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Face Masks Decrease Cognitive Function and Increase Reaction Time, Study Finds

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.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

California Threatens to Defund 600+ Schools Over Low Vaccine Rates

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.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Court Orders Facebook To Comply With Subpoena For Data On All Users That Broke “Covid-19 Misinformation” Rules

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.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

UN Human Rights Chief Criticizes Elon Musk For Pushing Back Against ADL Censorship Demands

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.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Weaponised definition of anti-Semitism is a ‘tool’ to undermine free-speech

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.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech

An overt way of policing speech?

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 14, 2023

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.

The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.

According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”

Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”

In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”

DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”

The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).

And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.

Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.

September 14, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s trans spokesperson vows to ‘hunt down Russian propagandists’

RT | September 14, 2023

A threat to “hunt down” Russian “propagandists” which flagged an action “next week” and was made by a Ukrainian military spokesperson, should not be dismissed just because of its over-the-top presentation, a senior Russian official has argued.

On Wednesday, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, who leads the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces’ purported outreach to English-speaking audiences, made some ominous predictions regarding Russia.

“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes,” she said.

“Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” she pledged.

Ashton-Cirillo, a trans woman who made headlines in the US in 2021 with a story of her infiltration of the American right-wing group Proud Boys, was given the spokesperson position in Ukraine in early August.

Her latest statement is part of her ‘Russia Hates the Truth’ series of minute-long videos, in which she delivers scolding condemnations of Russia.

While many Russian journalists have dismissed the unspecific threat as ridiculous, Valery Fadeev, the chairman of the Russian presidential human rights council, urged national law enforcement to take it seriously. The remark appears to be “a threat of murder or serious bodily harm” and thus a crime under Russian law, he argued on Thursday.

“Considering the lamentable record of attempts on the lives of Russian journalists and public figures … Russian security services should pay attention to it,” he added.

Moscow has accused Kiev of orchestrating the murders of journalist Darya Dugina in August 2022 and of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April this year. In July, the Federal Security Service reported busting a group believed to have intended to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak on Kiev’s behalf.

September 14, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Hungarian left accused of treason for accepting US campaign money to remove Orbán from power

MAGYAR NEMZET | SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

A private Hungarian citizen filed a complaint with both Hungarian police and prosecutorial authorities after a former CIA analyst went public with a statement that the CIA attempted to interfere in the 2022 Hungarian elections and remove Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from power.

Former analyst Larry C. Johnson said in a podcast at the beginning of September, “It is interesting that although in 2016 the Americans were deeply outraged by the alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election campaign, in 2022 we directly interfered in the Hungarian elections, which Viktor Orbán won again.”

Asked whether the CIA intervened to stop Orbán, Johnson, said “Yes, to defeat him, which, among other things, America was trying to achieve by funding Orbán’s opponents.”

Private Hungarian citizen István Tényi wrote to the police and the prosecutor’s office that they should investigate whether the crime of treason could be suspected against Hungarian citizens who, through the Action for Democracy foundation, may have been involved in influencing the parliamentary elections through a foreign government or organization.

Remix News reported on the funding scandal last year, in which Hungary’s leading left-liberal opposition candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, admitted himself in August 2022, during his podcast Gulyáságyú (Goulash Cannon), that his campaign was still receiving funds from the U.S. foundation Action for Democracy. The shadowy group sent HUF 1.8 billion (€4.48 million) in mostly U.S. donations through an NGO with close ties to billionaire oligarch George Soros, officials connected with Hillary Clinton, and a number of leading transatlantic organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations.

Márki-Zay revealed that Action for Democracy, which is headed by Dávid Korányi, a former adviser to Gergely Karácsony, sent the money in one batch, but he claimed that other transfers had also come from this organization in the past.

Since then, a new declassified intelligence document has come to light, revealing that there is not one but two major foreign donors to the “dollar left,” which is the term increasingly used within the Hungarian media. In addition to the American Action for Democracy, a Swiss foundation has also transferred nearly HUF 1 billion. The Swiss transfers were made in five installments from the beginning of the left-wing primaries, between September 2021 and February 2022.

Open investigations have also been launched in the above cases, with the police investigating the misuse of personal data and the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) looking into budget fraud. The National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) launched an investigation into money laundering and embezzlement as well, which has since been taken over by the tax authorities.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Enrique Tarrio: Feds Tried to ‘Coerce Me’ into Implicating Donald Trump

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 13, 2023

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating former President Donald Trump in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Tarrio to a record-high 22 years in prison despite not being in Washington, DC, on January 6.

“I don’t know what instructions I would give somebody at that point … I’m not speaking. I have no function. So there was no communication,” Tarrio said in a phone interview with the Washington Post.

Tarrio revealed that federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating Trump during a phone interview from the D.C. jail.

“I was looking and seeking what the plea offer would look like, right?” Tarrio told the Washington Post. “They didn’t want to give me a number. I need a number. To me, the most important thing is when I get home to my family.”

As the Post reported:

Instead, Tarrio said, the prosecutors asked him what role then-President Donald Trump played in getting the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. He said the prosecutors, accompanied by FBI agents in the Miami jail where Tarrio was being held at the time, showed him messages that he exchanged with a second person, who in turn was connected to a third person who was connected to Trump. Tarrio said he told the investigators that he didn’t know the third person. He refused to name the people who prosecutors said allegedly connected him to Trump.

“They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio continued. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.”

Tarrio said, “there was never an open-ended question after” federal prosecutors tried to implicate Trump.

The Post further detailed:

Tarrio said prosecutors in Miami last fall did not ask him about Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who was an acquaintance of Tarrio’s, or Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” rally. He said the federal visitors did not ask him questions about his knowledge of Jan. 6 beyond the theorized connection to Trump. “There was never an open-ended question after that,” Tarrio said.

Prosecutors did later offer Tarrio a deal: nine to 11 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, according to court records. Tarrio declined.

Read more

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

David v. Goliath in New York

Brownstone Institute | September 12, 2023

There is a battle going on for our freedoms this week. And very few Americans are even aware of what is at stake.

New York attorney Bobbie Anne Cox single-handedly goes up against the State of New York this week, after the state appealed a New York State Supreme Court ruling that a so-called “quarantine camp” regulation (“Isolation and Quarantine Procedures”) issued by Governor Kathy Hochul was unconstitutional.

The order concerns quarantine of citizens by the state government. Like other states, New York already has in place laws regarding quarantine of the citizenry – laws duly passed by the elected state representatives. Those laws were crafted by legislators (whose job it is to do this work) and passed by a majority vote of both Assembly and Senate and signed by the governor. That law not only provides for protecting the public by use of quarantine, but also includes protections for individual rights.

There are problems with the governor’s action.

  • The executive branch does not have the power to make laws under the constitution. That is reserved to the legislature.
  • With one state executive branch taking power not given to them constitutionally, it creates a precedent that could be used similarly for other issues to violate the rights of citizens on a host of other issues – not only in New York, but in all the other states as well.

So, what is in this regulation, you ask? It has to do with quarantine of the citizenry. There is a history of government-mandated quarantine during times of epidemics in our country. Whether or not the existing laws have been misused against individuals is another debate (see the case of Typhoid Mary, for example, who was imprisoned for more than 23 years under the quarantine law of the time).

This governor’s regulation puts the power at the highest levels of the state government – centrally controlled. The governor’s regulation not only circumvents the legislature’s power and responsibility to enact appropriate laws for the citizenry, but it also takes that power beyond the local level, where it can most appropriately be considered, and completely fails to protect the rights of the individuals against misuse or mis-application by the state officials.

In this regulation, there is no requirement for the state government to prove that the targeted individual is infected, has been exposed to an infectious disease, or poses any actual risk to his/her fellow citizens. The application of the regulation is broad – not just limited to Covid cases. There is no limit regarding the age or medical condition of the individual (it could be imposed on a child or a very elderly person), and there is nothing specified as to the duration of the quarantine, or how that duration would be determined. Most concerning: there is no mechanism provided for the individual to be released.

During the initial court case, it was clearly stated that the only possible mechanism for release was for that individual to sue the state, unless the state officials decided to lift it of their own accord.

Under the provisions of the governor’s regulation, the state government can use law enforcement to forcibly remove citizens from their homes or businesses against their will to place them in unspecified quarantine locations for an indeterminate period with no mechanism for release!

This terrible infringement on citizens’ rights, however, doesn’t stop here. It sets a precedent for more executive branch overreach. If it is not overturned in the appellate court, it will embolden other governors to make more forays into the realm of executive usurpation of the legislative branch of government (see the recent NM Governor’s action to remove 2nd Amendment rights by executive order).

There is no doubt that those who take this type of executive action (Lujan Grisham in New Mexico and Hochul in New York) know that this is outside their scope of power within our governmental system. They also know that, until someone files a lawsuit and prevails against them, they have a period of time when these executive regulations and orders will be in place.

It is essential that the appeals court upholds the ruling in the case of this regulation by Governor Hochul – for the good of all the people of New York, but also for all of us in other states.

This passionate, articulate, brilliant lawyer is fighting for all of us.

And Bobbie Anne Cox has suffered for it. She has set aside her normal legal practice to pursue this effort and has been focusing solely on this case for an extended period. She has sacrificed valuable time with her family, spending countless hours in the maze of motions, filings, dockets, scheduling, and research that are part and parcel of the legal system with all its complexities.  The work has been arduous, solitary, and, to some extent, thankless. If she wins the appeal, there is no financial benefit to her or any of the plaintiffs that will be realized.

She has no large staff of paralegals and junior attorneys assisting her to put this case together. She has not had assistance from her other colleagues in New York in fighting this battle.

And, because it has to do with complexities of the legal system, it gets little coverage in the media. Perhaps it is so difficult to imagine just why a state government even wants this type of power over the citizenry, that people find it very hard to grasp that it is really just what Bobbie Anne describes in terms of the potential abuse of individual rights.

No public outcry has occurred. No groundswell of support for her work has happened. And while many are supportive of the great work she has done and were so relieved when she won the case initially, the vast majority of people who stand to benefit from her work will never know they owe her a debt of gratitude.

On Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 10:00 am EST (at the courthouse in Rochester, NY, located at 50 East Avenue), Bobbie Anne Cox goes forth as a sort of David to meet Goliath, depending on her knowledge of the law rather than a slingshot and stones. She is relying on the New York panel of judges to truly prove that there still exists blind justice in New York.

The merits of her case are clear – even to people not that familiar with the law. Basic Civics shows us the correctness of her contention. This is not a partisan issue. While she is representing Republican plaintiffs, she is not one herself.

If you are able to support her by physically attending the hearing, do so. Perhaps by your presence you can be a silent reminder to the court that New Yorkers are interested in this and are supportive of her efforts.

If you cannot be there in person, consider watching the oral arguments live on the court’s website at: https://ad4.nycourts.gov/go/live/. Please also keep her and the court judges in your thoughts and prayers and share this information with your circle of friends and colleagues.

May she prevail.

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

Biden’s Department of Education Is Investigating Christopher Rufo For “Misgendering”

Listed among many allegations

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 11, 2023

The Department of Education, under President Joe Biden’s administration, is wielding its influence against Christopher Rufo, a conservative advocate and the New College of Florida.

Allegedly, the civil liberty offenses committed by Rufo include the “misgendering” of certain individuals and the closing down of the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) division within the school.

…

Screenshots of Rufo’s posts were used as evidence.

The allegations began unfolding on social media, where Rufo publicized the supposed evidence used against him. Among the charges was the allegation that Rufo had addressed the former head of the school’s DEI, Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, as “she” or “her.” Noteworthy is that Rosario-Hernandez, a biological woman, chooses the pronouns “ze/zir.”

Moreover, Rufo is accused of referring to a student, who prefers to be called “they/them,” as “her.”

Chiming in on this development, Rufo intensified the debate by posting, “President Biden’s Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into New College of Florida, following a complaint that, in part, alleged that I ‘misgendered’ the college’s former DEI director, who uses ‘ze/zir’ pseudo-pronouns. This is madness.”

The complaint further extends to accuse Rufo of violating civil rights by withdrawing funding from the DEI department and the Gender Studies Program. As per the Department of Education’s guidelines, the gravity of the situation could escalate, assuming it substantiates the claim and the accused parties choose to disregard any determined ruling — escalating into a potential implication with the Department of Justice.

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Trump charges are political persecution – Putin

RT | September 12, 2023

The numerous criminal charges against former US President Donald Trump amount to persecution and showcase the “rot” in the American political system, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated.

The US in its current state “cannot claim the right to teach others democracy,” the Russian leader said on Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

“The things that are happening to Trump are persecution of a political competitor… That is what it is. And it is done in the full view of the US public and the entire world,” he added.

The controversy is beneficial to Russia in the sense that it “exposes” Washington ”for what it is,” according to Putin. The US government chose to be hostile to Moscow and has propagandized its population into perceiving it as such, he argued.

“[The US] demonstrates what they called in Soviet times ‘the bestial scowl of imperialism’,” he joked.

Moscow does not expect any substantial change in US foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia, regardless of who takes the White House after next year’s election, the president said.

“[Trump] was accused of having a special relation with Russia, which is total nonsense and bulls**t. But he was the president who introduced the most sanctions against Russia,” Putin noted.

The American elites predominantly perceive Russia as an existential enemy, Putin believes. The country also has friends in the US, who want good relations and share Russia’s views on traditional values, the president added, but those voices are being suppressed.

Since leaving office, Trump has been charged with numerous crimes at both the federal and state level, ranging from election tampering to inciting the January 6 Capitol riot to financial improprieties.

The businessman-turned-politician, who is considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for presidency, has said that his legal woes amount to a “witch hunt” by his opponents.

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

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