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EU Uses Digital Services Act to Probe YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat Algorithms for Censorship Compliance

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 6, 2024

“Illegal drugs” is a very well-defined category in the EU. “Hate speech,” on the other hand, is not. Yet, the bloc is lumping these together as it builds another case for putting even more pressure on major social platforms and demands more data from them.

The EU is doing this via the censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and is this time targeting YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. In the tone and nature of the demands, the EU puts them in two groups here: two companies from the US, and one from China.

Previously, the EU launched DSA non-compliance proceedings against TikTok, AliExpress, but also Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.

The EU Commission this week announced that the “request for information” pertains to these tech platforms’ (algorithmic)recommendations, specifically, their design and functioning.

These companies are reminded that the DSA obligates them to “adequately mitigate risks stemming from their recommender systems” – and here we go into the usual list, starting with how recommendations might influence users’ mental health, risks to the electoral process, endanger minors, all the way to what the EU says is illegal content – “such as promoting illegal drugs and hate speech.”

Here, the demand is also to explain what is being done to “mitigate” the harm, as the EU chooses to understand it.

This last demand is addressed to YouTube and Snapchat, which must give the EU “detailed” information regarding algorithmic parameters that decide what is recommended to users.

The emphasis of the pressure being put on TikTok is a little different. Brussels wants to know what the video platform is doing to stop manipulation of elections, media, etc. – again, in terms of the recommendations system.

An EU Commission press release said the deadline to provide this information is November 15, and warns the three companies they might – depending on how the EU likes the answers – become subject to proceedings under the DSA.

The Commission wasted no opportunity to remind YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok that one of the DSA articles means possible fines if they respond to a request for information (RFI) in a manner that is “incorrect, incomplete, or misleading.”

Cheerleaders of EU policies on these matters hope that something of the sort will take root in the US as well, despite the fact that “hate speech,” for example, is not criminalized there.

October 6, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Germany’s Green Minister Targets Algorithms: Baerbock’s Latest Bid to Suppress Populist Rise

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2024

Even in the world of the EU’s often perplexing politics, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (of the Greens) stands out. And while she may “excel” at political gaffes – a passion for protecting free speech doesn’t seem to be among her strong suits.

Instead, with a seemingly straight face, Baerbock is now joining the legion of politicians urging for even more social media censorship, as a distinctly counter-intuitive way to “protect” democracy.

Baerbock wants the EU to do the heavy lifting on behalf of Germany’s current authorities this time as well, and one of the arguments the minister uses is that what she considers to be “disinformation” is allowing what she calls populist parties to grow in – popularity.

It should be a basic democratic principle that no party or political grouping can stay in power forever, so this kind of underlying “argument” smacks of authoritarian, rather than democratic traditions.

When one strips away Baerbock’s latest rant about fake news, disinformation, and attacks that are “disintegrating our democratic reality” (whatever that may mean) – what is left is the “problem” of the success of the opposition AfD party, and the German authorities’ inability to counter it with meaningful policies, therefore resorting to anything from name-calling, to open censorship.

On Monday, Baerbock turned to the European Commission to ask for “new rules” around what she and her political comrades consider to be disinformation. At this point, even the Commission – the enforcer of the infamous censorship law, the DSA, might have been thinking – “but what more can we do?”

If that was the case, it didn’t last long. As soon as on Wednesday, the EC “summoned” three major social media companies and demanded information about their algorithmic recommendations.

It might just be a coincidence, but algorithms were on Baerbock’s brain the day before, too. Reports say she suggested that Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution team up with the EC, against “algorithms that work against democracy.”

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

IS EUGENICS MAKING A COMEBACK?

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 3, 2024

From loss of life for the greater good to sterilizations to medically assisted suicide, world government’s role in population control has become a matter for humanity. Is eugenics no longer being hidden in western culture?

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Policy Imperatives for Health Freedom

By Leslie Manookian | Health Freedom Defense Fund | September 30, 2024

As a requirement for discussing and appreciating the imperative of health freedom in the USA, we must first define what is meant by health freedom. A simple definition is: the right of every American to decide what medical interventions to put into or onto one’s body, the right to access and use the medical and healing modalities of one’s choice, the right to maintain one’s health according to one’s conscience, and the right to live free of involuntary medication be it via the food supply, the water supply, or something airborne.

In a free and moral society, health freedom is not simply a convenience, it’s an imperative. In this vein, in the event of injury or illness, all Americans must possess the absolute right to choose what medical interventions and treatments to accept and what medical or healing modalities to utilize in order to address illness or injury; Americans must be free to choose how to maintain their health whether that be through nutrition, supplements, herbs, drugs, or a myriad of healing modalities; Americans must have access to truthful information regarding how the seeds for plants and animal feed and the food in our food supply has been grown or developed, medicated, processed, and packaged; and Americans have the right to exist in a society free of water and airborne medications, insect vectors, and chemicals.

Health freedom can only exist in a free and moral society which values each and every member of that society. This prerequisite thus excludes medical mandates of any kind. It is immoral to force another individual to risk their life for the theoretical benefit of another. Moreover, government does not have the moral authority or power to dictate what medical products any American puts into or on his or her body. If anyone in government does possess that power, then no American is truly free, nor does he or she possess any meaningful right whatsoever – Americans are merely chattel.

In order to create a society based on true health freedom, the following policy shifts should be implemented, as a first step. There are many more changes which should be implemented as well, but these proposals would address some of the most glaring, pernicious anti-liberty and anti-health aspects of our system as it exists today:

1. Ban all Medical Mandates:

The Declaration of Independence states, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”  Medical mandates are prime facie violations of our founding documents.

Health freedom demands prior voluntary informed consent before a medical treatment or intervention is administered. Medical mandates are thus, by definition, antithetical to voluntary consent and therefore must be prohibited in a free and moral society. No single individual in government knows the medical history of any American, knows what is best for Americans, or has to live with the repercussions of any choices made by Americans, thus, medical mandates are never justified in any circumstance.

2. Repeal the Bayh-Dole Act:

“The Bayh-Dole Act, formerly known as the Patent and Trademark Act Amendments, is a federal law enacted in 1980 that enables universities, nonprofit research institutions and small businesses to own, patent and commercialize inventions developed under federally funded research programs within their organizations.”

Under this program, government scientists may receive up to $150,000 per year on their patents.

In theory, Bayh-Dole incentivizes bright scientists to seek employment at federal health agencies rather than entering more lucrative private industry by allowing these taxpayer-funded scientists and other individuals and entities to retain the patent rights to intellectual property developed during their taxpayer-funded research and development activities.

In practice, this Act forever realigned the interests of taxpayer-funded scientists away from the American people and toward their own interests and profits and the profits of the private industries with which they collaborate. Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team at NIAID infamously owned half the Moderna Covid vaccine patent which incentivized the misguided covid era policies leading to a colossal violation of the rights of Americans demonstrating the perverse incentives created by Bayh-Dole and the necessity of repealing the act.

3. Repeal the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1992:

“The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) was created by Congress in 1992 and authorizes FDA to collect user fees from persons that submit certain human drug applications for review or that are named in approved applications as the sponsor of certain prescription drug products. Since the passage of PDUFA, user fees have played an important role in expediting the drug review and approval process.”

In 2022 alone, the pharmaceutical industry paid $2.9 billion in user fees amounting to 46% of FDA’s entire budget including $1.4 billion or 66% for FDA’s drug approvers’ salaries and $197 million or 43% of the biologics (vaccines) program budget. As a direct consequence of PDUFA, the FDA has a vested interest aligned with the profits and success of the pharmaceutical industry rather than the health and wellbeing of the American people.

4. Repeal the Public Readiness and Preparedness Act (PREP Act) which authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a PREP Act declaration.

“The declaration provides immunity from liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims:

  • of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions
  • determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency
  • to entities and individuals involved in the development, manufacture, testing, distribution, administration, and use of such countermeasures

A PREP Act declaration is specifically for the purpose of providing immunity from liability, and is different from, and not dependent on, other emergency declarations.”

The PREP Act desecrates the ethical principle of informed consent by protecting individuals from liability even when they expressly act contrary to patients’ wishes and instructions and must be repealed.

5. Repeal the Affordable Care Act:

The Affordable Care Act anchors Americans to the pharmaceutical and drug-based medical paradigm even though a majority of Americans used at least one form of “alternative” medicine in 2021 and spent $30.6 billion in out of pocket expenses for those holistic medicine services in 2023 according to Statista. Instead, implement a health savings program which permits Americans to access the health and medical modalities of their choice which in turn would foster more competition and reduce the exorbitant health care costs in the US by breaking the extant monopolies held by the medical and insurance industries.

6. Repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA):

NCVIA shields vaccine makers and those who administer vaccines from liability (except for willful misconduct), creating a perverse incentive to industry to develop a never-ending stream of vaccines which are then mandated by the states and a perverse incentive to medical professionals to charge for and inject patients irrespective of the harm they may cause. Further, the NCVIA protects industry, medical professionals, and vaccine programs by creating a separate administrative federal court structure lacking due process and discovery, managed by “Special Masters” instead of judges, all in violation of the constitutionally protected right to due process. While NCVIA contains other provisions designed to protect American families and ensure the safety of the national vaccine supply, Congress is not conducting proper oversight and the promises made in 1986 at the time of the Act’s passage have not been upheld. As such, Americans who have been injured or killed by vaccines are left with astronomical medical bills and to fend for themselves.

7. Prohibit Private Donations to Government Entities:

Prohibit private individuals, foundations, corporations, contractors, any other person or entity from donating or otherwise giving money to any agency or entity of the federal government. FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accept money from private actors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Pfizer thus skewing the interests of the agency in favor of these private actors and away from the American public. Gates has collaborated with FDA and the CDC Foundation takes money from the pharmaceutical industry whose products CDC is responsible for monitoring for safety.

8. Cooling-off Period for Senior Federal Employees:

Enact a 5-year cooling-off period before which agency leadership, deputies, and other key officials may depart federal agencies in order to enter the companies they regulate in the private sector.

9. Prevent Conflicts of Interest:

Eliminate conflict of interest waivers so that no person serving on a health agency committee, board, or other regulatory entity may have a conflict of interest. Disclosure of conflicts of interest is insufficient to ensure the agencies pursue the interests of the American people. Individuals with financial or ideological conflicts of interest should not serve as decision makers in any capacity.

10. Prohibit Government Grants to Nonprofits:

Prohibit government from allocating taxpayer dollars to nonprofit. Nonprofits exists to serve the public interests and should be funded directly by American citizens. If a nonprofit has a worthwhile mission, the public will gladly support it. Government exists to protect our rights and should not be in the business of picking winners and losers nor should it be using third parties to pursue policies outside the reach and review of the public.

11. Ban Water Fluoridation:

While water fluoridation programs are broad spread, they are not only dangerous from a health standpoint, they are forced medication in violation of the ethical principle of informed consent. Research comparing the health outcomes and IQs of communities that do and do not fluoridate their water supply reveal that children in the fluoridated water communities have reduced IQs and therefore inferior prospects in life. Other research has documented the health hazards of fluoride, an industrial waste product.

In addition, as fluoride is added to municipal water supplies, residents of those communities have no way to opt out and therefore are subjected to involuntary forced medication. No one should be forced to consume drugged water in order to maintain a biological necessity.

12. Ban Release of Genetically Modified Insects

Two tenets of good health are abundant exposure to sunshine and fresh air, however in some states, the state governments have collaborated with private business to release genetically modified mosquitoes into communities. While these mosquitoes are often designed to breed with one another and eliminate the “dangerous” species going forward, the health impacts of humans being bitten by these insects is not well understood. Nor should a person have to be risk being bitten by one of these creatures in order to venture outside. This amounts to a form of forced medication absent any form of consent and must be ended.

These recommendations should be understood as necessary first steps to begin correcting the disastrous health policy environment that exists in the United States today and to restore true health freedom in the US which would allow all Americans to decide what medical interventions to allow into or onto one’s body, which health and medical modalities to utilize in maintaining their health, and the ability to live free of involuntary medication be it via the food supply, the water supply, or the air we breathe.

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dawn raids, assaults, imprisonment: how Germany’s government treats good doctors

Around 200 doctors issuing mask exemptions were put on a blacklist – and the consequences are shocking

World Council for Health | October 2, 2024

On June 8, 2024, a call regarding ‘Mask Exemption Certificates and House Searches’ was initiated by Dr Walter Weber, head of the doctors’ association Ärzte für Aufklärung. On this call, we received some shocking information: in Germany, there is a ‘blacklist’ of about 200 doctors who issued mask exemptions and as a result are apparently monitored by state security. Around 100 doctors who had issued similar certificates then came forward. Approximately 95% of these doctors experienced unannounced house searches, with one doctor being searched eight times.

These house searches typically took place from 6am and often lasted during office hours for 1-3 hours. In many cases, doors were broken down, and there were reports of inappropriate treatment of those affected. One example is Rolf Kron, who had to endure sitting in his nightgown with an open door for hours in the winter. Physical violence was also a concerning issue: Dr. Woitzel had to undergo a leg amputation due to police violence.

Psychological and physical consequences

These reports of physical assaults are alarming. An eye doctor from Münster suffered hearing loss after a violent incident. Moreover, several female colleagues became seriously ill, and one doctor, Dr. Ströer, was sentenced to two years in prison without parole and died six months later “for no reason”. Dr. Bianca Witzschel has been in pre-trial detention for 1.5 years due to a negative expert report, while a counter-report was rejected by the judge.

The financial implications are also severe.

Many doctors had to ‘buy their freedom’, paying sums of up to 6,000 euros. One colleague reported costs of around 30,000 euros because the waiting room chairs did not meet the required distance. Most doctors affected agree to the anonymized publication of their experiences, underscoring the gravity of the situation.

Smeared, ostracised, silenced

Local press often reported on these doctors, leading to defamation and slander. Families were bullied, including children. The medical profession in Germany, consisting of about 150,000 practicing doctors, has been silenced by this systematic persecution. The 200 or so doctors willing to issue mask exemptions constitutes less than 0.00013% of the total number.

There is no justification for such treatment – but there is plenty of justification for these doctors having issued mask exemptions.

We recently reported on the leaked protocols from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which revealed the extent to which the German people were deceived by their own government during the so-called pandemic. One revelation was that the RKI – the equivalent of the US’ CDC – knew there was no evidence that masks stopped the spread of Coronavirus. Those doctors who issued mask exemptions were both acting in their patients’ best interests and in line with the evidence, as acknowledged by the RKI. The problem is, they weren’t in line with their government and the consequences of this should shock the world.

This is what totalitarian, centralized medicine looks like.

The systematic persecution of doctors who issued mask exemptions highlights a concerning development in German society. The fear of house searches and the resulting consequences have deterred many doctors from helping patients in need. This not only silences the medical profession but also isolates them from society. It is time to question these practices and protect the rights of doctors as well as the needs of patients. Especially taking into account the actual science supporting their decision to be cautious about the inefficacy and even harm created by using masks as a mandatory tool for the management of Covid 19 (Brownstone, 2024).

The World Council for Health is grateful for these 200 brave doctors and all those supporting informed consent and the Hippocratic oath primum non nocere, first do no harm. The WCH calls on the people of Germany to speak up for these doctors and demand that all charges against them are dropped, that they are compensated for the crimes their own government has committed against them, and that they are duly honoured for maintaining their moral and scientific integrity despite devastating consequences.

Sources:

https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/

https://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/politik/artikel/rki-protokolle-und-die-wissenschaft-verschiedene-wahrheiten-47499784

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Adam Schiff and Other Democrats Demand Social Media Censor “Misinformation” and “Disinformation” This Month

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 2, 2024

In the US, the Democrats continue with their sustained efforts to pressure major social media platforms, now about a month ahead of the presidential election.

The Twitter Files give some idea about what may be happening behind closed doors (if previous campaigns/elections are any indication), but this is about public pressure. This time, Congressman Adam Schiff’s turn is to “demand action” from companies behind social media.

Meta (Instagram separately), X, Google (and YouTube separately), TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Microsoft are the recipients of a letter Schiff signed along with seven fellow members of the House of Representatives (four of them, like Schiff, California Democrats).

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The demand is this: disclose what plans these companies with the most influence and reach in the online space have to counter what the congressman and his colleagues consider to be the spread of mis- and dis- information – but also, “potential incitement of violence on their platforms in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.”

Schiff’s letter doesn’t clarify if (repeated) attempts to assassinate a candidate count as “incitement of violence,” or really, what kind of violence he has in mind – but he does mention “attacks on our democracy.”

Yet, the companies are supposed to let him know what they are doing to stop it. Along the way, the assertion is made that they have all “rolled back” their previous election policies.

“This almost universal reversion on the issue of combating election mis- and disinformation is incredibly troubling,” the letter reads.

Meta, Google, X, etc. are also asked, among other things, “Will your company commit to sharing data and metrics on the effectiveness of your enforcement systems in relation to US elections and political speech?”

On the other side of this political maelstrom, Republicans – notably the House Judiciary Committee – continue trying to shed light on how the White House and government agencies pressured and then colluded with major social platforms during previous campaigns and elections, all in the name of supposedly combating “misinformation.”

This has produced some visible, public results – like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing to the committee to apologize for succumbing to that pressure on issues like Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression.

The revelations that the government and Big Tech colluded to usher in unprecedented levels of censorship in the past continues to be tested in the courts as well.

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine is making life for its Hungarian minority hell

By Tamás Pilhál | Remix News | October 2, 2024

A Ukrainian politician came up with another great, very European-compatible idea. Natalija Pipa, a representative of the Ukrainian legislature, believes that from now on in schools, teachers and students should only speak Ukrainian during breaks, while standing in line at the cafeteria, or even in the restroom. That’s right, they should not be allowed to speak any other language, even in their free time between classes.

Hungarians from Transcarpathia, Poles from Lviv, Romanians from the Chernivtsi area, or even Russians should not even be able to talk to each other in their mother tongue outside of school hours, because it threatens the existence of Ukraine. Mrs. Pipa also drafted a bill for teaching national minorities to speak Ukrainian.

As we know, Ukrainian lawmakers will certainly accept it without any bone of contention. They did not have any problems with previous deprivations of Ukraine’s ministry populations either, with Brussels and Washington patting their heads and encouraging them throughout the entire process.

It is truly a sight to see. Our eastern neighbor is closing in on European Union membership with full force. Their national hero, Stepan Bandera, who massacred tens of thousands of Polish civilians, would obviously be proud of them.

Let’s just go over the facts. Ukraine has been fighting a life-and-death battle with the Russians for two and a half years, but their main concern is still how to make the lives of their helpless national minorities even more hellish. Their house is on fire, but instead of putting out the fire, out of necessity, they kick those who are forced under the same roof with them. And the neighbors, they spit in our faces and then expect us to applaud them, feel sorry for them, and send even more money, and weapons that they can manage to shoot deeper into Russia, all to see if they can start WW III.

If we look at the recently retired U.S. State Department honcho Victoria Nuland, they have been doing this since the $5 billion CIA coup in 2014. These nationalists have been fomenting unrest, terrorizing their minorities, and beating the crap out of them.

They started with the Education Law of 2017, the detailed rules of which in 2020 divided people living in Ukraine into four castes. According to this, the Ukrainians are first class. (There was already such a thing in history. Only then the word “Aryan” was used.) The second class are the native peoples, for example, the Crimean Tatars, who can study in their mother tongue until they graduate. On the other hand, Hungarians, Romanians and Poles are classified as third class and treated as non-natives and can study in their mother tongue only until the fourth grade of primary school, after which they are forced to learn Ukrainian.

The goal? Complete assimilation and destruction of identity.

Then, the 2019 language law made Ukrainian mandatory everywhere except for private conversations and religious ceremonies. Since the summer of 2021, events can only be held in the state language, and the texts of speakers who do not speak Ukrainian must be translated. The Ukrainian state is operating under total paranoia.

It’s as if the Ukrainian puppet governments have been pulling the strings according to a ready-made script since 2014. Of course, we’ve seen this before. In how many South American, African, and Asian countries has a rainbow revolution “unexpectedly” broken out, have peoples living in peace been incited against each other? The story is the same. Once the “revolution” broke out, the complete looting of the colony could then begin under the command of an agent who did not necessarily speak the native language of the country, but at least was parachuted in to step on their necks from overseas.

However, in the case of Ukraine, the booty was not enough for the United States. They wanted war. Some of their more talkative politicians even blurted it out: they want to weaken Russia, they cannot let the vast mineral wealth fall into their hands. Perhaps even those with a slower understanding could understand what it was about. If they have to make Ukraine war until the last Ukrainian is dead, it’s not a big price either — for them.

When the war is over, maybe only first-class Ukrainians will be left to pick up the pieces.

October 2, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Amazon Retracts Ban of Dr. Paul Marik’s “Cancer Care”

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | September 30, 2024

This evening I received an e-mail from Dr. Marik, who explained that Amazon’s ban of his book “Cancer Care” has been retracted. The e-book is again available for purchase. This great news comes almost exactly a week after I wrote about the ban in my post Amazon Excommunicates Dr. Paul Marik. I’d like to think that my protest, which was very widely shared, may have contributed to the retail Leviathan’s decision to retract the ban.

I hope that our oligarchic overlords will come to understand that—as much power and money as they possess—they won’t get away with banning books by great scholars while also pretending to be benevolent. Everyone who still has his brain will see this for what it is—namely, a brutal act of tyranny that ONLY the bad guys in history have done.

Congratulations, Dr. Marik, for your victory for free speech and for providing helpful and possibly life saving information to cancer patients. Put one in the win column for the good guys!

October 2, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Ukraine plans unprecedented attack against its own Hungarian minority

Remix News | October 1, 2024

Despite fighting and dying on the front for Ukraine, the country’s ethnic Hungarian minority is facing further persecution, with a new draft bill moving forward that will ban them from speaking in Hungarian in schools, even on breaks between classes. The bill would stipulate that all lessons must be delivered in Ukrainian and that even the language used in personal conversations in the school would have to be in Ukrainian.

Natalija Pipa, a representative of the Rada, submitted the bill, according to a report from Mandiner.

The rights of the Hungarian minority were already being curtailed long before the Russian invasion of the country, with Ukrainian nationalists often targeting the population, which numbers approximately 150,000 in the Transcarpathia region.

The adoption of the bill may have a negative impact on relations with Hungary, and Budapest will block all EU aid packages to Ukraine in response. Language rights for Hungarians have been eroded over the years despite protests from the Hungarian government.

Notably, Ukraine amended its laws to comply with EU membership requirements, which included restoring many of the language rights stripped from minorities, an action demanded by Budapest, but Hungary’s government has indicated it is not fully satisfied. This new move by Ukraine appears to be a new salvo against Orbán’s government if it passes.

“Both Hungary and Ukraine are interested in the development of neighborly relations, they share the intention to do so, the government is doing everything to achieve this, but it expects Kyiv to restore the rights of the Hungarian national community,” said Péter Szijjártó Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade when he met with the new Ukrainian minister a day earlier.

“We expect Ukraine to restore the rights of the Hungarian national community in terms of access to the mother tongue, in the fields of education, culture and public administration.”

There have been numerous reports that ethnic Hungarians are being drafted in large numbers and often sent to frontline positions as “cannon fodder.“

“If this continues, there won’t be any Hungarians left in Transcarpathia,” said Füssy Angéla during a report from the region for Hungarian news portal Pesti Srácok.

Hungarian news outlet Magyar Nemzet reports that the “Transcarpathian morgues are also full, and they are deliberately slowing down the release of victims.”

According to Hungarian news portal Pesti Srácok, which delivered its report from the Hungarian-inhabited Ukrainian town of Munkács (Mukachevo in Ukrainian), there are rumors circulating that Ukraine is looking to recruit tens of thousands of men in the region. It is likely that a new brigade is being formed because the largest brigade of trained soldiers, the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, suffered huge losses at Soledar. The Russian occupation of the eastern Ukrainian settlement was announced on Jan. 12, 2023.

October 1, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

‘More afraid of democracy than for democracy’ – AfD ban moves forward in German parliament

Remix News | October 1, 2024

Germany is heading closer to outright fascism as the establishment parties move to completely ban the rival Alternative for Germany party (AfD), currently the second-strongest party in the country, according to polling. Now, 10 MPs from four parties, each, totaling 40 MPs from the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Left Party, the Greens, and the Social Democrats (SPD) will put forward a motion to ban the party because it is a “threat to democracy.”

The motion was drawn up by Saxon CDU MP Marco Wanderwitz, who personally lost his local election to an AfD politician but is only in parliament because he was also included on the CDU’s election list. As Remix News has reported, he has been working for at least a year to gather enough support from members of parliament to pass a ban on the AfD.

Although Wanderwitz has struggled to get the required 37 signatures to put forward the motion, now that many of the ruling establishment parties have lost by huge margins in the eastern state of Thuringia, Brandenburg, and Saxony, his work has been easier.

Not all parties have yet joined in, including the left-wing BSW and the Free Democrats (FDP). However, there are already politicians in the BSW who have come out and said they want a ban, including Brandenburg top candidate Robert Crumbach, who called for their banning during his campaign.

The question now is whether there is a majority of MPs who are willing to ban the party in the parliament. The ban motion indicates that the AfD wants to abolish the free democratic order with an “actively combative and aggressive attitude.” It is unclear if there is a majority of MPs who would pass the motion, but there are those who disagree with the motion.

FDP MP Katja Adler slammed the motion on X, writing: “One could get the impression that the supporters of the ban are more afraid of democracy than for democracy.”

Even within the SPD, there are politicians who doubt whether a ban is the right method, not necessarily because they believe in democracy, but because there are fears the Federal Constitutional Court could rule the banning is unconstitutional, which would only help fuel the AfD’s rise.

SPD General Secretary Kühnert, for example, said that he wants the party banned as well but does not think there is yet enough evidence to secure a ban.

Sahra Wagenknecht also expressed criticism of the ban, telling “T-Online” that instead of taking the legitimate concerns of AfD voters seriously, they wanted to get rid of the unwelcome competitor by banning it. Wagenknecht, however, may also be positioning her party to pick up AfD voters should a ban go through.

The CSU regional group in the Bundestag also rejected a motion to ban the AfD. Regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt told the Augsburger Allgemeine that he thought the motion was wrong and counterproductive.

Various AfD politicians have already responded to the ban proposal.

“I think that’s great. A ban motion against the AfD, supported by the CDU and SPD. We will request a roll call vote. That delegitimizes every single applicant and every yes-sayer and every abstention vote as anti-democrats. Not even Minister of the Interior Fraeser, who has had us monitored by her Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for years, has enough evidence together after many years to classify us as extremist,” wrote AfD MP Beatrix von Storch.

There are also worries from the establishment that a ban procedure would last years, during which time, the ban procedure itself would only strengthen the AfD.

Far-left radical Anton Hofreiter, of the Green Party, said in an interview that if he thought an AfD ban procedure would be over quickly, he would support it, but since it would likely last years, he thinks it is risky at this point in time.

Those opposed to the AfD already have a plan B if their efforts to ban the party fail, which would be to cut state funding to the party, which would effectively mean the end of the party, as it would no longer be able to fund its activities or pay employees.

Germany is now the only Western country that is seriously attempting to enact a ban on a major opposition party. Although such actions are routine in non-democratic nations, it would mark a dark day in German history and point to the rise of fascism and a party oligarchy in the country once again.

Notably, with stabbings and terror attacks brought on by the immigration policies of all the major parties, the AfD continues to soar in popularity. Just last week, a Syrian migrant committed arson, attacked people with a machete, and ran over people with his van in a mass attack in Essen that saw the man injure 31 people, including small children. It follows a string of Jihadi attacks in Solingen, Mannheim, and Munich in recent months.

The AfD, which is calling for the strictest immigration controls of all the major parties, is also tremendously popular with the young. Increasingly, the major parties cannot win on the issues, so they are turning to outright bans against their democratic opposition.

October 1, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

30 Lawmakers Sponsor Bill to End Liability Protection for Vaccine Makers

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 30, 2024

A bill introduced late last week in the U.S. House of Representatives would end the liability protections Congress gave vaccine makers under the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

Thirty Republican lawmakers signed on as co-sponsors to House Bill 9828, End the Vaccine Carveout Act. The proposed legislation would end the broad protection from liability for injuries resulting from vaccines listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Childhood Immunization Schedule.

“The … vaccine makers are criminal enterprises that have paid tens of billions in criminal penalties over the past decade,” Children’s Health Defense (CHD) founder and chairman on leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement on the bill.

Kennedy, who has long advocated for eliminating liability protection for vaccine manufacturers, added, “By freeing them from liability for negligence, the 1986 statute removed any incentive for these companies to make safe products. If we want safe and effective vaccines we need to end the liability shield.”

CHD, React19 and The American Family Project also supported the development of the bill, the press release said.

REACT19 founder Brianne Dressen, who experienced a debilitating COVID-19 vaccine injury as a volunteer in AstraZeneca’s clinical trial, announced the bill and its co-sponsors in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“People harmed are long overdue for a compensation process that actually works, and it’s time for the drug companies to pick up the tab,” she said.

‘Complex sham compensation program’ in place since 1986 act

Congress passed the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act to address the risks of vaccines — which Congress and vaccine makers acknowledged had “unavoidable” side effects.

The act set up a “no-fault” system whereby instead of suing the manufacturers, people injured by vaccines can file a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which adjudicates the claims.

The VICP was meant to insulate vaccine makers from lawsuits that could bankrupt them while ensuring that injury victims had a straightforward, non-adversarial and fair path to compensation.

The program is funded by a 75-cent-per-dose tax, paid by vaccine makers, for every vaccine included in the program.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services administers the VICP, also known as the “vaccine court.” Court-appointed “special masters” — typically lawyers who previously represented the U.S. government — manage and decide the individual claims.

The proceedings are more informal than a typical courtroom. There is no judge or jury, and the rules of evidence, civil procedure and discovery do not apply.

In practice, getting compensation through the VICP has been notoriously difficult. Critics say the program has devolved to protect government agencies and corporations rather than the health of vaccinated children.

CHD CEO Mary Holland said the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act effectively left parents and children injured by vaccines with no substantive way to get any compensation while giving vaccine makers a free pass.

“For over 35 years, parents of children injured and killed by government-recommended vaccines have been left with no meaningful redress — only a complex, sham compensation program that pits grieving families against the government, while Big Pharma enjoys no liability,” she said.

“During that same time, chronic health conditions in children — autism, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], severe allergies, asthma — have skyrocketed,” Holland said.

In some cases, people who are dissatisfied with the outcome of their case in the VICP, or who don’t get a timely decision, can sue the manufacturer for limited causes of action, such as fraud — as is the case in many of the over 200 gardasil injury lawsuits currently being argued against Merck in federal court.

Special protections for COVID drugmakers

Vaccines administered under emergency use authorization (EUA), such as the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, aren’t covered by the VICP.

Instead, COVID-19 vaccine makers are protected from all liability by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which grants producers of vaccines, medications and medical devices total freedom from liability for any injuries arising from “countermeasures” used to address a public health or national security threat.

The PREP Act directs such “countermeasures” to be covered by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

While the FDA fully licensed versions of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for people ages 12 and up, it’s unclear if the fully licensed formulations are being administered, or if some people are still receiving EUA formulations.

COVID-19 vaccines for infants and children ages 6 months through age 11 have not yet been fully licensed — however, they were added to the childhood schedule.

Still, all COVID-19 vaccine injuries  — whether from a fully licensed or EUA formulation — remain covered only through the CICP.

However, for the tens of thousands of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccine, compensation through this program has proven nearly impossible.

To date, the CICP has paid only 16 claims for COVID-19 vaccine injuries, totaling $425,301.55. Except for one payment, all of the claims resulted in compensation of $8,962 or less.

The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for people ages 12 and up, however those vaccines continue , and added to the childhood schedule, they are still not even included in the VICP process.

During the pandemic, Pfizer and Moderna generated the largest profits in history for a drug from their COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Pfizer made $37 billion in 2021, and slightly more in 2023 from the COVID-19 vaccine alone. Moderna generated over $18 billion in profits in 2021 and $19 billion in 2022.

The most current data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) show that between Dec. 14, 2020, and Aug. 30, 2024, a total of 1,602,516 total adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccine were reported to VAERS, including 37,390 deaths. There were 311,544 serious injuries reported.

Research also shows that VAERS tends to provide an underestimation of vaccine injuries. Most people don’t report their vaccine injuries to VAERS. Research also has shown that many VAERS reports are delayed or deleted from public view for reasons that are not transparent.

Several lawsuits are currently challenging the constitutionality of the PREP Act, and others have made legal arguments that the PREP Act doesn’t apply in particular cases. However, recently many of these cases have been dismissed in state and federal courts.

Last week, after the Nevada Supreme Court dismissed a case against a man injured by remdesivir, a drug covered by the Prep Act, Kim Mack Rosenberg, general counsel for CHD, told The Defender the decision highlighted “that we need legislative action to undo the damage created by acts such as PREP and the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.”

What the ‘urgently needed’ legislation will do

Holland said the End the Vaccine Carveout Act is “urgently needed”:

“This legislation will help end Big Pharma’s reign over government. The corrupt public-private partnership of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has suppressed science, stacked the deck against families, subverted the democratic marketplace of checks and balances, and removed citizens’ rights to a trial by jury.

“Americans deserve better.”

The bill proposes to remove the requirement for vaccine-injured people to pursue compensation in the vaccine court. Under the law, someone injured by a vaccine would be able to pursue civil action against a vaccine maker, and to seek compensation through the VICP or both.

However, once a person is awarded compensation in civil court, they will no longer be eligible for compensation through the VICP.

The 1986 law also set a short statute of limitations for seeking injury compensation to two or three years of the death or injury, respectively. However, it often takes longer than that for people to realize that a vaccine caused their injury or illness.

The proposed law would allow anyone injured since the program became effective in 1988 to file a lawsuit.

Finally, the bill would end the protection from liability for the COVID-19 vaccines, allowing people injured by the vaccine to sue the vaccine makers in court.

“COVID-19 vaccines must be redefined as vaccines and not ‘countermeasures,’ so that the PREP Act’s liability carveout can no longer apply,” according to a white paper that provided justification for the bill.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

September 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

UN Official’s Battle With “Toxic Information” Raises Censorship Fears Ahead of US Election

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 30, 2024

United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming’s focus is “disinformation” and “toxic information systems” – and she presents those as standing in the way of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

SDGs are the UN’s plan that opponents say is “toxic” in itself since it seeks to promote such controversial things as censorship and digital ID and, to make matters worse, that’s supported by major countries.

Now, Fleming seems to be keen to add to the avalanche of pressure on Big Tech – even though the term she no doubt carefully uses instead is “domination of public discourse” in places where this alleged disinformation is most present.

Coincidentally or not this is coming right before a US presidential election, but Fleming is framing her parroting of the “disinformation” narrative in terms of the social platforms, as purely an “SDGs and UN” issue.

She is even trying to link this with the UN’s purpose, which is (rather, should be) peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, but from which the world organization has been disconnecting for a while.

Responding to a question lumping disinformation, climate change, and conflict resolution into one, Fleming asserted that disinformation and “toxic information systems” are damaging humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts, not to mention SDGs (she doesn’t quite explain this assertion).

Fleming’s official UN bio says one of her roles is “far-reaching efforts to address mis- and disinformation, and hate speech,” while supposedly simultaneously promoting “free and independent media.”

However, she started her career with an outlet that’s anything but free and independent: Fleming used to work for “Radio Free Europe,” funded by the US authorities (originally through the CIA).

Now, no doubt thanks to Fleming, the UN has something called DG Media Zone and it is there and during this year’s UN General Assembly that Fleming sounded her alarm bells, going as far as to say that “every single one” of UN’s priorities is these days under threat due to disinformation. (“Climate change” is now proudly listed among those priorities, in case you missed that.)

Fleming’s solution: collusion. This time (and publicly) “merely” with “civil society and people” who need to “work on our information ecosystems together.”

A word of warning about “civil society,” though: it’s often a moniker behind which groups implementing censorship through “fact-checking” etc, like to hide.

September 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

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