Liberal world order must be destroyed – Orban
RT | April 25, 2024
Western liberal hegemony has failed and must be destroyed, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated on Thursday, suggesting it could end as soon as this year.
Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC Hungary) in Budapest, Orban criticized the existing “world order based on progressive liberal hegemony,” saying it has spawned numerous figureheads who are “not fit to be leaders,” with even “beauty pageants” knowing more about peace then they do.
He accused liberal politicians of building “hegemonic ideological control to which everyone must submit” instead of actual governing, while turning “state bodies into tools of oppression.” Such forces are a dangerous enemy whose time is coming to an end, Orban claimed.
“The progressive liberals sense the danger, the end of this era also means their end,” the prime minister argued. Their dominance could be overcome as soon as this year, Orban predicted, citing the upcoming EU Parliament and US presidential elections.
“The proponents of the old world are sitting in Brussels, and although it is not my business to interfere in American politics, I fear that they are also sitting in Washington. This is what we are doing this year. This year, we will try to drive them out,” the Hungarian prime minister said.
“This year, God willing, we can end the inglorious era of the Western civilization. We can end the world order built on progressive liberal hegemony. The progressive liberal world spirit has failed. It gave the world war, chaos, unrest and destroyed economies.”
The emerging world order will be based on true sovereignty, with countries driven by their actual national interests rather than a global ideology, according to Orban.
“Let the era of sovereignty come, let’s get back towards peace and security. Let’s make America great again, let’s make Europe great again,” he concluded.
Booed at Columbia University, Johnson warns to bring National Guard to quell pro-Palestine protests
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson at Columbia University, in New York City on April 24, 2024. (Photo by Reuters)
Press TV – April 25, 2024
House Speaker Mike Johnson has threatened to use National Guard against students’ pro-Palestinian protests at US universities as he got booed and heckled at Columbia University.
Following a meeting with Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives along with a group of Republican House members urged Shafik to step down if she fails to control Gaza war demonstrations on campus during a press briefing at Low Library on Wednesday.
Johnson was joined by GOP Reps. Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and Anthony D’Esposito, all from New York, and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina.
“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and anti-Semitism to flourish on our campuses. And it must be stopped in its tracks. Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested,” he said, accusing protesters of chasing down Jewish students and harassing them.
Students chanted “Free Palestine” and heckled and loudly booed Johnson and demanded his return to Washington DC, with the noise of protesters almost overpowering his speech.
Johnson, who also met with Jewish students before his remarks, said that he plans to urge US President Joe Biden to take executive action against the protests if necessary, adding, “If this is not contained quickly, and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”
Protesters shouted “stop the genocide” as other Republican leaders spoke. The Republicans accused protesters of being part of the problem and supporting the resistance movements of Hamas and Hezbollah.
New York Democrats criticize Johnson for “politicizing” the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests in Columbia, with Gov. Kathy Hochul stating that the presence of an entourage is exacerbating the division.
Johnson said in an interview after his speech that he respects the right to protest, but that he thought the students on campus had crossed into harassment.
Pro-Palestinian academic activism has grown significantly across the US since the onset of the Israeli regime’s US-backed war of genocide against the Gaza Strip.
Starting from the Colombia University in New York, protest encampments with a unified demand that their schools cut financial ties to Israel have been spread across the country. Demonstrations have been held in many universities such as Harvard, MIT, UT and other universities in Michigan, Minnesota and Colombia.
They are calling for universities to distance themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel’s savage military campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Johnson’s speech came hours after Biden officially signed into law a long-awaited foreign aid bill for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan that had faced considerable delays in the House due to political gridlock.
The new package will provide $26 billion for the Israeli regime, which has been engaged in a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip since last October.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the billions of dollars in US assistance, writing on X that it “demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel.”
Poland ready to help Ukraine hunt down military-aged men
RT | April 25, 2024
Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said that Warsaw would be willing to “help” Kiev repatriate men of fighting age, an unspecified portion of some 950,000 Ukrainians granted temporary sanctuary in Poland.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry banned all men between the age of 18 and 60 from getting or renewing their documents, including passports, at consular offices outside of the country. The Polish defense chief told the Polsat broadcaster on Wednesday that he was “not surprised” and supports Kiev’s move.
“The Ukrainian authorities are doing everything to provide new soldiers to the front, because the needs are huge,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
The Polish official said that Warsaw had previously offered to help Kiev track down those who dodge their “civic duty,” but noted that “the form of assistance depends on the Ukrainian side.”
“I think that many of our compatriots were and are outraged when they see young Ukrainian men in cafes and hear about how much effort it takes us to help Ukraine,” he added. Kosiniak-Kamysz also echoed Kiev’s official narrative that Ukrainians who could not avoid the draft have “justified grievances against their peers who have scattered around the world.”
Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba claimed on Tuesday that the decision to strip Ukrainian men of their rights was “fair” and in line with the controversial military mobilization reforms, which President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law this month.
Zelensky’s reforms, set to come into force next month, will lower the draft age from 27 to 25, tighten exemptions and oblige all men, regardless of eligibility, to report to a conscription office to “update” their personal data.
According to EU officials, an estimated 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age are living in the bloc. Kiev has identified that pool as a significant untapped source of manpower for the armed forces. However, asked in early April how many troops Kiev intended to mobilize, Zelensky dodged the question.
Stop Hassling the Hoffe
An Urgent Plea to All Readers for Help
BY JUSTUS R. HOPE | APRIL 23, 2024
Few stories are more compelling than the tale of Dr. Charles Hoffe. He is a Canadian small-town physician who clings to old-fashioned values. Dr. Hoffe enjoys treating patients even if he loses money doing so because Medicine is a calling for him, not a way to get rich.
His father came to visit and told him that he would never make a name for himself in this backwoods – yet charming – town of Lytton located in the heart of British Columbia. Charles explained that his goal was not to glorify himself, but instead to care for others. He enjoyed stitching the fingers of locals whose skill saws had slipped. He found satisfaction in bringing new life into this world, and he stood strong with the elderly until they departed. Dr. Hoffe was equally comfortable treating the town via its tiny emergency room.
Dr. Hoffe remained fiercely loyal to all under his care, and this was never truer than during the recent COVID-19 episode. While MSM stories abounded on the pandemic causing overflowing big-city hospitals, Hoffe recognized the disconnect between the reality in his small town. He did not see the pandemic materializing with his own eyes. The town of Lytton seemed relatively untouched by anything more serious than a mild flu.
Following the roll-out of the vaccine, Dr. Hoffe noticed a more extreme disconnect. Patients were showing up sick after vaccination. On one occasion he informed a vaccine-injured patient she would not require additional injections due to having sufficient immunity from previous virus recovery. A nurse reported him and despite 30 years of exemplary service without a single patient complaint, he was summarily fired from his position at the emergency department.
However, despite his income dropping by half without the emergency room, Dr. Hoffe persisted in keeping his patients’ safety first, even to his detriment. His first patient death from the pandemic came after vaccination, not from the virus.
Hoffe noticed mounting deaths, micro-clotting, and serious neurological events after the 2021 rollout, and this prompted him to write an email of concern asking his colleagues what they had seen.
Following this private email, he received a notice from the licensing authorities threatening him with disciplinary action should he cause any vaccine hesitancy through his communications.
Hoffe immediately recognized something seriously was amiss. Never in his experience had doctors been so threatened for simply asking questions. Scientific inquiry should not be punishable – and he would not be silenced – especially not when patients’ lives were on the line. The personal cost to him did not matter.
Although Dr. Hoffe found himself isolated in Lytton, a village of a mere 250 residents, he decided to conduct his own pilot study.
Tiny Lytton BC by Andrew Bowden – CC-BY-SA-2.0
He theorized that levels of D-Dimer would reflect micro-clot formation, and thus he measured these levels in his patients both before and after vaccination. To his horror, 5 of 8 patients turned positive for dangerous micro-clotting following the shots. Based on this safety signal, he informed his colleagues and warned that the vaccines seemed to be causing more harm than good.
Dr. Charles Hoffe, despite his tiny practice in this tiny British Columbia town, ironically had made a national name for himself. And bigger things were about to happen. His D-Dimer study began in early 2021, around April, and by June of 2021, his town of Lytton was extinguished in a massive wildfire that seemed to selectively torch the enclave while mysteriously sparing the surrounding wilderness.
Hoffe recalls the day of the inferno. He grabbed his laptop, and D-Dimer records, and fled his burning office. He drove the four hours to his family home, only to be greeted with the news that his wife was strategically planning a divorce. He was served with papers ousting him from his residence. Faced with banishment from his marriage, his profession, and his home, he sought refuge in a small vacation cottage located some six hours’ drive away. He made himself available to his patients via cell phone. But the licensing authorities quickly accused him of abandonment. Yet nothing could have been further from the truth. Like a good steward, Hoff watched over his flock with the utmost care.
Dr. Hoffe courageously stayed the course, keeping his patients first while brushing off the slings and arrows of the attack. The little income he earned following the loss of the emergency room position was about to be whittled down further as the Canadian government removed him from a previously favored physician payment list.
Meanwhile, the charred remains of the town of Lytton had been cordoned off by the authorities who blocked access – Maui style – to its displaced residents for some two years. Hoffe’s local Lytton home, in a positive twist of fate, was located upwind from the disaster, and he was able to move back in and treat the locals once again.
As if the situation could not grow worse, the Canadian Medical Authorities brought charges of misinformation spreading against Dr. Hoffe and sought to revoke his license to practice medicine.
Hoff hired a caring Christian attorney who vowed to fight this. For his defense, he recruited eight world-class expert witnesses, including Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Jessica Rose, and Dr. James Thorpe. They provided some 970 pages of compelling testimony, all pro-bono in light of Hoffe’s extreme financial circumstances.
Despite all this, the court used the tool of Judicial Notice to derail his defense. This meant that none of this expert witness evidence was admissible because as a matter of law the vaccines were by definition considered safe and effective – and this issue could not be legally contested.
To add further insult, the medical authorities sought to charge Dr. Hoffe with the costs of their investigation on top of revoking his license. These costs could easily exceed one or two hundred thousand dollars. In other words, the Canadian Medical Authorities are planning a one-two punch designed to bankrupt and silence Dr. Hoffe once and for all.
Which brings me to my request. If you value noble physicians like Dr. Hoffe who possess the moral fiber and strength of character to stand strong for their Hippocratic Oaths no matter the personal cost, then please reach out and help.
If everyone in our group contributed 10 dollars to Dr. Hoffe’s legal defense fund, we could send a message that patients care, and value physicians who stand for truth. We could spare Dr. Hoffe so he could help us fight another day. These payments are exclusively for defraying the costs of Dr. Hoffe’s legal fees, and not for his personal financial benefit.
All Donations are welcome to the Dr. Charles Hoffe Legal Defence Fund.
ABC fact checking is a ‘black box’
Who are the fact checkers, what are their qualifications and how do they decide what is true or false?
Maryanne Demasi, reports | April 22, 2024
Australia’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), proudly announced in 2022 that it had partnered with the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an international alliance of major news corporations and Big Tech firms, to counter the growing threat of “fake news.”
It was part of sweeping reforms in the media to deliver ‘trusted’ news to global audiences and protect the public from the harms of misinformation and disinformation online.
Spearheaded by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), partners include Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and ABC Australia, along with social media and tech giants – Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft (LinkedIn) and Google (YouTube) to name a few.
When ABC announced its new alliance with TNI, Justin Stevens, ABC News Director said, “We’re pleased to join the Trusted News Initiative and, in the process, provide Australian audiences with a deeper and better-informed view of our region and the world.”
Justin Stevens appointed ABC News Director in April 2022
During the pandemic, the alliance promised to focus on preventing “the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation,” and “the growing number of conspiracy theories,” targeting online memes that featured anti-vaccine messaging or posts that downplayed the risk of covid-19.
But critics have grown increasingly uneasy about the alliance. They say governments are being protected by journalists, instead of being held to account for their pandemic policies and they’re concerned the alliance has shaped public discourse by controlling people’s access to information and censoring content that diverges from the status quo.
Weaponising fact checking
Deploying fact-checkers is one way that TNI members control the dissemination of public information. When they label a statement ‘false’, ‘wrong’, or ‘misleading’, it’s used by social media platforms to legitimise the censorship of that content by deprioritising, hiding, demonetising, or suppressing it.
Debunking content is time consuming and costly. Fact-checkers are invariably junior journalists or intern researchers, with little to no understanding of complex scientific issues or public health policies, and often appeal to governments for the ‘truth’.
When the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration opposed government enforced lockdowns, fact checkers ran hit pieces on the authors – the notable academics were then shadow-banned, censored and deplatformed from social media.
In the case of the ABC, its original in-house fact checking unit was axed in 2016 because of Federal budget cuts, but was revamped the following year when the ABC teamed up with RMIT University in Melbourne to form the RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab departments.
The ABC paid more than $670,000 to RMIT between 2020 – 2023 as part of its joint fact-checking venture but they quickly gained a reputation for being flawed. For example, concerns about the suppression of the lab leak theory were labelled as “false” even though they were true.
ABC’s fact checkers were also accused of being biased by SkyNews because they had used their influence to censor disfavoured political views in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick grilled ABC’s Managing Director David Anderson at a Senate Estimates hearing about the network’s dodgy fact-checking practices last year.
“Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers?” asked Senator Rennick.
“You’ve made some outrageous claims on these fact-checks that aren’t correct, and you haven’t actually backed them up with any facts,” added Rennick, accusing the ABC of bias for predominantly fact-checking politically conservative voices in the media.
Sources say these controversies have prompted the ABC to cut ties with RMIT whose contract ends in June 2024.
New fact-checkers, same problems?
An ABC spokesperson said the network is now building its own internal fact-checking team, called “ABC NEWS Verify,” which appears to have similarities to the “BBC Verify” initiative.
“ABC NEWS Verify will be our centre of excellence for scrutinising and verifying information in online communities,” said the spokesperson outlining the various tasks of fact checkers. “Establishing a dedicated team will enhance and focus our efforts, creating a hub for verification best practice.”
I asked the ABC if it had any internal policy document outlining the criteria its fact-checkers would use to deem content as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ but the spokesperson responded saying “no it doesn’t.”
Andrew Lowenthal, an expert in digital rights and a Twitter Files journalist, said the ABC’s failure to explain how it intends on fact-checking claims was “seriously ridiculous.”
“That the ABC is seeking to decide what is misinformation without laying out any criteria demonstrates just how farcical and political ‘fact-checking’ has become,” said Lowenthal.
“Without transparent and publicly available criteria the program will quickly turn into a partisan advocacy initiative,” he added.
Andrew Lowenthal, Twitter Files journalist
Lowenthal’s Twitter Files investigation confirmed the Australian government was monitoring Covid-related speech of its citizens and requesting that posts were flagged and censored if they deemed them to be misinformation.
“In that investigation, the government’s Department of Home Affairs was relying on Yahoo! News and USA Today, among others, to justify their take down requests or they’d hire journalists without scientific credentials. We need dialogue, not diktats, to determine what is true,” said Lowenthal.
Senator Rennick agreed, saying the ABC’s process lacks transparency. “Who are these people that claim to be the fact-checkers in the first place and what are their credentials? Sounds to me like it’s a black box,” said Rennick.
“Often when fact checkers come out with their reports, they don’t give the other person they’re fact checking, a right-of-reply. Also, they rarely disclose the conflicts of interest of the so-called ‘experts’ they use to fact check claims,” he added.
Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist and founder of Public, has written extensively on the “censorship industrial complex.”
“That’s what the trusted news initiative [TNI] was all about…a strategy to use fact checking initiatives to demand censorship by social media platforms,” said Shellenberger.
Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins 2020)
“They can pretend that’s not what it’s about, but the fact that the news media are participating in this, is grotesque. It’s a complete destruction of whatever reputation and integrity they used to have,” he added.
“Organisations like BBC and ABC… they used to have reputations for independence and integrity, but they’ve now decided to destroy their entire reputation on the mantle of them being the deciders of the truth. The Central Committee. That’s totalitarianism that’s not free speech.”
The ABC says its new ABC NEWS Verify will have no connection to TNI.
Impartiality and credibility?
TNI’s broad principles of working in lockstep towards a single narrative, has meant that legacy media operate largely as a mouthpiece for government propaganda, offering little critique of public health policies…and ABC has been no exception.
During the pandemic, the broadcaster repeatedly came under fire after its medical commentator Dr Norman Swan made countless calls for harsher lockdowns, mask mandates and covid boosters – policies that strongly aligned with the government but had little scientific backing.
Swan’s commentary rarely provided an impartial perspective and he was eventually called out for failing to publicly disclose his financial interest in seeking government contracts related to covid-19.
In addition, Ita Buttrose, who was ABC Chair until last month, was seen fronting Pfizer’s advertising campaigns for covid products. ABC defended Buttrose saying, “Given she was not involved in editorial decisions, there was no conflict of interest.”
Ita Buttrose, former ABC Chair, March 2019 – March 2024
The ABC denies its alliance with TNI has impacted its editorial independence but Shellenberger says the entire purpose of joining TNI is to ensure they become the single source of truth.
“They’ve stopped doing real reporting, and they’re just out there wanting to be paid to regurgitate and act like publicists for the government. It’s grotesque. It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda,” said Shellenberger.
Resisting the tyranny
Some journalists have been resisting what they perceive to be ‘tyranny’ in legacy media and the widespread suppression of free speech.
In June 2021, a group of around 30 journalists rallied together to denounce TNI’s “censorship and fearmongering” and accused the alliance of subjecting the public to a distorted view of the truth.
The group known as ‘Holding the Line: Journalists Against Covid Censorship’ shared concerns that reporters were being reprimanded by their superiors and freelancers were being blacklisted from jobs for not following the “one official narrative.”
Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed a lawsuit against TNI alleging that legacy media organisations and Big Tech have worked to “collectively censor online news” about covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
The lawsuit states:
“By their own admission, members of the “Trusted News Initiative” (“TNI”) have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.”
A group of 138 scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum have since published The Westminster Declaration.
In essence, it’s a free speech manifesto urging governments to dismantle the “censorship industrial complex” which has seen government agencies and Big Tech companies work together to censor free speech.
In Australia, the journalist’s union MEAA has called on ABC’s newly appointed Chair Kim Williams to “restore the reputation of the national broadcaster by addressing concerns about the impact of external pressures on editorial decision making.”
Kim Williams, current Chair, ABC Network Australia
Williams, who took over from Buttrose last month, has warned his journalists that “activism” is not welcome at the ABC and that if they fail to observe impartiality guidelines, they should consider leaving the network.
Will the ABC course-correct with Williams at the helm? Now that trust in legacy media is at historical lows, the ABC’s partnership with TNI does little to assuage fears that the network has passed the point of no return.
NB: I was a TV presenter/producer at ABC TV (2006-2016) and wrote about my experiences with censorship at the network here and here.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 8
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | April 23, 2024
Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.
‘Let’s debunk the myth that mass migration brings an economic benefit,’ says former UK immigration minister
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | April 23, 2024
The notion that mass immigration brings a net economic benefit to a developed nation is a myth that needs to be debunked, a former U.K. government minister who resigned over the spiraling numbers arriving in Britain has claimed.
In an interview with the Conservative Home website, Robert Jenrick, the Conservative MP who stepped down from his role as immigration minister in the Home Office last year, called the government’s post-Brexit immigration policy a “complete disaster” and a “betrayal to voters” who for decades have elected parties promising to cut the number of new arrivals into Britain.
“The numbers are just so large that it has a proportionally much greater impact on everyone’s lives. This cuts to the housing crisis, why we have such low productivity, and why we have concerns about community cohesion and integration,” he told the site.
Net migration is at record levels in Britain since the U.K. left the European Union, peaking in the year to December 2022 at 745,000. It subsequently fell to 672,000 in the year to June 2023, but after leaving the European Union Single Market, this is a paradox that Jenrick finds difficult to accept.
“For years, politicians made promises to cut legal migration they knew they couldn’t keep because ultimately the UK was beholden to the EU’s freedom of movement.
“The great reform was the Conservative Party delivering Brexit, which finally took back control of the levers of migration. But the decisions made in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote were a betrayal to voters — they created a system that was even more liberal than the one before by lowering the salary threshold, creating a graduate route and an unregulated social care visa,” he said.
“Frankly, these decisions were two fingers up to the public, and in public policy terms they’ve been a complete disaster.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made “stopping the boats” a key pledge throughout his tenure in Downing Street — a nod to the illegal immigration crisis on England’s southern shores as thousands of undocumented migrants are transported across the English Channel from mainland Europe where they claim asylum and use human rights laws to avoid deportation.
However, despite attempts to combat this issue through the flagship Rwanda policy — a plan to deport migrants to the African nation for offshore processing — Jenrick believes that this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tackling immigration.
“To me, legal migration has always been the more important issue,” he explained.
“I’m 42, and for my entire adult life, if not longer, political parties of all persuasions have stood at elections saying they’re going to bring down the level of legal migration.
“All alighted on this challenge, said they were going to take action, and all ultimately failed.”
The Conservative MP challenged the view that mass immigration has a net economic benefit on a developed country like Britain, highlighting that just 15 percent of non-EU migrants who came to the country last year arrived with work visas. “So, the overwhelming majority of people were students, dependants, or were those coming as refugees.”
The figure is actually slightly higher than 15 percent. In the year to June 2023, 968,000 non-EU migrants arrived in Britain, of which just 169,000 were the main applicants on a work visa, amounting to 17.5 percent.
“One can make arguments for and against each of those categories, but they’re not people who are demonstrably making an economic contribution to this country.”
He warned the economic model that Britain has adopted when it comes to immigration isn’t working.
“If importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to the UK was a route to prosperity, the U.K. would be one of the richest countries in the world,” he said, adding that Britain has been in a recession in terms of GDP per capita for almost the last two years.
“I care about the prosperity of our own citizens, not the overall size of the economy.”
The former immigration minister accused businesses in Britain of becoming “hooked on the drug of imported foreign labor” and said the government had done too little to “boost training for young people in our country” to take on jobs in key sectors like construction.
He urged the government to adopt a “highly selective” immigration policy that enables it to choose the types of people that will make an economic contribution to Britain, noting that there is no longer the bogeyman of the European Union to fall back on as a reason why immigration figures should remain as high as they are now.
“What we need is radically reduced, highly-selective, high-skilled, and high-productivity migration,” Jenrick added, suggesting that an annual cap could “serve as a democratic lock” on Britain’s immigration policy and ensure that promises to the electorate to bring down the numbers are met.
Several studies support Jenrick’s observation that mass immigration is an economic drag on developed nations.
In November 2021, a Danish Ministry of Finance report revealed that the net cost of immigration from non-Western countries, after tax contributions had been deducted, amounted to €4.2 billion in 2018.
Similarly, a study from the University of Amsterdam published in December last year revealed the net cost to the Dutch public sector for decades of mass immigration between 1995 and 2019 was €400 billion, averaging €17 billion a year.
The research categorized the types of migrants arriving in the Netherlands during that time by nationality, revealing that those arriving from other EU and European countries had a net positive contribution to the Dutch economy, while those coming from countries such as Turkey and Morocco had cost the Dutch taxpayer the most with a net negative contribution of €200,000 and €260,000, respectively.
The WHO and Pandemic Response – Should Evidence Matter?
REPPARE | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | APRIL 22, 2024
The Basics of Policy Development
All public health interventions have costs and benefits, and normally these are carefully weighed based on evidence from previous interventions, supplemented by expert opinion where such evidence is limited. Such careful appraisal is particularly important where the negative effects of interventions include human rights restrictions and long-term consequences through impoverishment.
Responses to pandemics are an obvious example. The world has just emerged from the Covid-19 event, which should have provided an excellent example, as broad new restrictive interventions were widely imposed on populations, while some countries offer good comparators by avoiding most of these restrictions.
The WHO calls such measures Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM), also using the largely synonymous term non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). Even if we assume that countries will continue to enjoy full sovereignty over their national policies, WHO recommendations matter, if only because of epistemic authority or shaping of expectations. In 2021, the WHO established a PHSM Working Group which is currently developing a research agenda on the effects of PHSM. As part of this remit, it is expected that the WHO will re-examine their recommendations on PHSM rigorously to reflect the lessons from Covid-19. This process is envisaged to be completed by 2030.
It is therefore curious that the WHO, without providing any comparison of cost and benefit from Covid-19, concluded a 2023 meeting with public health stakeholders from 21 countries with a call to action on all countries “to position PHSM as an essential countermeasure alongside vaccines and therapeutics for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response.” With Member States due to vote in late May to make WHO recommendations within the International Health Regulations (IHR) effectively binding, “undertaking to follow the Director General’s recommendations before they are given, one would expect these recommendations would be based on a thorough and transparent review that justifies their imposition.”
IHR Benchmarks
In 2019, the WHO defined ‘benchmarks for International Health Regulations (IHR) capacities,’ which did not include PHSM. Although the IHR are still being revised, the benchmarks have been updated in 2024 as ‘benchmarks for strengthening health emergency capacities.’ The update includes new benchmarks on PHSM, which are stated by the WHO to “play an immediate and critical role throughout the different stages of health emergencies and contribute to decreasing the burden on health systems so that essential health services can continue and effective vaccines and therapeutics can be developed and deployed with their effects maximized to protect the health of communities.”
In the new document, PHSM are said to “range from surveillance, contact tracing, mask wearing and physical distancing to social measures, such as restricting mass gatherings and modifying school and business openings and closures.” A new benchmark on PHSM has been included. For example, to meet the level of “demonstrated capacity,” States are now expected to “review and adjust PHSM policies and implementation based on timely and regular assessment of data” and to “establish whole-of-government mechanisms with well-defined governance and mandates to implement relevant PHSM.”
However, the document also acknowledges that PHSM can have “unintended negative consequences on the health and well-being of individuals, societies and economies, such as by increasing loneliness, food insecurity, the risk of domestic violence and reducing household income and productivity” [i.e. increase poverty]. Accordingly, another new benchmark has been introduced: “The protection of livelihoods, business continuity and continuity of education and learning systems is in place and functional during health emergencies.” Disruptions particularly to schooling now seem to be expected during health emergencies as reflected in benchmarks involving “policies for alternative modalities to deliver school meals and other school-linked and school-based social protection when schools are closed due to emergencies.” While potentially being rooted in an acknowledgement of the harms of the Covid-19 response, this benchmark also illustrates the extent to which the Covid-19 event now shapes the idea of what a pandemic response looks like. No other pandemic or health emergency was ever addressed through similarly prolonged disruptions to the economy or to education.
Furthermore, benchmarks on border control measures now expect States to “develop or update legislation (relevant to screening, quarantine, testing, contact tracing, etc.) to enable the implementation of international travel related measures.” To meet the “demonstrated capacity” benchmark, States must “establish isolation units to isolate and quarantine suspected human or animal cases of communicable diseases.”
Due Research
These new benchmarks illustrate a remarkable departure from WHO’s pre-Covid guidelines. The most detailed such recommendations were laid out in a 2019 document based on a systematic review of non-pharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza. Despite SARS-CoV-2 spreading similarly to influenza, these guidelines have been widely ignored since 2020. For example, the 2019 document stated that border closures, or quarantining healthy contact persons or travellers were “not recommended in any circumstances.” The isolation of patients was recommended to be voluntary noting that workplace closures of even 7-10 days may disproportionately harm low-income people.
Prior to 2020, most discussed PHSM now proposed by the WHO had never been implemented at large scale and data on their effects was accordingly scarce. For example, the 2019 review recommended wearing masks when symptomatic and in contact to others, and even “conditionally recommended” wearing masks when asymptomatic during severe pandemics purely based on “mechanistic plausibility.” Indeed, two meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of face masks published in 2020 found no significant reduction in influenza transmission or influenza-like illness.
Today, we have an abundance of evidence on the effects of PHSM during the Covid era. Yet, there could hardly be more disagreement regarding efficacy. A Royal Society report concluded that lockdowns and mask mandates decreased transmission and their stringency was correlated with their effectiveness. Meanwhile, a meta-analysis estimated the average lockdown in Europe and North America to have reduced Covid mortality by merely three percent in the short term (at high cost) and an updated Cochrane Review still found no evidence for the effectiveness of masks in community settings (let alone mask mandates) in RCTs. The lower level of restrictions in Nordic countries was associated with some of the lowest excess all-cause mortality in the world between 2020 and 2022, including Sweden which never resorted to general lockdowns or mask mandates.
New Recommendations
Notwithstanding the variable evidence of effectiveness and harm, and the ongoing 7-year WHO review process, the WHO has begun to revise recommendations on PHSM. The first publication of the WHO’s newly launched initiative Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), titled ‘Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics,’ advocates for a “precautionary approach to infection prevention early in the event” that “will save lives” and tells policy makers to “be ready to apply stringent PHSM, but for a limited time period in order to minimize associated unintended health, livelihood and other socio-economic consequences.” These recommendations are not founded on any systematic review of new evidence, as was attempted in the 2019 influenza guidance, but largely on unstructured, opinion-based “lessons learned” compilations of committees convened by the WHO.
The 2023 version of the WHO’s ‘Managing Epidemics’ handbook, first published in 2018 and intended to inform WHO country staff and health ministries, illustrates this lack of evidence-base. Comparing both editions of the same document shows a marked normalization of Covid-19-era PHSM. For instance, the earlier version recommended sick people wear masks during severe pandemics as an “extreme measure.” The revised handbook now recommends masking everyone, sick or healthy, not merely during severe pandemics but even for seasonal influenza. Covering of faces is clearly no longer considered an “extreme measure” but normalized and portrayed as similar to hand washing.
Elsewhere, the 2018 version of ‘Managing Epidemics’ stated:
We have also seen that many traditional containment measures are no longer efficient. They should therefore be re-examined in the light of people’s expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Measures such as quarantine, for example, once regarded as a matter of fact, would be unacceptable to many populations today.
The 2023 edition revises this to:
We have also seen that many traditional containment measures are challenging to put in place and sustain. Measures such as quarantine can be at odds with people’s expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Digital technologies for contact tracing became common in response to Covid-19. These, however, come with privacy, security and ethical concerns. Containment measures should be re-examined in partnership with the communities they impact.
The WHO no longer considers quarantine inefficient and unacceptable, but merely “challenging to put in place and sustain” because it can be at odds with people’s expectations.
A new section on “infodemics” gives advice on how to manage people’s expectations. States are now encouraged to set up an “infodemic management team” that shall “debunk misinformation and disinformation that could have a negative health impact on people and communities, while respecting their freedom of expression.” Again, evidence is not provided as to why this new area of recommendations are needed, how ‘truth’ is arbitrated in such complex and heterogeneous situations, or how potential negative effects of stifling exchange of information and discussion of complex issues will be addressed.
Infodemic Management in Practice
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General recently reassured the world in a speech:
Let me be clear: WHO did not impose anything on anyone during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not lockdowns, not mask mandates, not vaccine mandates. We don’t have the power to do that, we don’t want it, and we’re not trying to get it. Our job is to support governments with evidence-based guidance, advice and, when needed, supplies, to help them protect their people.
This is not the only example of the WHO adopting a proactive strategy of “infodemic management” as it recommends States to do. The latest draft of the Pandemic Agreement includes a new paragraph:
Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement shall be interpreted as providing the Secretariat of the World Health Organization, including the WHO Director-General, any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the domestic laws or policies of any Party, or to mandate or otherwise impose any requirements that Parties take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures, or implement lockdowns.
The latter claim is particularly noteworthy because it ignores the proposed IHR amendments accompanying the pandemic agreement, through which countries will undertake to follow future recommendations on PHSM within a legally binding agreement, while the Pandemic Agreement does not include any such propositions.
The WHO promises to ‘support governments with evidence-based guidance’ but appears to be promoting PHSM recommendations that conflict with their own guidance without any apparent new evidence base. Given that countries did well without following highly restrictive measures, and the long-term impacts of reduced education and economic health on human health, the principle of “do no harm” would seem to demand more caution in applying such consequential policies. Policies need an evidence base to justify their adoption. Given the trajectory of natural outbreaks, contrary to WHO claims, is not increasing, it seems pertinent to expect one from the WHO before they push Member States to risk the health and economic well-being of their populations next time a pandemic or health emergency is declared.
REPPARE (REevaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse agenda) involves a multidisciplinary team convened by the University of Leeds.
‘Tacit Admission of Guilt’: Two Top Journal Editors Decline to Testify Before Congress on Scientific Censorship
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 17, 2024
Only 1 of 3 science journal editors invited to testify before Congress on government interference in the peer-reviewed publication process accepted the invitation this week.
Holden Thorp, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, on Tuesday testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Magdalena Skipper, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of Nature, and Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, “declined to participate,” according to the subcommittee’s website.
“We invited the editors-in-chief of The Lancet, Nature and Science. Only the editor of Science had the courage to come and help us be better,” Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said.
In his opening remarks Tuesday, Wenstrup said, “This subcommittee was established so we can collectively take a look back on the pandemic and see what we can do better for the next time.”
But experts who spoke with The Defender said they were disappointed with the editors who declined to testify — but also with the members of the subcommittee, who they argued failed to address key issues during the hearing.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender, “The committee and Thorp disappointed academic researchers and the public alike.”
McCullough, author of more than 1,000 science journal articles, added:
“Thorp was silent on harmful retractions of fully published papers … This has happened repeatedly for manuscripts describing early treatment(s) and protocols for ambulatory acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and for reports of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, disabilities and deaths.
“Who is behind these retractions? Why are they working to suppress early therapeutic options for patients and scrub any concerns over vaccine safety?”
Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead told The Defender, “It seems very telling” that Skipper and Horton skipped Tuesday’s hearing.
“In the context of SARS-CoV-2 origins, these two journals have been accused of being unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and government agencies,” Mead said. “Such conflicts can impede unbiased scientific reporting and commentaries.”
“Skipper and Horton’s absence would seem to be a tacit admission of guilt on the part of the two journals they represent,” said Mead, who wrote a peer-reviewed paper that was retracted by the journal Cureus after publication.
McCullough said two papers for which he was senior author were retracted. “In both instances, the public and the practicing community were harmed by the intentional omission of critical side effects from the knowledge base on these products.”
Independent journalist Paul D. Thacker has investigated scientific censorship for The Disinformation Chronicle. He told The Defender, “The science and medical journals did not publish the best research available during the pandemic. They just served as gatekeepers to protect people, institutions and corporations in power.”
Thacker added:
“Holden Thorp should resign. He oversaw a news section that ran several fake stories about the pandemic to misinform the scientific community. And Science published studies that have been noted in the peer-reviewed literature for poor statistics to deny a possible lab accident. It’s a historical low point for this publication.
“Nothing will change from these hearings. My only hope is that some researchers will understand how corrupt the scientific process has become and this hearing will spur them to make change.”
‘No place for politics’ or government influence over journals
During his opening remarks, Wenstrup said the hearing was not intended “to see how the government can be more involved in the journal editorial process, but to make sure that the government does not involve itself or influence this process.”
“There’s no denying the awesome power these periodicals as well as their editors hold over the medical and scientific communities,” Wenstrup said. As a result, “there can be no place for politics or inappropriate government influence of journals.”
But Wenstrup accused the journals and their editors of not always being “arbiters of truth.” Instead, he said, they “provide a forum where scientific claims are made, defended, and debated by peer review.” Wenstrup added, “We saw a breakdown of that during the pandemic.”
“Rather than the journals being a wealth of information and opinions about this novel virus of which we knew so little, they helped establish a party line that literally put a chilling effect on scientific research regarding the origins of COVID-19,” Wenstrup said.
Wenstrup cited the “Proximal Origin” paper — published by Nature in March 2020 — as an example, saying that it helped “set a precedent … that the natural origin of COVID-19 was the only plausible theory.”
“Anyone else who had even the inkling of another plausible scientific thought was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist … How is that acceptable in the scientific community when the entire crux of the field is open for debate?” Wenstrup said.
During his opening remarks, Ranking Member Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) contradicted Wenstrup’s statements, claiming the subcommittee has not proven that top government public health officials such as Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins orchestrated the publication of the “Proximal Origin” paper.
‘Clear evidence of malfeasance and dishonesty’
Thorp told members of the subcommittee that he is “extraordinarily proud of the Science journals’ work” and “of the role that the scientific enterprise plays in society.”
He said the Science journals “abide by a rigorous multi-step peer-review process” and “a careful process to ensure that the reviewers do not have a conflict of interest.” This “well-established process,” he said, “was applied consistently to the nearly 9,000 research papers submitted to the Science family of journals related to SARS-CoV-2.”
Thorp referred to a May 2021 letter by virologist Jesse D. Bloom that Science published in its commentary section. “This letter called for a thorough investigation of a lab origin of COVID-19,” Thorp said, citing the commentary as evidence the journal did not conduct viewpoint censorship.
“Publication of this letter turned the tide in the discussion of COVID origins toward considering the possibility of a lab origin,” Thorp said.
Thorp also referred to two papers, by virologists Michael Worobey and Jonathan E. Pekar, published in Science’s research section 2022 that supported but “[did] not conclusively prove the theory of natural origin.” He said the government did not influence the publication of these papers.
“To be clear and to state upfront, no government officials from the White House or the NIH [National Institutes of Health] prompted or participated in the review or editing of [these] papers by us,” Thorp said.
Upon questioning by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) about communications between Fauci, Collins and Thorp in May 2021, Thorp said they supported an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 at the time and did not dissuade Science from publishing the Bloom letter.
Responding to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Thorp acknowledged that opinion pieces “go to 8,000 reporters four days before they’re published.” Because some of these pieces mention government figures, he “from time to time let[s] them know ahead of time that there’s an opinion piece coming that they might get asked about.”
“Scientists are not and never will be perfect,” Thorp said. “We are human, but the scientific method enables us to reach beyond our individual limitations by requiring evidence and constant self-correction. It helped us end the pandemic.”
Referring to the Worobey and Pekar papers, Wenstrup said, “It seems that these studies, much like ‘Proximal Origin’ … were used to stifle debate.”
Similarly, Mead told The Defender that, in recent years, “It seems clear that prestigious high-impact journals like Nature and The Lancet were inclined to prioritize certain narratives or findings that align with the interests of their influential stakeholders.”
“The result has been a suppression of alternative theories or evidence that diverges from these interests, undermining the integrity and objectivity of scientific inquiry,” Mead said, adding that this obstructed the “open exchange of information critical for understanding how this pandemic got created in the first place.”
“The more insidious fundamental issue concerns the biases of the editors themselves and the behind-the-scenes communications they receive from industry and government sources that want them to uphold a specific narrative,” Mead said.
Noting that Democrat members of the subcommittee appeared to defend former government officials like Fauci and Collins during the hearing, Mead said, “It seems fairly clear … that the mega financial relationships between biopharmaceutical companies and the Democratic Party have tainted the conversation around the politicization of science.”
“Why are Fauci and Collins being so assiduously protected by the Democrats when there is clear evidence of malfeasance and dishonesty on their parts?” Mead asked. “This seems to be yet another attempt to whitewash what happened during the pandemic.”
Deleted Thorp tweet contradicts his congressional testimony
Wenstrup questioned Thorp about a now-deleted March 2023 tweet referring to the origins of COVID-19, in which Thorp said, “One side has scientific evidence, the other has a mediocre episode of Homeland,” noting that “the tweet appears to contradict your testimony today.”
“I was not as careful expressing my personal opinions on my personal Twitter page as I should have,” Thorp said. “That does happen on social media. From time to time, I’ve gotten off Twitter and I highly recommend that.”
Wenstrup also asked Thorp about a November 2021 editorial in which he claimed that research allegedly conducted by the University of North Carolina, the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses did not occur.
Thorp said he is under pressure to write a 720-word editorial “every two weeks” and, at the time, he “was going from what was reported in news stories” about the issue.
Mead told The Defender that Thorp’s admission that he was basing his editorials on information reported in news stories “is quite alarming.”
“Relying solely on mainstream news reports rather than direct investigation through primary sources and interviews with Ralph Baric and other researchers risks perpetuating misinformation and totally undermines the integrity of scientific inquiry,” Mead said.
‘Redactions were never mentioned’ during the hearing
“The government will never earn the trust back from the Americans by deeming all information that it doesn’t like as misinformation, nor will it deserve that trust if that’s what our government is doing,” Wenstrup said in his closing remarks.
But experts told The Defender that there was much that Wenstrup and other members of the subcommittee left out of Tuesday’s hearing.
“Congress needs to explore ways to cut off taxpayer funding for journals that do not want to be accountable to taxpayers,” Thacker said.
“The behavior of Nature has been atrocious, both in terms of the biased news they ran during the pandemic and the corrupt studies they published, such as the ‘Proximal Origin’ paper, which has all the hallmarks of ghostwriting that I looked into while leading congressional investigations,” Thacker added.
Mead said the relationships of key virologists with Fauci and the Wuhan Institute of Virology “should have been discussed openly” during the hearing.
“Retractions were never mentioned in the context of scientific journals and censorship by those journals,” Mead added. “Problems with the peer review process need to be more fully fleshed out, such as how to avoid overly biased reviewers being skewed in a particular direction to suit the editors’ own biases.”
“It would be interesting to find out how much of Science’s revenue depends on pharmaceutical advertising,” he added.
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.
Australia’s Communications Minister Tells People To Report Social Media Posts to the Chief Censor
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2024
Australia’s Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has urged citizens to report content posted on social sites to what’s known as the country’s “chief censor,” the eSafety commissioner.
Appearing on the ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast, Rowland explained to host Craig Reucassel what the current government thinks should be done about “misinformation.”
Often-repeated assertions were heard that there is dangerous misinformation on social media along with exposure to “reactions and rumors” that traumatize users – because, for example, they are able to view breaking news videos “with no censorship.”
(This last bit is what rubs Reucassel the wrong way, and it has to do with the recent Sydney stabbing attacks that he would evidently like “nicely packaged” first, in that way controlling how the public learns about an event and reacts to it.)
And so, clearly, both the minister and the host agree that the government should step in (even more) and intervene, the only question is, how?
One of the ideas is to come up with yet another “voluntary” (voluntary as in, “or else…”) code of conduct for tech companies, probably along the lines of what is already happening in the EU.
The purpose would be to get platforms to remove even more content that’s labeled as “misinformation.”
Right now, the eCommissioner is the official who can order comments removed, but a “voluntary code” would obviously expedite things.
In the meantime, since according to the minister, platforms aren’t “doing enough,” she encouraged citizens to report content to the eSafety commissioner, turning themselves into some sort of “government censorship helpers.”
Reucassel exhibited quite the zeal for censorship, remarking during the conversation that ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast flagged content on TikTok (also related to one of the Sydney stabbings), but accused the platform of not removing it.
The host revealed that the media outlet told TikTok, “We’re taking down all this footage that’s happened in the Wakeley stabbing, we’re trying to regulate that kind of stuff.”
But apparently this effort, joined by the eSafety commissioner, did not produce results – or as Reucassel said, social platforms are not sufficiently “proactive.”
Even if videos have a sensitive content warning and people have to click and choose to still watch it – Rowland doesn’t think that’s “enough.”
Rowland agreed.
“They need to do more. Keeping Australians safe online, protecting particularly children and vulnerable people from being exposed to this content is a collective responsibility.”
And that’s when listeners got “encouraged” to report content to eSafety.
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No Threat Can Force Iran’s Surrender /Trita Parsi & Lt Cl Daniel Davis
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From the Archives
An Expert Military Analysis of War with China
Actually, None is Necessary
By Fred Reed • Unz Review • December 13, 2020
The Correlation of Armed Forces: U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $634.8 billion in 2019. Exports were $163.0 billion; imports were $471.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $308.8 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $76.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were $56.5 billion; services imports were $20.1 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with China was $36.4 billion in 2019.
There is talk within the Washingtoniat of a possible war with China. Steve Bannon, who apparently was dropped on his head as a child, actually favors such a war. We hear the usual shoo-the-boobs alarm about how the Chinese are doing something terrible and we must gird our loins and American values and show them what for, bow wow, woof. The danger is that the current game of who-blinks-first in Asian waters might actually provoke a shooting war. You know the kind of thing: One warship refuses to get out of the way of another, a collision ensues, some retard lieutenant who signed up on waivers opens fire, and we’re off and running. It is not a good idea to let children play with matches.
The said war is discussed either in emotional terms by idiots or in purely naval terms by those familiar with such things, so we hear of the First Island Chain and the Second Island Chain and whose missiles against the other’s missiles and so on. This would be appropriate if we were fighting World War Two again. Which we aren’t. Let’s take a quick-and-dirty look at how such a war might go.
To begin the war, America would overestimate itself and underestimate China. This is doctrine in the Pentagon. … continue
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