posing as a federal law enforcement officer was apprehended by his security guards.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Kennedy expressed his gratitude for his private security team.
“I’m very grateful that alert and fast-acting protectors from Gavin de Becker and Associates (GDBA) spotted and detained an armed man who attempted to approach me at my Hispanic Heritage speech at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles tonight” Kennedy said in an X post on Saturday, adding that he hopes the administration of US President Joe Biden will grant his request for Secret Service protection, noting that he is “the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection.”
According to a statement issued by his campaign, the man claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security team and told them that he “needed to be taken to the candidate immediately.” Spotting a gun, the security team removed the man from the area and notified the Los Angeles Police (LAPD).
The campaign also claims that there was a second man, who was arrested by the LAPD along with the prime suspect, who had a backpack that contained at least one other handgun, multiple knives, and extra ammunition.
The LAPD confirmed in a statement that they received a call at around 4:30pm on Friday reporting a man with “a loaded gun in a shoulder holster and a badge stating he was a U.S. Marshal.” The suspect, identified as Adrian Paul Aispuro, 44, was arrested and taken into custody. He is being held on $35,000 bond and is facing a felony charge for carrying a concealed weapon.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose uncle, former US President John F. Kennedy, and his father, a New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated over half a century ago, filed an application for Secret Service protection in April, but despite several follow-ups, his requests were rejected by the White House.
In an X post last July, Kennedy claimed that since his father’s assassination in 1968, all candidates for president have been provided with Secret Service protection, “but after 88 days of no response and several follow-ups”, he received a letter from the Biden administration saying that “the protection is not warranted.”
Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, called the decision “shocking and repugnant,” and accused Biden’s office of politicizing the Justice Department and security apparatus.
By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | September 15, 2023
On September 20th our representatives meeting at the United Nations (UN) will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: “Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.”
This was announced as a ‘silence procedure,’ meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organization (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’
The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare, and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population were simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:
Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralization of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by your governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.
Whilst the Declaration’s thirteen pages are all over the place in terms of reality and farce, they are not atypical of recent UN output. People are trained to use trigger words, slogans, and propaganda themes (e.g., “equity,” “empowerment of all women and girls,” “access to education,” “technology transfer hubs”) that no one could oppose without risking being labeled a denier, far-right, or colonialist.
The Declaration should be read in the context of what these institutions, and their staff, have just done. It is difficult to summarize such a compendium of right-speak intended to veil reality, but it is hoped this short summary will prompt some thought. Wickedness is not a mistake but an intended deception, so we need to distinguish these clearly.
Doing Darkness Behind a Veil of Light
Put together, the following two extracts summarize the internal contradiction of the Declaration’s agenda and its staggering shamelessness and lack of empathy:
“In this regard, we:
PP3: Recognize also the need to tackle health inequities and inequalities, within and among countries, …
PP5: “Recognize that the illness, death, socio-economic disruption and devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, …”
‘Recognition’ of devastation is important. SARS-COV-2 was associated with mortality predominantly within wealthy countries, where the median age of Covid-associated death was between 75 and 85 years. Nearly all of these people had significant comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, meaning their life expectancy was already restricted. People contributing significantly to economic health were at very low risk, a profile known in early 2020.
These three years of socio-economic devastation must, therefore, be overwhelmingly due to the response. The virus did not starve people, as the Declaration’s writers would like us to believe. Deteriorating disease control was predicted by the WHO and others in early 2020, increasing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Economic disruption in low-income countries specifically results in more infant and child deaths.
In Western countries, adult mortality has risen as expected when screening for cancer and heart disease are reduced and poverty and stress increase. Knowing this, the WHO advised in late 2019 to ”not under any circumstances” impose the lockdown-like measures for pandemic influenza. In early 2020, under the influence of their sponsors, they advocated for them for Covid-19. The Declaration, however, carries no note of contrition or repentance.
Undeterred by incongruity, the Declaration goes on to describe Covid-19 as “one of the greatest challenges” in UN history (PP6), noting that somehow this outbreak resulted in “exacerbation of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty…”. In fact, it acknowledges that this caused:
“… (a) negative impact on equity, human and economic development across all spheres of society, as well as on global humanitarian needs, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, the enjoyment of human rights, livelihoods, food security and nutrition, education, its disruption to economies, supply chains, trade, societies and the environment, within and among countries, which is reversing hard-won development gains and hampering progress…” (PP6)
To restate the obvious, this does not happen due to a virus targeting sick elderly people. It occurs when children and productive adults are barred from school, work, healthcare, and participation in markets for goods and services. Economic, social, and health catastrophe inevitably results, disproportionately harming poorer people and low-income countries, conveniently far indeed from the halls of Geneva and New York.
No, we were not all in this together.
Not all were negatively impacted by this catastrophe. People and corporations who sponsor much of the WHO’s health emergency work, and that of its sister organizations such as CEPI, Gavi, and Unitaid, did very well from the policies they advocated so strongly for. Software and Pharma companies made unprecedently high profits, while this mass impoverishment played out. The international agencies have also gained; construction and recruitment are strong in Geneva. Philanthro-capitalism is good for some.
The main aim of the Declaration is to back the proposed WHO international health regulation (IHR) amendments and treaty (PP26), key to ensuring that viral outbreaks that have such a small impact can remain highly profitable. An additional $10 billion per year in new financing is requested to support this (PP29). There is a reason why most countries have laws against scams. The UN and its agencies, fortunately for its staff, are outside of any national jurisdiction.
Based on their sponsors’ assessments, the staff of these agencies are doing their job well. For the rest of humanity, their work is an unmitigated disaster. In 2019 they said never lock down, then spent 2020 defending top-down lockdowns and mandates. For three years, they theatrically pretended that decades of knowledge on immunity, disease burden, and the association of poverty with mortality did not exist.
Now they write this UN Declaration to fund their industry further through taxpayers they so recently impoverished. Once tasked to serve the world’s vast populations, particularly the poor and vulnerable, the UN vision has been consumed by public-private partnerships, the allure of Davos, and a fascination with high-net-worth individuals.
When Words are Used to Obscure Actions
While the Declaration underlines the importance of educating children during pandemics (PP23), these same organizations backed school closures for hundreds of millions of children at minimal risk from Covid-19. Among them, several million more girls are now being farmed off to nightly rape as child brides, others in child labor. Women and girls were disproportionately removed from education and from employment. They weren’t asked if they supported these policies!
The girls are being raped because the people paid to implement these policies did so. They know the contradiction, and the harm. But this is a job like many others. The only unusual aspects, from a business standpoint, are the sheer amorality and lack of empathy that must be engaged to excel in it.
To justify wrecking African children’s lives, the UN claims that the continent has “over 100 major public health emergencies annually” (OP4). Africa has a rising burden of endemic diseases that dwarfs mortality from such outbreaks – over half a million children die every year from malaria (increased through the Covid-19 lockdowns) and similar burdens from tuberculosis and HIV. By contrast, total Covid-19 deaths recorded in Africa over the past 3 years are just 256,000. The 2015 West African Ebola outbreak, the largest such recent emergency pre-Covid, killed 11,300 people. MERS and SARS1 killed less than 1,000 each globally. However, induced poverty does cause famine, raises child mortality, and wrecks health systems – is this the health emergency that the UN is referring to? Or are they simply making things up?
Through the IHR amendments, these agencies will coordinate the locking down, border closures, mandated medical examinations, and vaccination of you and your family. Their Pharma sponsors reasonably expect to make several hundred billion more dollars from these actions, so we can be confident that emergencies will be declared. By claiming 100 such events annually in Africa alone, they are signaling how these new powers will be used. We are to believe the world is such that only the abandonment of our rights and sovereignty, for the enrichment of others, can save us.
The UN and the WHO do recognize that some will question this illogic. In PP35, they characterize such skepticism as:
“health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization.”
The WHO recently publicly characterized people who discuss adverse effects of Covid vaccines and question WHO policies as “far-right,” “anti-science aggressors,” and “a killing force.” This is unhinged. It is the denigration and hate speech that fascist regimes use. The reader must decide whether such an organization should control their freedom of expression and decide what constitutes truth.
It is not helpful here to give details of all 13 pages of right-speak, contradiction, and fallacy. You will find similar rhetoric in other UN and WHO documents, particularly on pandemic preparedness. Straight talk is contrary to business requirements. However, the first paragraph in the Declaration’s ‘Call to Action’ sets the tone:
“We therefore commit to scale up our efforts to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and further implement the following actions and express our strong resolve to:
OP1. Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to overcome inequities and ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products to ensure high-level attention through a multisectoral approach to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies, particularly in developing countries;”
There are 48 more. You paid taxes so that someone could write that!
Those millions of girls suffering at night, the hundreds of millions of children who had their futures stolen, the mothers of those malaria-killed children, and all suffering under the increasing burden of poverty and inequality unleashed by this farce are watching. The Declaration, like the WHO IHR and treaty it supports, awaits the signatures of the governments that purport to represent us.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
BY DR ROGER WATSON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 15, 2023
Prolonged wearing of a surgical face mask, made compulsory in many settings in many countries during the Covid years, reduces cognitive function and increases reaction time in addition to increasing shortness of breath and fatigue. These are the findings of a study published in Nurse Education in Practice, an international peer reviewed journal, on September 15th 2023.
The study, carried out in Turkey and titled ‘The effect of prolonged use of surgical masks during face-to-face teaching on cognitive and physiological parameters of nursing students: a cross-sectional and descriptive study’ involved 61 nursing students who volunteered to participate in the study. The sample size was determined to be adequate for the study using the statistical method of power analysis. Information was collected on cognitive fatigue and dyspnoea (shortness of breath) using a self-administered questionnaire and cognitive reaction time was measured objectively using an app. Body temperature and blood oxygen saturation were also measured.
The students were asked to complete the questionnaires and measure the above parameters at the start of a five-hour class and to repeat the process at the end. Surgical face masks were worn for the duration of the class. With the exception of blood oxygen saturation, all the remaining parameters were adversely and statistically significantly affected over the course of the class.
At the end of the class, the students reported greater shortness of breath, cognitive fatigue and had demonstrably slower reaction times. They experienced a rise in body temperature which is an established correlate of physical fatigue.
The authors of the study are careful to point out that the design of their study was a pre-test/post-test where the participants were, effectively, acting as their own controls. It is possible, therefore, that alternative explanations may exist to explain the observations. For example, we do not know if or to what extent the observed changes in parameters may have taken place anyway after five hours in class. For that reason, as recommended by the authors, further study is required of these phenomena using a parallel control group who undergo the five-hour class but who are not subjected to wearing surgical face masks for the duration. The reported study was carried out under Covid restrictions, therefore, there was no possibility of incorporating a control group.
Assuming that the outcome of the study does provide evidence for the adverse effects of face masks then further study should be conducted. Furthermore, the implications of the study could be very important if transposed to clinical practice. Prolonged wearing of surgical (and even more restrictive) face masks was compulsory during Covid restrictions. The ramifications for the ability of clinicians to make the correct decisions and to act quickly in emergency situations are surely worrying.
Declaration of interests: the author is Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 12, 2023
The California Department of Health (CDPH) is threatening to restrict funding for the more than 600 schools being audited by the state because they reported more than 10% of their kindergarten or seventh grade students were not fully vaccinated last year or because they failed to file a vaccination report with the state, EdSource reported.
“Schools found to have improperly admitted students who have (not) met immunization requirements may be subject to loss of average daily attendance payments for those children,” the CDPH said in an email.
CDPH posted the audit list, which included 449 schools with kindergarten students, 175 schools with seventh graders, 56 schools with both grades and 39 schools that had not filed a vaccination report.
California students are considered “not fully vaccinated” if they have not provided proper immunization records to their school, if they don’t have the vaccinations required by the school system or if they have been admitted to schools conditionally while they are in the process of finishing their school-mandated vaccine series, according to the state audit guide.
If a student behind on the vaccine requirements has not received a first dose of a required vaccine within 10 days of starting school and a second dose of a required vaccine within four months of the first dose, the student must be excluded from school.
The audit guide indicates that to determine whether schools have students behind schedule, auditors check whether kindergarteners have two doses of a varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and two doses of a measles vaccine and whether seventh graders have two doses of varicella and one dose of Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), their sixth pertussis-containing vaccine.
Oakland Unified School District, with 48 elementary schools and eight of the seventh grade schools on the list, has the highest number of schools being audited. Los Angeles Unified has 75 of its non-charter schools on the audit list, while Pomona Unified has 13, San Francisco Unified 14 and San Juan Unified in Sacramento County, eight.
The vaccination audit has been occurring in public schools only since the 2021-2022 school year, when 45 schools made the list.
Schools in violation of the state law must submit corrected attendance reports that reflect the reduction in average daily attendance cited in the audit finding, which will likely reduce their funding, according to CDPH spokesperson Scott Roark.
Sensationalizing vaccine numbers
Over the last year, legacy media organizations such as The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post along with public health officials across the country have been sounding the alarm over decreasing rates of routine vaccination among U.S. children.
But even at its lowest point — the 2020-2021 school year — the kindergarten vaccination rate only dipped to 94% from 95%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Experts cited in these articles blame the drop on pandemic disruptions to U.S. healthcare, “vaccine hesitancy” about the COVID-19 vaccine bleeding over into other vaccines and the availability of non-medical vaccine exemptions.
EdSource reported that vaccination rates in California, which had been climbing since the state eliminated the personal belief exemption in 2015, plunged after schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thousands of children in California were unable to start the school year in 2022 because they were behind on their vaccinations, it reported.
But EdSource also reported that the kindergarten vaccination rate was 92.8% in 2020 — down from 95% in 2018 — but went back up to 94% in 2021.
Substack writer and analyst Karl Kanthak told The Defender these numbers are being used to create the appearance of a crisis, which he says is part of a broader attack on vaccine exemptions.
Between the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which gave vaccine makers immunity for any injuries caused by vaccines, the 1994 Vaccines for Children Program that provides no-cost vaccines to low-income children and the school mandates, Big Pharma has achieved nearly full saturation of the pediatric market, Kanthak said.
But that’s not the case for the adult market, where vaccine uptake is much lower without mandates. “Eliminating school exemptions for children is a major step in making exemptions unavailable for adults,” Kanthak said.
Because the child market was already saturated, “they [pharma] couldn’t use low rates as an excuse” to argue legislators should eliminate access to exemptions, he said.
That has resulted in the misrepresentation of vaccine rates, where it is made to seem as if high numbers of children are missing required vaccines, raising the specter of disease outbreaks, said Kanthak, which is apparent in the audit and EdSource’s reporting on it and most media headlines about vaccines.
“So you get policy influenced by headline,” he said.
Audit numbers are ‘misleading’
For example, Kanthak told The Defender that many shots required for kindergarteners, including the last doses of the MMR, varicella, DTaP and polio can be administered between the ages of 4 and 6, according to the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule.
Doctors or parents planning to complete the course of vaccination may choose to do so later in that time period for any number of reasons related to the child’s development, health condition or previous vaccination.
Because children start kindergarten in that window, many children being counted as unvaccinated are on the CDC schedule, even if they are not yet “fully vaccinated,” he said.
“To count conditional admissions as unvaccinated is misleading,” he said.
“The tracking systems are not designed to track students who are simply still ‘in process’ with pediatricians who are following the medical guidelines and individualizing care to the patient,” he said.
Instead, “The schools are measuring too-young students, too early in the school year, for injections they are not overdue for until second grade.”
Kanthak said the audit numbers themselves are misleading because some of the schools listed have very few students and some of those students are missing something marginal.
“The first two schools on the list have only two seventh grade students, therefore one student missing their Tdap — sixth pertussis injection — gives those schools an only ‘50% fully vaccinated’ measurement.”
The audit lists a significant number of schools with very few students. Sixty-three elementary schools and 53 seventh grade schools have fewer than nine students. Thirty-five elementary schools and nineteen seventh grade schools have fewer than 20 students.
In those schools, having one or two students not “fully vaccinated” places them on the audit list, but it is a small number of overall students. Using a percentage in any population less than 100 is misleading, he added, because each student comprises more than 1% of the total.
Kanthak added that such reports typically exclude these small numbers to protect children’s confidentiality.
Only 61 of the kindergarten schools on the list and 46 of the seventh grade schools on the list had more than 100 students.
Overall, the total number of kindergarten students in the more than 500 schools on the audit list comprises about 5.3% of the total 471,379 kindergarten students in California.
California-based attorney Brad Hakala of the Hakala Law Group told The Defender, “In a state that has in excess of 39 million residents … it seems like statistics are consistently being skewed” to favor the position that dropping vaccine rates is a crisis.
“With that said, and in light of parental rights which more and more parents are attempting to exercise,” he added:
“There certainly seems to be a growing concern among parents … who are avoiding or delaying the vaccination of their child/children for one reason or another. …
“Some parents are not fundamentally opposed to the traditional vaccines being administered to their children, but they just want to space them out in frequency, timing, and volume, especially in light of ongoing concerns of vaccine injuries. Others want a more holistic approach and are opposed to their children having any vaccinations.
“I believe that the pandemic, the emergency use authorized (EUA) shots and the ever-increasing negative health ramifications that we are seeing arise from these untested medications that are still under EUA, are highlighting the already growing concern that parents are having with injecting their children with more and more medications.
“From the requisite number of injections and vaccines significantly increasing over the years, to the way that society has been treated by varying governmental entities since 2020, parents just want to protect their children and have the absolute right to protect their children, and I personally think that is having an overall effect on the current vaccination rates within California.”
Vaccine rights attorney Greg Glaser told The Defender he thinks the rising concerns parents have with vaccination has the potential to pose a real threat to Big Pharma, which is “calling the shots” on these audits to make sure vaccination rates don’t drop at all.
“The pharmaceutical companies fund the politicians and then the politicians put pressure on the Department of Public Health,” he said. “The first lever they’re able to control is these public health officers and public health departments.”
“Vaccine hesitancy scares Big Pharma,” he said.
He added:
“Pharma is very sensitive to trends. They can see when parents are no longer choosing vaccination and they know what a trend looks like. …
“Pharma’s clearly seeing a trend that less parents are vaccinating. So they’re using their levers of power in public health departments to audit schools to stop that trend.”
Ad hoc immunization clinics raise concerns
EdSource reports that schools and districts trying to increase vaccination rates are sending vaccination guidelines home with students and health services teams and reaching out to families to let them know where to get vaccinated.
Also, some schools or school districts are offering immunization clinics.
For example, Sacramento City Unified School District offers weekly free vaccination clinics at its district enrollment center. And Gateway Community Charters offered a clinic at its middle school.
The presence of such clinics also raises concerns, Glaser said, specially given the recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of school-based health centers across the country.
This push has some critics concerned children will receive, or be pressured into receiving, unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton — an integrative physician whose license was revoked by the California medical board for writing eight vaccine medical exemptions the board alleges were not fully compliant with CDC regulations — told The Defender she saw the clinics as a way to pressure families and children into vaccination in ways that could violate their rights.
“Schools are not medical offices, and the records on vaccines are not complete, so some children will get vaccines they do not need,” she said.
Sutton added, “Many questions must be asked: how is permission obtained? How is the vaccination transmitted to the child’s chart in the real doctor’s office? How are adverse events handled medically and financially?”
Vaccine exemptions: ‘as California goes, so goes the nation’
California has been ground zero for struggles over vaccine mandates for over a decade.
In 2012, California passed Assembly Bill 2109 to restrict the ability of parents to have their children exempted from vaccine requirements based on personal beliefs.
Where before parents simply had to write a letter stating their personal beliefs, the new law stipulated that parents seeking exemption for their children must get the signature of an authorized healthcare provider stating that parents had received information about the risks of not being vaccinated.
In 2015, allegedly prompted by a measles outbreak at Disneyland — that the media blamed on unvaccinated children — and low vaccination rates in many California schools, Democratic State Sens. Richard Pan and Ben Allen authored a controversial bill, Senate Bill 277, that eliminated the “personal belief exemption” altogether.
Pan’s SB 277 passed in 2015 and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law, despite significant pushback from parents, hundreds of whom protested at the legislature.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pan also proposed legislation mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all school children, with no personal or religious exemptions permitted — before the full approval of the vaccine for children by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The bill did not pass.
He also wrote a 2021 op-ed in The Washington Post likening “anti-vaccine extremism” to domestic terrorism.
The passage of SB 277 in 2015 made California the first state in nearly 35 years to eliminate nonmedical vaccine exemptions. Beginning in January 2016, nonmedical vaccine exemptions were no longer accepted for school entry.
After that, school vaccination rates rose. Parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children can obtain a medical exemption, have their children enrolled in special education services or homeschool them.
California has one of the highest rates of homeschooled children in the country, and those numbers are higher post-pandemic.
But California has also taken an aggressive stance against medical exemptions.
Doctors providing medical exemptions have been investigated by the California Medical Board, with many of them having their licenses revoked.
All medical exemptions for California children issued on or after Jan. 1, 2021, are subject to review by CDPH and can be revoked. All exemptions are automatically reviewed if they are submitted in a school where the immunization rate is below 95% if the school has failed to report its vaccination rates, if the physician writing the exemption has written more than five medical exemptions in a calendar year or if CDPH deems it necessary to protect public health.
As a result, Glaser said, “the number of medical exemptions in California has slowed to a trickle.” And those rules, he said, were put in place by Pan “for political reasons, not for reasons of public health.”
Glaser also said he thought these audits were happening in California because “as California goes, so goes the nation.”
He added, “When something is tried and succeeds in California, according to the metrics set by those in power, then they have a justification to roll it out across the nation.”
Hakala thinks that since 2020, “an increasing portion of the population is growing in their concern for what messages and information the government is putting forth, and the laws that are being passed that affect parental rights, especially in California.”
He added:
“I think there’s a growing distrust for the veracity of the information that is being disseminated, and on the basis of the laws that are being passed — and not just by one side of the political aisle or the other — but all information being disseminated seems to be increasingly scrutinized, as society’s skepticism continues to grow.
“This, in part, I think has a direct effect on the numbers that the audit report exemplifies.
“The public’s trust seems to be consistently evaporating, and it is my belief that a significant amount of work will need to be done to repair that trust.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2023
The District of Columbia (DC) Court of Appeals has rejected Meta’s appeal to quash a sweeping subpoena that demanded it hand over “documents sufficient to identify all Facebook groups, pages, and accounts that have violated Facebook’s COVID-19 misinformation policy with respect to content concerning vaccines” to the DC government.
Millions of users, many of whom made truthful statements that challenged the government’s Covid narrative, are likely to be swept up in this government data grab due to the scope of Facebook’s “Covid-19 misinformation” rules and the number of users that were impacted by them.
Facebook’s Covid-19 misinformation rules prohibited many truthful statements during the pandemic. For example, at one point claiming that “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” was banned — an assertion that health officials have now reluctantly admitted is true.
Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook censored truthful information.
And millions of people were impacted by these far-reaching censorship rules. In some quarters, Facebook censored over 100 million posts for violating these rules. Some of the groups Facebook took down under these rules also had hundreds of thousands of users.
Meta had challenged the subpoena on free speech and privacy grounds, arguing that it violated the First Amendment and that a warrant was required to compel disclosure of the requested data.
Specifically, Meta argued that the subpoena violated Meta’s own First Amendment rights by “prob[ing] and penaliz[ing]” its ability to exercise editorial control over content on its platform and also violated Meta users’ First Amendment rights because it would deter them from engaging in future online discussions of controversial topics.
Additionally, Meta cited the warrant requirements in the Stored Communications Act (SCA) — a law that sought to provide Fourth Amendment-like privacy protections by statute to communications held by third party service providers.
However, the DC appeals court rejected Meta’s arguments.
The court stated that Meta had not shown the subpoena will result in its free speech or associational rights being chilled. Additionally, it said Meta users’ First Amendment rights wouldn’t be chilled because “the users who made those posts have already openly associated themselves with their espoused views by publicly posting them to Facebook.”
The court also insisted that the warrant requirement in the SCA does not apply to public posts and that the subpoena “does not require Meta to ‘unmask’ any anonymous Users.”
Furthermore, the court characterized this mass request for user data as “reasonably relevant” to the DC’s investigation and said the subpoena is “narrowly tailored to the government’s asserted interest.”
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
Not only does the subpoena require Facebook to hand over the data of users that were banned for sharing dissenting opinions on Covid but the Covid-19 misinformation policy the subpoena centered around is starting to be rolled back by Meta.
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2023
The UN human rights chief Volker Turk rallied against criticism of attempts by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to suppress online speech, particularly on X.
Turk took the bull by the horns in his fervent appeal on Wednesday, levelling sharp criticism at tech tycoon, Elon Musk, who has rebranded Twitter as X, demanding a stauncher response to rampaging so-called “hate speech.”
Turk expressed concern over the criticism leveled against the ADL after the group campaigned for advertisers to pause spending on the platform.
Turk alluded to Musk’s criticism of the ADL’s tactics without explicitly dropping names, although it was clear he placed Musk’s platform X near the heart of his grievance.
Musk, who has painted the ADL in a harsh light, accusing it of pushing baseless claims which have frightened advertisers and inflicted financial damage, is currently in the eye of the media.
Turk made no bones about drawing attention to this matter, as he urged online media behemoths to step up the crackdown on the blitzkrieg of “offensive” language and “disinformation.”
Transparency over policies dealing with “hate speech,” their effective implementation, and accessible ways for average users to report such abuse were among Turk’s key demands.
“Social media platforms have played a terrible role in metastasizing of hatred from limited backwaters into multi-current mainstream trends,” he complained.
Turk demanded that social media platforms increase transparency about their hate speech policy.
“And they must much more effectively put these policies into practice, including by ensuring that people can report hate speech easily and that those reports will swiftly lead to appropriate action,” he added.
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | September 15, 2023
The highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism has been repeatedly abused to suppress criticism of Israel and stifle pro-Palestinian activism at UK universities, a startling new report has found.
Produced by the European Legal Support Centre and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the report analysed 40 cases between 2017-2022 where spurious accusations of anti-Semitism were levelled against students and faculty members over speech related to Palestine/Israel.
In nearly every case, the accusations were eventually dismissed after prolonged, stressful investigative processes. However, the harm inflicted on the well-being and reputations of those falsely accused had already been accomplished through these malicious campaigns.
Based on the findings, the report concludes that the IHRA definition is inadequate and unfit for purpose. In practice, it undermines academic freedom and the right to lawful speech for students and staff. The reputation and careers of those falsely accused also suffer harm from such allegations. Overall, the definition is being used to stifle protected speech critical of Israel, in violation of the academic rights and freedoms that universities are legally obligated to protect.
“We have found that since its adoption in UK higher education institutions, the IHRA definition has been used to delegitimise points of view critical of Israel and/or in support of Palestinian rights, silencing political criticism and academic scrutiny of Israeli state policies” Programme Director of the European Legal Support Centre, Giovanni Fassina, told MEMO.
“University staff and students in the UK have been subjected to false allegations of anti-Semitism, unreasonable investigations based on the IHRA definition, or cancellations and disruption of events. These proceedings harm well-being and reputations, including possible damage to education and careers. The complaints have had an adverse effect on academic freedom and free speech on campuses and have fostered self-censorship,” Fassina added.
Despite concerns raised by academics, activists and legal experts over its chilling effect on free speech, the IHRA definition was adopted by a majority of universities. Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA, has himself warned that it is not appropriate for university settings where critical thought and free debate are paramount. Nevertheless, in 2020, the then Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson threatened university leaders with punitive financial consequences if their institutions did not adopt the IHRA. As a result, 119 universities (almost 75 per cent of UK universities) have adopted some version of the definition as a basis for campus policies.
Meanwhile, the UK government has rejected similar calls for protection against discrimination from other minority groups in the name of fighting ‘woke aggression’ and ‘cancel culture’.
For instance, Muslim advocacy groups have urged the adoption of an official definition of Islamophobia to tackle anti-Muslim hatred. But the government rejected this, claiming a singular definition could chill legitimate speech and debate.
In stark contrast to its position on the IHRA, the Tory government and the right in general have argued that a definition of Islamophobia could impact law enforcement and require legislative changes. Critics pointed out this rationale is inconsistent given the IHRA definition’s documented use to restrict speech, curtail events and initiate proceedings against students and faculty.
The contrast reveals not only a double standard in the government’s approach to addressing racism targeting different minority groups, but also a hierarchy of racism, where certain groups are granted greater protection and privileges over others. There is a reluctance to bolster protections for Muslims, even as accusations of anti-Semitism are readily weaponised to demonise certain speech.
A major flaw of the IHRA definition is that it conflates anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism. Seven of the 11 illustrative examples do just that. One example states that “denying Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that Israel is a racist endeavour” is anti-Semitic. As the report authors explain, this example falsely equates Jewish self-determination solely with the political project of Israel – a contingent position unique to Zionist ideology. It further delegitimises Palestinian claims to self-determination and casts opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies as anti-Semitic. Most concerning, it suppresses documented evidence of Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians by equating such criticism with bigotry. Through such examples, the definition chills free speech and makes it difficult to act in solidarity with Palestinians without facing accusations of anti-Semitism.
Several cases where students and teachers were “cancelled” on extremely dubious grounds were highlighted. In December 2020, an academic teaching on the Middle East received notification that a recent graduate had submitted complaints alleging their social media posts from 2016-2020 were anti-Semitic. The posts criticised Zionism, shared an article on the Nakba, and commented on anti-Semitism allegations against Labour.
The graduate argued these violated the IHRA definition. Despite the academic being cleared, they underwent a lengthy disciplinary process causing stress and requiring legal advice. The university referred to the IHRA definition in its policies.
Another example is the treatment of Dr Somdeep Sen. He was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Glasgow on his book ‘Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial’. After the lecture was announced, the university received a complaint from its Jewish student society alleging that the event is anti-Semitic.
In response, the university demanded Sen provide details on his talk’s content in advance and confirm he wouldn’t contravene the IHRA definition. As these conditions undermined academic freedom, Sen withdrew and the event was cancelled.
The two examples are just the tip-of the iceberg. All the cases show how vague accusations of violating the IHRA definition have put pressure on universities to investigate or penalise faculty and students for speech related to Palestinian rights and Israeli policies. In all the cases, the burden of proof is on pro-Palestine students and critics of Israel. The presumption is that they are guilty until proven innocent; a perverse inversion of the universal principle that one is innocent until proven guilty.
Commenting on the findings, Neve Gordon, the chair of Brismes’s committee on academic freedom and a professor of human rights law in the school of law at Queen Mary University, said:
What has been framed as a tool to classify and assess a particular form of discriminatory violations of protected characteristics, has instead been used as a tool to undermine and punish protected speech and to punish those in academia who voice criticism of the Israeli state’s policies.
In his comments to MEMO, Fassina mentioned the vicious campaign to police free speech on Israel and Palestine and the ongoing efforts to weaponise anti-Semitism against critics of the apartheid state. “For us and our partners in the UK, it was time to expose a pattern we have been observing for too long: unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism made against academic staff and students after they criticised the policies of the Israeli government or just ‘liked’ some tweets about Palestine, Israel or about the Labour Party.” He explained that the latest report adds to the evidence already produced in Europe, in the US and Canada that demonstrate similar harmful consequences of the IHRA definition for the rights of advocates for Palestine. “This is not just a UK problem but reveals a wider trend of anti-Palestinian racism in Western countries, which is highly problematic for the respect of fundamental rights and democracy,” Fassina added.
Fassina called on UK higher education institutions to rescind the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism; halt its use in disciplinary proceedings or investigations; and more crucially, with the forthcoming UN report on combatting anti-Jewish racism to be released, recognise that the IHRA is an anti-democratic, authoritarian instrument weaponised against critics of Israel. “IHRA definition is a tool of anti-Palestinian racism that should not be adopted or used by any institution that aims to respect human rights. As we are waiting for the UN to release its plan to combat anti-Semitism, we hope it will take into account the multiple calls made against the IHRA definition,” Fassina stressed.
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By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
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