The Administrative State Moves To Show Who’s Boss On Energy Policy
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 08, 2022
Last Thursday, June 30, the Supreme Court issued its decision in West Virginia v. EPA, holding that, absent a further explicit statute from the Congress, the EPA did not have the authority to orchestrate its planned fundamental restructuring of the electric power generation sector of the economy. More generally, the Supreme Court stated that in cases involving “major questions,” including regulations that affect large portions of the economy, the government must demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” to support a sweeping effort to regulate.
Do you think that such a Supreme Court decision might cause the various regulatory bureaucracies to slow down and reconsider a little before plowing ahead with other dubious plans for fundamental economic restructurings? That’s not how these bureaucracies work. And such is most particularly the case with regard to regulators of the energy sector, sometimes known as “climate change” arena, where the bureaucrats are burning with a righteous religious fervor that they believe entitles them to cast the evil sinners into the fires of hell.
And thus, contemporaneous with the Supreme Court’s decision, several agencies promptly doubled down on efforts to strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory restrictions, essentially daring the courts or anyone else to stop them. Thousands of pages of statutes give them thousands of arguments to claim they have the “clear congressional authorization,” any one of which arguments might stick. They are now out to show who’s boss.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan wasted no time in getting a statement out on the afternoon of June 30. Excerpt:
[W]e are committed to using the full scope of EPA’s authorities to protect communities and reduce the pollution that is driving climate change. . . . EPA will move forward with lawfully setting and implementing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm.
In other words, we will just have to find other ways to implement the restrictions that we want to implement. The very next day, July 1, David Blackmon at Forbes reported that “EPA Targets Permian Basin, Widening Biden’s War On Oil And Gas.” The Permian Basin is currently the most productive oil and gas region in the United States, providing about 40% of the oil production and 15% of the gas of the entire country. The Permian Basin is also the site of about 40% of the nation’s active drilling rigs. And so it seems that EPA is gearing up to declare the Permian Basin a so-called “non-attainment area” with respect to ozone. Blackmon:
[T]he Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced [this week that] it may soon issue a ruling declaring that vast parts of the Permian Basin are in “non-attainment” status under the agency’s ozone regulations. If such a declaration is made, it will constitute a direct governmental assault on what is by far America’s most active and productive oil-producing region and its second most-productive natural gas area.
What would be the effect of such a declaration on current and future U.S. domestic oil and gas production? Blackmon again:
Placing the Permian Basin in non-attainment status would force a significant reduction in the region’s rig count, severely limiting the domestic industry’s efforts to increase U.S. oil production at a time when the global oil market is already severely under-supplied.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott promptly called on the Biden Administration to back off, saying that an EPA “non-attainment declaration “could interfere in the production of oil in Texas which could lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump by reducing production, increase the cost of that production, or do both.” But Blackmon notes that the plan comes from an office headed by a Biden-appointed anti-fossil-fuel activist, and thus is likely a core element of the administration’s program:
Mr. Biden appointed Joe Goffman, another of the many anti-fossil fuel activists that now hold senior posts at his various agencies, to head up EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation on an acting basis. That appointment might have been made with this specific policy action in mind.
Meanwhile, over at the Interior Department, July 1 was also the day for issuance of a statutorily-mandated five-year off-shore oil and gas leasing plan. Nicholas Groom at Reuters has a summary here. The bottom line is, we’re going to completely shut down leasing off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but maybe we’ll allow a little in the Gulf of Mexico or the Cook Inlet (Alaska). The number of auctions over the five-year period will be in the range of “zero to eleven,” and supposedly we’ll take public input as to which way to go. But Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement left no doubt as to where she wants and expects this to come out:
“From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy,” Haaland said in a statement. “Today, we put forward an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing. The time for the public to weigh in on our future is now.”
There is a 90 day period for public comment. You can be sure that environmental activist groups will flood the zone with thousands of comments to support the approach of the “zero” option of ceasing all further off-shore leases.
Other agencies were eerily silent in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision. Notable among those were the SEC and the Federal Reserve, both of which have recently ventured into adding “climate change” to their missions with only the most questionable of statutory support. Neither has given any indication of an intention to slow down.
And then on July 2, President Biden issued his now-famous tweet blaming the rising price of gas at the pump on gas station owners:
My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.
A bureaucracy-wide campaign is ongoing under this guy’s direction to suppress oil and gas production in any way they can think of, and yet he has the gall to blame high prices on “companies running gas stations,” the majority of which are small independent businesses. At this point Biden has become malicious.
WHO Wants To Run the World?
By Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster, Michael Baker | Brownstone Institute | July 11, 2022
In Geneva in late May at the 75th meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), amendments to its International Health Regulations (IHRs) were debated and voted upon. If passed, they would grant the WHO the right to exert unconscionable pressure on countries to accept the WHO’s authority and health policy actions if the WHO decides that there is a public health threat that might spread beyond a country’s borders.
As Ramesh Thakur, the second man at the UN for years, noted, the amendments would mean “the rise of an international bureaucracy whose defining purpose, existence, powers and budgets will depend on outbreaks of pandemics, the more the better.”
This is the first clear instance of a globalist coup attempt. It would subvert national sovereignty worldwide by putting real power into the hands of an international group of bureaucrats. It has long been suspected that the authoritarian elites arisen during covid times would try to strengthen their positions by undermining nation states, and the this 75th jamboree is the first solid evidence of this being true.
What an opportunity then to see who is in the conspiring club. Who drafted the amendments? What was in them? Which individuals supported them or spoke out against them?
WHO were the conspirators?
The amendments on the table at the May WHA meeting had been transmitted to the WHO by the US Department of Health and Human Services on January 18, circulated by WHO to its member states (‘States Parties’) on January 20 and formally introduced to the WHA on April 12.
The proposals, according to an announcement on January 26, were co-sponsored by 19 countries plus the European Union. Even if some co-sponsors had little direct involvement in drafting them, they all would have approved in principle the overarching goal of tightening up the WHO’s authority over member states in the face of a public health event.
Loyce Pace, the HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs – the leading US official nominally responsible for the proposed amendments – arrived at the Biden administration fresh from a stint as executive director of an advocacy organization called the Global Health Council.
That council receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its members include Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Abbott Labs, and Johnson & Johnson. You get the idea. Via one of the foxes-turned-chicken-guard, it appears the HHS ‘worked closely’ on these amendments with large pharmaceutical companies, who will be chomping at the bit for a more proactive (read: profitable) response to any public health emergency, real or imagined.
So the conspiring club consists primarily of the US government and its Western allies in lockstep with Big Pharma, and they are looking to undermine both the sovereignty of their own governments and that of other countries, presumably with the idea that the Western elites would do the running.
What was in them? A blizzard of acronyms and euphemisms
To understand what the US proposed at the WHA, we need first to understand how things have worked in the WHO to this point.
The IHRs in their current form have been in force as international law since June 2007. Among other things, they impose requirements on countries to detect, report and respond to ‘public health events of international concern,’ or PHEICs. The WHO Director-General consults with the state where a possible public health event has occurred, and within 48 hours they are meant to come to a mutual agreement on whether or not it actually is a PHEIC, whether or not it needs to be announced to the world as such, and what counter-measures, if any, should be taken. It’s essentially an early-warning system on major health crises. This is a good thing if it’s run by people you can trust and if it has checks and balances to rein in expansionary tendencies.
The proposed amendments would greatly strengthen the power of the WHO relative to this baseline, in a number of ways.
First, they lower the threshold for the WHO to declare a public health emergency by empowering its Regional Directors to declare a ‘public health event of regional concern’ (PHERC, italics ours) and for the WHO to put out a new thing called an ‘intermediate public health alert.’
Second, they permit the WHO to consider allegations about a public health event from non-official sources, meaning sources other than the government of the state concerned, and allow that government only 24 hours to confirm the allegations and a further 24 hours to accept the WHO’s offer of ‘collaboration.’
Collaboration is essentially a euphemism for on-site assessment by teams of WHO investigators, and concomitant pressure at the whim of WHO personnel to enact potentially far-reaching measures such as lockdowns, movement restrictions, school closures, consumption of medicines, administration of vaccines and any or all of the other social, economic, and health paraphernalia that we have come to associate with the covid circus.
Should the state’s government acceptance of the WHO’s ‘offer’ not be forthcoming, the WHO is empowered to disclose the information it has to the other 194 WHO countries, while continuing to pressure the state to yield to the WHO’s invitation to ‘collaborate.’ A non-collaborating country would risk becoming a pariah.
Third, the proposal includes a new Chapter IV, which would establish a ‘Compliance Committee’ consisting of six government-appointed experts from each WHO region tasked with permanently nosing around to ensure the member states are complying with IHR regulations.
There are more crossings-out of the existing IHR language and new language added in, but the flavour of what the US-led alliance is shooting for is a WHO that can unilaterally decide whether there is a problem and what to do about it, and can isolate countries that disagree.
Compliant WHO member states could act as a supporting cast in the isolation effort, through the distribution of their own health budgets and their ‘health-related’ policies, which would include travel and trade restrictions. The WHO would become a kind of command-and-control center for globalist agendas, pushing the produce of (Western) Big Pharma.
Why and how would this work?
We learned during covid times why it would make sense that the US and its allies are insisting on these amendments.
Lowering the bar for declaring a global (or regional) public health threat triggers a huge opportunity for Western pharmaceutical companies. As legal experts have observed: “WHO emergency declarations can trigger the fast-track development and subsequent global distribution and administration of unlicensed investigational diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.
This is done via the WHO’s Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EULP). The introduction of an ‘intermediate public health alert’ in particular will also further incentivise the pharmaceutical industry’s move to activate domestic fast-track emergency trial protocols as well as for advance purchase, production and stockpile agreements with governments before the existence of a concrete health threat to the world’s population has been detected, as is already the case under WHO’s EULP via the procedures developed for a ‘pre-public health emergency phase’.”
You can bet that the WHO ‘expert teams’ sent in to make on-the-ground assessments, under the banner of ‘collaboration’ with the host country experiencing the health event, will be chock-a-block with operatives from the CDC and who knows what other Western agencies, all poking around potentially sensitive facilities that a host government might justifiably claim a sovereign right to keep to itself. Likewise with the ‘Compliance Committee’ proposed by the US under the new Chapter IV of the IHRs: its government-appointed members have an open-ended brief, enshrined in international law, to be busybodies.
In layman’s terms, the WHO would be turned into an international thug, with its member states offered the role of backyard gang members.
As a bonus for Western elites, the proposals are a sneaky form of rewriting history. By cementing authority within an international organisation to determine the existence of public health crises and direct potentially draconian emergency responses, Western governments would get to enshrine and legitimise their own extreme responses to the covid outbreak, as we have pointed out previously. Their backsides would thereby be given some protection from legal challenges.
The refusniks: Developing countries
The proposals were pushed primarily by Western countries: the US was joined by Australia, the UK and the EU in arguing for passage. The resistance was led by developing countries who saw it as a colonialist ambush in which their ability to set policy and respond to health threats in a manner commensurate with their domestic situations would be overridden.
Brazil reportedly went so far as to threaten to withdraw from the WHO, and the African group of almost 50 countries, along with India, argued that the amendments were being rushed through without adequate consultation. Russia, China and Iran also objected.
Failure on the first try, but the US and its allies in the West will get more shots to push it through.
How do we expect them to do this? Well, when a proposal gets bogged down inside a giant bureaucratic machine like the WHO, the inevitable response is to set up committees to work in the background and circle back with a new set of proposals to be presented at a future meeting. True to form, a ‘working group’ and ‘expert committee’ are being assembled to accept member state proposals on IHR reform by the end of September this year. These will be ‘sifted through’ and reports will be prepared for review by the WHO’s executive board in January next year. The objective is to have a fresh set of proposals on the table when the WHA convenes for the 77th time in 2024.
Not all was lost
Salvaging something from the fact that the WHA failed to get a consensus around its biggest agenda item, the US and its allies got a small victory on the point of when they can try again – though in their desperation they needed to violate the IHRs’ own rules to accomplish it. Article 55 of the IHRs states unambiguously that a four-month notice period is required for any amendments.
In this instance, revised amendments were presented on May 24, the same day that the first lot were rejected. These were discussed, further amended on May 27 and then adopted on the same day. The approved amendments halve the two-year period for any (further) approved amendments to the IHRs to take effect. (The IHRs that came into force in 2007 were agreed to in 2005 – but under the new resolution, anything agreed to in 2024 would come into effect in 2025 rather than 2026.)
Yet, what was achieved in terms of fast-tracking the force of new amendments was lost in slow-tracking their implementation. Nations would have up to 12 months – double the previous suggestion of six months – to implement any IHR amendments that newly enter into force of law.
State of play
Where is all this going?
If the WHO takes the reins on decisions about what constitutes a health crisis, and can pressure every country into a one-size-fits-all set of responses that it, the WHO, also determines, that’s bad enough. But what about if its invitation to ‘collaborate’ with countries is backed up with teeth, such as sanctions against those who demur? And what about if it then broadens the definition of ‘public health’ by, for example, declaring that climate change falls under that definition? Or racism? Or discrimination against LBTQIA+ people? The possibilities thereby opened up for running the world are endless.
A global ‘health’ empire would bring huge harms to humanity, but a lot of power and money is pushing for it. Don’t think it can’t happen.
Paul Frijters is a Professor of Wellbeing Economics at the London School of Economics: from 2016 through November 2019 at the Center for Economic Performance, thereafter at the Department of Social Policy
Canada’s Heritage Minister panel: unregulated speech “erodes the foundations of democracy”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2022
According to the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, “misleading political communications” should be regulated because unregulated political disinformation and discussion “erodes the foundations of democracy.”
Rodriguez has insisted multiple times that censorship bill, Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, would not regulate user-generated content.
“We made it very clear in the Online Streaming Act that this does not apply to what individual Canadians and creators post online,” said Rodriguez. “No users, no online creators will be regulated. Only the companies themselves will have new responsibilities.”
However, that claim has been contradicted by the Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety that he appointed. Online platforms would have to regulate based on the speech of its users.
“[Section] 4.2 allows the CRTC to prescribe by regulation user uploaded content subject to very explicit criteria. That is also in the Act,” said chair of CRTC Ian Scott in June 2022.
The same comments have been previously repeated severally by the Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety, whose role is to propose measures of regulating online content that it considers harmful, including, but not limited to “propaganda, false advertising and misleading political communications.”
Content that would be regulated includes Facebook posts, private Twitter DMs, Amazon listings, video games, and even listings on Airbnb.
“Many experts mentioned there is justification to look more widely at some interactive services like Airbnb and gaming platforms,” members of the group proposed in one meeting.
“Many experts supported the notion that private communications should be included under the scope of the legislative framework. Private messaging services should also be regulated.”
The advisory group also proposed the regulation of legal content, noting that legal but harmful content “poses unique challenges” and “it is difficult to reconcile the issue of disinformation with the freedom of expression.”
The Online Streaming Act passed in the House last month and is currently in the Senate.
U.S. Drug-War Hypocrisy in Russia
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 11, 2022
The drug-war hypocrisy of President Biden and the mainstream press are on full display in Russia, specifically in the case of Brittney Griner, the renowned W.N.B.A. basketball star. Griner was caught with a small amount of hashish oil in her luggage upon arriving in Russia to play for a Russian basketball team during the offseason. She has been detained by Russian authorities for drug-war violations since February 17 of this year. She faces a possible 10-year jail sentence.
Imbued with their extreme anti-Russia animus, Biden and the mainstream press have gone ballistic, accusing Russian authorities of illegitimately detaining Griner. They have been maintaining that Russian authorities should release her immediately and permit her to return to the United States without any further delay.
For example, here is an editorial from the Los Angeles Times entitled “Free Brittney Griner,” in which the Times writes, “We don’t know if Griner brought contraband into Russia or if she’s being framed by an adversarial government with an unjust legal system. At this point, it really doesn’t matter. This punishment does not fit the alleged crime, and it’s clear that Griner is essentially a political hostage. She must be freed.”
Consider this op-ed in the New York Times in which a Times sports columnist named Kurt Streeter repeatedly repeats the phrase “141 days,” to depict what he considers to be an excessively long period of time for Griner to be held on drug charges.
Meanwhile, after these pieces were written, Griner decided to plead guilty to the charges. So far, there is no allegation by either newspaper that the Russians forced her to plead guilty.
For his part, Biden is steadfastly maintaining that despite Griner’s guilty plea, the Russians are still holding Griner illegitimately. Unfortunately, he failed to provide any explanation for his reasoning, most likely because he doesn’t have one. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed this when she stated, “We believe that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Brittney Griner, and she is in intolerable circumstances right now. We are going to do everything that we can — the president has this top of mind — to make sure that we get Brittney home safely.”
Of course, there is one great big elephant in the room that none of these people dares to confront and address: drug laws. Russia has drug laws, just like the United States does.
Now, think about that: Russia is an authoritarian state, one that has drug laws as part of its legal structure. In fact, think about China, a totalitarian communist state, one that also has drug laws as part of its system.
Given such, what does that say about the United States, given that it too has drug laws as part of its system. In fact, both the federal government and the state governments have brutally enforced drug laws for decades, as thousands of people who have been prosecuted and incarcerated can attest.
Streeter laments, repeatedly, that Griner has been in jail for “141 days.” Sure, three months is a long time, given that no one should should ever be detained at all for possessing drugs. But what Streeter omits from his lamentations is that 141 days is nothing compared to the years-long and decades-long jail sentences that American citizens have received at the hands of not the Russians but rather at the hands of their very own government officials — just for possessing or distributing drugs.
Just a few weeks ago, a festival organized by a group called the Rainbow Family was held in a national forest in Colorado. A U.S. magistrate popped in and opened up a makeshift courtroom in the middle of the forest. And guess why he did that. So that he could arraign people who were charged with possession of marijuana and other minor offenses. You can catch a photograph of this guy in this Washington Post article. He is quoted as saying, “Have you ever been in a more beautiful courtroom?”
It’s worth noting that Griner is black. Why is that important? Because it helps to remind us of the racist nature of America’s drug laws. The people who are serving the longest jail sentences here in the United States for drug-war violations are black. In fact, America’s drug war is without a doubt the most racist government program since segregation.
The Wall Street Journal, citing NORML, states that Griner’s possession of a small quantity of hashish oil would have been legal in Arizona and 18 other states. That’s only partially true. It’s legal under state law, but not federal law. The federal government continues to make possession of illicit drugs, including marijuana and hashish oil, illegal in every state, just as Russia does.
There is, of course, another lesson to be learned here. The more that the Pentagon, by itself or through NATO, incites foreign crises or creates official enemies in order to justify the continuation of its massive and ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess, it makes it much more unsafe for Americans to travel overseas.
Brittney Griner’s arrest and detention for drug-war violations in Russia puts a needed mirror on America’s war on drugs. The best thing U.S. officials could do to help others around the world who are victimized for drug-war violations is by ending its own drug-war tyranny here at home. That means legalization of all drugs, both at the federal and state levels. It also means immediately releasing every person from every state and federal prison who has been incarcerated for a non-violent drug offense. It’s always best to lead by example, as compared to engaging in hypocritical tirades against foreign regimes that are enforcing the same drug-war tyranny that U.S. officials are enforcing here at home.
Justin Trudeau’s opponent would ban ministers from attending WEF
Free West Media | July 10, 2022
Pierre Poilievre, who will be running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada later this year, said at a meeting in Calgary that he would ban ministers from attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland sits on the WEF’s Supervisory Board. Shadow Minister of Natural Resources Michelle Rempel Garner can also be found on the organisation’s website. She denied in an article that Canada was run by the WEF.
Earlier, WEF chief Klaus Schwab had boasted however that more than half of the Canadian cabinet was made up of Young Global Leaders of the WEF.
Poilievre thus indicated that he wanted to take Canada in a completely different direction. He is planning to take on Trudeau in the next election and defeat him.
“I have made it clear that I will ban my ministers in my cabinet from attending the World Economic Forum if I become prime minister,” he said at an earlier meeting. “Work for Canada. If you want to go to Davos, to that conference, buy a single ticket. You cannot be part of our government and pursue a policy agenda that is not in line with the interests of our people.”
Poilievre is running in the 2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election and is considered to be the frontrunner. He has supported those in the Canada convoy protest against vacccine mandates who were protesting peacefully and said the federal government had abused its power by invoking the Emergencies Act during the protest and proposed limiting its power and use to prevent it from being used similarly in the future.
Poilievre demonstrated his support for army reservist James Topp’s anti-mandate protest walk from Vancouver to their planned Canada Day freedom protest on Parliament Hill, by joining Topp, Paul Alexander, Tom Marazzo, a self-declared spokesperson for the Canada convoy protest and an ex-military officer, on June 30, 2022 in the final stage of Topp’s march to Ottawa.
Joe Biden and Other Politicians, not Coronavirus, Caused Children’s Educations to Suffer

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 7, 2022
President Joe Biden declared Tuesday at Twitter: “Due to the pandemic, kids are behind in math and reading.” This is yet another example of politicians’ blame shifting we have seen throughout the coronavirus scare. Kids in America have fallen behind in their educations during the coronavirus scare, but not because of coronavirus. They have fallen behind because of coronavirus crackdown actions supported by Biden and many other politicians in the name of protecting students, teachers, and staff at schools from coronavirus that did not improve safety but did interfere with students’ ability to learn.
Since early on in the coronavirus scare it was known that children tended to be in miniscule danger from serious sickness or death from coronavirus. It was also known that, at schools, teachers and other adults tended not to get coronavirus from students. Yet, most American politicians with control over education policy did not say that “for the children” schools would be kept open and continue operating normally, something that was done in other countries and a few places in America without problems. Instead, as politicians are apt to do, they used the “for the children” plea as an excuse to wreak havoc. They shut down schools, then replaced them to some extent with dysfunctional attempts at virtual education, and ultimately reopened the schools in an absurd and menacing manner.
Many schools, when they finally reopened, had all kinds of mandates that made the schools insufferable. The mandates, while failing to protect people from coronavirus, did carry health dangers of their own. Mask mandates, obsessive disinfecting of surfaces at schools and even of children’s hands, enforcement of “social distancing,” the presence of ubiquitous plastic barriers separating people, coronavirus testing, and pressure or even mandates for students to take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots were among the nasty changes confronting students at their “new normal” schools. Students found themselves trudging through a real life version of a dystopian novel.
No wonder students’ learning suffered through the coronavirus scare. Learning was not high on the priority list of many politicians rushing to exercise their new powers. And, due to government pressure and bad choices by people in charge, the situation was similarly awful at many private schools as at government schools.
Fortunately, this dark cloud of politicians harming student’s educations in the name of countering coronavirus does have a silver lining, though only for a small subset of students. “Enough is enough,” decided some parents along the way of witnessing the school closures, the dysfunctional virtual learning efforts implemented to replace regular school, and the dystopian “new normal” schools that ultimately came into being. These parents took their children’s educations into their own hands, moving their children to homeschooling. The result is that many more children now than before the coronavirus scare are free from the politicians’ harmful meddling, whether undertaken in the name of protecting children from phantom coronavirus danger or accomplishing other objectives at variance with advancing the math and reading skills Biden mentioned at Twitter. It is a safe bet that most of these new homeschooling parents will do a much better job than the schools they left behind at making sure their children’s educations serve their children’s needs and interests.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute
UK’s Online Safety Bill Shields Mainstream Media & Axes Alternative News Under Guise of Press Freedom
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – July 8, 2022
The British government has tabled an amendment to the Online Safety Bill seeking to prevent social media giants from taking down mainstream news without an appeal process. While London is declaring this to be a further boost to journalism protections, this new safety net is not meant to be applied on alternative media sources.
“Social media is now the main source of information about the world for 16-24-year-olds, and for all ethnic minorities in the UK,” explained Ellis Cashmore, honorary professor of sociology at Aston University in the UK.
“Yet platform moderators have practically unrestricted power to edit, and, if they wish, remove content. This is an unheard-of censorial power. I can’t think that, in history, proprietors have ever had such colossal power to control the flow and content of information, not just to one population, but to the world.”
The Online Safety Bill was first introduced in the British Parliament in March 2022 with the aim of holding social media platforms, search engines and various websites to account for hosting illegal activities or spreading harmful content.
The newly introduced amendment is “designed to guard against the arbitrary removal of articles from journalists at recognized news outlets when shared on social media platforms,” according to the UK government’s website. The authors of the amendment draw attention to the fact that half of British adults use social media for news, with Facebook*, Twitter and Instagram* being the most popular platforms. When it comes to 16-24 year-olds, the internet is the most-used platform.
Once the bill comes into force, social media giants would be required “to ensure recognized news publishers’ articles remain viewable and accessible on their sites even if they are under review by moderators.”
The introduction of the new amendment can be explained by the fact that the tech giants have proved themselves impossible to control, the professor explained.
“Tech companies operate in a relatively unrestricted way and governments around the world usually rely on the companies’ goodwill,” he said.
Still, the new amendment is focused on so-called “category one companies”, which include “the largest and most popular social media platforms”, and is not designed to shield alternative media sources.
The bill’s selective approach has been manifested by its earlier amendment obligating social media platforms “to proactively look for and remove disinformation from foreign state actors which harm the UK.” It specifically singles out Russian news, with an obvious reference to Sputnik News and RT – both presently banned by the EU and social media giants after the beginning of the Russian special operation to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
“Freedom of speech and expression are highly valued principles in western Europe and North America,” says Cashmore. “But it is interesting that, after the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, there were no protests at the decisions of western governments to prohibit broadcasts and news supplies from RT, Sputnik and maybe a few less important news outlets.”
The professor notes that wiping Russian news from the media sphere is senseless given that many westerners are interested in learning Russian perspectives. “This does not mean they would be persuaded or even influenced, but they feel entitled to make up their own minds independently. They have been denied that facility,” Cashmore stressed.
“Since February, Russia, its people and its values have been condemned, denounced and stigmatized,” said the professor. “Vladimir Putin has been personally vilified. It is difficult to see this ending, at least not for 30 years. Russia has been excluded from many world affairs and many believe Russia and the other BRICS countries may coalesce into an international configuration to rival NATO. This would become a new world order.”
Meanwhile, the bill’s amendments have raised concerns among British campaigners who are warning the government that in its current form the proposed internet safety laws are “on the verge of being unworkable,” according to The Independent.
In particular, campaigners have advocated for a number of measures to strengthen freedom of expression and rights safeguards to better protect people from marginalized backgrounds and expand transparency requirements on firms to boost access to data for researchers and academics.
*Facebook and Instagram are banned in Russia over extremist activities.
Stop the War on Doctors
My Rather Public Reply To The Threat Made Against Me By The American Board Of Internal Medicine
By Pierre Kory | July 2, 2022
Anyone in America who deviates from the group-think enforced by public health bureaucrats runs the risk of cancellation. Politicians, parents, comedians, teachers – now they’re even coming for the doctors.
As a lung and ICU specialist, I have practiced medicine for 14 years and successfully treated more than 450 patients during the pandemic. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, I was studying and implementing cutting-edge methods to treat critically ill patients. I’m the Senior Editor of a best-selling textbook in my field, now in its second edition, which has been translated into seven languages.
For my efforts, I now find myself on the receiving end of “disciplinary sanctions” from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), who sent me a letter threatening “suspension or revocation of board certification.”
The “sin” threatening to end my medical career was my unwillingness to go along with Fauci’s monolithic vaccines-above-all-else strategy. The failure of this approach is plain to see, and anyone with an ounce of curiosity knows there are many methods of treating the virus.
Ivermectin is one of them. This cheap, readily available generic medicine is approved by the FDA for certain uses in humans – but not for Covid-19, despite 85 controlled trials from around the world demonstrating its effectiveness. In Brazil, the largest study to date found a reduction in Covid mortality rate of 70%. In India, the second most populated country in the world, the drug has been credited with near eradication of the disease. Studies attempting to discredit ivermectin have been debunked again and again.
Other trials, such as the recent TOGETHER trial, are designed to fail from the start to drive a desired narrative. In the National Institutes of Health’s ACTIV-6, despite starting the majority of patients on treatment after five days of Covid-19 symptoms at a lower than recommended dose, they found a statistically significant reduction in the time to recovery, particularly among the most severely ill. Unsurprisingly, major newspapers reported that the study showed ivermectin was ineffective.
Despite ivermectin’s proven effectiveness, in the opinion of the ABIM, advocating for its usage is a form of “disinformation” and carries the penalty of losing one’s medical license and livelihood.
Throughout the pandemic, I’ve maintained an open mind, analyzed what works for patients, discussed strategies with fellow doctors, and conducted my own extensive research. When new data arose that changed my understanding, I admitted as much and changed course—like with the vaccines. If only the powers that be at the ABIM and our government could say the same.
Consider the evolution of accepted facts about Covid-19 safety measures from Fauci and his ilk. Despite government mandates, neither lockdowns nor cloth masks prevent transmission. They never have. It turns out former Surgeon General Jerome Adams had it right when he tweeted in March 2020 that masks are, “NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus” – a comment for which he was pilloried. We are only beginning to learn the impact of the societal costs of these early preventative measures, a price our children who were kept home from school will be paying for years.
Second, there is no evidence the vaccines stop Covid-19, despite the constant lecturing from the Biden Administration and the mainstream media. In the United States and globally, cases continue to rise and fall without any correlation to the pace or percentage of population vaccinated. This is not what we were promised. In 2021, Fauci said vaccinated people were “dead ends” for the virus, and President Biden declared, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Today, approximately 110,000 cases are announced daily in America, where more than two thirds of the population is fully vaccinated.
There is a backlash brewing in America right now, and it goes beyond inflation rates and gas prices. People are tired of arrogant public officials and compromised institutions who believe they have all the answers but constantly get it wrong and make no apologies as they steamroll those who don’t support the current narrative. The ABIM’s sudden (and suspiciously well-funded) persecution of doctors who stray from the party line is only the latest example.
Doctors on the ABIM’s board and across the country need to stand up against this witch hunt. It’s demeaning to honest doctors and dangerous to the patients we’ve dedicated our careers to serving.
Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.
Dutch officer present at shooting incident goes into hiding
TCS Wire | July 7, 2022
A Dutch police officer present at the shooting incident on Tuesday (likely the one who shot at Jouke Hospes) has reportedly gone into hiding.
According to Leeuwarder Courant, at least one officer has been rehoused because the “atmosphere around him became too grim.”
“The man lives in a village in the municipality of Opsterland. He left the village under guard on Wednesday evening. His house will be secured on Thursday,” reports Leeuwarder Courant.
The incident occurred late Tuesday night, just before midnight, wherein fired two rounds at an unarmed teenager in his tractor who was leaving the scene of a protest.
Jouke Hospes, the 16-year-old that was shot at by Dutch police for participating in a distribution centre blockade, says that he is currently under investigation for attempted manslaughter.
In a message obtained by The Counter Signal, Hospes says that he was shocked to see video of the incident that led to his arrest after being released from prison.
“I still can’t figure out why the police fired. The images [and video] show very well that I’m not doing anything wrong… I’m lucky that I survived.”
He continues, saying that he is now under an active investigation for attempted manslaughter.
“I have been released for the attempted manslaughter and am still a suspect tonight in my own bed,” Hospes says. [translated from Dutch]
Police are claiming that the teen attempted to ram into police and vehicles and [that they] had fired warning shots before firing two “targeted shots.”
“At about 10:40 pm, tractor drivers attempted to drive into officers and service vehicles. This happened at the entrance Mercurius/A32 in Heerenveen. A threatening situation arose. Warning shots were fired, and targeted shots were fired,” Politie Fryslân tweeted following the incident. [translated from Dutch]
“A tractor was hit. A tractor drove away from the incident and was stopped shortly afterwards on Jousterweg. Three suspects have been arrested. No one was injured.”
However, while police claim that Hospes attempted to ram into them before they fired two shots at him, video taken by onlookers tells an entirely different story.
Video shows that Hospes was driving very slowly in his tractor, was as far away from the officers as he could be without going off the road, and was clearly attempting to leave the scene without incident.
Hospes describes the moments leading up to his arrest, saying when farmers heard that a mobile police unit was going to do a sweep of the distribution centre blockade, they collectively decided it was time to break it up and were already starting to leave when police arrived on the scene.
“Behind me, it was clear, so I decided to go around it. I calmly crossed the sidewalk and drove very calmly. I went to see if traffic was approaching and if I could cross the road. I was driving [slowly], and suddenly I heard a PANG in my right ear. I thought there soon would be a second one.”
“I didn’t have any damage, so I thought it was a rubber bullet… However, I stopped for a while at Oudehaske, and when I was walking around the tractor, I saw a hole in the iron. All kinds of thoughts went through my head.”
Images taken after the shooting show clear bullet holes, suggesting that officers were using live rounds against protesters.
Hospes was later arrested and subsequently freed the next day after Dutch protesters showed up in droves outside the prison holding him.
As previously reported by The Counter Signal, the police’s actions come after several municipalities declared emergency ordinance orders, bestowing upon police unprecedented powers to deal with protesters blockading food distribution centres.
Since the orders were declared, police have been seen wearing military-style equipment, have used tear gas against protesters, and have now shown that they’re willing to fire on anyone, even a teenage boy.
Moreover, several videos have been taken across the Netherlands of heavily armed police waving pistols around at traffic stops, signifying a dark turn in the protests.
LA parents can now file for damages from the illegal COVID vaccine mandates
A judge has ruled that the LA Unified School District wasn’t authorized to mandate the COVID vaccines or force kids into independent study. If you were injured, I’ll help you recover damages.
By Steve Kirsch | July 5, 2022
An important decision on vaccine mandates was just signed and released this morning.
The case was filed by a father on behalf of his son who attends the Science Academy STEM LAUSD magnet school. The lawyer in this case was Lee Andelin.
LAUSD will likely appeal the decision, but it’s unlikely they will prevail.
The decision means that:
- LAUSD was wrong in requiring the COVID vaccines
- For all but ten vaccines, a personal belief exemption must be respected.
- LAUSD can no longer send kids away from their school and to independent study because they are not vaccinated.
- Only the Department of Public Health can mandate vaccines, not the schools
- The ruling applies to all students, not just the student filing the complaint
- Parents whose children were injured, either by having to have their child vaccinated (regardless of whether your child has a vaccine injury or not) or whose child was shifted into independent study, now have an opportunity to sue for monetary damages.
If you are in the last category, please register here and I’ll let you know how you can join with other parents to preserve your rights and to potentially recover monetary damages.

