The Free Speech Union has just published a briefing on carbon literacy training by Thomas Harris, its Director of Data and Impact. The FSU is concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.
Carbon literacy training is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.
The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-19th Century people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.
In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The FSU fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.
The FSU first became aware of this new threat to free speech in the workplace when it was contacted by a member who is concerned about his career after he challenged the carbon literacy training provided by his employer. The FSU believes he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.
If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here. And if you’re not already a member of the FSU, you can join here.
The Mayor of New York City is looking to potentially incorporate Israeli drone technology and methods to aid in law enforcement and emergency efforts, in the latest example of cooperation between American and Israeli police forces.
Eric Adams, the New York City Mayor, visited Israel this week in order to assess the country’s law enforcement technology and the possibility of incorporating it into the New York Police Department (NYPD), telling reporters during an online briefing in the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, yesterday that the Israeli police forces “are a little bit more advanced”.
Adams praised the drones used by Israeli law enforcement as being more durable and being able to fly for much longer than NYC’s current technological devices, clarifying that “the method in which they’re using them, the methods in which they are training to use them, is what caught my interest”.
Referring to himself as “a great fan of technology and all it can do to make our lives easier and safer”, the Mayor proclaimed that “Israel is on the cutting edge of exciting developments in technology that will benefit all of us.”
He also referred to Israeli police’s use of drones in coordination with police motorcycles, saying it could potentially be a tactic utilised by the NYPD to help response times for accidents or other emergencies.
The utilisation of drone technology by Israeli police and wider authorities has increased throughout the past year, with officials in the central Israeli city of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut having begun deploying drones as first responders in traffic accidents last October.
Despite his praise for the NYPD’s Israeli counterparts, Adams acknowledged that a significant part of the drone technologies’ utilisation is directly opposed to laws practiced within the United States, making full implementation an issue. The NYPD “will not use any tool that is not in alignment with the laws of our city, in our state and in our country.”
One such method it will reportedly refrain from using is the facial recognition technology which is notoriously used by Israeli authorities to identify Palestinians. “So many police forces across the globe, they use various methods that are not suitable in our city, and we’re not going to use any methods that do not conform with our rights and the laws of our country”.
The Mayor praised some aspects of Israeli policing tactics, however, such as their ability to “strategically and successfully deal with a large crowd”. He claimed that “some methods we may not use, but there are other methods that they use that they’re really humane in nature.”
Such tactics like crowd control may be incorporated by the NYPD, he said, seemingly referring to recent riots that rocked the city last month. “As when we had a similar incident in our city, how do we do it in the correct way? And they’ve [Israelis] learned how to do it correctly. And we walked away with some of those tactics.”
The World Economic Forum has been on a tear lately! A recent article in the New York Times (paywall-free link) by a senior WEF agenda contributor, Adam Grant, a Wharton management expert and an adviser to Bill Gates, says, “Elections are Bad for Democracy.”
In the United States, any private citizen can publish any opinion on their web page or social network timeline. However, Mr. Grant is not an ordinary private person; he is a WEF contributor who participated in numerous WEF functions and authored many agenda-setting articles. He is also an adviser to Google and Bill Gates.
Far from obscure is the venue that gave him a platform to be heard: The New York Times is the foremost “newspaper of record,” which used to be the most respected publication many years ago.
Who is Adam Grant? The New York Timesforgot to mention that he is a very senior member of the WEF. Here’s his World Economic Forum page:
Adam Grant is a prolific WEF author, with posts too many to list individually.
You Are Too Dumb to Vote, Adam Grant Explains
Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.
If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?
Mr. Grant advocates “randomly selecting” officials from a “pool of candidates.”
Who forms the pool of candidates? Who is admitted to the “pool”? Mr. Grant is vague on this question, but we can take a guess. The pool would be formed by the no-longer-elected “guardians of our democracy”; only the people acceptable to them would be allowed to be randomly selected.
Indeed, Mr Grant explains that those seeking to enter the “pool” would need to be vetted:
In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship.
I am sure those who do not believe the WEF-promoted ideologies would be ineligible for the pool and unable to pass the civics test. We do not want doubters to undermine our democracy, after all! (Note the sarcasm)
If you, my dear reader, wonder who will ensure that “random selection” is truly random, you are not alone!
Mr. Grant is a senior adviser to the Department of Defense, Google, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So please take him seriously, as do the organizations above who take his advice. He means it.
Just imagine the savings, Grant says:
Switching to sortition would save a lot of money too. The 2020 elections alone cost upward of $14 billion. And if there’s no campaign, there are no special interests offering to help pay for it.
Surely, we can save a lot of money if dirty peons like you and me are not allowed to vote!
The WEF is Serious About Abolishing Voting
Is the above a weird individual opinion only? Not quite!
In this video, Klaus Schwab discusses the idea of using a “prescriptive mode” to form the will of the electorate and do without elections:
The WEF views political systems with competing political parties as “toxic” and discusses “detoxifying politics,” understood as getting rid of party competition:
The “Well-being Alliance,” another organization forming the WEF’s agenda, also suggests going away from “party politics”:
I discussed the Wellbeing Alliance, its Marxian ideology, and its relationship with the WEF here.
The above well-being agenda is already being implemented in eight countries, as discussed in the article above.
These radicals envision a future “free of party politics,” with “detoxified” discourse, and with leaders selected from a pool of WEF-approved candidates. The discourse will be free of undesirable misinformation, even if the unwanted misinformation is true.
The regular peons, like you and me, do not deserve a voice because we are considered “toxic” and incompetent to select our future glorious leaders. The WEF knows better!
Christiaan Dettmar, a family judge from the Weimar District Court in Germany recently faced the Erfurt Regional Court for his stance against the unnecessary imposition of mask mandates on children. In April 2021, going against the grain, he ruled that children at two Weimar schools should not be burdened with wearing Covid masks in class, defying the restrictive guidelines set by the Thuringian Ministry of Education.
However, in a move reflective of the bureaucratic stranglehold on such decisions, higher courts dismissed his ruling, claiming it unauthorised. The Thuringian Higher Regional Court stated that the family judge did not possess the jurisdiction on this matter, a viewpoint also echoed by the Federal Court of Justice. They insisted that only administrative courts should handle state orders regarding corona protection measures.
At the time (in April 2021), Dettmar had his office, private residence and car searched after he ruled that children should not be wearing masks. He also had his phone confiscated after his decision which embarrassed the government.
His decision to end mask mandates was made after hearing evidence from Professor Kappstein on the lack of benefit of wearing masks and observing distance rules for the children and third parties. Kappstein said that after evaluating all the international data on the subject of masks, the effectiveness of masks for healthy people in public is not supported by scientific evidence.
Dettmar concluded that not only are masks useless but they are also dangerous.
The compulsion imposed on school children to wear masks and to keep their distance from each other and from third persons harms the children physically, psychologically, educationally and in their psychosocial development, without being counterbalanced by more than at best marginal benefit to the children themselves or to third persons. Schools do not play a significant role in the “pandemic”.
The PCR tests and rapid tests used are in principle not suitable on their own to detect an “infection” with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is already clear from the Robert Koch Institute’s own calculations, as explained in the expert reports. According to RKI calculations, as expert Prof. Dr. Kuhbandner explains, the probability of actually being infected when receiving a positive result in mass testing with rapid tests, regardless of symptoms, is only two per cent at an incidence of 50 (test specificity 80%, test sensitivity 98%). This would mean that for every two true-positive rapid test results, there would be 98 false-positive rapid test results, all of which would then have to be retested with a PCR test.
A (regular) compulsion to mass-test asymptomatic people, i.e. healthy people, for which there is no medical indication, cannot be imposed because it is disproportionate to the effect that can be achieved. At the same time, the regular compulsion to take the test puts the children under psychological pressure, because in this way their ability to attend school is constantly put to the test.
In the recent trial against Judge Dettmar, although the prosecution demanded a hefty three-year prison term, the defence, representing the concerns and wishes of countless parents and citizens, argued for acquittal. The presiding judge at the Erfurt Regional Court noted that the Weimar judge’s decision emanated from his personal views.
After originally being sentenced to two years in prison, the court has now suspended the sentence on probation.
However, it is still possible that Dettmar may lose his office and pension as a result of the conviction.
Throughout the proceedings, the courtroom was electric with tension and support. Spectators broke into spontaneous applause in favour of Dettmar. This would have continued except the judge threatened to throw them out. The prosecution’s attempt to paint the judge’s intentions as malicious was met with scepticism. They claimed that he intentionally set up a child protection procedure against the mask mandate, misrepresenting it as a statement against government measures. Their evidence, mainly based on emails and chat messages, was tenuous at best.
The defence, however, passionately highlighted the judge’s genuine concern for the well-being of children. They asserted that the case was merely an attempt to suppress and penalise differing opinions in a society where free thought should be celebrated.
Reiterating his unwavering stand, Dettmar confirmed he would make the same decision again. The subsequent lifting of school mask mandates by German states in April 2022 only reinforces the argument that such restrictions should never have been in force in the first place.
The assembling of a compelling and fair response to an infectious viral outbreak is an immense challenge. Ideally, unbiased experts without conflicts of interest develop a survey of potentially effective remedies. The team includes seasoned pathologists, broad-thinking social psychologists, experienced epidemiologists, holistic dieticians, and veteran practitioners of complementary and indigenous medicine.
Imagine a broadly trusted, well-meaning group gathering knowledge, and through consensus, generating recommendations and medical guidelines designed to have the greatest impact towards minimizing suffering. In making the best efforts to evaluate solutions and means of relief, they never lose sight of weighing risks versus benefits.
This did not happen. During the recent pandemic, all of those who considered or attempted to approach the crisis without the blessings of authorities were summarily belittled, repressed, and disgraced.
Many voices of reason were confounded by the enigmatic organization, the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Their duplicitous activities were neither creative nor supportive, and simply aimed at destroying those who refused to agree with dogmatic mandates and protocols generated by the pharmaceutical industry.
At the peak of CCDH’s influence, they released a malicious piece of propaganda, called TheDisinformation Dozen. The document was a frontal, full-scale attack on those who questioned the viability and motives of the mainstream response to the pandemic. This manifesto was conceived as a distractive and deceptive instrument — disseminated among the willing world press corps. Not only was the news media compromised by their funders, but they were also hungry for a scapegoat and eager to enthusiastically repeat easily drawn, though suspect conclusions.
The CCDH’s overt purpose was to stop any alternative thinking about how to respond to a viral outbreak. Their offense against those who failed to accept vaccines as a panacea presents a telling window into the boldness of authoritarian bullying over the last three years.
The Missouri v. Biden lawsuit alleges that the White House pressured social media to close accounts of pandemic policy dissenters. During discovery, Eric Waldo, the Senior Advisor to the Surgeon General admitted CCDH briefed their office before they pressured Facebook for more censorship.
Most recently CCDH has come under increased scrutiny with a lawsuit by Twitter claiming they are masquerading as a legitimate research firm and that they illegally obtained data to use it in a scare campaign to deter advertisers from the platform.
Concurrently, the publications and damage done by Imran Ahmed, the chief executive officer of CCDH, and his collaborators, are being examined by the House Judiciary Committee. The ongoing investigation into government censorship of alternative viewpoints during the pandemic has determined that CCDH’s activities are of interest. Ahmed was notified that he must supply all documents related to CCDH and its relationship with the federal government and social media companies.
CCDH purports to be a non-profit organization without political affiliation or funding, protecting the public from dangerous misinformation. As they face increasing scrutiny and pressure, a thorough examination of their origins and tactics reveals the mechanics of an organization whose mission is to censor enemies of the state and the pharmaceutical industry.
On The Attack
As the COVID crisis escalated, Ahmed assembled a primary list of competitors to Big Pharma; disparaging those who simply questioned a single prescribed solution. Without presenting evidence, The Disinformation Dozen claimed twelve individuals held the primary responsibility for vaccine hesitancy and thousands of deaths. While leaping to these conclusions, Ahmed also surmised that the motivation of anyone who expressed opinions that did not conform with industry and government — was financial. The report insists that sources of alternative information must be de-funded and de-platformed.
Incredibly, there are no details in all of these publications that informs or assures the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. What the CCDH reports all have in common is the assumption that vaccines are Big Pharma’s gift to mankind and that all other responses to infectious disease are heresy and worthy of scorn and condemnation. These assaults on dissenters are filled with strongly worded guidance, both for individuals and governments, urging people to resist and disregard those who dare counter the pharmaceutical narrative. Strikingly, the reports show complete indifference to free speech, lateral thinking, and medical autonomy.
CCDH leadership’s lack of qualifications in public health and epidemiology is indicative that their intentions and strategy are other than altruistic. Despite his organization’s goal to identify and counter digitalhate, Imran Ahmed’s résumé reveals no recognition of medical or humanitarian ethics.
Not surprisingly, Ahmed has a history of blindly supporting Big Pharma’s dictates concerning the viability and safety of vaccines. For years, he and his associates have specialized in attacking anyone who doesn’t follow the narrow guidelines of pharmaceutical industry preferences.
Ahmed is not medically qualified and shows no understanding of healthcare. However, he has been a political operative and has worked behind the scenes for power brokers at the highest level.
Profiles In Deception
Of particular interest is a telling British political scandal dubbed, Brickgate. Ahmed had been working for MP Hilary Benn, another pharma cheerleader. During the brief challenge in 2016 to the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin, he became the communications director for Angela Eagle, an MP who was one of two possible replacements for Corbin. Ahmed was the point man on an allegation that a brick was thrown through a window in Eagle’s office, with the implication that she was being threatened by her political opponents. The UK press promoted the story, reporting on Ahmed’s accusations and outrage.
The facts proved otherwise. The window turned out to be in a shared stairwell and broken from the inside. A brick was never found, and a police inquiry determined it was very unlikely a hostile act. Whereas Ahmed undoubtedly knew these details, he attempted to portray a different story to gain political points for his boss.
This seemingly minor tale illustrates that the noble role Ahmed presents currently was preceded by his willingness to do whatever it takes to serve his masters. It also confirms that his work has been other than in the service of revealing truth.
Ahmed’s shadowy background and relationships with politicians, including his co-founder of CCDH, Morgan McSweeney, certainly do not qualify him to judge anyone’s ethical standards.
Within a few years of Brickgate, Ahmed followed his political godfather, McSweeney, in further machinations toward engineering the agenda of Labour Party leadership. Ahmed took the helm of CCDH, and McSweeney remains integral to the senior staff of MP Keir Starmer. He is a serving member of the vaccine-friendly Trilateral Commission, the current head of the Labour Party, and a likely future UK Prime Minister. Starmer was an early proponent of the COVID vaccine and has a close relationship with Lexington Communications, a lobbying firm that represents Pfizer. With the strong support of Starmer, the United Kingdom was the first country to release the Pfizer COVID vaccine. Even as it was rolled out, he pressed for government repression in a joint effort with CCDH, harassing those who dared to question vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Most of Ahmed’s cohorts all have common interests that have little to do with well-being.
Board Member and MP Damian Collins is another pro-Pharma devotee. Pfizer’s main UK plant was in Kent — Collin’s home district — and he was a strong proponent of the early release of their COVID vaccine. He is also directly associated with the military intelligence group, Integrity Initiative, and a member of the Henry Jackson Society, a secretive association that has connections with the CIA.
The fabric of CCDH’s personnel is embroidered with intelligence community assets. There is no better example of this than Ahmed’s communications director, Lindsay Moran, a self-declared former CIA operative, with experience in consulting for mainstream media. Her previous employment does not make her a criminal, though it does bring further into question the intent and operations of CCDH.
Considering Imran Ahmed’s credentials, known associates, and the profile of other CCDH figures, it can be asserted that there is more to the organization than its stated purpose. At a minimum, this background brings into serious doubt Ahmed’s ability to inform and advise the public in an unbiased manner.
Without awareness or mention of his political affiliations, Ahmed has been relied on for stories and quoted by many news outlets, who present CCDH as a pristine source of factual information.
In one glowing personal profile, his work is described in an article from 2021 on the Global Citizen website. Avoiding questions about his past work, Ahmed’s views are swallowed whole by the authors and repeated gleefully, including the outrageous claim that almost all COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated. The most telling information in the entire piece is at the end: This series was made possible with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
It is important to evaluate this hagiographic portrait and consider that it is presented by Global Citizen, an international non-profit that does not hide ecstatic support of vaccination. According to its website, the organization’s central pursuit is raising and directing funds toward global poverty and health. Global Citizen sponsored a spectacular fundraising concert in 2021 called VAX Live — where among the luminaries who appeared among performers was President Biden, who described the crisis as a pandemic of the unvaccinated; perhaps the best advertising the pharmaceutical industry ever had. The concert successfully promoted and procured COVID-19 vaccines with funds raised by the event.
The Money Trail
Global Citizen has intimate relationships with the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Health Organization. These partners share a common interest in vaccine advancement and have gained undue influence over governments and the press. As political leadership floundered in the face of the building healthcare scare, these unelected power brokers stepped in to persuade the world that vaccination was the only remedy to consider.
CCDH insists that it does not take money from partisan organizations or receive government funds, however, this is difficult to confirm when they refuse to reveal all details of its funding. The world of non-profits has numerous routes for financing to be directed in ways to avoid scrutiny.
Some of the not-for-profit organizations that are partners with CCDH claim to have high-minded goals, yet support an organization that betrays indifference to freedom of expression. The Institute For Strategic Dialogue facilitates and defends CCDH in contrast to its stated mission:
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising tide of polarisation, extremism and disinformation worldwide.
ISD structure and membership betray a different agenda. Attacking those with dissenting opinions who question mainstream corporate concerns is a cause of the polarized environment that they claim to safeguard.
Evidence points to well-endowed philanthropic organizations with ties to the pharmaceutical industry propping up CCDH and their hostile scheming. Support also includes money funneled through the shady world of PR agencies that are paid millions by Big Pharma to promote their interests. The Paris-based, Publicis Groupe, has directed such resources, admitting to relationships with fact-checkers that support their client’s positions. CCDH and a similar entity, Newsguard, both depend on minimal scrutiny of the structure and motivation for their financing. The perception of these non-profits would change dramatically if the public realized how their presentations are influenced by money.
Although financing has yet to be tracked, there are signals that point to a possible Bill Gates — CCDH relationship. Ahmed instinctively and repeatedly protects Gates and consistently attacks those who question his motivation for supporting vaccination.
In the Anti-Vaxx Playbook, Ahmed claims Gates is attacked symbolically within a word slaw that sidesteps the powerful influence of the Gates Foundation:
Anti-vaccine campaigners have collaborated with alternative health entrepreneurs and conspiracists to ensure that global health philanthropist Bill Gates has become a symbolic figure that represents all of their attacks on the trustworthiness of vaccine advocates.
These attacks are not aimed at influencing the ongoing debate over a Covid vaccine, in which the role of Bill Gates takes a back seat to more practical issues. The real utility of this campaign of vilification is to create a symbol and associated memes that aid the communication of interrelated beliefs about Covid, vaccines and conspiracies.
Bill Gates has come to represent a complex of anti-vaxxer talking points and conspiracy theories. Virtually every element of the on line anti-vaxx movement has found ways of featuring him in their narratives, in a variety of contexts and tones.
This description is a conspicuous attempt to deflect well-deserved attention from Bill Gates, claiming so-called anti-vaxxers are simply mentioning his name as a talking point.
Contrary to where Ahmed would direct us, an examination of Gates is central to understanding how philanthropy, corporate influence, and profiteering form government policies. Attempts at blurring the role of Gates and his foundation as they support vaccines and COVID response policies reveal CCDH’s loyalty to protecting the milieu of its political and financial benefactors.
The philanthropic and corporate worlds’ support and reliance on CCDH is at the nucleus of this deceptive contrivance, enhancing the facade that protects CCDH from scrutiny.
There are a wide variety of theories about why this shaping of public perception is so important. One consequence is obvious; the fraud increases the amount of profits for the pharmaceutical industry and the billionaires who support vaccine sales. Financing organizations like CCDH is a necessity in the general plan to minimize public doubt about an immensely lucrative product.
CCDH is paid to manipulate sentiment without substantiation. It remains stunningly apparent that no supporting details, scientific reports, or verifiable sources of facts appear in any CCDH reports. They merely use the premise that vaccination is the only trustworthy solution for infectious diseases — to vilify their targets.
Defending The Indefensible
The repercussions of the antics of the pharmaceutical-philanthropic consortium are exhibited in this sordid tale. Yet the damning revelations about Imran Ahmed and CCDH are unreported as yet by a press corps that trusts and mimics a political hack.
There remains a wholesale and uncritical acceptance of CCDH while its ability to present an objective assessment of any medical or healthcare opinion is demonstrably biased. Their mission has no basis in exposing the truth, yet nodding promoters still acquiesce to their alleged veracity.
The growing evidence of connections between individuals and entities that promote vaccines and so-called fact-checkers underlines the degradation of news gathering and reporting. The willingness of the news media to accept and disseminate CCDH disinformation without scrutiny reveals these dynamics and the dangerous trend toward authoritarian censorship.
As CCDH faces legal consequences for its negligence and a congressional inquiry into its relationship with the government, the organization continues to manipulate the truth with deceptive lies. They must rely on the press and the public to remain blind to their duplicity.
As a response to the Twitter (X) lawsuit, in an open letter signed by its supporters, CCDH dares to invoke a threat to their rights to free speech;
We view these efforts as a threat to the right to the freedom of expression, resulting in a dangerous chilling effect on civil society, experts, and advocates – and ultimately the public, which deserves to know how X and similar platforms are spreading hate and disinformation.
The appeal ends with desperate phraseology that reflects the height of hypocrisy:
The misuse of the legal system and other forms of intimidation against researchers, experts, and advocates who seek to hold social media companies accountable is an attack of the right to freedom of expression and access to information and must cease. The bullying of those seeking to speak truth to power cannot be tolerated.
Indeed.
In attempting to defend themselves, these words further betray CCDH’s hypocrisy. And the list of those signing on to this rebuttal only indicates how deeply compromised the corporate world has become in pretending to have noble exploits.
It is most important to view the activities of CCDH from the broadest historical perspective.
Their censorship efforts are at the epicenter of an open collaboration between corrupt industrialists and compromised politicians; repressive methodology with hostile tactics display the apparatus and consequences of merging the corporate world with the government.
It’s too late to propose questions to Tucker Carlson for his interview with Donald Trump, scheduled to air on Wednesday, August 23, 2023, because that interview has already been recorded.
In a fantasy world, here’s what I wish Carlson would ask:
Before Covid, your Presidency was going pretty well. You had a good shot at winning another term. Would you agree that the pandemic pretty much reversed that?
Actually, it wasn’t just the pandemic. It was your government’s response to the pandemic. The Democrats won by claiming you had botched the whole thing. They said hundreds of thousands of people died because you didn’t lock down soon enough and refused to wear a mask. They said the US should have behaved more like China than like Sweden. Do you agree?
A lot of Republicans now think you should have run the pandemic more like DeSantis did in Florida (even though they might not have said it at the time). It seems to me that before March 10th, 2020, you were planning to run it that way. And you were listening to your public health advisors from the CDC and NIH. Is that correct?
What was shocking to me was when you seemed to pivot 180 degrees in just a few days, from saying that it would not be worse than a bad flu season, to announcing that we would throw everything we had at it, locking down the whole country, and investing trillions of dollars in keeping the economy shut down. It was especially surprising that you agreed to the economic shutdown. What made you change your mind?
I’m going to be more specific on this, because a lot of information has come out suggesting that you changed your mind because your National Security Council, and related military and intelligence operatives, told you the virus was a potential bioweapon that leaked from a Chinese lab. Is that what you were told? Did they tell you millions of people would die and you would be responsible, if you didn’t follow their plan?
In a Time Magazine article you were quoted saying “I can’t tell you that” when you were asked about why you thought the virus came from a lab in Wuhan. You said “I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Who was not allowing you to speak openly about the possibility that it was a lab leak? Can you speak about it openly now?
Can you tell me who made the decision in the middle of March to invoke the Stafford Act in all 50 states at the same time (which had never been done before), and to put FEMA in charge as the Lead Federal Agency for pandemic response, when FEMA had no warning and no experience in this area at all? Who decided to remove HHS from the role of Lead Federal Agency, which it was supposed to have according to every single pandemic planning document before Covid? Did you make those decisions or did the NSC or other military or intelligence advisors tell you to take those steps?
When you brought Scott Atlas in, he advised you to open the country back up immediately. It seems like you really wanted someone in the White House with an opinion that was different from the one you were hearing in favor of lockdowns. But, for some reason, there was enormous resistance to bringing any experts in. There was even supposed to be a meeting at the end of March (long before Atlas arrived) with top epidemiologists that mysteriously got canceled. Why did you have so little control over who advised you about the pandemic? Why didn’t you follow the advice of Scott Atlas if, as he reported in his book, you pretty much agreed with him that the lockdowns were disastrous?
Most people think Fauci was in charge of the pandemic response. But in his book, Dr. Atlas reports that you said the main problem wasn’t Fauci, it was Deborah Birx. Is that because Birx was in charge of coordinating the NSC/DHS response, and Fauci was just a front to make it seem like a public health response?
A few months into the lockdowns, you sounded as if you had lost control of the situation, like in the tweet from May 18th 2020 when you wrote in all caps: REOPEN OUR COUNTRY! You’d think if anyone could have ended the lockdowns, it would have been the President. But you seemed to feel helpless to reverse what was happening. Is that because there had been a sort of silent coup of the NSC and Department and Homeland Security?
If the answers to all the previous questions are classified, that would confirm that the response to Covid involved secret machinations of national security entities. Can you at least confirm that much?
Some have suggested that the entire Covid response was launched as a way to make you look bad and make sure you did not get a second term. Do you agree? If so, who do you think was behind that plan?
Were you aware of the massive censorship and propaganda that were happening to make people accept the lockdowns and vaccines? Do you feel like you were part of that campaign to convince people? Or do you feel like you were somehow forced to participate in it?
Were you in touch with leaders of other allied countries to coordinate the response to the pandemic? It’s pretty astonishing how all our closest allies ended up doing exactly the same thing at the same time. If you were not the one who was coordinating with foreign leaders, were you aware of that type of coordination going on – especially with the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, and other European allies?
And, of course, the most important question of all: Would you ever do such a thing again?
The conspiracy of silence is obvious. Both political parties like it. The media likes it too because it was a main participant. Academia is compromised as much as the social media companies. Government bureaucrats want the entire fiasco to be a thing of the past, except to the extent it can serve as a template for the future. That leaves only independent voices to raise ever louder questions of the entire establishment.
We are of course speaking about the calamity commonly called Covid that robbed us all of liberty and rights, and kicked off this national and global crisis. All the major national problems the US faces today – inflation, learning loss, ill-health, cultural confusion, demographic disruption, professional instability, tech censorship, widespread substance abuse, and the loss of all trust in the commanding heights including the whole of government and every connected institution – trace to the lockdowns that began that fateful day of March 16, 2020 (oddly, the day following the Ides of March, when Caesar was killed).
It was a decision for the ages. Shouldn’t we know more about what led to it and why all of this happened? The person who wants all questions to go away the most is the person who hopes to reinhabit the White House, namely Donald Trump. Whether or not you support his return to power, the reality is that he presided over the largest and fastest loss of liberty in the history of this country.
No other president can compare, not Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Carter, or Obama. His administration, particularly in the last year, embarked on a new age of censorship, administrative state control over all our lives, astonishing levels of spending and redistribution, and massive invasion of our communities and homes. It attacked small business on a scale we’ve never seen, and seriously compromised even our basic rights to associate. The Biden administration was more of the same with new mandates.
Incredibly, Trump has somehow avoided questions about this. His supporters don’t want it discussed. This is likely why he is skipping the debate: fear that DeSantis will call him out. Neither do his opponents on the Democratic side want this discussed because they fully approve of what he did. His opponents in the primary are compromised too, particularly Mike Pence who led the charge within the Trump administration for lockdowns, mass purchases of PPE from China, nationwide distribution and deployment of killer ventilators, and being the biggest champion of Fauci/Birx, which we know because he wrote this in his book.
There are a whole host of questions about those fateful days leading to lockdowns. We are not getting answers because no one is asking the questions. All the people who are in a position to end the silence have a strong interest in perpetuating it for as long as possible, in hopes that mass amnesia takes hold and grants them all amnesty. Fauci is the model here: in his deposition in Missouri v. Biden, he testified that he could hardly remember anything. His hope is that everyone else will follow.
We have a small window in which to get answers during the primary season. Perhaps there will be a breakout at some point. There simply must be. Until there is some honesty and truth about what happened and why, we risk perpetuating all the crises of our times. And let’s be clear: there is not one credible study from anywhere in the world that demonstrates that lockdowns, and everything associated with them, were worth the astronomical cost. Indeed, every bit of evidence shows that the entire Covid response was a disaster. It will be repeated if there is no accountability and radical reform.
We know about the “germ games” of Event 201 and Crimson Contagion. The plans for locking down were already in the works. Covid was the excuse but did they seriously believe that this was the killer bioweapon for which they had prepared? We have documented proof that everyone knew that this virus was not massively deadly. We knew this from January 2020. If that wasn’t enough, we have data from the Diamond Princess that suggested that the infection fatality rate was nowhere near the 3-4 percent that the World Health Organization predicted.
What unleashed all this mania to end liberty as we know it? Tucker Carlson visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago on March 7, 2020. His message to Trump was to take the coronavirus seriously because it could be a bioweapon export from China. Tucker had heard this from a trusted source within the intelligence community whom he has yet to name. Tucker has since said that he very much regrets his role.
Trump listened and yet seemed unpersuaded. On March 9th, Trump tweeted out his intuition that this bug was flu-like and did not require extraordinary efforts by government. Two days later, however, Trump evidently changed his mind. “I am fully prepared to use the full power of the Federal Government to deal with our current challenge of the CoronaVirus,” he wrote in a complete about-face.
Whatever changed his mind likely happened on March 10, 2020. What was that? To whom did he speak and what did they say? By chance, was he told that this was indeed a bioweapon from China and yet the pharmaceutical companies were working on the antidote and all he needed to do was lock down until it arrived and then he could be the hero? Was that his thinking?
If that was not his thinking, what precisely did he hope to achieve by locking down the entire country by executive edict? How did he imagine that he was personally going to stop the spread of a virus in the US that was already everywhere on both coasts and likely had been for the prior six months? Did it ever occur to him to call up some independent experts on infectious disease? If not, why not?
Two days later, he ordered a stop to all flights to and from Europe, the UK, and Australia. He announced this in a televised address that evening. When he was giving this address – which looked like a hostage video – did it ever occur to Trump that he was embarking on an exercise of government power never before seen? Millions of families and travel plans were shredded and panic ensued throughout the world. What led him to believe that it was within his legal rights as president to do that?
On March 13, Trump’s own Health and Human Services issued a document on the pandemic plans. It was marked confidential but came to be released months later. Incredibly, this policy document not only declared a national emergency but made it very clear that the rule-making power for pandemic management would rest with the National Security Council. That’s the intelligence community. The public health agencies of the CDC and NIH were reduced in power to deal with implementation and operations but they were not in charge.
Did Trump know what was happening around him? Did anyone come to him and tell him of this large document, which, to this day, is the only blueprint we have for what government was trying to do with its Covid response? Had he ever seen this before publishing? If so, did it not strike him as odd that the National Security Council would be given primacy over the public health agencies themselves?
That weekend, March 14-15, 2020, every report we have says that Trump huddled in the White House with son-in-law Jared Kushner, two of Jared’s college buddies, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Mike Pence. Whom else did he consult on this weekend? At this point, national security had already been given primacy in policy, so surely the military and intelligence community were represented at the White House. Who and what did they say?
According to Kushner, the decisive voice in putting together the lockdown plans was Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, who had previously headed Trump’s own FDA. He is said to have been on the phone with Trump. According to Kushner, Gottlieb told him: “They should go a little bit further than you are comfortable with… When you feel like you are doing more than you should, that is a sign that you are doing them right.”
How much did Gottlieb’s opinion matter to Trump and did Trump ever consider perhaps that Gottlieb, as the voice of Pfizer, might have had a conflict of interest? What else does Trump remember about this weekend?
All of this really matters because on Monday, March 16, Trump held a national press conference together with Fauci and Birx. At this event, they handed out a PDF to the press which in turn was issued to every public health agency in the country. It read in part: “Bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”
That sounds like a federal edict to close churches, schools, and essentially put the entire country under house arrest. Indeed, the restrictions on human association also pertained to houses, which in many states were restricted in the number of people who could gather inside them. Only one state, South Dakota, refused to go along.
During the press conference, Trump waffled a bit on whether he was shutting everything down but Fauci stepped in to clarify that, yes, the Trump administration was in fact shutting down the whole country, Bill of Rights be damned.
At the very moment when Fauci was reading these sentences from the microphone, Trump was standing to his side but was suddenly distracted by someone or something in the audience. He waved and smiled, almost as if he either did not want to hear what Fauci was saying or did not care. To whom was he waving and why?
Did Trump even know about the edict that was being issued that day, that he was effectively using his power as president to close churches and impose universal quarantine on the population? If so, how was this consistent with his promise to make America great again?
The next day, the Trump team got busy on hospital protocols, which amounted to the mass production and distribution of ventilators plus giving out the deadly drug Remdesivir. Who was it that told Trump that intubating people was the best way to deal with this virus? Why did they believe that, given that people who are intubated are very likely to die either from the procedure or the secondary bacterial infection that likely followed?
Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force companies to make more ventilators, which they did. Today these are mostly scrap metal, of course, and most hospitals and doctors abandoned the practice once it became clear that it was killing thousands. Why did Trump seize on this whole idea to begin with? Who was advising him and why did it not occur to him to call any one of thousands of people with hands-on specializations in respiratory viruses for a second opinion?
As late as April 30, 2020, Trump was still pushing lockdowns as the solution. He even criticized Sweden for not locking down. As the summer approached and many people violated lockdown orders to protest the George Floyd killing, it seems like Trump began to wonder if he had been hoodwinked.
If Fauci and Birx tricked him into wrecking his presidency and the country, why not just admit that? If he swears that he was right to greenlight lockdowns, why should voters trust that he would not do it again? What does he believe the limits to government power are?
Even as late as July 20, 2020, Trump was still claiming that he would “defeat” the virus, this time with facemasks. “It is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance,” he wrote.
Moving to the fall, Trump wisely allowed himself to be schooled in medical realities by Scott Atlas, who arrived at the White House to talk some sense into the crazy people who were running the show. Trump seems to have been convinced. But meanwhile, the whole country was in ruins with millions of businesses closed, the kids not in school, and the whole population in a state of trauma at the loss of liberty.
There were two months remaining before the November 2020 election. During his campaign stops, he dropped the lockdowns, called for openings, but largely left the subject off the stump speech entirely, as if nothing had ever happened. Going into the election, Covid was largely off the agenda but for the media and Democrats who urged further lockdowns, which they implemented once in power.
Trump should explain what was going through his head during these months. Did he know what was actually going on in the country, how many businesses had been boarded up, how many kids denied in-person education, how many churches were closed, how many families had been broken up with travel restrictions? Further, did he worry that his spending and money-printing policies, plus trillions in stimulus payments, would fuel inflation after he left office?
We still cannot get a fix on how it came to be that the shots were widely mandated on people who never needed them. Nor is there an honest discussion of the resulting job losses, injuries, and deaths that resulted. Did these mandates come about simply because too many Americans thought better than allowing a stranger to inject them with a mystery potion ginned up in a lab and deployed ten times faster than any vaccine in history? Was there an industrial interest in forcing compliance? If so, that’s next-level corruption.
As for masking that all science knew for certain would be ineffective for stopping the spread of a respiratory pathogen, were they merely symbols imposed to scare the public? This is truly dystopian.
Some independent journalists with access to the candidates, and this includes even Biden but certainly also every Republican who expects to earn votes, must get up to speed on the details of this calamity. It is simply unthinkable that this country, born of the ideal of freedom, would have undergone a quiet coup against liberty and the Constitution, and yet there be no serious discussion of what happened, much less reform efforts to restore what we lost.
All of this is more important than January 6, election doubting, or tribal partisan bickering. As curious as these topics are, they are distractions from that which should interest us all: the status of freedom in America and the enforcement of the Bill of Rights. Every day, the censorship continues and every day the plots against the common good are ongoing. The kids are suffering as never before. The economic crisis still surrounds us and can get much worse. All the agencies that did this enjoy more funding than ever before.
We are supposed to live in an age of information. It takes herculean efforts to bring about silence on the most important questions of our time. But thus far, all the major institutions are managing to pull it off. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
It’s been an astonishing couple of days for German judges. Well, “astonishing” if you’ve been living in a cave for the last four years.
Many of you likely already know that satirist and playwright (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins is being prosecuted in Germany for “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,”
Needless to say, the charges are absurd. Insultingly so. You can read CJ’s first-hand account of this nonsense here and here.
Anyone who isn’t a) stupid or b) delusional can plainly see these charges have nothing to do with a stock-image swastika, and everything to do with the content of the book. In short, they are politically motivated charges brought against an author for criticizing the state. The very essence of dystopian tyranny.
He now faces 60 days in prison or a 3600 Euro fine.
That’s case one, and as we say one you are likely familiar with if you’re regular readers.
Something you probably haven’t heard is that, just this morning, a different German court sentenced a former judge to two years in prison.
His crime? Ruling that mask mandates in schools were not constitutional.
The case dates back to April 8th 2021, when Weimar District Family Court judge Christiaan Dettmar ruled that two schools in the district a) could not enforce mask mandates, b) must continue in-person classes and c) could not force pupils to test for “Covid”.
The court case was a child protection case under to § 1666 paragraph 1 and 4 of the German Civil Code (BGB), which a mother had initiated for her two sons, aged 14 and 8 respectively, at the local Family Court. She had argued that her children were being physically, psychologically and pedagogically damaged without any benefit for the children or third parties. At the same time, she claimed this constituted a violation of a range of rights of the children and their parents under the law, the German constitution (Grundgesetz or Basic Law) and international conventions.
After listening to testimony from expert witnesses, the judge ruled in favour of the mother, writing in his verdict:
These are the risks [to mask mandates]. The children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and psychological well-being by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each other and from other persons, but they are also already being harmed. At the same time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the constitution and international conventions.
Two weeks after handing down this ruling, his home and office were raided by the police and his mobile phone was seized.
And now, two years later, he was found guilty of “judicial misconduct” and initially given two years in prison (the court has since suspended the sentence). “Judicial Misconduct”, for simply disagreeing with the government.
Free speech is the first and most vital liberty, without it no one is truly free. An independent judiciary is a must to preserve any kind of justice, judges who simply nod along with government edicts are the building blocks of authoritarian states.
The voice of the people and the power of the courts – ideally – work together to hold the government to account.
And yet, whether in the judiciary or the arts, the German legal system is now a machine for criminalizing and punishing dissent of any kind.
… I’d make a comparison to another German government that used to function in a similar way, but I really can’t afford a 4000 euro fine.
Do the feds want to be ready to censor or even round up doctors who may oppose their next round of heavy-handed “public health” measures?
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I have a black mark in the NPDB despite lack of a completed hearing — the demand for a psych evaluation and temp suspension gave me the black mark.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office tried to “silence” scientists who called into question the effectiveness of the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) policy promoted by the head of the city, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Shirley Rodrigues, the London Mayor’s deputy for environment and energy, told in emails to Imperial College London professor Frank Kelly that she was “really disappointed” by scientists publishing results that cast doubt on the effectiveness of Ulez, the newspaper reported, adding that the corresponding complaint was sent in November 2021.
In particular, Rodrigues said that she was “deeply concerned” about the damage done to the credibility of the Mayor’s office and Ulez. In response, Kelly promised to write a Ulez-friendly report, the report added.
The report stated that since 2021, Kelly’s research group has received over 800,000 pounds ($1.018 million) from the mayor’s office. However, the publication by scientists led to a cooling in their relations with the London city hall. This, in turn, caused the reluctance of representatives of the scientific community to write any new materials about Ulez, the newspaper noted.
The Ulez initiative was first announced by then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2015. Later, Khan launched an initiative that included, among other things, the installation of special traffic signs and cameras. Since 2020, the London authorities have had to spend over 850,000 pounds to rebuild infrastructure for the initiative, which has been repeatedly damaged by vandals.
The four indictments against Trump are ridiculous in their charges. There is no legal basis in law for any of the indictments. Moreover, many of the indictments are violations of Constitutionally protected civil liberties. All the indictments amount to is an assertion that to charge Democrats with fraud in an election is a felony. It is OK to charge Republicans with fraud.
Charges of electoral fraud have accompanied every election cycle in US history whether at the local, state, or national level. Many believe today that John F. Kennedy got to the White House because the Democrat machine in Chicago counted the graveyards. George W. Bush’s election was disputed and had to be settled by the Supreme Court. Never before has it been a crime to dispute an election.
What explains the criminalization of Trump’s dispute of the election? I will suggest a number of reasons. One is that the Democrats know that they cannot win against Trump, and polls show that Biden is so unpopular even with Democrats that they cannot again steal the election. So the Democrats decided to misuse city, county, and federal prosecutors to tie up Trump with four criminal indictments of multiple charges in order (1) hopefully to discredit him in the public eye, and (2) tie him up in court proceedings and trials so that he cannot campaign. Maybe all the stress will kill an old man. Clearly if the Democrats thought they could win, they would not bring shame on themselves and their party and on government in the United States with obviously politically-inspired indictments of the leading candidate for President. Clearly the people do not believe the indictments. A political party that cared about the country would not split the country in half by weaponizing law. But the corrupt Democrats and their Ruling Establishment backers only care about power. America now has an entire political party totally devoid of integrity. Power uber alles is the Democrats only principle.
Another is the incompetence of the prosecutors. Jack Smith is so totally incompetent that he has had to admit mistakes in his filings and has been repeatedly over-ruled by the federal judges overseeing his two phony indictments. In other words, Jack Smith is so thoroughly incompetent that he is unqualified to be a para-legal in a small town. No self-respecting and competent attorney would bring such false charges, especially against an American President.
The two black prosecutors, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, are quota law school grads and quota hires. Once law schools reduced their admission requirements, they had to lower their standards, because if the quota admissions didn’t pass, the law schools would be accused of racism and of creating false hopes. The result is a lower level of competence of all graduates, black and white, male and female.
It is well known that Alvin Bragg cannot explain how a city or state court can try a person on a federal charge, which is his only felony charge. He can’t even explain what the federal charge is.
Fani Willis has 11 charges against trump, all of which are nonsensical and false, especially her racketeering charge under the RICO law put in place to convict the Mafia. Only an incompetent idiot would equate protest of electoral fraud with racketeering. Aside from being nonsensical charges in Trump’s case, fani Willis’ charges to be valid require criminal intent. Fani Willis provides no evidence that Trump harbored criminal intent when he responded to expert evidence of electoral fraud and tried to get the matter investigated prior to Biden being declared the winner. Nowhere in her indictment does Fani Willis provide any evidence of criminal intent or any reason why she thinks criminal intent is involved.
The indictments boil down to this: It is a felony to accuse Democrats of electoral fraud.
Considering how the locations of the trials have been orchestrated, it is highly unlikely that the jury pools will contain one person who is not a Trump-hater. In other words, the Democrats know that the juries they select will convict Trump even if the evidence proves him innocent. The ground has been prepared so that indictment means conviction. The kangaroo convictions will be appealed and eventually might reach an honest court, but the process will take years, thus ensuring Biden a second term.
This is America today. It is far worse than a Banana Republic. We are now presented with four Kafkaesque, Stalinist trials of a President of the United States. If they can do this to a President, a mere citizen has no chance. The corrupt, incompetent trio of Smith, Bragg, and Willis are achieving the destruction of legal integrity and civil liberty in the United States. The result will be social disintegration.
Americans are going to very much regret that they accepted the stolen 2020 presidential election and that they acquiesced in the white liberals’ goal of placing anti-white blacks in power over them.
Pakistani authorities have arrested opposition leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi in a widening crackdown on former prime minister Imran Khan’s party by the military-backed interim government.
Qureshi, who twice served as Pakistan’s foreign minister, was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Saturday in the capital Islamabad shortly after he denounced the newly installed caretaker government for its attempts to delay the elections which are scheduled to be held later this year.
“He was arrested from his residence by Islamabad police. We don’t have any further details yet,” a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
In recent months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting Khan’s PTI party in an attempt to crush his grassroots support, causing nationwide anger against the country’s powerful military, which most people believe is behind the crackdown.
According to several independent surveys, the PTI will win a landslide victory in the next elections if the party is allowed to run a political campaign without restrictions.
PTI spokesman Zulfi Bukhari condemned Qureshi’s arrest on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying the vice chairman of the party was “arrested for doing a press conference and re-affirming PTI stance against all tyranny and pre-poll rigging that is going on currently in Pakistan.”
“PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been illegally arrested once again,” the PTI said in social media post on X.
Qureshi was also arrested on May 11 and released on June 6.
In the meantime, Khan, 70, is currently serving a three-year jail term.
Khan was arrested earlier this month and taken to jail after a court found him guilty in one of the more than dozens of cases he has faced.
The former prime minister has maintained that some 200 cases against him are politically motivated to keep him out of power. He says the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.
The three-year jail sentence issued by a lower court disqualifies him from taking part in elections.
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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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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