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Does Israel Permit Freedom of Worship?

Palestinian Christians will soon be extinct

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | May 3, 2022

A week ago I wrote a piece describing how Israel’s power over the US government is such that no American official will confirm that the Israelis have, and have had for years, a secret nuclear arsenal consisting of as many as 200 nukes. The situation is particularly odd in that the United States is on record as being strongly opposed to nuclear proliferation, except for Israel, and the enriched uranium that was used to create Israel’s bombs as well as the nuclear triggers were stolen and exported illegally from the US. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself was reportedly involved in the thefts. One lawyer friend has suggested that the reason for the reticence is that under US law by way of the Symington Amendment, no assistance or aid can be given to any country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel has not signed and also has a widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal. To preserve Israel’s billions of dollars in annual largesse from the US taxpayer, silence over what goes on when the government breaks its own laws must be maintained. Some might consider that a case of pandering to Israel rather than taking steps to enhance United States security, but when it comes to the Jewish state that argument is a non-starter in Washington as Israel always comes first.

This week I am going to describe another aspect of the Zionist state’s policy that has been invisible if one relies on the mainstream media or the chattering magpies that occupy Capitol Hill and the White House. That is the ongoing elimination of Christianity in the region where it was born being carried out by Israel and its friends. The United States has been the enabler of much of the change in spite of the prevalence of self-described devout Christians in Congress, many of whom ironically are vocal and even enthusiastic supporters of Israeli “security” policies. Killing Palestinians is all too often justified in Congress and the White House with the meaningless expression “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

American power wielded on behalf of Israel has already destroyed a thriving Christian community in Iraq while still laboring to do the same in Syria and possibly even Lebanon. At Christianity’s very birthplace, in what was once Palestine, Israel has been engaged in making the lives of Palestinian so miserable that they frequently choose to emigrate. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously declared in a letter to his son that “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…” and he exploited massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Haganah to create terror to accomplish that end. Since that time, Israel has refused to allow Palestinians driven from their homes by the 1948 fighting to return, has destroyed more than 400 Arab villages and confiscated other Palestinian properties, has appropriated additional land and water resources for its illegal settlements, has allowed armed settlers to destroy Palestinians crops and other forms of livelihood, and controlled Palestinian movements through a network of Jews only roads and numerous checkpoints. Even Palestinians who happen to be Israeli citizens are legally and in practice treated like second-class citizens with limited rights. There are more than 60 laws in Israel that discriminate against non-Jews while Israel now legally defines itself as a Jewish state. Israel has also imprisoned without any trial thousands of West Bank and Jerusalem Palestinians, including children, and shot dead hundreds more.

I could go on, but the point is that Israel wants Palestinians gone, a process that has particularly impacted on the Christian community. It has not been done by ethnic cleansing in the classic sense after the initial Nakba massacres and appropriations in 1948, but rather accomplished by creating incentives to leave. And it has been successful. At the end of the Second World War, an estimated one third of the Palestinian population identified as Christian, but the percentage is currently closer to 9% and continuing to decline. The numbers suggest that Christians in the former Palestine are verging on extinction. In fact, Christians have been able to become disproportionately emigrants from their homeland because they more frequently than Muslims have family already established in Europe and the US and have also been able to rely on networking through their churches for resettlement assistance in a new country.

Even by the wretched standards of the past 70 years, Israel’s seeking a “final solution” with the Palestinians recently has become particularly outrageous, focusing as it does on loosening their ties to their religious and cultural institutions while also destroying their livelihoods and appropriating their properties.

Hardly reported in the US media was the use of new Israeli imposed security restrictions to disrupt this year’s Palestinian Christian Orthodox Easter celebrations of Christ’s Resurrection at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This comes on top of similar police action to support the usual crowd of rampaging settlers and other Jewish extremists at the most recent Ramadan services held by Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa Mosque, which included using a drone to fire tear gas at worshipers.

What took place during Holy Week and more particularly on Easter Sunday has been described by Rod Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative. I will confess that I do not much like Dreher as he is fond of celebrating himself in everything he writes, full of navel gazing and smug sanctimonious twaddle, but as he was a participant and eye witness to what occurred his account is of necessity extremely valuable. To be sure, he makes it clear that readers understand that he is not criticizing Israelis in general, nor is he engaging in anything objectionable to Jewish sensitivities when he includes himself in how “we American Christians, especially those who support Israel,” also as “an American who cares about Israel,” and who refers to “my Israeli Jewish friends” and then goes on to assert “I condemn anti-Semitism unreservedly. Criticizing the Jewish settlers and official Israeli policy does not constitute anti-Semitism” before concluding that “most Israeli Jews wouldn’t support these hate-filled radical settlers.”

Actually, the US and other governments as well as many states do believe that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. And, depending on how the question is phrased many, possibly most Jews worldwide, support firm action against Muslims in particular, who are routinely described in the media and by the Israeli government as “terrorists.” Rod clearly understands that it is a bad idea to veer into areas that Jews are uncomfortable with as they can be surprisingly sensitive and unreasonably reactive to perceived slights. No need to bite the hand that feeds you, as one might put it, particularly if one wants to stay employed.

Dreher reports how he was “staying at a hotel inside the Old City, where I was advised to book a room out of fear that the Jerusalem police would not let Christians into the Old City on Holy Saturday. This turns out to have been very good advice.” Holy Saturday for Orthodox Christians features a “miracle” of the Holy Fire, which is believed to be the first sign of the Resurrection of Jesus. Normally, at 11 am, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher opens and is quickly packed with believers. After noon, the Greek Patriarch the “little house” built directly over the tomb of Christ, prays, and what is referred to as “divine energy” descends from heaven to light the Patriarch’s candles, the flames from which are shared with everyone present. He then emerges and passes the flame to everyone there.

Dreher and a friend reportedly left their hotel early to pray but when they arrived at the end of the street at the Jaffa Gate, two Jewish police officers refused to allow them to pass out of the Old City, warning that if they left they might not be able to come back in. They then walked over to an access point to the Jaffa Gate, and witnessed a large group of Christians behind a barrier on the other side, blocked from entering into the Old City where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is situated. Dreher observed that at the same time Orthodox Jews wearing white prayer shawls, entered freely into the Old City on their way to the Western Wall to pray on the Jewish Sabbath. Later that morning, Dreher was only allowed to pass into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because he had obtained a ticket to the “fire” service. The tickets, to control and limit attendance at the church was an innovation by the Israeli police. The Patriarch objected, observing that tickets had never before been required. The tickets allowed entry of only 1,800 worshipers in the church, which normally accommodates 10,000, a reduction of 82% of the faithful permitted to be in attendance on the highest of all holy days.

An Anglican priest from Virginia who spoke to Dreher at the service described that morning’s experience this way: “Police checkpoints were at every corner. Even when we reached the private property of the Greek Patriarchate, police had taken over there as well. They actually turned back nearly a dozen Consuls General and other diplomatic representatives, including ones from the United States. We had to take an alternative route to get inside. If that was the way it worked for VIPs, imagine you’re a local Palestinian Christian simply trying to worship on the holiest of Christian holidays inside the church built over the very Tomb of Christ.”

At issue are demands by radical Jewish groups, most notably the extremist Jewish settlers’ organization Ateret Cohanim, a type of Jewish Taliban, to “cleanse” Jerusalem of all non-Jews. They have been aggressively buying or otherwise occupying properties in and around the traditional Christian and Muslim quarters of the city and often use violence when they are resisted by local residents. Christians, unlike the Muslim community, notably do not tend to resort to violence in support of their property or civic rights even though recourse to the Israeli courts is useless as the judges have consistently sided with the settlers and police.

In Jerusalem there have been regular instances of verbal abuse, vandalism and spitting on Christian clergy, as well as sporadic violent assaults. In the Armenian Christian quarter a monk reports how “[The settlers] destroy the tires of our cars, graffiti ‘death to Christians’, break windows, they desecrate our cemetery, you know… ugly things, and it’s really invasive.” Some Christians have pointed to what happened to the former St John’s Hospice near the Jaffa Gate as a prime example of what the Christian churches fear could happen across the quarter. The building’s lintel still shows the tau-phi monogram of the Greek Patriarchate but in 1990, this pilgrims’ hostel was illegally occupied by Ateret Cohanim, and now the vast building is covered with multiple Israeli flags and houses violent armed Israeli settlers. The local Christians Dreher talked to “believe that this is part of a settler plot to choke off access to Christian holy sites within the city, and force Christians out.”

The Israeli authorities tend to ignore the settler activity as they have powerful supporters, including from the diaspora community in the US and some Evangelicals who help to fund them. Ateret Cohanim’s 2010 annual gathering featured as guest speaker no less than John Bolton and the Kushner Family Foundation has reportedly helped finance its activities. In addition, Israel’s religious conservative parties are a necessary component in the coalition government and their extreme behavior is tolerated and even aided and abetted on the sly. Nor will secular Jews stand up for their Christian brothers in Israel in enough numbers to matter. Also, many Israelis believe that increasingly hardline radical Jewish groups are actually the future of Israel based on demographic trends. All excuses aside, clearly enough of the ruling elite in America, and in Israel, support the radical settlers, or none of this would be happening.

And the situation is little better for Christians in Palestine outside Jerusalem. A Franciscan monk visitor to a monastery outside of the city reported how the Israeli authorities had cut off water to the building while the missionaries themselves were verbally abused and had rocks and other debris hurled at them by settlers. In Bethlehem, a Christian gift shop was deliberately put out of business after nearby Jewish settlements were allowed to erect walls blocking access to it. Other attacks on Christians have included a June 2015 arson incident at the Church of the Multiplication and a nearby Benedictine monastery in Tabgha, located 120 miles north of Jerusalem. The church is built on the site where Christ fed the 5,000 through the multiplication of loaves and fishes. The attackers left Hebrew graffiti on the walls, reading “all idols will be smashed.” In 2014 occurred vandalization of a Romanian Orthodox church, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition, and Catholic offices in Jerusalem, as well as a monastery in Beit Shemesh. The year before, more than 20 Christian sites of the Latin Patriarchate were attacked by vandals. And in 2012, a Trappist monastery in Latroun was subject to arson and graffiti, while the Convent of St. Francis on Mt. Zion was vandalized. Non-Jews in Bethlehem and on the West Bank meanwhile live under a system of Israeli military laws and check points established by government order number 101. In Hebron, non-Jews living on Jewish-only streets cannot even walk out their front doors and they are regularly bombarded by feces and other waste hurled down upon them by the settlers.

Israel’s anti-Christian policies are international and includes support of groups the US has called terrorists. Israel has given money and weapons to the jihadists fighting against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which includes al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Wounded jihadists even have crossed into Israel to received hospital treatment. Once, ISIS accidentally fired into Israel and then publicly apologized. Israel is intent on removing al-Assad, which will lead to an exodus of Christians from Syria, similar to what took place in neighboring Iraq after US forces deposed Saddam Hussein.

There is a certain irony in how the United States doggedly pursues China over its alleged maltreatment of the Uighurs while at the same time rewarding and protecting Israel even though it spies relentlessly on the US and very clearly persecutes Palestinians. Dreher asks the question why the US government, which gives Israel multiple billions of dollars a year, cannot stop Israel’s de facto official punishment of its Christians. The answer is at least in part simple, that most American Christians do not care about the plight of their co-religionists in the Middle East. Millions of true-blue Christians not unlike Dreher, many weaned on the Scofield Bible and its dispensationalism, and many of whom wind up in government or other positions of power, choose to disengage from the problem, accepting that Jews are the “chosen people” of God and, for some, part of End Time prophecy. They are therefore to be given a pass by both the media and government on all their exclusivism and bad behavior even as they meddle in US politics and work to hobble freedom of speech by criminalizing anyone who criticizes Israel or supports Palestinians by urging a boycott against it. Until all that changes, if it even can happen, Christians in the so-called Holy Land will be on the chopping block and when the churches and monasteries no longer have a community to sustain them, it will be the end of Christianity in the place where it was born. And more’s the pity, the United States will have played a major role in enabling that to happen.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ is another propaganda tool

By Ian Miles Cheong | Samizdat | May 3, 2022

US President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it had formed a “Disinformation Governance Board” to fight the spread of so-called disinformation on the Internet. While White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki didn’t elaborate on how the bureau would operate, she suggested that it would monitor disinformation on topics like COVID-19 and elections.

Conservatives have often half-joked about George Orwell’s “1984” becoming a reality, but it appears that the Biden administration has decided to literally take a page from the book and create a “Ministry of Truth”.

The board’s aim is to target “disinformation,” but what constitutes disinformation? Many times over the years we have seen complete censorship from government officials and Big Tech social media companies, most infamously during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which saw major tech platforms and politicians painting it as “Russian propaganda.”

Allowing the government to dictate what “the truth” is sets a dangerous precedent, as it instead promotes desired narratives to bolster poll numbers, ratings, or nudging the citizenry into following government edicts – all on the basis of “trust us, we know what’s best for you.”

Facts be damned. Just do as you’re told. This was seen multiple times during the pandemic era, when both Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams hummed and harred over mask-wearing and social distancing – first instructing the public not to wear masks, and then much later calling it a necessity.

Gatekeeping discourse is a surefire way to control the narrative, controlling what people see, what they say, and ultimately – what they believe. It’s also an effective means to silence dissent, and quash those who might speak out against the regime’s approved narrative – or even the regime itself.

The new Ministry of Truth is a tool, and there is no reality in which this tool will not be used for bad intent – and it’ll claim to be doing it all in the name of the greater good.

Unsurprisingly, the Ministry of Truth was rushed into creation seemingly as a reaction to “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform, Twitter, the de facto town square of political discourse and public narratives.

With the relinquishment of Twitter to Musk, those who control mainstream narratives fear they will lose out on an important resource, and will no longer be able to promote narratives and fix algorithms to sway public opinion – at least not with ease. There will be pushback, and their positions are not ones they are willing to defend, hence why the creation of this new tool is necessary. It keeps the plebeians in check.

Free speech, which in Musk’s belief is “essential to a functioning democracy,” flies directly in the face of the Biden administration’s attempts to crack down on viewpoints that contradict the regime’s official narrative. And who better to head the Disinformation Governance Board than Nina Jankowicz, who herself perpetuated several regime-approved falsehoods?

Jankowicz, who previously advised the Ukrainian government on disinformation and strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, voiced her support for Christopher Steele, whose infamous “Steele dossier” on Russian election interference during Donald Trump’s 2016 election dogged the presidency for years. Despite Steele’s loss of credibility, Jankowicz hyped up the former spy in August 2020 as being able to offer “some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo” when he spoke on a podcast about the topic.

It’s worth noting that the infamous dossier, which included the unverifiable claim that Russia had “kompromat” on Trump in the form of a sex tape, has since been entirely discredited. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, was later charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. Jankowicz also repeated the unproven theory that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign, spread by members of the Trump campaign.

“Back on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently—Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op,” Jankowicz said on Twitter. “Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”

She attempted to distance herself from her remarks with the claim that she was simply livetweeting Trump’s first presidential debate with Biden. However, when solicited by the Associated Press in October 2020 for her thoughts on the laptop, Jankowicz told the publication that “We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” dismissing the fact that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.

As detailed by Newsweek, Jankowicz continued to perpetuate doubt against the story, tweeting on October 22, 2020 that “The emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.”

In a consolidated effort to disqualify the New York Post’s original report on Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation”, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms banned the New York Post and prevented its users from sharing the story weeks ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. The original report on the laptop has since been validated by a comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings, published by the New York Times.

Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that censoring the report was a “total mistake,” and chalked up the decision to a “process error.”

Both Twitter and Facebook heads were grilled over their companies’ perceived anti-conservative bias and penchant for censoring so-called “disinformation,” with the censorship usually aimed at conservatives. It’s worth pointing out again that the now-discredited “Steele dossier” had no problem gaining traction when it first ran on BuzzFeed.

Nina Jankowicz had no problem spreading actual disinformation while helping to silence the truth under the auspices of “combating disinformation.” Given her predilection towards perpetuating anti-Russian narratives, one might ask if contradictory evidence to the “Snake Island” and “Ghost of Kiev” hoaxes constitute forms of “disinformation” in her book. After all, the mainstream media is chiefly responsible for promoting these heroic war stories, both of which were almost immediately discredited by the Russian media – and later by western experts. Even Ukraine’s own propagandists were forced to instruct the public to stop promoting disinformation about the conflict. Would the Ministry of Truth move to silence such attacks on its credibility?

Those concerned with the truth must do everything in their power to resist the Biden administration’s efforts to police the truth. To that end, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the few American leaders who has stepped up and vowed to fight back against the Orwellian disinformation bureau.

“They want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able to speak out and fight back,” DeSantis said. “But we’re not going to let Biden get away with this one, so we will be fighting back.” Referring to the regime as a “decaying and discredited ruling elite in this country,” DeSantis said: “We believe it’s essential that individual Floridians and Americans are able to speak out against the false narratives trying to be jammed down our throats by this regime.”

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Yes, TCW is being censored

TCW Defending Freedom | May 3, 2022

AFTER many reports over the weekend that the site was not working for some users, we have established that we are being blocked by the adult content filter on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Three.

Affected users get the message above, which does not make it clear that the site is being censored, but gives an erroneous message about the SSL certificate. This makes it look like a misconfiguration on our part, but this is not the case.

We have contacted Three to enquire exactly why TCW has been added to their adult content filter.

Three use the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) guidelines, which you can find here.

TCW can appeal to BBFC to be unblocked by Three, and you can be sure that we are following this process. We have also registered the censorship with the Open Rights Group’s Blocked! website.

In the meantime, Three users may wish to reconsider their choice of ISP. Customers of Three can request that the adult filter be turned off by contacting customer services. A non-censoring ISP would be a good idea too – we can recommend Andrews and Arnold. A good VPN (Virtual Private Network) might be an idea too, if you would prefer that your ISP does not control the content you are able to access online. IVPN are great.

We will be tweeting @ThreeUKsupport and @ThreeUK to see what they have to say. It would be helpful if some of our readers could do this too.

If this can happen to TCW, it can happen to any site on the internet. Resist online censorship, for that is what this is.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

HOW IS THIS A THING? #NWO, #TRANSHUMANISM

Computing Forever | May 1, 2022

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

New so-called ‘Ministry of Truth’ actually just a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’, which is precisely the opposite: DHS

Samizdat | May 2, 2022

The newly-unveiled ‘Disinformation Governance Board’, operating within the Department of Homeland Security, has triggered a massive pushback, forcing DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas to make several appearances on national TV in an attempt to clarify how this unit will operate.

Many critics, including top Republicans, blasted the initiative as a “Ministry of Truth,” directly from the pages of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Mayorkas deflected this criticism by claiming such thought policing is “precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do.”

“What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries from the cartels and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years,” he explained, after CNN’s Dana Bash said it was still not clear “how this governance board will act.”

The new body is headed by Nina Jankowicz, whose resume includes advising the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and overseeing the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute lobby group. Detractors also scrutinized her for dismissing the New York Post’s suppressed ‘Hunter’s laptop’ story as a fake “Russian influence op,” only for it to be later verified by major media outlets.

In a separate appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’, Mayorkas defended the qualifications and objectivity of Jankowicz, calling her “eminently qualified” and a “renowned expert in the field of disinformation.”

“I don’t question her objectivity. There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views and they’re incredibly dedicated to mission. We’re not the opinion police.”

The new “anti-disinformation” push was announced on Wednesday, just two days after billionaire Elon Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion and vowed to restore freedom of speech on the platform.

Responding to news of Musk’s Twitter takeover, Jankowicz said, “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities, which are already shouldering disproportionate amounts of this abuse.”

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Hospital and Care Home Visiting Restrictions Are “Cruel, Inhumane and Unnecessary”, Doctors Tell MPs

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 29, 2022 

The Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group met this week to hear about visiting restrictions still being imposed by many care homes and NHS Trusts. Co-chaired by Rt Hon Esther McVey MP and Graham Stringer MP, the Group listened to evidence about the devastating effects visiting restrictions in hospitals have on patients and their loved ones. MPs also heard how visiting restrictions in care homes, along with the continued use of rolling lockdowns and over interpretation of testing guidelines, is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of the residents.

Leandra Ashton, who co-founded The People’s Care Watchdog, Dr. Ammar Waraich, a medical registrar in the West Midlands, Carol Munt, experienced Patient Partner and Advocate and Dr. Ali Haggett, community mental health and wellbeing specialist, told MPs of the obstacles still in place when trying to visit a loved one and the shocking impact on vulnerable hospital patients, care home residents and their families.

All the speakers voiced serious concerns that obstacles are still in place in some healthcare settings. Politicians heard harrowing accounts of the harmful effects of isolation and loss of social contact on physical and mental health, safeguarding problems with medication, dehydration, hygiene and lack of basic care and the failures to uphold existing legislation to protect those who lack capacity.

Leandra Ashton’s mother was arrested in November 2020 for taking her grandmother out of her care home a day before the second lockdown. Two years on, many residents are still being isolated from their loved ones. She told MPs:

When I took the video of my mum being arrested taking my nan out of her care home, I did not think it would go viral. So many families got in touch and it led to us setting up the People’s Care Watchdog. We were struck by how much legislation is in place, such as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, Deprivation of Liberty and the Mental Capacity Act, to protect those in care homes. These laws are simply not being upheld and instead guidelines are being over-interpreted and the legislation even used to keep people in care homes and hospitals as if they were prisons. The public bodies that are supposed to uphold the protective legislation are not doing so.

There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising Government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.

Listening to the evidence, Esther McVey said:

I am troubled by the evidence presented by our speakers, particularly the safeguarding issues and neglect that care home residents are suffering as a result. In hospitals, we have heard about patients losing hope and refusing treatment without the encouragement of family. We know patients have much better treatment outcomes when they have support from relatives and friends around them.

Most of the infection control measures that restricted visiting in healthcare settings have been removed, most recently NHS Trusts were told healthcare workers, patients and visitors no longer need to distance in hospitals, so I fail to see why and how these visiting restrictions are still in place in any healthcare setting. I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that he makes it absolutely clear that all patients and residents must be able to see visitors.

Highlighting how visitation is an important and necessary part of healthcare, Carol Munt said:

In the same way that we would not stop prescribed medication and treatments, we should not have stopped visits. Why were decisions taken without any consideration for the need of patients and their families to connect? Why do we still have such variation in compassionate care across the country? There is no uniformity among care homes apart from the need to be profitable for their owners. Some care homes made a superhuman effort to arrange visiting, as did the Bristol Nightingale Hospital. There was good practice in some places so there should be good practice everywhere. We should expect more of these endemic situations and we must be prepared for them.

I could not comprehend how any Minister for Health and Social Care could allow this to happen and not make the effort to get his department to look at ways that visiting could be facilitated. I heard and continue to hear the most callous reports of relatives dying alone with no visitors. The same goes for hospital patients. Ultimately, I think we need legislation to ensure that visiting rights are enshrined and protected.

Medical Registrar Dr. Ammar Waraich reported that many hospitals are still preventing visits due to the potential risk of Covid spread:

The policy is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary. Seeing loved ones can be immensely therapeutic and give struggling patients the will to survive. It is deeply traumatic for families to lose loved ones suddenly or see them go through difficult treatment without being there in person. Video calls are not a good enough replacement and we do not have the staff, the time or resources to facilitate calls for all our patients.

Most infection control measures have been lifted as the level of risk is no longer there. Hospitals can no longer function as detention centres and an inpatient stay should not become a sentence. The policy was one of the major mistakes of lockdown. Visiting sick relatives in hospital is, and must remain, a fundamental right, not to be given up.

Co-chair Graham Stringer said:

I find it extraordinary that no visiting is allowed in some healthcare settings, even to this day. It is cruel that family members are being denied access to sick and vulnerable loved ones, often not getting regular updates, living in anxiety about what their relatives may be going through, but knowing they are going through frightening and difficult treatment, often at the end of their lives, without being able to be with them in person.

“At the height of the pandemic it was understandable that there were precautions but there is no longer a basis to that argument. All the restrictions have been lifted and NHS Trusts across England have now been told to ‘return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas’. The government must take action to resolve this situation.

Speaking about her experience working in the community throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ali Haggett said:

I have spent the last eighteen months with the support group Unlock Care Homes, uncovering the plight of many thousands of families who are still denied regular, meaningful contact with care home residents and hospital patients. Even before Covid, we knew that isolating people, particularly older people, has a serious impact on physical and psychological health. We have continued to isolate adults in care and in some hospitals almost continuously for two years. The effects have been felt particularly badly by those with dementia. Many residents no longer recognise their families and have been denied the most basic of human needs.

My concern is that this situation is concealing neglect and abuse on a significant scale. One of my community members sadly died and the hospital has admitted liability partly because he was completely blind and couldn’t reach his food or drink. Had his wife been allowed to visit, this wouldn’t have happened. Families I work with report numerous issues still affecting them, not just visiting restrictions. Rolling lockdowns, over-interpretation of testing, PPE requirements resulting in poor communication and fear, lack of ancillary services such as podiatry or physiotherapy leading to huge health problems, residents asked to isolate when one person tests positive, sometimes for 10 days or more and the one significant visitor recommendation being ignored or rejected. Families must be able to visit openly and check the wellbeing of residents.

Stop Press: MPs and Peers including Esther McVey, Lord Frost, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Graham Brady, Emma Lewell-Buck, Graham Stringer and Sammy Wilson have written to the Telegraph to say they are “deeply concerned” that visiting is still forbidden in many institutions where “over-interpretation of testing guidelines is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of vulnerable residents”. They point out that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act “could and should have protected against this situation arising” but this legislation is being “wilfully misinterpreted as an excuse” to keep people isolated in care homes and hospitals “as if they were prisons”.

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Former colony resists direct UK rule

The acting premier of the British Virgin Islands, Dr. Natalio Wheatley.
Samizdat | May 1, 2022

The acting premier of the British Virgin Islands has voiced deep “concerns” over London’s plans to assume direct governance of the Caribbean territory, following the arrest of its leader in a US drug sting operation, and a highly-critical report into alleged systemic corruption.

On Friday, shortly before the premier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, appeared before a US judge on charges of cocaine smuggling and money laundering, a commission of inquiry led by Judge Sir Gary Hickinbottom hurriedly published its final report, urging the UK to dissolve the islands’ elected government, suspend their constitution, and impose direct rule for at least two years.

“What this would mean in real terms is that there would no longer be elected representatives who represent the people of the districts and the territory in the house of assembly where laws are made for our society,” said Natalio Wheatley, who assumed the post of acting premier after Fahie’s arrest.

London already dispatched a Foreign Office minister, Amanda Milling, to meet the territory’s Governor James Rankin and other senior figures and discuss the terms of direct rule, ahead of a formal decision expected next week.

The acting BVI premier acknowledged “very serious matters highlighted in the report, which spanned successive Administrations,” and did not question the British Crown representative’s authority and responsibility to maintain order – but said the proposed reforms “can be achieved without the partial or full suspension of the constitution,” under already existing emergency powers.

“I urge you the public to read the report with an objective eye in terms of strengthening our systems of Government under a democratic framework of governance, as opposed to draconian measures that would set back the historical constitutional progress we have made as a people.”

Hickinbottom’s commission was established in 2021, amid claims of corruption and wasteful government spending – as well as rumors that the island leadership was engaging in drug trafficking. According to The Guardian, the British government was aware of the US undercover investigation, and decided to “rush out” the 1,000-page Hickinbottom report after Fahie was arrested.

Named by Christopher Columbus, the Virgin Islands are divided between the UK, the US and the US territory of Puerto Rico. Some 35,000 BVI residents have been British citizens since 2002. While they enjoy a limited self-governance under a 2007 constitution, the string of islands is officially designated as one of the British overseas territories, called crown colonies prior to 1983.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Following the Science is Impossible and Stupid

Institutional science follows politics; it will always endorse central regime policies

eugyppius | April 30, 2022

During the pandemic, Germany closed schools on a wider scale and for a longer duration than most other places in the civilised world. I was recently reminded of how our government came to embrace these extreme policies. The story is very revealing:

It began with the strange decision of state media to elevate Christian Drosten at Berlin Charité to national prominence, by granting him the Coronavirus Update podcast on 26 February 2020. The WHO had just endorsed lockdowns two days before, and various countries were acquiring new Corona tsars – random virus wizards who would become the face of containment policy to panicking domestic audiences. Every day, Drosten’s banal podcast interviews were reported breathlessly across the German media, as if they meant anything.

It’s important to remember that Drosten is a virologist. He’s not a statistician, and for what it’s worth, he’s not a public health expert either. He studies how very small proteins work and how they interact with human cells. Nevertheless, Drosten had (or claimed to have) a wide range of opinions on matters outside of his field, including the question of whether closing schools would slow down SARS-2.

At first, Drosten said that he didn’t think this would accomplish very much. Like everyone else of his ilk, he had an early history of saying basically correct and sensible things before he went crazy. On 11 March 2020, he went home and read this paper on Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic. It wasn’t his field; his assessment of its analysis is worth no more than mine or yours. But after reading it, he decided that actually closing schools would be a great idea, especially when used in combination with other interventions, such as banning mass gatherings. This was wind in the sails of hystericists like Markus Söder, minister president of Bavaria. And so we closed our schools, and our kids endured months of social isolation and mental anguish, because Drosten read a thing and had a brilliant idea.

But, that’s only the official story. It may be vastly worse than that. I really doubt, for example, that Drosten’s ridiculous podcast was a spontaneous programming idea by Norddeutscher Rundfunk. I suspect, instead, that there’s a reason lockdowns and Corona tsars went together in those early days. Primary was the political or bureaucratic decision to do all this crazy stuff, in the absence of any evidence aside from some dodgy numbers out of Wuhan. Thus the genius smart guys who run our institutions had to find celebrity virus astrologers, who could become the public face of novel policies and provide a simulacrum of science for the politicians to pretend they were following. It’s even odds, whether Drosten really did change his mind because of a paper he read one night; or whether it was rather the political or bureaucratic faction behind Drosten that changed their minds and gave him a paper or two to read.

Science isn’t some objective reasonable force outside of politics. Scientists spend most of their careers chasing government grant funding, and fighting for appointments and promotions in government-funded university systems. Science follows politics, and nobody knows this as much as the disingenuous politicians who claim that their policies are subordinate to scientific findings.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

New bill aims to dissolve Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board

Defund the Department of Homeland Security

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 30, 2022

Rep. Lauren Boebert is leading the way in introducing a bill to defund the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board, under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

We obtained a draft copy of the bill for you here.

“This kind of stuff is terrifying. We in Congress have the power of the purse. It is our duty to shut down this department immediately,” Boebert told Fox. “I’m calling on leadership in the Republican Party – Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and others — to join me in calling for this department to be shut down and defunded.”

The new board will focus on Russian propaganda and “misinformation” spread by and about human traffickers at the border.

The head of the board, Nina Jankowicz has previously been accused of spreading misinformation. She called the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation. The authenticity of the laptop has since been proven.

“No tax dollars should go to where Biden can use the power of the federal government to silence truthful stories like Big Tech did with the Hunter Biden story,” Boebert said.

Boebert compared the formation of the new board to the draconian world in George Orwell’s book “1984.”

“Democrats took that [book] not as a warning, but as a guide,” she added.

Boebert is looking for cosponsors for the bill, which she is expected to introduce next week.

“This really is a department of propaganda,” Boebert said. “To say that the federal department has a say in what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s truth and what is not. This is a very dangerous place that we’ve come to.”

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

D.C. Schools Can’t Vaccinate Kids 11 and Up Without Parents’ Consent Until Lawsuits Settled

The Defender | April 28, 2022

A preliminary injunction prohibiting the mayor of the District of Columbia, the D.C. Department of Health and D.C. public schools from enforcing the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Amendment Act of 2020 (D.C. Minor Consent Act) will remain in place after the defendants declined to file an appeal within the required 30-day period.

The preliminary injunction reverts D.C. to the standard age of consent of 18, at least until the conclusion of the case.

The injunction stemmed from two lawsuits filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act, which allows children 11 and older to consent to vaccinations without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

The law, passed on Dec. 17, 2020, specifically targets children whose parents filed religious exemptions for their children.

“This is a significant legal victory,” said Rolf Hazlehurst, senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD). “But the legal battle is by no means over.”

D.C. is the legal testing ground for mandatory vaccinations, according to Hazlehurst, which makes this a “high-stakes” battle.

“The defendants and other states are twisting and distorting the ‘mature minor’ doctrine to push the limits of government overreach at the expense of parental rights,” Hazlehurst said. “They will not abandon this tactic or their assault upon our children or parental rights.”

The two lawsuits challenging the D.C. Minor Consent Act include one filed by CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation and a second brought by Informed Consent Action Network.

Both lawsuits sought a preliminary injunction to immediately prohibit D.C. schools and public health officials from enforcing the law until the lawsuits are concluded.

During oral arguments on March 3, Hazlehurst argued the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it contains multiple provisions that strip away the meager protections guaranteed to parents under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

Hazlehurst also argued the law violates the right to freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Hazlehurst told the court the mayor of D.C. created a “pressure-cooker environment,” enticing and psychologically manipulating minor children to defy their parents and take vaccinations against their parents’ will.

To make his point, Hazlehurst relied on a drawing, “Peer Pressure,” by a child of one of the plaintiffs. The drawing depicts the dilemma children face at school when they don’t want to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

On March 18, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the preliminary injunction.

In obtaining the preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs overcame a high legal hurdle that the “threatened injury must be certainly impending” as established by the U.S. Supreme Court precedent Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, Hazlehurst said.

The court also ruled the plaintiffs in both lawsuits have legal standing based on preemption because the D.C. Minor Consent Act conflicts with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

In CHD’s case, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden made the additional finding that the plaintiffs have standing based upon the fact that they are likely to succeed on the merits that the law violates the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment.

“This preliminary injunction is part of ongoing litigation in an extremely important national precedent-setting case,” said Hazlehurst. “The rights of parents to decide what is best for their children’s health is at stake. Government can’t be allowed to make such decisions for minor children.”

The D.C. Minor Consent Act contains several provisions designed to deceive parents by hiding the fact that their children have been vaccinated against their parental judgment, authority or religious convictions.

The law requires healthcare providers to falsify records by leaving the child’s school vaccination records blank.

It also allows doctors to bill parents’ insurance companies for vaccines administered to children against their parents’ written directive. However, insurance companies may not send parents of those children an explanation of benefits.

April 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

60 countries sign declaration that commits to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation”

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 29, 2022

The United States (US) and 60 partner countries, including the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia, and members of the European Union (EU), have signed a sweeping “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” which commits to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation” and somehow upholding free speech rights while also censoring “harmful” content.

The White House framed the declaration as something that supports freedom and privacy by focusing on its commitments to protect human rights, the free flow of information, and privacy. The EU put out similar talking points and claimed that those who signed the declaration support a future internet that’s open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure.

However, the commitments in the declaration are vague and often conflicting. For example, the declaration makes multiple commitments to upholding freedom of expression yet also commits to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation.” It also contains the seemingly contradictory commitment of ensuring “the right to freedom of expression” is protected when governments and platforms censor content that they deem to be harmful.

Furthermore, many of the governments that signed this declaration are currently pushing sweeping online censorship laws or openly supporting online censorship.

For example, just a few days ago, the Biden administration called for private companies to censor online “misinformation” – the latest of many similar calls. The EU also recently passed its Digital Services Act (DSA) which contains requirements to censor “hate speech” and “misinformation.”

Some government officials, including Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry François-Philippe Champagne and UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, even mentioned their country’s online censorship laws during the live launch of this Declaration for the Future of the Internet.

“The vision outlined in this declaration aligns very well with the many initiatives we are working on here in Canada, including our Digital Charter,” Champagne said.

Canada’s Digital Charter was launched in 2019 and threatens platforms with “meaningful financial consequences” if they fail to fight online “hate” and “disinformation.”

“I am enormously encouraged to see online safety is a key principle of that declaration,” Dorries said. “As the UK’s Digital Secretary, doing more to protect people online is one of my main priorities – and last month, I was proud to introduce a groundbreaking Online Safety Bill to the UK Parliament that will make the internet safer for everyone.”

The UK’s Online Safety Bill will give the government sweeping censorship powers, censor some “legal but harmful” content, and criminalize “harmful” and “false” communications.

Like the commitments to freedom of expression, the declaration’s commitments to privacy are also being made by governments that engage in or allow mass surveillance.

For example, the EU is allowing the linking of face recognition databases to create a mega surveillance system. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently boosted its social media surveillance technology. And the outgoing London Metropolitan police commissioner recently congratulated herself on extending the surveillance state.

While the current signatories of this declaration are governments, the White House plans to work with “the private sector, international organizations, the technical community, academia and civil society, and other relevant stakeholders worldwide to promote, foster, and achieve” the “shared vision” of this Declaration for the Future of the Internet.

Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google have already welcomed this declaration.

“It’s great to see countries coming together today to launch the Declaration for the Future of the Internet (DFI),” Google’s Vice President, Government Affairs & Public Policy, Karan Bhatia, wrote in a blog post. “We are committed to partnering with governments and civil society through the Declaration to disrupt disinformation campaigns and foreign malign activity, while ensuring people around the world are able to access trustworthy information.”

Google and its video-sharing platform YouTube have used the term misinformation to justify the mass censorship of content. Additionally, Bhatia’s commitment to ensuring access to “trustworthy information” echoes YouTube’s commitment to boosting “authoritative sources” – a practice that creates a huge disparity between mainstream media outlets and independent creators and results in mainstream media outlets being artificially boosted by as much as 20x.

“This Declaration is an important signal from some of the world’s leading democracies,” Nick Clegg, the President of Global Affairs at Facebook’s parent company Meta, tweeted. “The only way to preserve and enhance the best of the open internet, prevent it from fragmenting further and protect human rights in the digital space is by working together.”

While Clegg’s statement focuses on the open internet and protecting human rights, Meta also mass censors content on its platforms and plans to continue this censorship in its metaverse.

And despite the declaration’s commitment to privacy, both Google and Meta’s businesses rely heavily on surveilling users to serve targeted ads.

The current list of countries that have endorsed this Declaration for the Future of the Internet includes Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cabo Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, the European Commission, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, North Macedonia, Palau, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States, Ukraine, and Uruguay.

The declaration isn’t legally binding but is intended to be used as a “reference for public policy makers, as well as citizens, businesses, and civil society organizations.” The signatories also intend to translate its principles into “concrete policies and actions; and, work together to promote this vision globally.”

We obtained a copy of the Declaration for the Future of the Internet for you here.

April 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

The EU’s Digital Services Act is the next big threat to free speech

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 29, 2022

Authorities across the world continue to use the Ukrainian crisis as the backdrop against which to pass, in some cases unprecedented in the way they restrict or censor free speech, legislation regulating the digital industry.

These trends are nothing new, but the current massive global crisis presents an excellent excuse to introduce draconian measures with little or no scrutiny or opposition. And so, in the EU, the Digital Services Act just got “enriched” by a new law that will allow the bloc to declare a state of emergency – on the internet.

The law, referred to as a “crisis mechanism” is a part of the Act and got ushered into existence last Saturday.

A state of emergency normally gives governments extraordinary powers and suspends normal laws and regulation in order to preserve lives and property – something that has thus far been used in case of war or natural disaster, i.e., those events affecting a country’s physical security, economy, etc.

But now the 27 EU countries will be able to do the same in imposing extraordinary control on all key, public-facing elements of the web: social platforms, search engines, and e-commerce sites.

A good chunk of these three categories means this is not about the usual emergency measures in a time of crisis – they also concern freedom of speech, which is where things get very complicated. What critical voices who manage to find their way into corporate media seem to be admitting is legislation like this can bring harmful outcomes, but they’re also trying to normalize it.

Daphne Keller of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center has been quoted as telling Wired, “It looks like the war in Ukraine created a political opportunity for advocates of tighter restrictions to push their agenda. That’s pretty normal politics, if bad law.”

But many others, whose voices cannot these days be heard in the mainstream, will argue that this is also an example of “bad politics”: in Europe, that part of the world that has given birth to democracy and always strives, though does not always succeed, at implementing its tenets, sneakily passing extreme regulation almost literally “under cover of the night” (reports say that the vote on the new EU law took place “in the early hours of Saturday”) could highly likely backfire, down the road.

For the moment, the EU seems happy to explain its latest attempt at dipping its toe in the authoritarianism pond by saying that forcing tech companies to silence or completely censor information should be considered as not controversial, if a crisis is taking place, whether that concerns public security or – a health threat. Yes, the Covid panic, and its possible future (re)apparitions in European societies and economies, has also been factored in, when deciding to draft and then approve the new law.

With issues sensitive as this, every word counts – but the definition of what constitutes a “threat” big enough to invoke these massive new powers is predictably murky and bureaucratic.

Members of a European Parliament (EP) grouping called the European People’s Party (EPP), said only that when the EU Commission decides, “very large” platforms will have to “limit any urgent threat on their platforms.”

There’s more. “All measures under the crisis mechanism will be limited in time and accompanied by safeguards for fundamental rights,” European Commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke promised.

These statements mean everything and nothing, and that’s exactly what they’re designed to do.

There’s other news revealing a bid to centralize power in the EU, now a very diffuse, and at times confused organization. Thus European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen will be given the power to enforce the new rules, bypassing a previous system where countries like Ireland, that have the most to lose if Big Tech is pushed out of Europe, had a voice.

It’s of interest to note that Big Tech has been playing along pretty well so far, making this latest legislative push somewhat unclear. Both during the Covid and Ukraine war events, these large corporations have been heeding political messages and catering to political needs, basically to a fault.

Reports suggest that now, the bureaucrats in Brussels may just want to make their jobs simpler. Instead of having to go to the sanctions regime and relying on Big Tech to obey – like they did when they blocked Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik – they will now have a whole new law that enforces all this in one fell swoop.

This is happening as Big Tech – both the from the West, like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and from the East, like TikTok, are yet to make any comment.

And now it’s up to EU member countries to approve the law and allow the “crisis mechanism” to kick into gear.

April 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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