Stanford’s Censorship Operation finally shut down by the University, but only after the chutzpah became unbearable
BY MERYL NASS | JUNE 14, 2024
Stanford’s Internet Observatory was a surveillance-censorship operation (discussed previously) that spit on the First Amendment, worked closely with fed intelligence agents and trained students to break the law. God only knows what techniques were developed here in the heart of Silicon Valley to mind control the citizenry.
And they were so brazen! The spooks pretended they were academics doing “research.” But where are their advanced degrees? Where are their courses? Why isn’t Renee DiResta listed in the faculty directory?
The Observatory’s main figurehead, Renee DiResta, “ex” CIA asset, just published a book about her wondrous exploits saving the world from TRUTH.

And Stanford itself was so brazen, it filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to complain about how it was unjustly cited for its criminal collusion with the USG to censor political, intellectual, scientific, medical etc. opponents in the Missouri v Biden censorship case. It was just “research.”

Finally, Stanford could not stand the heat, and is getting out of the kitchen. Bye-bye.


EU’s top court hits Hungary with massive €200 million fine for blocking migrants, plus €1 million every day
By John Cody | Remix News | June 13, 2024
The EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, has hit Hungary with a massive fine for refusing to comply with a 2020 ruling that the country was blocking migrants at its border using illegal policies.
The ruling has sparked a strong reaction from the Hungarian government, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán writing on X that the “ECJ’s decision to fine Hungary with 200M euros plus 1m euros daily for defending the borders of the European Union is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.”
The European Court of Justice published the decision on X, noting it referred to Hungary’s “failure to comply with the Court of Justice’s judgment of 17 December 2020.”
The court had initially ruled in 2020 that Hungary had illegally detained and blocked migrants from entering its territory and then illegally held asylum seekers at the Röszke transit zone on Serbian territory, thereby allowing them to be deported before they could appeal their asylum application rejection. The court ordered Hungarian authorities to reconsider the practice of detaining such migrants.
The top court has now ruled that Hungary has ignored this judgment. The ruling comes at a time when not only Hungarians reject mass immigration, but polling across Europe shows the vast majority of Europeans want an end to mass immigration and immigration from non-European countries. In fact, a new poll found that 7 out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many migrants, while only 39 percent of respondents say Europe “needs immigration today.”
Original case backed by Soros NGO
In 2020, the government of Hungary maintained that it cannot be considered detention when the migrants are not allowed to enter Hungary but are still permitted to turn around and return via the route they came. A previous decision on the same case, handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, also found that the procedure did not constitute detention.
As Remix News previously reported, the case came about due to the backing of an NGO funded by billionaire oligarch George Soros.
The ECJ case was originally filed by two Iranian and two Afghani nationals stuck in the Röszke transit zone on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia. They entered the transit zone seeking asylum in Hungary, but the Hungarian authorities refused to process their case, arguing that they came from Serbia, a country deemed to be safe.
Represented by a Soros-funded NGO, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, they filed their case with the Szeged district public administration and labor court, which in turn forwarded it to the ECJ.
The Hungarian government maintained that migrants could not apply for asylum on Hungarian territory, but intead must apply for asylum at a Hungarian embassy in neighboring countries, such as Belgrade in Serbia.
Hungary contended that asylum applicants have no right to enter Hungary, as they cross several safe countries on their way to Hungary.
“Hungary is surrounded by safe countries,” said the Hungarian government’s international spokesman Zoltán Kovács in 2020. “The Geneva Conventions stipulate refugees must apply for asylum in the first safe country. Nothing guarantees the right to choose where to apply while breaking the law as an illegal migrant to boot.”
EU now at a crossroads: Reform or self-destruction

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 13, 2024
The EU has just experienced a monumental change, following years of failed immigration policies, which has ushered in a massive number of far-right MEPs in the more powerful EU member states. It’s too early to say whether this will make too much of a change to policy decisions at the highest echelons of the European Union but certainly the European Parliament itself is, possibly for the first time ever, going to be an interesting place with now a quarter of all of the 720 MEPs coming from far-right groups.
Traditionally most people who voted in EU elections were stalwart supporters of the project and the ethos of one Europe united by a policy of free movement of goods, services and people and, for many, a single currency. The few who voted against the mainstream parties – the main bloc made up of Christian democrats and socialists – were those who wanted to use their vote as a throw-away gesture to send a signal to their own elites that they want change. That protest vote in the past was always very small as the EU elite in Brussels always benefited from a voting system which was tilted in their favour. But no more.
The European Parliament, which most sceptics considered to be a fake assembly whose only real role is to rubber stamp draft legislation from either the powerful European Commission or member states (via the European Council), could now become suddenly relevant to the whole project. For the last five years, there has only been two Irish MEPs to take the floor and tackle the European Commission head on, on its genocide in Gaza or its phoney war in Ukraine. But now something like 180 MEPs will use their two minutes speaking time to tackle the commission on its failed foreign policy, immigration and trade deals with China, for example. The Ukraine war could be a central theme which will probably be a thorn in the side of the European Commission and its chief – whoever that might be as, despite supporting statements from the Christian Democratic group in the European parliament, it is not a certainty that Ursula von der Leyen will return as Commission chief.
If she succeeds and stays on as EU Commission president, she will have a tough time in parliamentary plenary sessions as Europe’s biggest countries – who pay the most into the EU budget – have picked up the most far-right seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National scored the most decisive victory, winning 30 of the country’s 81 seats, and more than double the votes of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew party. That political slaughter pushed Macron to call a snap election. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won 24 seats and increased her share of the national vote, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in Germany and snapped up 15 seats. Presently the AfD doesn’t have a pan-European group to align itself to and, under EU rules, benefit from huge amounts of cash from the EU parliament as it was kicked out of one of the two ‘groups’, prompting fears that it will create one itself and invite others to join it. In the European parliament both France’s and Italy’s far-right MEPs are in different groups, but in reality, when it comes to voting, for sure there will be a unified policy on most issues which will give them leverage with the European Commission that we have never seen in the short history of the EU.
It’s important to note that far-right parties topped the polls in Austria and Hungary, too, with important gains in Spain and Cyprus. All of these countries have one thing in common: real immigration problems which neither the mainstream political groups nor the EU has addressed.
But the real issue is the identity and survival of the European Union itself as this shake-up is certainly going to threaten the traditional power structure. Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more. Unlike President Macron who wisely stated to the press that the far-right votes were a message which he is listening to, von der Leyen’s statements were more about fighting the new threat.
Musk wants Ukrainian NGO designated as terrorist group
RT | June 13, 2024
A Ukrainian NGO has compiled a database of influential American citizens, who it claims hold positions that ‘mirror’ those of Moscow. One of the blacklisted individuals is billionaire Elon Musk, who has called for the organization to be designated as a terrorist group.
The NGO, Texty.org.ua, produced a lengthy report last week, which detailed a supposed “ecosystem” of citizens and organizations in the US, whose narratives “echo key messages of Russian propaganda” regarding the Ukraine conflict.
On Wednesday, Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee added a provision to the markup of the State Department’s 2025 budget that bans Texty from receiving US funding.
“It’s a good first step. They should be added to the list of sanctioned terrorist organizations,” Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) in reaction to the news.
The prohibition was championed by Representative Jim Banks, who was also targeted by the Ukrainian NGO. He told fellow Republicans that “federal bureaucrats should not support or partner with foreign groups that attempt to intimidate and silence US citizens and lawmakers.”
His message alluded to a link between the department and Anatoly Bondarenko, a co-founder of Texty. He is also an instructor for the ‘TechCamp’ program, which provides training to foreign journalists, NGOs, and activists, according to the Conservative Thinker.
The group has said its report was a piece of “data journalism,” and described itself as the victim of “an attack on freedom of speech and a display of chauvinism against the citizens of Ukraine.”
“Our critics believe that we do not have the right to investigate the streams of false information they produce about our country and us, simply because they are US citizens and we are not,” it claimed.
The original report described people on its list as “forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine,” ranging “from Trumpists to Communists.” Highlighted in the report was the renowned anti-war group CODEPINK, organizations funded by billionaire Charles Koch, popular conservative speaker Jordan Peterson, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Texty targeted Musk for supposedly allowing “Russian propaganda” on X, which he owns, and sharing with his followers a “highly skeptical view of the United States’ financial support for Ukraine.” Meanwhile, businessman Peter Thiel was accused of investing in Rumble, a free speech video sharing website. Unlike major platforms operated by US tech giants, it allows RT content.
The report acknowledged that both entrepreneurs had contributed to Kiev’s war effort against Russia via Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system and Thiel’s Palantir big-data analysis platform, but placed them on its blacklist nevertheless.
WHO Plans More ‘Health Promoting Schools’ — Critics Say More Vaccines, Less Parental Control Are Fueling the Plan
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 7, 2024
The World Health Organization (WHO) is expanding its “health promoting schools” initiative worldwide, citing flagging vaccination rates and the need to provide medical services to underprivileged children and combat alleged misinformation.
The COVID-19 pandemic is behind the latest push to expand its “Making Every School a Health Promoting School” program, the WHO said, citing “the largest disruption of education systems in history” and “the health effects of mass school closures” and other pandemic-related disruptions.
The agency said the initiative aims to “serve over 2.3 billion school-age children” worldwide.
But critics say that behind the WHO’s noble-sounding plan to expand health-promoting schools — also known as school-based health centers (SBHCs) — is an attempt to gain “a foothold in our schools,” to bypass parental consent and expand vaccination, data collection and surveillance.
Laura Sextro, CEO and chief operating officer of The Unity Project, a California-based health freedom and parental rights nonprofit, told The Defender that SBHCs are “very, very agenda-driven organizations within the school system.”
Sextro said SBHCs “will cover everything from sex education [to] radical gender ideology. They’ll be talking about driving vaccines … That is something that frankly parents should have the autonomy” over.
Valerie Borek, associate director and lead policy analyst for Stand For Health Freedom, said SBHCs will promote “vaccines, especially COVID, HPV, and influenza.”
“School-based health centers have no place in public schools,” said Sheila Matthews, co-founder of AbleChild: Parents for Label and Drug Free Education. Matthews alleged the centers allow “Big Pharma access to our children, who are a captive audience.”
Nigel Utton, a board member of the World Freedom Alliance and coordinator of its Education Charter, said the WHO can’t be trusted to support the health of young people. “If it did, no child in the world would live in unsanitary conditions, or be subjected to trafficking, poor nutrition or emotional intimidation within school systems,” he said.
“Instead, the WHO wastes enormous resources on forcing vaccination programs — injecting children with dangerous chemicals including animal proteins, heavy metals and other unspecified ingredients,” Utton added.
Critics also question the involvement of private interests in SBHCs, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — and Bill and Melinda Gates themselves — in promoting SBHCs and funding the WHO’s reports on the subject.
School-based health centers give ‘Big Pharma access to our children’
SBHCs aren’t new — the concept dates back to the 1970s. The WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF have actively promoted such programs since 1995.
SBHCs are intended to offer “primary care, mental health care, and other health services in schools,” particularly in underserved communities. This includes services such as immunizations and “well-child care.”
A 2020 paper in Health Promotion Perspectives, whose lead author, Manuela Pulimeno, Ph.D., is UNESCO’s chair on health education and sustainable development, said health-promoting schools help “integrate health educational goals in a holistic perspective at school” and have shown positive outcomes.
“To achieve this goal, health-related contents may be embedded in the school curricula as core discipline,” the paper states.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed SBHCs, stating they “improve access to health care services for students by decreasing financial, geographic, age, and cultural barriers.”
In the U.S., the School-Based Health Alliance promotes SBHCs. According to the alliance, about 3,900 SBHCs operate nationally, up from around 1,900 in 2012. A September 2023 study in JAMA Network Open called for “additional SBHC expansion.”
In 2022, the Biden administration issued $75 million in grants to states to expand SBHCs, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention incorporated SBHCs into its “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” model.
On a global level, “work is currently underway with early adopter countries such as Egypt, Kenya, North Macedonia and Paraguay to support governments in building a new generation of school health programmes,” the WHO said in a May 26 report.
WHO’s global standards for SBHCs include censorship and surveillance
In their report, the WHO developed eight “global standards” for SBHCs (page 3), in which school health services represent just one such standard. Other standards include school and government policies, school governance and leadership, school and community partnerships, schools social-emotional and physical environments and curriculum.
These are accompanied by 13 “implementation areas,” (page 17) calling for reinforcement of “intersectoral government and multi-stakeholder coordination,” strengthening “school and community partnerships,” curriculum development, “teacher training and professional learning” and monitoring and evaluation.
Critics say these proposals allow schools to implement vaccine programs. For instance, SBHCs have been linked to higher human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates, according to a 2022 report.
Merck, the maker of the Gardasil HPV vaccine, is a funder of the School-Based Health Alliance, whose board includes several members with ties to Big Pharma and vaccine-promoting organizations.
The Gardasil HPV vaccine is often administered to teenagers as part of school vaccination programs. In October 2023, a 12-year-old boy in France died days after collapsing and injuring himself minutes after HPV vaccination at his school.
In the U.S., several state and city government websites include vaccinations among the list of services SBHCs provide.
“Increased vaccine uptake is a mark of success for school-based health programs,” Borek said. “They’re considered an optimal place to promote and administer vaccines. In fact, schools and vaccine policy go hand in hand historically — vaccines didn’t have a strong foothold until schools mandated them for admission.”
Utton pointed out that “schools have been used to coerce and manipulate children into taking vaccinations against the will of their parents. Teachers have been indoctrinated, and those who have questioned the manipulative agenda have been ostracized.”
Borek said the “psychological pressure” a child experiences when a school authority figure recommends any kind of medical care creates a “fertile ground for pushing policy.”
SBHCs ‘will certainly be a tool to collect data’
Included among the WHO’s global standards for SBHCs are interventions in school curriculums and proposals to “embed school health content” in training for educators.
The 2020 Health Promotion Perspectives paper said the WHO calls for the incorporation of “health literacy” in “the core curriculum as children enter school.”
Critics told The Defender that changes like these could lead to the inclusion of non-health-related topics in school curricula under the guise of health education.
Virginie de Araujo-Recchia, a French lawyer and member of ONEST, France’s National Organization of Ethics, Health and Transparency, told The Defender that SBHCs may be “favored by the political powers in an attempt to achieve a fusion between education, citizenship and environmental causes.”
The WHO’s global standards for SBHCs also target “misinformation.” According to UNESCO, SBHCs “can … teach young people develop the critical thinking skills they need to reject harmful health-related myths and misconceptions,” noting that “This is a key in responding to pandemics like Covid-19 and HIV.”
The global standards call on schools to develop “versatile physical spaces that can be adapted to changing restrictions, as in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The WHO’s global standards also contain provisions for increased data collection and surveillance in schools, with the 13th “implementation area” calling on schools to “Design, develop and share practices for collecting, storing and analysing data.”
This is linked to calls to provide “capacity-building in evaluation (e.g. data collection and analysis)” and investments “in feasible … interoperable systems for collecting and storing data from monitoring at all levels of the education and/or health system.”
According to Stand for Health Freedom, SBHCs are “completely unregulated” in the U.S.
For instance, it is unclear how HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) andthe Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act will be applied to SBHCs and students’ health information.
SBHCs “will certainly be a tool to collect data on anything from vaccine status to sexual preference,” Sextro said.
Children can become ‘health trainers of their parents’
The WHO claims SBHCs involve “all stakeholders, and particularly students, parents and caregivers.” The agency’s global standards call for “opportunities for parents … to participate meaningfully in the governance, design, implementation and evaluation” of SBHCs and their inclusion on “design teams” and governance boards.
But the WHO appears to contradict itself, excluding parents from the “system of global standards for health-promoting schools” and noting that the “target readership” of its SBHC-related documents is “mainly people in government.”
According to Nemours KidsHealth, the centers “only provide care to children with parents’ written permission.” However, the organization notes that this “permission” usually consists of “the option to sign a permission form at the beginning of each school year.”
A consent form for an Atlanta SBHC shared with The Defender says nothing about parents being notified before, during or after treatment. Last year, a Connecticut school board was sued for rejecting a government-funded school-based mental health clinic that aimed to treat teens without parental consent.
“The reason they’re doing this is because they don’t want parents to be able to exercise their rights, which is to … make medically informed decisions on behalf of their children. And so, they’re usurping the parents,” Sextro said.
“Parents need to be front and center in their child’s medical care,” Borek said. “These centers are cleaving that relationship by promoting medical assessments and treatment without the presence of a parent.”
A proposed bill in New Hampshire (SB 343) would require parents to be present when services are provided at an SBHC.
“Schools are clearly not the place to introduce school health centers,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “Our children are neither guinea pigs for mass medical experimentation nor beings to be sacrificed.”
Notably, UNESCO suggests SBHCs can help children “educate” their parents on health matters. According to the 2020 Health Promotion Perspectives paper, SBHCs can help children “become health trainers of their parents, relatives and friends, impacting positively the entire society.”
Gates ‘has a direct financial benefit’ from SBHCs
Earlier this year, Melinda French Gates announced a $23 million investment in the School-Based Health Alliance, alongside fellow billionaire MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The Gates Foundation has also provided financial support for the publication of at least two WHO reports on SBHCs.
“The Gates Foundation and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance [founded and funded by Gates] fiercely promote childhood vaccination, and make a lot of money from it,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “This is not philanthropy at all, but a stranglehold and ideology,” citing the WHO’s partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation as another example.
Sextro said Gates “has a direct financial benefit and interest in promoting these school-based health centers, because they will directly promote everything from the pharmaceutical to the vaccine interest that he and the Gates Foundation have.”
The WHO’s global standards for SBHCs include calls for the delivery of “comprehensive school health services based on a formal agreement between schools (or local education departments) and health service providers.”
According to the School-Based Health Alliance, 21% of funding for SBHCs in the U.S. came from private foundations in 2022, while according to the AAP, “local hospitals [may] provide … financial support for SBHCs.”
The WHO “is mainly financed by private funds from companies or foundations owning pharmaceutical labs,” de Araujo-Recchia said. “The capital links between the mainstream media, digital giants, American financial giants and the WHO demonstrate real collusion.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
Scott Ritter Silenced by Liberal Authoritarians
By Patrick Lawrence | ScheerPost | June 8, 2024
It is not difficult to be astonished these days, given how many things going on around us warrant astonishment. To pull something out of a hat at random, the Democratic apparatus has openly, brazenly politicized the judicial system—weaponized it, if you prefer—in its determination to destroy Donald Trump and now has the temerity to warn in the gravest terms that a second Trump term would mean… the politicization of American justice.
Again at random, in The Washington Post’s June 7 editions George Will tells us President Biden “has provided the most progressive governance in U.S. history.” Yes, he wrote that. Give in to your astonishment.
It is interesting in this case to note that, during the reign of Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, our George thought big government was bad, bad, bad. Now it is a fine thing that Biden is “minimizing the market’s role by maximizing the government’s role in allocating society’s resources and opportunities.” Apart from turning his own argument hourglass upside-down, this assessment of our swiftly declining president is preposterously, right-before-your-eyes false.
You cannot tell the AC’s from the DC’s these days. But this is not the half of it in the way of astonishing events, things done, things said and such like.
Last week, as many readers will have noticed, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector and now a widely followed commentator, was about to board a plane bound for Turkey when armed police officers stopped him, confiscated his passport and escorted him out of Kennedy International Airport. Ritter was booked to transit through Istanbul for St. Petersburg, where he planned to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual gathering.
Here is Ritter recounting this incident in an interview with RT International:
I was boarding the flight. Three officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said, “Orders of the State Department.” They had no further information for me. They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.
No passport, no freedom to travel, no explanation. I have it on good authority that Ritter subsequently advised other Americans who were to attend the St. Petersburg events not to risk it.
I have had countless conversations over many years in which the question considered has been “Is this as bad as the 1950s?” The matter has been especially vital since the Russiagate fiasco began during the Clinton–Trump campaign season in 2016. It was in the ensuing years that the authoritarianism implicit in American liberalism from the first burst upon us like some weird grotesque out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I always urge caution when invoking comparisons between our corruptions and ideological extremes and those of the McCarthy era. Hyperbole and exaggeration never serve one’s understanding or one’s argument. But the confiscation of Scott Ritter’s passport on the instructions of Antony Blinken’s State Department seems to me a radical step too far. The liberal authoritarians now in command of the nation’s major institutions, the House of Representatives among the only exceptions, have just signaled they are quite prepared to act at least as undemocratically as the House Un–American Activities crowd, the FBI and the rest of the national-security state did during the 1950s to preserve their political hegemony.
When I think of confiscated passports I think of Paul Robeson, the gifted singer, the courageous political dissenter, the civil rights advocate — here he is singing his famous Water Boy — whose documents were seized in 1950 because he refused to indulge in the Cold War paranoia that was already prevalent. His performing career collapsed and he nearly went broke before a Supreme Court decision restored them in 1958. Or I think of all the screenwriters, novelists, poets, painters and activists whose papers were canceled while they were in Mexico — or in France or in Sweden or in England — to avoid HUAC and expatriation turned into exile.
And when I am finished thinking of these people, about whom there is a rich, inspiring literature, I think of how far America descended into a derangement we tend to look back upon in some combination of wonder, derision and contempt.
We can no longer look back in this fashion. The revocation of Scott Ritter’s passport, along with the destruction of the judicial system, the myth-spinning about our purported leaders and all the rest pushes this in our faces. Let us give this a moment’s thought to see if we can determine what is likely to be in store.
Why Scott Ritter, I have wondered these past few days. Of all the dissident commentators of too many stripes to count, why Scott? I reply to myself, “Because Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, a former U.N. arms monitor in Iraq and he enjoys big-time credibility as a patriotic American.” His voice, in short, is the sort that can carry weight in sectors of the voting public that may well prove key in determining the outcome in the Trump–Biden election this Nov. 5.
Viewed in this context, I take the full-frontal suppression of Ritter’s rights last week as very likely tied to the liberals’ political prospects, other than brilliant as they are at this point. Censorship, suppression of various kinds taking various forms, “canceling”—these are nothing new, of course. But I sense things may get a great deal worse from here on out.
This is a year of global elections, as has often been remarked. The Associated Press counted 25 major national elections in a piece published at the start of the year. Taiwan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia, India, Mexico: These are among the big ones that have already taken place. The European Union is holding parliamentary elections June 6–9, cited in liberal quarters as the most important in decades. When Americans vote Nov. 5, it will be in this context.
In many of these elections — not all but many — the core issues are variants on a theme. The liberal order, such as we have it, is cast as defending itself against the onslaughts of —take your pick — populists, authoritarians, here and there a dictator. This is certainly how liberal media encourage American voters to view the Biden – Trump contest. And it is for this reason I think we must all brace ourselves for what may turn out to be a very major disaster for what remains of American democracy — and by extension the West’s.
Cast your mind back to 1992, when the Soviet Union was no more, an incipient triumphalism was taking hold in the U.S. and Francis Fukuyama published his famous (or infamous) The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press). Fukuyama, then a middling bureaucrat at the State Department, made the case that liberal democracy had won out and would stand as the ultimate, unchallenged achievement of humankind. A sort of happy political monoculture was destined to prevail eternally across the planet.
However sophomoric you may find this thesis, and I find it almost juvenile in its silliness, it came to define the expectations of all righteous American liberals. There was the Bush II administration, a major setback for the liberal narrative, although at the horizon this was merely a variation on the liberal theme. Then came the Obama years. And the Obama years set up the Democrats for a kind of fateful consummation in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy that November was incontrovertibly the surest of outcomes because it was… what is my phrase?… a matter of historical destiny.
This is why Clinton’s defeat landed so hard among the mainstream Democrats. It was more, much more, than a loss at the polls. Trump’s victory contradicted what had become a prevalent consciousness among American liberals. Biden’s win in 2020 was a kind of salvage job: It put the liberal narrative back on track. But something had happened in the years after Clinton’s November 2016 loss. Liberals had assumed an uncompromising ideological righteousness such that we can now legitimately call them authoritarians—soft despots in de Tocqueville’s terminology, apple-pie authoritarians in mine. The cause is upside-down to the Cold War cause, but these people are at least as dangerous as the McCarthyites, and, as I have suggested, maybe more so.
We learned something important during those years. Deprived of what they considered their right as conferred by the force of history, liberals demonstrated that they would stop at nothing in the cause of retrieving it. Even those institutions that must stand above the political pit if a democracy is to have any chance of working, notably but not only the judiciary, were intruded upon in the liberal authoritarian project. Nothing was off limits.
Here we are again. We are headed into another confrontation of the kind that set liberals on the path of destruction they began to walk in 2016. We are already seeing a new wave of preposterous, utterly unsubstantiated charges of Russian or Chinese interference. Trump will turn America into a dictatorship. Trump will go on a rampage of retribution. Trump—we hear this already, as noted—will corrupt the courts, our courts, the courts we have kept pristine.
The Scott Ritter affair astonishes me yet more than any of the other astonishing developments of late. I read it as a warning of how extreme things may get, what irreparable damage to the American polity may be done, if liberal authoritarian cliques determine that a broad campaign to suppress dissent will be necessary if Biden is to have a chance of winning a second term and they are to fulfill their end-of-history destiny.
Let me put it this way. Liberal media now routinely bait Trump to say whether he will automatically accept the outcome this Nov. 5. One would have to be naïve in the extreme to make any such commitment as things now stand.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a media critic, essayist, author and lecturer. His new book, Journalists and Their Shadows, is out now from Clarity Press. His website is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
So Much for Lawfare? Trump Found Guilty and So What
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 5, 2024
A New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with buying the silence of a porn star. He is the first American president to become a felon. The verdict is not unexpected from the deep blue Democratic enclave of Manhattan; the larger question is if lawfare will defeat Trump on November 5.
The jury found Trump faked records (hiding hush payments as “legal expenses”) to conceal the purpose of money given to the onetime attorney Michael Cohen. Trump was actually reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money deal struck with porn star Stormy Daniels, to silence her account of an affair with Trump. The affair was in 2006, a decade before Trump was elected president. The falsification of business records took place in 2017, after Trump was already in the White House and thus could not have influenced the election. He was found guilty nonetheless.
For the jury to reach its unanimous decision of guilt on all 34 charges, the key was believing two witnesses over Trump.
There are only two people on earth who know if an affair actually took place between Stormy and Trump. Trump said no, Stormy said yes and the jury agreed with her, fully absent of any further actual evidence. Daniels benefitted greatly from her claims to having the affair, and violated a nondisclosure agreement she voluntarily signed and accepted money for, to achieve her goals. “Proving” the affair was the base upon which the rest of the case to find Trump guilty was made.
It is important to understand that having an affair and paying off someone to remain quiet about it are not crimes, even for a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, the prosecutor claimed in closing arguments Trump “hoodwinked the American voter” with a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. In addition to those who may have benefitted from the plan, “all roads lead to the man who benefited the most: Donald Trump,” Joshua Steinglass told the jury.
But the witness whose testimony was fully believed by the jury, and whose testimony will see Trump receive a criminal penalty when he is sentenced on July 11 (four days before the Republican National Convention!) is Michael Cohen. In the total absence of physical evidence and in the face of Trump’s claims to the contrary, Cohen served as connective tissue for many disparate elements. It was Cohen who claimed Trump masterminded the plan to hide the payments to Stormy. It was Cohen who said the 34 checks and invoices, only nine of which were signed by Trump himself, were not for legal expenses as they were labeled but were to reimburse Cohen for paying off Stormy. Stormy’s name appeared on none of the 34 documents, a fact which instead of exonerating Trump became under Michael Cohen’s testimony the linchpin of the conspiracy to falsify business records. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, told jurors the case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, whom he called “the greatest liar of all time.”
Nearly incredibly (Trump’s defense team called Cohen a “walking reasonable doubt”) the jury believed Cohen based on nothing but his good word. This is despite Cohen having gone to jail for perjury, been caught lying to Congress, being disbarred, and actually telling a lie during his testimony at the instant trial. It remains difficult to understand how a jury could objectively grant so much credence to Cohen in the face of his record of lying to his own advantage. Every critical element of the case came down to whether his word could be trusted. That is what convicted Trump. You might have thought Robert De Niro was leading the deliberations.
There’s more. For jurors to have found Trump guilty of all 34 counts, they must have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Trump falsified or caused the falsification of business records “with intent to defraud” but also that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. That second element — the intent to commit or conceal another crime — elevates the charges to felonies and got around the statue of limitations that usually governs misdemeanors such as false business records. To reach this conclusion the jury had to also believe Cohen that Trump’s primary intent in all this was election influence and not, as Trump claimed, to hide the affair from his family.
There are many questions surrounding the jury’s verdict, and the fact pattern of the case itself, all of which should come out in Trump’s inevitable appeal. With that in mind, the actual legal conclusion of this case is far into the future, almost certainly after the November 5 election. But that begs the more important question: does any of this matter to voters? This is lawfare, not justice, after all. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” said Trump.
CNN, for example, concluded “Donald Trump, who built a mystique as the brash epitome of power, has never been more powerless to dictate his own fate. His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, [was] placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law.”
So a victory for Democratic lawfare? Maybe not. Trump remains eligible to campaign for the presidency and serve if elected. None of the other lawfare shots is likely to conclude before November.
So does it matter? A majority of registered voters said a guilty verdict in Trump’s trial would make no difference in their vote in the 2024 presidential election. Across all registered voters, 67 percent said a guilty verdict would have no effect on their vote, while 17 percent say they would be less likely to vote for him and 15 percent say they would be more likely, according to the NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released before the verdict. An ABC News poll earlier this month showed 80 percent of Trump’s supporters say they would stick with him even if he’s convicted of a felony in this case. Some say they would either reconsider their support (16 percent) or withdraw it (four percent.) Similar polls followed Trump’s defeat in New York courts over supposed real estate fraud.
And Biden knows it. A Biden campaign spokesman said Trump’s conviction showed “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”
As in other Third World countries where the judiciary is used to smite political opponents, let us hope the people can see the truth, as they still hold the final card to be played. The Deep State has tried from day one to destroy Donald Trump — Russian collusion and dossier hoax, pee tape accusation, Mueller hearing and report, Emoluments Clause, various calls for extra-legal interventions and coups, Alfa Bank hoax, Impeachment I, Impeachment II, demands Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment, MSM blackout of Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter purge of conservative accounts, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Letitia James prosecution “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” with no victims, no monetary loss but an effort to bankrupt Trump with civil judgment, Colorado attempt to remove Trump from state ballots over the 14th Amendment, and false statements Trump will “take revenge,” “demand retribution,” ensure a “bloodbath,” and “end democracy” (America’s last election if he wins.)
Trump meanwhile has characterized this trial, and the others, as unjust, rigged, lawfare pure and simple. He has kept the voters’ eyes not on who he is (his personal life has been baked-in to the vote long ago) but on what he represents to the electorate. As such, it is hard to see this guilty conviction, however unfair, as mattering too much come November.
Kafka-NHS
The witch hunts against dissident doctors continue
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | June 8, 2024
In June 2021, Dr. Sam White, a general practitioner, released a video calling out harmful covid policy. From a scientific perspective every word he said was entirely defensible. Moreover it is clear that he was speaking from an ethical position of wanting to protect his patients from harm. He pulled no punches in addressing the most prominent issues that were causing harm – lack of treatment for the frail, inappropriate gene therapies and masking. In interviews, in 2022, he called the situation a war between good and evil. In doing so he unleashed a torrent of anger among those in a position of power over him, which, three years on, continues to harm him.
He had already resigned from his GP partnership in protest at their vaccination policy in February 2021. His conscience had been keeping him awake at night because he did not want to be a part of the vaccine rollout. Consequently, after resigning he was signed off with stress rather than having to work his notice. NHS England still saw fit to suspend him with an emergency order in June. Dr White managed to record a conversation with an NHS senior clinical adviser who implied that he was mentally unwell. Dr White believes that possession of that recording led the NHS to revoke their suspension. However, by then the NHS had referred him for a GMC investigation and an automatic GMC suspension.
The GMC overturned the suspension in August 2021 but imposed restrictions on him including a ban on mentioning covid on social media and requiring the removal of his previous posts. The legal position is that doctors have a right to free speech but if the GMC could prove Dr White’s speech was a threat to the health of the public or undermined trust in the profession then he could be sanctioned.
Dr White looked to his indemnity provider for support to fund his legal case but they washed their hands of him saying it was a “conduct issue”. With the help of crowd funding support, Dr White took the case to the High Court in November 2021. The verdict was published in December 2021, overruling the GMC and saying they had not followed due process in their actions. The High Court documentation was removed from the judiciary’s website in September 2022 such that other doctors in a similar position will be unable to refer to it in their defence. It is available on the Wayback Machine.
Dr White has asked to be removed from the register, as he is no longer practising conventional medicine, but the GMC have refused and are continuing to persecute him. Every interview he has undertaken has been transcribed and put forward as evidence that he is undermining public health policy and causing the public to lose trust in the profession. The next tribunal hearing is scheduled to last three weeks in August and September 2024. This ongoing investigation, three years later, indicates a relentless effort to discredit and punish Dr. White for his dissenting views.
If that sounds bad, wait until you hear about the NHS’s role.
The same day as the High Court hearing, unbeknown to Dr White or his lawyers, NHSE had a meeting where they decided to refer Dr White for a health assessment, despite the fact he no longer worked in the NHS. This was an opportunity to reopen the investigation into him. They have repeatedly asked if he had returned to NHS work and said he must tell them if he did. What was their intent here? Were they planning to ask any future employer to suspend him all over again?
NHS England has a list of “approved providers”. Any doctor not on their list cannot work for the primary employer of doctors in the country. In 2023, NHS England removed Dr White from their list, effectively barring him from practising within the NHS. He had already shifted his practice to private healthcare with a holistic focus, but this further punishment leaves him with no other options.
The GMC is far from perfect but at least it has due process and a system of appeal for where there might be an injustice. NHS England can unilaterally destroy a career, with no legal recourse.
In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of the whole affair was revealed in the communications between the GMC and NHS England. Firstly, the derogatory terms used about the doctor to justify their behaviour are shocking and reveal a lack of professionalism and intolerance for differing opinions within the medical establishment. Moreover, this language served as a means to rationalise their harsh and unjust actions towards him. Secondly, they appeared to be acting in cahoots. The GMC’s apparent open and fair processes have been bypassed by direct communication with NHS England, stripping Dr White of a right to employment.
Dr. Sam White’s case is a stark example of systemic injustice and the erosion of professional rights within the NHS and the GMC. His ongoing persecution for voicing dissenting views underscores a troubling intolerance for ethical and scientific debate, reminiscent of a Kafkaesque nightmare where rationality and justice are subordinated to bureaucratic oppression.
A Landmark Victory for Physicians and Patients – and the First Amendment – in AAPS v. ABIM
Appellate Decision Sides with Physicians Rights to Free Speech
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse™ | June 8, 2024
Several medical credentialing boards instituted COVID-19 Misinformation Policies in September of 2021 and have used them to censor and retaliate against academics and practicing physicians who performed research, clinical care, and presented their findings on the early treatment of acute COVID-19 and vaccine safety. The boards’ position is that they and the government agencies they agree with, hold agency over the truth. By establishing that power dynamic, members who disagree with them are spreading misinformation and can be convicted in closed panel meetings without the member being allowed to present their views based upon the data and evidence at hand.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons sued three medical specialty boards for their threatened actions against the board certifications of physicians because of speaking out on medical controversies. Physicians earned and need these board certifications in order to hold professorships, practice medicine in most hospitals, and remain in most insurance networks.
Defendants are the American Board of Internal Medicine (“ABIM”), the American Board of Family Medicine (“ABFM”), and the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (“ABOG”). In addition, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, is a defendant due to alleged government interference with freedom of speech.
The Fifth Circuit also invalidated Galveston Local Rule 6, by which that federal district court has infringed on plaintiffs’ right to amend their lawsuits. The Fifth Circuit agreed with AAPS that this district court rule is contrary to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and thus must be voided.
“AAPS can now pursue its claim against censorship by the Biden Administration,” AAPS Executive Director Jane Orient, M.D., stated.
Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho agreed with the panel majority on the key issues and wrote separately to decry attempts by some today to impose censorship on others. “In America, we don’t fear disagreement—we embrace it. We persuade—we don’t punish. We engage in conversation—not cancellation,” Judge Ho wrote.
“We know how to disagree with one another without destroying one another. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work,” Judge Ho added as he sided fully with this lawsuit against censorship.
The precedent-setting ruling in favor of the First Amendment was issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. This influential Court established the right to object in court to censorship of physicians’ speech on topics ranging from government Covid policies to abortion. AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly should be congratulated for this stalwart effort in defense of our civil liberties.
German politician flees to Russia

Olga Petersen © X / @OlgaPetersenAfD
RT | June 8, 2024
Hamburg MP Olga Petersen has sought refuge in Russia, telling Bild that she feared having her children taken by the German state over her perceived support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Petersen left Hamburg with her children last month, prompting widespread speculation about her whereabouts. Several weeks before her disappearance, her party – the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) – expelled her from its Hamburg faction for traveling to Russia as an election observer in March and declaring the vote “open, democratic, and free.”
Alexander Brod, a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, told TASS last week that Petersen had settled in Russia with three of her four kids.
Petersen broke her silence on Friday. “I have indeed taken my children out of the country,” she told Bild. “I want to know that my children are safe and that they remain in my care. Without my children, I would no longer see any meaning in life.”
According to Brod’s account, social workers had begun proceedings to take the three children – all of whom are in elementary school – into state care. Petersen offered no further details on the alleged efforts to take her children, and Bild questioned these claims, stating that the kids had been reported to youth welfare workers over behavioral problems.
Expressions of support for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine are illegal in Hamburg, with a court in the city sentencing a man to three years in prison last May for sharing “pro-Russian ideas” and using the ‘Z’ symbol – painted on some Russian military vehicles operating in the conflict – on his Telegram channel.
While there were no criminal proceedings being taken against Petersen, any kind of prison term would have resulted in her losing custody of her children. German courts can also strip a parent of their custody rights if they are deemed abusive, violent, or negligent.
Although Petersen has been expelled from the AfD’s faction in Hamburg, she remains a member of the region’s parliament and will appear on ballot papers as an independent in Hamburg’s district election on Sunday.
“I will remain a member of the Hamburg Parliament and will fulfill my obligations to the best of my knowledge and belief,” she told Bild, adding that she will ensure her children’s safety before deciding whether she is “fit for political action again.”

