US Republicans Condemn UK’s Online Censorship Law as a “Tsunami… Heading Towards America”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024
UK’s “censorship law” – Online Safety Act – has gained in notoriety, as it has now become the subject of interest of the US House Judiciary Committee, which has for years tried to shed light on the censorship on the internet, and its actors and factors.
So much so that the committee’s members have coined the expression, the Censorship Industrial Complex.
While most of the body’s activities are centered around US social media and allegations of the Biden-Harris administration’s involvement in pressuring them to censor speech, no “complex” is considered to be on an industrial scale for no reason.
A flurry of third parties – such as “fact-checkers” and “raters” – have been involved and investigated, including those based abroad – notably, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
A member of the Republican-majority committee, Congressman Darrell Issa, now strongly criticized the trends concerning censorship-enabling legislation in the EU and in the UK, singling out the Online Safety Act, and warning that “a tsunami of censorship is heading towards America” from abroad.
And that’s just to add to what is already there – Issa called that situation, “malign actors here at home.” As for the UK law, the congressman is unimpressed by its authors and supporters promoting it as a way to protect against hate speech and other online ills.
According to Issa, what it does is give regulators a tool to censor free speech, and as such is viewed by Republicans as part of “a broader global push by the Censorship Industrial Complex.”
Issa in full, from The Spectator:
“The growing attacks on free speech in the US – as well as the UK and EU – pose a direct threat to free people on both sides of the Atlantic. We know that legislation like the Online Safety Act that is said to combat ‘hate speech’ empowers regulators to censor free speech.
“Congressional Republicans understand that these threats to free speech are part of a broader global push by the Censorship Industrial Complex, which includes not only the EU, UK, and other nations but also malign actors here at home. We are committed to confronting this growing threat alongside the incoming Trump Administration to fight against these assaults on free speech within our borders and around the world.”
The congressman had no problem counting the UK and the EU (with its Digital Services Act) among the places this push emanates from, while also vowing that the second Trump administration, alongside Congress Republicans, intends to “fight against these assaults on free speech within our borders and around the world.”
In the UK itself, there are those like Reform Party leader Nigel Farage who couldn’t agree more. Farage, who has close ties with Trump, has made comments about a free speech crackdown in his country.
The UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom advocacy group also agrees. Executive Director Paul Coleman said that the Judiciary Committee’s criticism and stance on a number of issues “shows that the UK is fast becoming notorious around the world for its censorious practices.”
Vienna police ban mass protest supporting excluded Freedom Party’s ‘People’s Chancellor’ Herbert Kickl
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | November 28, 2024
A massive protest planned for Saturday in Vienna to support Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl, who was excluded from ongoing government negotiations despite winning the most votes in the recent election, has been banned by the police.
Heute reported that the rally was expected to draw 1.4 million participants and was organized by the group Fair Thinking, which gained notoriety among the Austrian establishment for its demonstrations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The protest, promoted as a show of support for “People’s Chancellor Kickl,” sought to challenge the so-called “sugar coalition” of parties negotiating to form the government. The FPÖ and Kickl, despite their electoral success, were left out of talks, fueling outrage among his supporters.
Kickl, who previously appeared at Fair Thinking’s protests, has become a popular figure among many Austrians, representing opposition to Covid policies, insisting on neutrality in the Ukraine conflict, and expressing dissatisfaction with Austria’s political elite over its commitment to mass immigration.
The initial protest date of Nov. 9, which coincided with the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogroms, drew condemnation from political leaders, including Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who called the timing a “slap in the face to victims’ relatives.”
President Alexander Van der Bellen also expressed strong disapproval, leading to organizers postponing the event to Nov. 30.
On Thursday, however, Vienna police announced the prohibition of the protests under Section 6 Paragraph 1 of Austria’s Assembly Act. The justification cited potential disruptions to businesses in Vienna’s shopping districts and the flow of traffic.
A statement from the police warned: “Holding an unannounced or prohibited meeting constitutes an administrative violation. Such meetings can be dissolved, and participants must disperse immediately.”
Organizers have not backed down, hinting at plans to proceed informally or under different guises. A statement on their Telegram channel invited supporters to “take a walk” in Vienna during Advent and visit Christmas markets, particularly the one at Marien-Theresien-Platz.
Critics have argued that prioritizing undisturbed shopping and traffic flow over freedom of assembly sets a dangerous precedent amid fear this rationale could be used to justify arbitrary bans on protests, limiting democratic expression.
The ban has further inflamed tensions in Austria’s political landscape, highlighting deep divisions over Kickl’s exclusion from government negotiations.
Kickl’s FPÖ has gained support since topping the September federal elections but being sidelined by other parties in coalition talks, winning Sunday’s state election in Styria with 35.6 percent of the vote.
The legacy Social Democrats (SPÖ) and Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) saw their vote shares drop in what is considered to be punishment for its anti-democratic cordon sanitaire imposed around the FPO.
Free speech crackdown: Expect more house raids as Germany’s left moves to supercharge law on ‘insulting’ politicians
Remix News | November 28, 2024
Following a wave of house raids and arrests against those who “insult” politicians in the German government, the ruling far-left Social Democrats (SPD) are doubling down and moving to make it even easier to target speech violations and insults while also increasing punishments — despite growing criticism.
Lower Saxony’s Justice Minister Kathrin Wahlmann (SPD) has submitted a proposed resolution to the Conference of Justice Ministers of the German states to allow prosecutors more extensive options to prosecute “insults to politicians,” as reported by German newspaper Welt.
The new proposal would drop the threshold required to prosecute individuals who “insult” politicians. Currently, the act indicates that insults that “significantly impede” the politician’s “public work” can be charged. However, the new proposal would delete this section, which would then allow for prosecutors to more easily pursue a variety of offenses that do not necessarily “significantly” impede a politician’s work.
Lower Saxony’s Justice Minister Wahlmann (SPD) said she found it “unbearable” to see “the disgusting hate comments” that politicians are exposed to, which is why she is launching this proposal.
“Anyone who is particularly committed to the community should also benefit from the community’s special protection,” she said, adding that current rules had “proven to be insufficiently effective.”
Currently, the maximum prison sentence is three years in prison for “insulting” a politician, but this could increase further. The new proposal would also allow authorities to more easily pursue cases in instances where no report or complaint has been filed.
It must be underlined that these cases are being weaponized against the German populace at a tremendous rate. For example, police recently raided a retired soldier’s house for calling Economic Miniister Robert Habeck, of the Green Party, an “idiot” in a meme posted to X. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, also of the Green Party, won her criminal case against a woman who called her the “worst foreign minster ever.” In the case of CDU leader Friedrich Merz, a woman is being prosecuted for calling him a “drunkard.”
It is unclear how these cases “significantly hindered” the public lives of these two major politicians, but a wave of such cases have been launched in recent years, primarily by left-wing parties. In fact, Habeck has filed criminal charges against 805 people, while Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has launched 513 criminal complaints.
Merz himself has also launched such cases, but he is not disclosing how many. However, the specific law, which is section 188 of the German criminal code, was passed by Merz’s party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), under the leadership of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. With this law in hand, thousands of criminal cases have been launched against citizens for speech “insults.”
Augsburg constitutional lawyer Josef Franz Lindner is critical of the new law proposal, telling Welt : “If the element of significantly hindering public activity were removed from Section 188 of the Criminal Code, it would actually be easier for public prosecutors to investigate an insult to a politician ex officio and come to a conviction… However, I see problems with the principle of proportionality and, above all, with the principle of equal treatment.”
He notes that the law is designed to protect the “public work” of politicians, but “if the element of public work were removed, however, this reason for the unequal treatment of politicians and other people would no longer apply. The argument would then be that the honor of politicians is worth more than that of normal citizens. I see this as a violation of the Basic Law (the German constitution).”
The move to make this speech law even harsher comes at a time when a prominent Green Party MP Renate Künast calls critics of such “insult” arrests supporters of the extreme right, saying “anyone who criticizes this is supporting right-wing extremism.”
Notably, she is currently spearheading an effort to ban the rival Alternative for Germany (AfD) entirely from the democratic process.
These “insult” cases also do not only apply to politicians, but even judges as well, as seen in one case where a German man criticized a judge’s sentence for a Syrian man who was convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl. The man who “insulted” the judge in an email ended up being fined at a higher rate than the Syrian rapist in the case, who was given no prison time — only probation.
Notably, these house raids and prosecutions are having the desired effect: a population terrified of criticizing the government.
As Remix News reported earlier today, freedom of expression in Germany is being increasingly constrained, with 74 percent of citizens believing people are holding back their opinions out of fear of repercussions, according to a new survey by Insa.
This growing trend is illustrated by recent high-profile cases, such as individuals facing criminal convictions for insulting politicians on social media and even pensioners receiving police visits over internet memes.
Canada helps Israel in broadening its definition of ‘anti-Semitism’
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | November 26, 2024
Once again, anti-Semitism was the catchphrase for political rhetoric denouncing the protest in Montreal against NATO’s complicity with Israel’s genocide. NATO delegates met in Canada for the 70th annual session of its Parliamentary Assembly, and protesters called for Canada’s withdrawal from the organisation, even as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the country is on track to increase its military spending, which NATO has established as two per cent of the country’s GDP.
“We need to commit ourselves every day to NATO and the principles that keep us safe in this uncertain world,” said Trudeau, acting as if former colonial powers were not responsible for “this uncertain world” and, along with Israel, the genocide in Gaza.
Activists at the protest thought otherwise, of course. As the gathering outside the meeting turned violent, Israeli and mainstream media were swift to label the protest as “anti-Semitic”, as did Trudeau. Montreal’s police, however, said that they did not receive reports of anti-Semitic violence or hate crimes. Mayor of Montreal Valerie Plante condemned the violence, but said that she did not believe that the protest was anti-Semitic.
The protest was organised by Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles, with the purpose of exposing NATO’s complicity with Israel’s genocide.
However, as Israel increasingly targets any criticism of its actions as “anti-Semitism”, Trudeau followed suit.
“As a democracy, as a country that will always defend freedom of speech, it’s important for people to be able to go out and protest and express their anger, their disagreements in free and comfortable ways,” he declared. “But there is never any room for anti-Semitism, for hatred, discrimination, for violence.”
Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Blair took a similar position. “Those behaviours are unacceptable and we can condemn them, and in particular the hatred and anti-Semitism that was on display, in the strongest possible terms.”
According to reports in Israeli media, a protestor referenced the “Final Solution” which was a Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust.
What stands out is the discrepancy in responses to two different scenarios – Israel’s internationally-approved genocide and a protest against NATO – which showed clearly that the latter’s manifestation of violent action, directed against a transatlantic military alliance, was deemed to be more disturbing than Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people.
Besides this discrepancy, Israel is also extending the “anti-Semitic” label to include any form of protest directed even at organisations that are not Jewish, but prioritise allegiances to Zionism and Zionist colonial violence. The target audience of the protest in Montreal was clearly the NATO delegates.
NATO members have supported Israel’s genocide through purchasing the occupation state’s military technology (“as field-tested against Palestinian civilians”) and also by selling weapons to Israel. Since 2017, Israel has also benefited from its permanent official mission established in NATO headquarters in Brussels. In January 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at NATO headquarters, noting that,
“NATO and Israel have worked together for almost 30 years.”
Calling out NATO’s complicity in genocide is not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. Trudeau has confirmed recently that Canada will abide by the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. What message is Trudeau sending to the Canadian public about his government picking and choosing what part of colonial violence it deems worthy of support, while vilifying protestors for drawing attention to government-level hypocrisy?
Germany Tightens Grip on Online Speech as Vice Chancellor Defends Arrest of Online Critic
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024
Germany’s authorities continue to double down on their crusade against all manner of free speech on the internet: from the right of citizens to criticize them, to satirical content like memes.
Instead of considering apologizing to a pensioner whose home was recently raided by law enforcement for an online post unflattering of his person, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck is now urging even stricter regulation of social media.
And it’s clear what kind of regulation Habeck – who was referred to as “an idiot” in the post that got 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff in hot water with the prosecution – wants to see more of.
The Green Party politician cited the EU’s controversial, sweeping censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a tool that could be used to “regulate” algorithms used by social media.
According to the German press, Habeck told the ARD broadcaster not only that he wouldn’t apologize but went on to try to explain – or, justify – why he filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner in the first place.
Habeck suggested that being called an “idiot” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back; his grievance supposedly originates from a previous “racist” post by Niehoff.
That’s not what the prosecutor said when they sent the police to the man’s home, however; only the post branding the high-ranked official as “idiot” was mentioned as the reason for the search – as it was allegedly intended “to defame Robert Habeck in general and to make his work as a member of the federal government more difficult.”
In Germany, those found guilty of such offenses can end up in prison for up to three years, or be forced to pay a fine.
Habeck mentioning a previous “racist” post, meanwhile, stems from the prosecution saying the pensioner “could be suspected of incitement to hatred” (but this was not the reason for sending the police to Niehoff’s home).
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Picked For NIH Chief as Free Speech Takes Center Stage in Science
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024
With a decision that has garnered the attention of both supporters and skeptics of America’s public health establishment, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. For a nation battered by years of pandemic policies, conflicting narratives, and public mistrust, there’s more to this nomination— it’s a declaration.
Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and a leading voice in health policy, has been a consistent advocate for evidence-based decision-making and open scientific discourse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he gained national attention for his principled stance against lockdowns and sweeping mandates, which he argued caused more harm than good. Now, he’s poised to bring that same conviction to one of the most influential scientific institutions in the world.
Rather than being welcomed as a critical voice, Bhattacharya faced vilification from a system allergic to dissent.
Fighting for Free Speech in Science
Perhaps Bhattacharya’s most defining moment came when he fought back against censorship. The Stanford professor became a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of colluding with Big Tech to silence dissenting voices on public health.
The suppression of ideas, Bhattacharya argued, isn’t just an affront to the First Amendment; it’s antithetical to the scientific method. By standing up, he wasn’t just defending his views but ensuring that future debates about public health policy could happen in the open, where they belong.
A New Era for the NIH
With his appointment as NIH director, Bhattacharya is stepping into a role that carries enormous responsibility. But for a man who has spent his career challenging conventional wisdom, this is an opportunity to turn the page on a period of public disillusionment with science.
In an X post following the announcement, Bhattacharya, who was once blacklisted from Twitter under the old regime, promised to reform America’s scientific institutions to make them “worthy of trust again” and to ensure that NIH-funded research would focus on improving health outcomes for all Americans.
President Trump underscored this vision, calling Bhattacharya a leader who will restore the NIH to its “Gold Standard” while addressing America’s greatest health challenges. Paired with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another advocate for reform, Bhattacharya is set to tackle systemic issues such as chronic illness, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and the erosion of public trust in science.
Six Simple Steps to Pharma Reform
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | November 20, 2024
The recent United States elections may have finally produced an administration that is willing – even eager – to reform the Big Pharma juggernaut that has thoroughly dominated life in the United States since Covid. But how might we achieve meaningful, definitive Pharma reform?
Simple.
Before we continue, please allow me to highlight the difference between “simple” and “easy.” Just because something is simple doesn’t make it easy. Lifting a 10-ton weight is no more complicated than lifting a 10-pound weight. But it’s a lot harder to do.
The task of reforming Big Pharma will not be easy. Talk about a heavy lift! Consider that before the 2020 election, the pharmaceutical industry donated funds to 72 senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives. Pfizer alone contributed to 228 lawmakers. At this moment, Big Pharma may be down, but it’s not out. The industry has too much power, money, and influence to be brought under control without a major struggle.
While not easy, should the political will be mustered, the process of breaking the stranglehold Big Pharma has on us would be surprisingly simple. Six changes in Federal law – four repeals of existing law, and two new pieces of legislation – would go a long way toward reining in and even reforming Big Pharma.
From the 1970s onward, US Federal policy consistently trended toward the empowerment and enrichment of the pharmaceutical industry. Since 1980, a series of Federal laws were enacted that created perverse incentives and promoted the rapacious behavior that has characterized Big Pharma over the past several decades, climaxing with the pandemic totalitarianism of the Covid era.
Four of the most problematic of these laws are ripe for repeal. Doing so would constitute vital steps toward reining in Big Pharma. The two other steps proposed here would require new legislation, but fairly simple legislation at that.
The six simple steps are:
- Repeal the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act
- Repeal the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act
- Repeal the 2004 Project Bioshield Act
- Repeal the 2005 PREP Act
- Outlaw Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising
- Encode Medical Freedom into Federal Law
Repeal the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act
The Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act (Public Law 96-517), better known as the Bayh-Dole Act, was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The Bayh-Dole Act made 2 major changes: it allowed private entities (such as universities and small businesses) to routinely keep ownership and patent rights to inventions made during government-funded research. It also allowed Federal agencies to grant exclusive licenses for use of Federally-owned patents and intellectual property.
The Bayh-Dole Act was intended to encourage innovation within government research. As researchers could now profit directly from their work, it was thought they would make better use of taxpayer support. However, as economist Toby Rogers has argued, this ill-conceived law had the opposite effect.
The ability for government contracted workers to patent their discoveries created a disincentive to share them with other researchers, who might beat them to market. Close guarding of intellectual property and lack of open collaboration had a chilling effect on rapid innovation – hardly what taxpayers would have wanted from their investments.
More importantly, endowing Federal agencies such as the NIH with the power to effectively pick “winners and losers” with whom Federal intellectual property would be granted for commercial use, created a tremendous potential for corruption within these agencies.
The Act did contain a provision for “march-in-rights,” whereby the relevant government agency (such as the NIH) could step in and allow other entities use of the intellectual property if the original patent-holder failed to meet specific requirements to make proper use of them for the public good. However, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, in 44 years since the Act was made law, march-in-rights have never been successfully invoked, despite numerous attempts.
The Bayh-Dole Act itself, coupled with the refusal of agencies such as the NIH to ever invoke march-in-rights, has been frequently implicated in the massive price-gouging problems in US pharmaceuticals. In one remarkable exchange in 2016 between Senator Dick Durbin and then NIH Director Francis Collins, Durbin refuted Collins’ prevaricating defense of never invoking march-in-rights, stating:
… if you cannot find one egregious example where you could apply this [march-in-rights], I would be surprised. And applying it even in one, sends at least the message to the pharmaceutical companies, that patients need to have access to drugs that were developed with taxpayer’s expenses and the research that went into it. I think that doing nothing sends the opposite message, that it’s fair game, open season, for whatever price increases they wish.
By allowing the NIH authority to assign publicly funded intellectual property rights and statutory power to protect exclusive use of them, the Bayh-Dole Act opened the door widely for massive corruption between industry and regulators and greatly enabled the extreme degree of agency capture now present at the NIH and other Federal Agencies.
Bayh-Dole has been a failure. It should be repealed and replaced.
Repeal the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act
The toxicity of vaccines was so well-established even decades ago, that a Federal law – the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34) was passed to specifically exempt vaccine manufacturers from product liability, based on the legal principle that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” products.
Since Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 NCVIA Act protecting vaccine manufacturers from liability, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of vaccines on the market, as well as the number of vaccines added to the CDC vaccine schedules, with the number of vaccines on the CDC Child and Adolescent schedule rising from 7 in 1986 to 21 in 2023.
Furthermore, this special protection afforded to vaccines has prompted Big Pharma to attempt to sneak other types of therapeutics under the “vaccine” designation to provide them with blanket liability they would not otherwise enjoy.
For example, the Pfizer and Moderna Covid mRNA injections, while commonly called vaccines, are not true vaccines, but rather a type of mRNA-based gene therapy. In effect, they are what I refer to as Vaccines-In-Name-Only, or “VINOs.” As pointed out by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and others, the CDC’s definition of “vaccination” was altered during Covid to allow new types of drugs to be labeled as vaccines.
We have now reached the previously unimaginable state where Big Pharma is touting potential “vaccines” for cancer. As the National Cancer Institute admits on its website, these are actually immunotherapies. The purpose of employing this misleading nomenclature is clear: to slide even more therapies under the tort-protected “vaccine” umbrella.
The bloom is off the rose for vaccines. The alarming toxicity of the Covid vaccines caused a worldwide reexamination of this entire class of medicines. Multiple Covid vaccines, including the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca products, once brazenly touted as “safe and effective,” have now been pulled from the market. And the literally millions of VAERS reports implicating the mRNA Covid products have not gone away.
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 should be repealed, returning vaccines to the same tort liability status as other drugs.
Repeal the Project Bioshield Act of 2004
The Project Bioshield Act, signed into law by George W. Bush in 2004, introduced the Emergency Use Authorization avenue for pharmaceutical products to be brought to market. Among other things, this law empowered the FDA to authorize unapproved products for emergency use, in the event of a public health emergency as declared by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
By its very design, this law is ripe for abuse. It places immense power in the hands of the unelected Director of HHS, who can declare an emergency activating the law, and who simultaneously oversees the FDA.
This power was egregiously misused during Covid. Shockingly, the FDA issued nearly 400 EUAs related to Covid for pharmaceutical and medical products, the Covid “vaccines” being only the best known. The FDA even went so far as to grant “umbrella” EUAs for entire categories of Covid products such as test kits, often without reviewing specific products at all. The immense amounts of fraud related to test kits and other Covid-era medical products should come as no surprise.
With regard to Covid-related pharmaceuticals, to this day EUAs continue to be misused to the benefit of Big Pharma and to the detriment of citizens. For example, when the FDA announced the “new” formulations of the Covid boosters for 2024-25, they still released these new products under Emergency Use Authorization. In other words, a full four-and-one-half years after the start of the Covid pandemic, these products are still rushed to market after ludicrously inadequate safety and efficacy trials, based on a purported “emergency” now approaching a half decade in length.
The 2004 Project Bioshield Act should be repealed and the EUA designation it created should be eliminated.
Repeal the PREP Act of 2005
The NCVIA already provided vaccine manufacturers with a blanket tort liability shield beyond the wildest dreams of other industries, but apparently that was not enough. In 2005, at the height of the “War on Terror,” George W. Bush signed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (42 U.S.C. § 247d-6d), better known as the PREP Act.
The PREP Act, which was heavily lobbied for by vaccine manufacturers, provides an unprecedented level of blanket tort liability to Big Pharma and other medical-related industries in the event of declared bioterrorism events, pandemics, and other emergencies. Again, tremendous power is placed in the hands of the Director of HHS, who has broad discretion to declare such an emergency.
The PREP Act was controversial from the outset – any act that can spark vigorous, simultaneous opposition from both Phyllis Schlafly’s conservative Eagle Forum and Ralph Nader’s left-wing Public Citizen for its unconstitutional nature is surely pushing the envelope.
In effect, the PREP Act has allowed Big Pharma and its captured regulatory friends to completely circumvent routine FDA standards for safety and efficacy under the guise of an emergency, which as noted above, can conveniently last half a decade or more.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of Covid, the PREP Act has been broadly invoked in the legal defense of countless defendants now sued for the excesses, harms, and violations of human rights perpetrated at all levels of government and society. It will take decades in the courts to sort out where the PREP Act’s broad protections begin and end.
This is both absurd and insane. At its inception, the PREP Act was broadly recognized as one of the most overreaching and unconstitutional Federal laws in modern times. The Covid era has tragically revealed the PREP Act to be a murderous failure. The PREP Act must be repealed.
During Covid, government at nearly every level used the specter of a pandemic to blatantly suspend, deny, and even attempt to permanently eliminate numerous fundamental civil rights that are clearly encoded in the Constitution. Furthermore, the well-established and time-honored pillars of Medical Ethics were dismissed wholesale in the name of public safety.
In addition to repealing the deeply flawed laws discussed above, two pieces of straightforward legislation are needed to limit Big Pharma’s undue influence on society.
Outlaw Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising
The United States is one of only 2 countries in the world that allows direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. The scale of this advertising is monumental. Total Pharma advertising spending topped $6.58 billion in 2020. The dangers of this are multiple.
First, as we can all see by turning on the television, Big Pharma abuses this privilege by aggressively hawking almost any product it feels it can profit from. The “pill for every ill” mindset shifts into hyperdrive on TV, with an expensive, proprietary, pharmacological cure for everything from your morbid obesity to your “bent carrot.”
Direct-to-consumer television advertisements heavily target the elderly. This is an important component of Big Pharma’s push to promote the Covid and RSV vaccines as routine shots, piggybacking on the wide acceptance of influenza vaccines. Not content to profit off the traditional fall flu vaccine, Big Pharma seeks to create a subscription model for a bevy of seasonal shots against numerous, generally mild, viral respiratory infections.
Even more importantly, direct-to-consumer advertising provides Big Pharma with a legal way to capture media. Pharma was the second-largest television advertising industry in 2021, spending $5.6 billion on TV ads. No legacy media outlet dares to speak out against the interests of entities providing that level of funding. This muzzles dissenting voices and eliminates open discussion about safety issues in mainstream media.
In short, through direct-to-consumer advertising, Big Pharma has bought the media’s silence.
A free society requires freedom of the press and media. The Covid era has demonstrated that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising stifles freedom of the press and media to a dangerous and unacceptable degree.
Somehow, the rest of the world has managed to survive without direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. In fact, many countries do better with respect to health measures than the Pharma-ad-riddled USA. In 2019, just before Covid, the United States ranked only 35th in terms of overall health in the Bloomberg National Health Rankings. Meanwhile, the United States pays more for its middling health rankings than any other nation on Earth.
Encode Medical Freedom into American law
The Founding Fathers would be scandalized to find that the United States needs explicit laws stating that the Bill of Rights is not null and void in the event of a “pandemic,” (or during other emergencies, for that matter), but here we are.
The Founders were well acquainted with episodic infectious disease. In fact, they faced epidemics at a level we cannot imagine. George Washington survived smallpox. Thomas Jefferson lost a child to whooping cough. Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and surgeon general of the Continental Army, promoted inoculation of the troops against smallpox.
Despite those experiences, the Founders inserted no health-emergency-based escape clauses in the Constitution permitting government to deny citizens the inalienable rights protected therein.
As I have written previously, the excesses of the Covid era have sparked a movement toward encoding “medical freedom” into law, to protect our civil rights against medical and public health overreach. (To be fully effective, this may need to be expanded to include any declared emergency – e.g. “climate” emergencies – although that is beyond the scope of this essay.)
Given the excesses of the Covid era, many of which have now been demonstrated to have been pre-planned and deliberate, and given rapid technological advancement of both medicine and surveillance, it is advisable to encode into law assertions regarding medical freedom. While the exact wording may vary, the 2 key points of focus would be explicitly protecting bodily autonomy and limiting the power of public health declarations. Here are two examples:
- Citizens shall not be deprived of any rights protected in the US Constitution, or of their ability to fully participate in society, on the basis of their acceptance or refusal of any medical treatment(s) or procedure(s).
- Citizens shall not be deprived of any rights protected in the US Constitution, or of their ability to fully participate in society, on the basis of a medical or public health emergency.
Encoding such statements into law would accomplish two goals. First, it would substantially rein in the power-seeking element of the public health industry that became such a menace to human freedom during Covid, and which incidentally is tightly entwined with Big Pharma. Second, it would significantly thwart the efforts of Big Pharma to push their wares through a herd-based and mandate-driven approach.
Should someone oppose such explicit statements of our God-given rights, on the basis of “But what if there is another pandemic?”, I would reply as follows: Only once in human history did the world lock itself down due to a disease. It turned out to have been done mostly under false pretenses, and it turned out to be a deadly and disastrous mistake. We are not doing that again.
Conclusion
Big Pharma is a Leviathan, in both the biblical and Hobbesian senses of the word. To truly control it, other measures will surely be necessary. Other needful actions are beyond the scope of this article. Some of these may be very complicated. For example, it is imperative that the gain-of-function bioweapons research be halted. However, this is a worldwide issue, so outlawing it in the US alone will not solve the problem.
However, these six simple steps are an important start. Members of the incoming administration have already spoken about some of them. Success breeds success, and successfully implementing these solutions will help free ourselves from the tentacles of the monstrosity that Big Pharma has become.
Clayton J. Baker, MD is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
Healthcare workers file class action lawsuit against the Ontario government over its COVID-19 vaccine directive
The Canadian Independent | November 22, 2024
A $170-million class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Province of Ontario and its Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, alleging negligence, misfeasance in public office, tortious inducement to breach contract, and violations of privacy rights related to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.
Lisa Wolfs is the primary plaintiff in the lawsuit. She was previously employed as a Clinical Nurse Educator with London Health Sciences Centre and initiated the suit on behalf of unionized healthcare workers in Ontario. At the heart of the lawsuit is the challenge to the legality of Directive 6, a public health order issued in August 2021 by Dr. Moore.
Court documents show that Wolfs went on medical leave on September 15, 2021, was later cleared to return to work, but was terminated on August 4, 2022, under the enforcement of COVID-19 Directive 6.
Filed under Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act, 1992, the lawsuit seeks to represent tens of thousands of unionized healthcare workers across the province who were subject to the directive. The plaintiff argues that the mandate imposed unauthorized changes to her employment contract, forced the disclosure of personal medical information, and caused significant economic and emotional harm.
Directive 6 mandated that hospitals, home and community care service providers, and ambulance services implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for employees, staff, contractors, students, and volunteers.
Under the directive, healthcare workers had to provide proof of vaccination, a medical exemption, or participate in an educational program to maintain their employment. Wolfs argues that these policies led to her termination after nearly 16 years of service, despite her previously exemplary record. Her lawsuit claims that her dismissal violated the terms of her employment contract, which did not include mandatory vaccination as a condition of employment or allow for unpaid leave under these circumstances.
The lawsuit accuses the Ontario government and Dr. Moore of several violations. First, it alleges negligence, claiming that the vaccination policies were implemented without sufficient evidence supporting their efficacy in preventing COVID-19 transmission.
Second, it accuses Dr. Moore of misfeasance in public office, arguing that he acted with reckless indifference or willful blindness to vaccine risks and the lack of long-term safety data.
Third, the lawsuit alleges tortious inducement to breach contract, stating that the directive unlawfully interfered with employment agreements between healthcare workers and their employers.
Finally, it argues that the directive infringed on workers’ privacy rights by requiring the disclosure of vaccination status or medical exemptions.
In addition, the suit questions the public health rationale behind the mandates, referring to Health Canada product monographs. According to the claim, these documents do not indicate that approved vaccines such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty or Moderna’s Spikevax prevent COVID-19 transmission, undermining the stated purpose of the directive. Additionally, the lawsuit raises concerns about vaccine safety, highlighting adverse events reported during clinical trials and instances of product recalls or restrictions.
Seeking $170 million in damages, the lawsuit includes $50 million for pain and suffering, $50 million for misfeasance in public office, $20 million for tortious inducement to breach contract, and $50 million in punitive damages. The claim also includes compensation for lost income, medical monitoring expenses, and legal costs.
The case will proceed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, where the plaintiff will aim to have the lawsuit certified as a class action. If successful, it could set a precedent for addressing grievances related to pandemic-era workplace policies.
Scarlett Martyn, a veteran paramedic in Ontario, reached out to The Canadian Independent to highlight this lawsuit. Martyn is a member of United Healthcare Workers of Ontario (UHCWO), a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization representing thousands of healthcare professionals. The group advocates for health privacy, voluntary and informed consent, and non-discriminatory medical policies in Ontario and across Canada.
Martyn says that UHCWO is raising funds to support the lawsuit. She explained that the organization is crowdfunding to cover potential court costs if class certification is unsuccessful and any named plaintiffs are required to pay legal costs. She also mentioned that if they succeed at the certification stage, the funds raised will be used to cover litigation costs for the class action. You can read more about the UHCWO and donate if you wish at the link below.
House of Representatives Approves Legislation Threatening Nonprofits’ Free Speech
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | November 22, 2024
On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives approved legislation that would threaten nonprofit organizations’ exercise of free speech rights. The legislation would accomplish this goal by empowering the US government to selectively clamp down on nonprofits to an extent that targeted organizations may cease to exist. This is all being done in the name of countering terrorism, a trusty standby excuse for the US government exercising authoritarian powers.
The House approved the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (HR 9495) by a vote of 219 to 184. The “yes” votes came mainly from Republican members, and all the “no” votes were from Democrats plus Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute.
J.D. Tuccille provided an informative critique of HR 9495 in a Friday Reason article. The bill, explained Tuccille, “allows for the ‘termination of tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.’” Continuing, Tuccille wrote:
The designation of organizations as such is left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, based on that official’s judgment that a non-profit group has, in the last three years, provided ‘material support or resources’ to what the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. The language provides for a 90-day window during which time supposed ‘terrorist supporting organizations’ can appeal the designation, but the burden is on them to prove that they’re not guilty.
This turns due process on its head.
The threat from this new bureaucratic power is extreme for targeted organizations. As Tuccille puts it in his article, the loss of “tax -exempt status” is essentially a death penalty for most non-profit organizations.”
What a censorship power this legislation hands over to the executive branch bureaucracy. Nonprofit organizations whose activities challenge the ambitions of the US government and connected individuals, businesses, and organizations, can be snuffed out. Meanwhile, other organizations will have a big incentive to limit their own speech to avoid being similarly targeted for destruction.
During the House floor debate on HR 9495, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) presented a brief, persuasive speech against the bill. Here is the text of his speech:
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 9495. As Members of Congress, it is our duty to stand against terrorism and stand up for our common values, but this bill does neither.
What does it do?
What it does is grant sweeping draconian powers to the executive branch to essentially shut down any nonprofit.
On what basis would future administrations, Democratic or Republican, be able to exercise such power?
On a mere accusation.
I repeat, an accusation.
All nonprofits could be under scrutiny. These are decent people who are advocating on issues from religious freedom to animal welfare.
Mr. Speaker, why would conservatives, the very same people who gnashed their teeth at executive overreach, support such a measure?
Why would they suddenly about-face and sacrifice the values they claim to stand for?
It is because this is a gift to the President-elect, Mr. Trump, wrapped up in a bow right before the holidays.
On the campaign trail, he has made no secret of who he would seek to go after. This is bigger than the President-elect because now every President who would be king would be free to seek vengeance on their political opponents for every perceived slight.
I caution my colleagues to consider how far-reaching the consequences of this bill would be. This bill would apply to all future Presidents.
At a time when we should be strengthening our checks and balances and shoring up our guardrails, this legislation would do the opposite.
Mr. Speaker, in the strongest possible terms, I urge my colleagues to vote against this executive branch power grab.
This legislative threat to nonprofit organizations and their free speech can be expected to be rejected by the Democratic controlled Senate and President Joe Biden. But, it will likely be back for another go-round under more amenable conditions come January when the House, Senate, and presidency are all in Republican control.
Trump’s election victory: the schism in the US is deepening, the fight is intensifying
By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – November 23, 2024
Following a crushing defeat at the November 5 elections (Democrats are now in the minority in Congress), the US Democratic Party is gradually coming to its senses, consolidating and launching new attacks against the Republicans.
At the forefront of all this is the editorial board of the New York Times newspaper, which published an article the day after the vote titled ‘America makes a perilous choice’. The main idea is that Americans should clearly understand the threat to the country and its laws posed by the 47th President of the United States, since he prioritises “the accumulation of uncontrolled power and the punishment of his alleged enemies”. Recognising that the elections demonstrated deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, politics and the state of American institutions, the newspaper demands that Democrats unite and resist the destructive figure of Trump: the task now is to vote correctly in the midterm elections of 2026 and in 2028 “to get the country back on the right track”.
On November 14, the same editorial board published a new article ‘Trump’s reckless choices for national leadership’. “Donald Trump has demonstrated his incongruity with the presidency in countless ways, but one of the most obvious is the marginal figures surrounding him, conspiracy theorists and low liars who put loyalty to him above all else”.
The media loyal to the Democratic party have launched a vehement campaign against the candidates named by Trump for posts in his government. They are accused of a variety of sins and the Senate is being urged to reject many of these nominations.
The idea that many troubles and problems await the United States under Trump is being dispersed in various ways, while the ‘red thread’ is the idea that the president-elect is surrounded by incompetent people and that they are simply unworthy to perform state functions.
Famous US columnist David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post that Trump is by nature a destroyer and hopes to overthrow what he imagines to be the ‘deep state’, but American voters did not give him the opportunity to destroy the country’s military and intelligence services. If they approve Trump’s appointees, they will do more to collapse his presidency “than Democrats ever could”. The New York Times called Trump a “threat to global peace and security” on 11/18/2024.
The fight between Republicans and Democrats intensifies
It should be noted that Trump’s supporters are not indifferent. A number of newspapers and TV networks have been charged with disinformation (amounting to $10 billion), calls for an audit at the Department of Defence are growing louder and louder and demands for an investigation of the many miscalculations of the Biden administration are being voiced on television.
The plan for changing power in the US (‘Project 2025’), developed by one of the think tanks supporting Trump, is being criticised sharply. It proposes to enhance the powers of the head of state dramatically, put a number of departments under his direct control (and to abolish the FBI altogether), resolve the issue of illegal migration with an iron fist, expelling all illegal immigrants from the country, and to “make federal bureaucrats more responsible to the democratically elected president and Congress”. The ideological basis for these changes is the struggle for the revival of the ‘Christian foundations’ of American society and the task of increasing church attendance is also highlighted.
In one of his speeches, Trump himself promised to legislate that only two genders, male and female, are officially recognised in the United States.
A number of publications, including Politico, say that Trump’s victory actually means ‘the end of the era of American-style peace’.
Political scientist Daniel Dresner thinks that the election of Trump symbolises the end of ‘American exceptionalism’.
In the Foreign Affairs magazine articles are appearing stating that Republicans should now show a greater commitment to realism and restraint: “If the US political class could agree that the United States has been overzealous in its foreign policy and should adjust its course, it would help to ensure that the country will not repeat the deadly mistakes of the last 20 years, where the US got bogged down in various conflicts”.
Current events clearly indicate that a fierce battle in the ranks of the American elite is being aggravated; the supporters of globalism and aggressive liberalism do not want to give up their positions. Nevertheless, the huge public debt of the United States, which exceeds $36 trillion, should force authorities to have a more adequate approach to military interventions, which “bring limited benefits and impose high costs on the United States”.
Some comments from the countries of the Global South say that the US is apparently awaiting a long internal political struggle, which may limit US activism in the international arena. Along with this, it is suggested that Washington’s policy is unlikely to change overnight. For example, the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper expressed on November 15 that “the next four years will not be any better”, however, most importantly, they should also not be worse. Trump should adopt a cooperative approach to foreign policy and security that recognises the limitations of the United States.
At the same time, the Egyptian Al Ahram, noting Trump’s pro-Israeli approach to the Middle East, stressed the other day that the newly elected US president recognises that Israel has lost what he called the ‘PR war’ and should therefore soon put an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, since the world can no longer tolerate daily bloodshed and preposterous destruction.
Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story
Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy
By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024
One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.
In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.
July 28 disclosure
We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.
As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.
However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.
No peaceful transfer of power
It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.
The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.
The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.
Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.
Secret meeting with journalists
And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.
The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning
By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024
Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
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A superpower and “the world’s sickest warrior state”
By Paul J. Balles | March 8, 2010
Living through five or six major wars has hardened me to what I thought were the extremes of inhuman cruelty and brutality.
Two things made those extremes almost bearable: the brutality always revealed – at least according to the media coverage – the viciousness of the enemy. It was therefore quite understandable when our “brave men and women” pulverized the enemy.
Films of Japanese torturing captive Americans somehow justified holding Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II; and only a small percentage of Americans found the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki unreasonably vengeful at best, at worst, depraved.
The media giants in America portrayed the North Koreans as barbaric beasts with their captives, quite unlike their southern counterpoints – our allies during the Korean War. No one ever felt the need to explain how the South Koreans were a civilized breed while the North Koreans were absolute savages, at least according to the official line.
In Vietnam, our warriors justifiably (or so the media made us believe) dropped napalm on the North Vietnamese who had the gall to hide in villages and tunnels to ravage our invaders. At least it was accepted practice until some rogue photojournalist filmed a young girl screaming down a Vietnamese road in flames. … continue
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