On Fact-Checkerism and the Mythology of Disinformation
Thoughts on what our discourse police are even trying to do
Pascal Siggelkow, state media “fact finder,” abysmal idiot.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | September 14, 2023
Nobody in our corner of the internet could fail to notice the antics of those yapping bouncing frenetic chihuahuas who call themselves fact-checkers. Mostly they work in obscurity, misunderstanding internet jokes, recycling the vacuities of self-styled experts, debunking weird Twitter posts, and above all churning out prodigious walls of text filled with banalities that nobody reads. Occasionally, though, they manage to entertain us – as recently, when it emerged that BBC “disinformation specialist” and fact-checker-in-chief Marianna Spring had larded her very own CV with disinformation. Almost nothing is more amusing than finding oneself in the crosshairs of the fact-checkers, as has happened to me on at least one occasion.
My favourite checker of facts is the man-bun-sporting dimwit Pascal Siggelkow, who has been appointed top “fact finder” for the state media news service tagesschau. We last encountered Siggelkow when he mistook a noun for a verb in Seymour Hersh’s reporting, ultimately spending four amazing paragraphs debunking the thesis – unique to his own mind – that explosive seaweed destroyed Nord Stream. Before hunting facts at tagesschau, Siggelkow worked for Südwestrundfunk, another state media broadcaster, where he did daring undercover investigative reporting like snitching on “doctors who downplay Corona and issue unfounded mask exemptions.” This is really reporter-of-the-year material. In truth, we have before us here a whole genre of journalism conducted by an aggressively stupid tribe of Siggelkows, distinguished by their total lack of accomplishments, limited vision and minuscule persuasive capacities. That these small men should be entrusted with the project of policing our words is a strange thing indeed, and it suggests there is more going on in the world of fact-checking than we realise. Here, I propose to examine what it is that fact-checkers really do, and whether there is anything to say about them beyond the obvious fact that they are complete and utter idiots.
To explore fact-checking more concretely, I have ventured into the barren wastelands of the tagesschau “Fact Finder” page, where Siggelkow plies his trade and few before me have ever set foot. I’ve selected, mostly at random, a limited corpus of eleven recent discourse-policing items for closer analysis. I offer links to each of them below, in chronological order, providing their headlines and teasers in translation, together with sample quotations to give you an idea. This is a tiresome read indeed, so please skip ahead unless you are of particularly strong constitution.
1. Why is excess mortality so high?, by Pascal Siggelkow and Alexander Steininger
28 November 2022
In 2022, an unusually high number of people have died so far in relation to previous years. October in particular was an outlier. According to experts, this cannot be explained by Corona alone.
“As a scientist, I want to be open to all possibilities, but I just don’t see the connection [to vaccination],” [said Jonas Schöley, Research Associate in the Department of Population Health at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock]. Additionally, he said, the scientific evidence evaluating vaccines is much stronger than that available in population research. “We don’t have to rely on the error-prone search for causes in population data because of the very good body of studies on the efficacy and risks of vaccination.” If the vaccines led to an increased number of deaths, this would have been proven long ago in medical and epidemiological research.
2. A flood of fake videos and pictures, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
3 July 2023
In connection to the riots in France, numerous pictures and videos are being shared on social media. Many of them are not from the current protests, but are disinformation.
In right-wing extremist and conspiracy-theorist Telegram channels, posts containing the term “France” have seen marked increase since the end of June … The Austrian right-wing alternative channel AUF1, for example, speaks of “ethno-riots” and a “bloody multicultural illusion.”
“Whenever there are topics that lend themselves to populist or right-wing extremist instrumentalisation, they are used,” [Pia] Lamberty, [Social Psychologist and Executive Director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy] says … This could be current political debates such as the topic of heat pumps, crises such as climate, Corona, economic tensions, or even riots such as in France. “Such attempts at instrumentalisation are not always successful across society as a whole, but for supporters of right-wing extremist ideologies they are often an additional confirmation of their own world views.”
3. Doubts about the significance of the AfD “Einzelfallticker” 1, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
3 July 2023
With their “isolated case ticker,” the AfD purports to show the alleged “true extent” of crimes committed by migrants. But a random sample shows that in half of the cases, reports do not indicate the origin of the suspect.
In response to a request from ARD-Factfinder, the AfD writes that it is “interested in transparency regarding the official figures from the police crime statistics in 2022.” Pia Lamberty, social psychologist and managing director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy … sees things differently. Launching a ticker with the intention of pointing out the danger posed by people considered to be non-Germans by the AfD by no means accords with the “role of an objective informer.” “This is the opposite of an open investigation and the opposite of objectivity,” says Lamberty.
4. How credible is the information on the [Ukrainian] counter-offensive?, by Pascal Siggelkow
7 July 2023
Ukraine’s counteroffensive to liberate territory occupied by Russia has been underway since June. Because Ukraine is keeping a low information profile, and the media often rely on Russian information. Experts are sceptical about this.
The fact that information on the counter-offensive comes primarily from Russia is due to the fact that Ukraine has mostly imposed a news blackout. The Russian Defence Ministry is trying to exploit this situation, says Julia Smirnova, senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany (ISD). “This is a focus of Russian propaganda, and the numbers that are given are often massively exaggerated.” The Russian defence ministry is therefore not credible, she said.
The Dutch open source intelligence website (OSINT) Oryx wrote on Twitter of a total of six tanks abandoned in Zaporizhia oblast, including one Leopard tank, four Bradleys and one mine-clearing tank. “Left behind” howevewr is not synonymous with “destroyed.” In total, according to Oryx’s research, eight of Ukraine’s Leopard tanks have been destroyed or damaged so far since the Russian invasion began.
5. Increased agitation against queer people, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
17 July 2023
Whether it’s about homosexuals, drag queens or trans people: Disinformation about queer people is omnipresent in social networks. Experts believe this can have devastating consequences.
Trans people are particularly targeted by disinformation, says Kerstin Thost, press officer of the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (LSVD). “In the past months around the debate on the Self-Determination Act [which would make it possible for Germans to change their official gender and first names], we have seen an increased attack on trans people in particular, not only in Germany but also internationally. There has been an increased mobilisation of hatred, agitation and “demonisation against LGBTQI*.” LGBTIQ* stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people.
6. Who finances the welfare state?, by Pascal Siggelkow
26 July 2023
It’s said time and again on the internet that 15 million people keep Germany running. The references is to “net taxpayers,” who pay more taxes than they receive in benefits. Experts, however, believe that this figure is wrong.
The figure of 15 million “net taxpayers” is justified … in this way: Of the approximately 46 million employed people in Germany, 27 million paid more taxes and contributions than they received in state benefits. Of these, however, 12 million are “directly or indirectly dependent on the state,” since they are paid by taxes … for example, as state employees. Thus … 15 million “net taxpayers” keep the system running.
Stefan Bach, a researcher … the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), believes this calculation is incomplete … “Basically, state taxes and levies are offset by services without which the modern economy cannot function either.” …
Social contributions such as unemployment insurance or health insurance should also be considered separately … The calculation holds that all pensioners are recipients of benefits [and] ignores the fact that the status of net tax payer and recipient changes … in the course of one’s life. …
7. Local weather phenomena do not refute climate change, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
10 August 2023
The last two weeks of July in Germany were cold and wet. Some use this fact to play down climate change. But experts believe this is wrong.
… Kevin Sieck from the Climate Service Center … believes that temporary local weather does not support arguments about climate change: “Robust statements about climate trends can only be obtained by looking at several decades,” says Sieck. “A rainy July in Germany doesn’t say anything about long-term trends.” It is therefore the long-term developments that are relevant when assessing trends in the climate.
Karsten Schwanke, meteorologist and ARD weather presenter, agrees: “There will always be very changeable summers.” But there is a clear tendency towards warmer summers with larger upward swings. “We see a tendency for heat waves to become longer. And we are currently getting heat waves that we definitely didn’t see 50 years ago. We’re also getting more droughts, especially in the summer.”
8. How China regards the Russian invasion, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
21 August 2023
In the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, China is trying to position itself as a mediator. At the same time, the US and NATO are portrayed as warmongers. Is China neutral?
“China stands for peace while the US prevents the peace process”, “The actions of US-led NATO have pushed Russia-Ukraine tensions to their peak” or “Ukrainian ‘neo-Nazis’ have opened fire on Chinese students.” These are all statements made by Chinese state media or government officials in relation to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Although Beijing claims to be a neutral actor that respects the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations,” China has provided “rhetorical backing” to the Kremlin, according to a study by the US-based German Marshal Fund. “Chinese officials and state media have openly supported and promoted Kremlin-friendly accounts of the war.”
9. Why the record debt is not much to write home about, by Pascal Siggelkow
7 September 2023
Germany’s national debt is at a record high, many media reported. From a purely nominal point of view, this is true, but from the point of view of experts, this is not very meaningful.
Martin Beznoska, Senior Economist for Financial and Fiscal Policy at the Institute for the German Economy (IW) points out [that] a more suitable parameter for assessing a country’s debt is … the debt-to-GDP ratio. “The debt-to-GDP ratio is a better indicator because it puts the debt in relation to the potential that the state has in terms of revenue-generating capacity,” Beznoska says.
The debt-to-GDP ratio relates government debt to nominal gross domestic product. For Germany, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 66.3 per cent in 2022. This means that the total debt was 66.3 per cent of the gross domestic product. Compared to the two previous years, the debt-to-GDP ratio in Germany has thus improved: in 2020 it was 68.7 per cent, in 2021 69.3 per cent. Before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, however, it was still 59.6 percent.
10. Spahn’s dubious figures, by Pascal Siggelkow
1 September 2023
Vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction Spahn has criticised the planned increase in unemployment benefits. He said this would mean that a family of four would receive on average as much as an average-income family. But this is not true.
Planned increases to unemployment benefits next year have caused heated debeated. The CDU/CSU have complained that the changes will raise benefits higher than the wages of many employees. Vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary facation Jens Spahn said this sent the wrong signal. Even now, a family of four are entitled to an average of 2,311 Euros a month, which he said is as much as an average-income family in Germany. But this is not quite correct.
According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), couples with two children had an average net household income of 5,490 euros in 2018. This is significantly more than the 2,311 Euros Spahn claimed. The gross household income was 7,435 Euros.
11. Fake videos and conspiracy claims, by Pascal Siggelkow
11 September 2023
Many false images and videos are circulating on social media about the devastating earthquake in Morocco that killed more than 2,000 people. Some of them are linked to well-known conspiracy narratives.
A look at the recent past shows that disinformation is often deliberately spread after natural disasters. In the case of the fires in Hawaii in August as well as the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February, videos were circulated that were supposed to show evidence of absurd causes.
In the case of earthquakes, the USA is often portrayed as the alleged cause – with their High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). HAARP is a research programme of the University of Alaska in the USA that has been in existence for decades. The aim is to research the upper atmosphere – the ionosphere – and also the propagation of radio waves. Radio waves are used for this purpose.
Now, as projects go, debunking the debunkers does not appeal to me very much, but we must get some read on Siggelkow’s accuracy and reliability. Remember that he should be almost totally right almost all of the time. After all, he or his managers choose what to debunk, so the very least we can expect of them is the judicious selection of easy targets. Alas, the only clean victory I can grant our Fact Enthusiast is 11), on the Moroccan earthquake. Few will believe this was caused by the American HAARP research programme, but it’s hard to know how many tagesschau fans needed to hear this in the first place.
Remarkably, in various of these pieces, Siggelkow doesn’t seem to be clearly debunking anything; 1) on excess mortality he tries to head off the dark conclusions of vaccine sceptics, but can only manage this very weakly, while 4) on the Ukraine offensive and 8) on China’s pro-Russia stance he merely offers helpings of reheated NATO propaganda to counter news and opinions from unapproved foreign sources. Also in this category is 5), which swipes at two pieces of allegedly anti-LGTBQ misinformation, but cannot clearly refute either of them, and beyond that offers little more than unsubstantiated hand-wringing about the violence and threats which gender minorities face.
Otherwise, we see a mix of disingenuous approaches, perhaps illustrated best by 7) on the fact that cool and rainy weather doesn’t refute climate change. While this is certainly true, the mainstream media – including tagesschau – have been confusing climate for weather deliberately in service of their environmentalist polemic for years. If hot summer days can indicate climate change, then cool summer days can contraindicate it, and if the press doesn’t like people making the latter argument, they should stop making the former one.
Number 6), on the precarious German welfare state, which allegedly depends on a mere 15 million net taxpayers to cover its liabilities, also belongs here. By selectively excluding entitlements – above all, pensions – you can make this figure more favourable, and if you want to count households instead of individuals things might look better too, but these prevarications and qualifications miss the point. As an objective matter, the German pension system faces collapse in the face of the retirement wave and demographic decline. Much the same applies to 9); it’s true that German debt is at a record high only in nominal terms, but even the preferred debt-to-GDP ratio which Siggelkow’s experts prefer paints an uncomfortable picture of government extravagance since the pandemic.
Particularly in these last two cases, we see Siggelkow reaching for a tactic that these complex cases don’t allow him to exercise fully. We might call this The Debunking of the Part to Discredit the Whole. This is the main stock-in-trade of fact checkers in general; indeed, it is baked into the very premise of their profession. It consists in leveraging a quite irrelevant but well-grounded objection for the purposes of casting a pall over broader arguments that the checkers would prefer not to assail, because the rest of the facts to be checked don’t run in their favour. Thus 2) denounces fake French riot videos on social media as a means of playing down, however implicitly, the very real violence which broke out in the wake of Nahel Merzouk’s killing, while 3) on the AfD Einzelfallticker ends up (after no little special pleading) actually confirming that migrants commit crime at higher rates than native Germans, while merely questioning migrant involvement in many of the catalogued cases. 2
Also in this category is 10): While Jens Spahn obviously understated the average income of the four-person German household, his broader argument – that in certain circumstances entitlements can exceed wages and are rising at a faster rate than income – appears to be totally correct.
You need read only a few of these exercises in ideological masturbation to find the primary explanation for fact-checker mediocrity. People like Siggelkow can afford to be stupid, because they’re not actually paid to think about anything. As a fact-checker, Siggelkow’s job consists mostly of calling up various “experts” and writing down what they tell him. Even this may overstate his agency, as very often I expect that it is the “experts” who call up Siggelkow and provide him with pre-digested material to print, but of course this is hard to prove. In those cases where Siggelkow interviews primarily midlevel academics not obviously connected to any advocacy groups, we might presume the reporting reflects his own initiative. Quite often, however, his sources hail from highly politicised think-tanks and NGOs, and in these instances I think we’re justified in suspecting he’s acting as a mere conduit.
Three of our eleven articles (2, 3 and 11) draw on the alleged expertise of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), a “non-profit extremism monitoring agency founded in 2021.” Their heavy representation in my eleven-article corpus is no accident; CeMAS and other anti-extremism NGOs are a major pillar of Siggelkow’s production. Sometimes they crop up even where you wouldn’t expect them, as in 4) on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which features a prominent quote on “Russian propaganda” from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a “think and do tank” (heavens preserve us) which concerns itself with “digital regulation, disinformation, extremism and digital civic education.”
Siggelkow’s forays into economic matters are rarer, but in our exploratory corpus, the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) plays an outsized role. This is an old progressive liberal operation that advocates redistributive economic policies. IW experts help Siggelkow defend the welfare state in 6) and play down German national debt in 9). Curiously, when it comes time to defend NATO, Siggelkow’s bench of personal informants runs a bit thinner, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Ukraine war has ceased to be a major focus of state media coverage. Thus for 8), Siggelkow performs no expert interview, and rips instead from a piece published by the German Marshall Fund, an Atlanticist think-tank whose name he misspells. In 4) on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, his major source is somebody with a master’s degree in “East Asian Economy and Society” from the small think-tank-cum-consultancy-operation known as the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy. This is a small den of Atlanticist Europhiles who are still awaiting the day when they will get their own Wikipedia page.
A broader survey of Siggelkow’s output, extending to the beginning of this year, reveals a split focus between the Russian war on the one hand, and identity politics and mass migration on the other. Somewhat surprisingly, climate topics have a mostly supporting role, and he thematises Covid and the vaccines only occasionally. The recent economic pieces are outliers.
The null hypothesis of the fact-checking industry would be something like this: “Threatened by the rise of alternative internet media, the establishment press have cultivated various discourse-policing operations to reclaim objectivity and reliability as their exclusive province.” In Siggelkow’s output, we certainly find much to support this view. It is the reason, for example, that he is so fond of writing about social media “misinformation” and internet “conspiracy theories.” The internet is a dangerous world of lies and disinformation, from which only the friendly tagesschau and their intrepid finders of facts can save you. This is basically his attitude, but as theses go, the null hypothesis is far too broad.
It cannot explain Siggelkow’s great selectivity, for example. There are absolute mountains of absurdity on the internet that he totally ignores, while often venturing into overtly political territory to fact-check the inconvenient arguments of the political opposition, which don’t involve internet social media at all. At the same time, the governing parties – especially the Greens – attract almost no Siggelkowian scrutiny, despite their long history of absurdly false statements. Fact-checking is clearly an enterprise devoted towards furthering a very specific political programme under the false cover of objectivity. This programme is directed primarily against “right-wing extremism,” particularly in its post-2015 incarnation. Secondary fronts on behalf of NATO, climate change sceptics, and the establishment CDU/CSU opposition emerge as the news cycle lends them relevance. Siggelkow, in other words, is quite plainly a propagandist who finds facts on behalf of the Scholz government, and in this he is funded by mandatory license fees levied from every German household.
That Siggelkow so often strays from his stated mission to correct falsehoods and publishes many pieces not clearly directed against any notional misinformation, merely reveals the tendency of the ideological mission to overwhelm tactical fact-finding entirely. Siggelkow is a conduit via which the preformulated output of regime-adjacent advocacy groups can find their way into the press and talk back to their critics even in the absence of any specific occasion for them to do so.
Siggelkow also has a broader purpose, independent of his rearguard actions on behalf of the regime. This is the construction of a mythology which binds the political right to internet ‘conspiracy theorising.’ His implicit polemic is not merely that legacy media like tagesschau have a lock on objective and reliable information, but that political views opposed to those which prevail among state media journalists arise from ignorance, disinformation and general internet insanity. The facts are on the side of the progressive liberals who steer the German state, and the only people opposed to them are online idiots who believe that secret US government programmes cause earthquakes.
While Siggelkow’s tricks are both tiresome and transparent, fact checking is anything but easy. His steady stream of but-ackshually-bro bothering depends like all other heavily politicised press reporting on the support of a dense web of NGOs, think tanks and other advocacy groups. Where these are lacking, for example in novel areas like Corona, Siggelkow really struggles. The great algal blooming of pro-Atlanticist “open-source intelligence” posters after the outbreak of war in Ukraine reflects an effort to supply the Siggelkows of the press with recycle-able content. Like everything else in our present, diffuse system of regime power and propaganda, the ideological behemoth moves slowly and struggles to react to new problems.
Ultimately, the significance of the fact-finders is obscure; it’s hard to believe Siggelkow has many readers. The lack of interest his tedious schoolmarmery attracts is probably one reason his ilk are so over-represented in state media operations, where nobody need worry about producing content that is profitable. His writing is dry and unpersuasive; at most, it is a kind of choir-preaching that reassures the the tagesschau audience that their views are grounded in facts, logic and science, and anyone who disagrees is a dangerous internet manic, or perhaps Russian.
An “Einzelfall” is an isolated case; the AfD Einzelfall-Ticker alludes to the older project “XY-Einzelfall,” which began documenting migrant crimes in Germany in 2016. The title is an ironic reference to the regime line that migrant infractions are “isolated cases.”
Because authorities often intentionally withhold the details of migrant perpetrators, whether specific cases actually involve migrants or not requires some surmising on the part of the reader. Probably whoever runs the Einzelfallticker should include only cases where migrant offenders are specifically identified or described (there is no shortage of those), but in my own less-than-casual study of the Einzelfallticker, I find that a) they’re generally clear when there’s uncertainty about the origins of the suspect, and b) in most of the unidentified cases, they’re probably right to suspect migrant perpetrators.
DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech
An overt way of policing speech?
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 14, 2023
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.
The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.
According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”
Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”
In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”
DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”
The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).
And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.
Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.
Kiev’s trans spokesperson vows to ‘hunt down Russian propagandists’
RT | September 14, 2023
A threat to “hunt down” Russian “propagandists” which flagged an action “next week” and was made by a Ukrainian military spokesperson, should not be dismissed just because of its over-the-top presentation, a senior Russian official has argued.
On Wednesday, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, who leads the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces’ purported outreach to English-speaking audiences, made some ominous predictions regarding Russia.
“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes,” she said.
“Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” she pledged.
Ashton-Cirillo, a trans woman who made headlines in the US in 2021 with a story of her infiltration of the American right-wing group Proud Boys, was given the spokesperson position in Ukraine in early August.
Her latest statement is part of her ‘Russia Hates the Truth’ series of minute-long videos, in which she delivers scolding condemnations of Russia.
While many Russian journalists have dismissed the unspecific threat as ridiculous, Valery Fadeev, the chairman of the Russian presidential human rights council, urged national law enforcement to take it seriously. The remark appears to be “a threat of murder or serious bodily harm” and thus a crime under Russian law, he argued on Thursday.
“Considering the lamentable record of attempts on the lives of Russian journalists and public figures … Russian security services should pay attention to it,” he added.
Moscow has accused Kiev of orchestrating the murders of journalist Darya Dugina in August 2022 and of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April this year. In July, the Federal Security Service reported busting a group believed to have intended to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak on Kiev’s behalf.
Threads Is Already Blacklisting Covid Terms From Search, As Part of New Censorship Campaign
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 12, 2023
Meta is once again up to its old tricks. The new social networking app Threads, which was marketed as an alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter, is now limiting access to information and prohibiting searches related to key terms such as “coronavirus” and “vaccines,” as revealed by the Washington Post.
Despite only being a couple of months old, the platform has already been observed to deliberately muzzle certain search terms in its novel search functionality.
Meta has previously implemented search blackouts around Covid-related terms due to combating what it says is “misinformation.”
Offering an explanation for the obstruction, Meta conceded to the Washington Post, “The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content.”
They assured that they would reinstate search results for these terms when they believed the content quality was up to their standards. However, they declined to disclose a complete list of obstructed search terms, leaving users guessing.
Apparently, Meta has opted for strict keyword censorship, instead of engaging in complex debates about what content concerning the Coronavirus should be permissible.
This move is suggestive of their unwillingness to disclose more internal correspondences, many of which came to light during the ongoing inquiries on censorship stemming from COVID-related discussions.
Biden’s Department of Education Is Investigating Christopher Rufo For “Misgendering”
Listed among many allegations
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 11, 2023
The Department of Education, under President Joe Biden’s administration, is wielding its influence against Christopher Rufo, a conservative advocate and the New College of Florida.
Allegedly, the civil liberty offenses committed by Rufo include the “misgendering” of certain individuals and the closing down of the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) division within the school.
…
The allegations began unfolding on social media, where Rufo publicized the supposed evidence used against him. Among the charges was the allegation that Rufo had addressed the former head of the school’s DEI, Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, as “she” or “her.” Noteworthy is that Rosario-Hernandez, a biological woman, chooses the pronouns “ze/zir.”
Moreover, Rufo is accused of referring to a student, who prefers to be called “they/them,” as “her.”
Chiming in on this development, Rufo intensified the debate by posting, “President Biden’s Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into New College of Florida, following a complaint that, in part, alleged that I ‘misgendered’ the college’s former DEI director, who uses ‘ze/zir’ pseudo-pronouns. This is madness.”
The complaint further extends to accuse Rufo of violating civil rights by withdrawing funding from the DEI department and the Gender Studies Program. As per the Department of Education’s guidelines, the gravity of the situation could escalate, assuming it substantiates the claim and the accused parties choose to disregard any determined ruling — escalating into a potential implication with the Department of Justice.
What Should We Do About the Powerful Israel Lobby?
Make them register as “foreign agents”
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 12, 2023
World Jewry is on the attack against Elon Musk, who has threatened to sue the Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for as much as $22 billion for defaming him and doing material damage amounting to many billions of dollars to his company X, which used to be known as Twitter, falsely smearing the platform and its owner for allegedly providing an antisemitic haven for “hate speech.” Per Musk, the ADL has gone so far as to put pressure on potential advertisers not to do business with him and to engage in a total boycott of X.
I for one can only say “Thank you Mr. Musk and it is only regrettable that no one did anything against an organization dedicated to spewing hatred directed against many Americans while also seeking to deprive an entire nation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech. And while you are at it, I would also recommend that you take a look at the other groups that are partners in Zionist crime, most significantly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which has now created a PAC dedicated to defeating any politician who is known to be critical of Israel. After the 2020 national election, AIPAC boasted that the PAC that it had set up had raised $17 million to defeat candidates critical of Israel, while also supporting those politicians who were friends, 95% of whom were elected. To pretend that the Lobby exists to provide some kind of perspective or balance in foreign policy is a case of who is kidding whom on the issue of Israel. ADL and AIPAC are dedicated to enriching and protecting a foreign country that is on a daily basis engaged in a broad series of crimes against humanity as well as war crimes and which is characterized by persecution based on religion and race. ADL and AIPAC have no concern for what damage is done to the American people due to their persistent corruption of our body politic and media to achieve their treasonous objectives.”
So what has the physically hideous and mentally deficient Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt, the Chief Executive Officer of ADL, been up to and why has it taken so long for some Americans, to include Musk and Tucker Carlson, to react to being abused, stripped of rights, and vilified every time anyone dares to speak up? Well, the simple answer is that anyone who dares to challenge Israel’s vile behavior or Jewish control over large parts of the United States economy plus near total dominance of its political class can count on being attacked in the media and labeled an antisemite, which means that, increasingly, one might well be charged with a “hate crime” which can bring with it both civil and criminal penalties. Even at the state level, in 35 jurisdictions, one can now even be denied a job or benefits for supporting an economic boycott of the Jewish state.
Greenblatt and company believe that they can get away with murder, both metaphorically and literally, because they are protected by their money, media access and the political cover that they have flat out bought and also obtained through intimidation and threats. The interaction with Tucker Carlson began when Greenblatt began fulminating over Tucker’s willingness to discuss on his talk show controversial subjects that are familiar to conservatives but are generally banned by the media, to include “replacement theory.” The theory suggests that the decline of birth rates of whites is deliberate due to government policies that make it economically difficult to raise more than one or two children. The decline in workers is being replaced by the hordes of illegal immigrants allowed into the country, which will produce a permanent Democratic Party majority that will be docile and controllable. Jewish groups are seen as enthusiastic for the open borders and cultural and political shifts that go with them.
Greenblatt and the ADL initially focused on Tucker Carlson in particular given his high profile and popularity. Greenblatt repeatedly demanded that Fox News fire Tucker for discussing the “great replacement” theory as well as other white-nationalist talking points. Greenblatt has denounced Carlston’s alleged willingness “To use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic, antisemitic, and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform.” He called on advertisers to stop supporting the Carlson program and Fox with their dollars. Also, under-fire conservative Republican Representative Matt Gaetz subsequently became involved in the argument, saying that Tucker Carlson is correct about openly discussing white nationalist ‘replacement’ conspiracy theory and he called out Greenblatt and the ADL as “racist,” i.e. “anti-white.” Carlson has retorted that the ADL is trying to destroy freedom of speech in the United States, most particularly whenever the issue under discussion is the abuse of Jewish power or Israel.
Greenblatt was delighted, invoking woke buzzwords to confirm his own superior ethical status, when Carlson was fired in April, tweeting that “It’s about time. For far too long, Tucker Carlson has used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic & anti-LGBTQ hate to millions.” Apparently Greenblatt is not disturbed by racism and xenophobia and related crimes against humanity in Israel, but that is to be expected.
Musk’s history with Greenblatt is revealing. Shortly after Musk obtained control of Twitter in April 2022, he was contacted and pressured by ADL in a bid to remove what Greenblatt described as antisemitic content. Twitter’s CEO Linda Yaccarino negotiated the issue, but Musk believes that the platform should be characterized by allowing all forms of legal speech, and beyond excluding sites calling for violence, Twitter became exemplary as a free speech zone. Free speech includes criticism of the Jewish religion, Jewish group behavior and the Jewish state of Israel, even including doubting the evidence for the perpetual victimhood holocaust myth, all of which Greenblatt regards as antisemitism and therefore hate crimes. As the disagreement with ADL heated up, the hashtag #BanTheADL began to appear and it has now become the most used tag with more than a quarter of a million appearances on X. Greenblatt has denounced the users of the hashtag as “white supremacists,” in line with his apparent belief that antisemites and other racist evildoers are basically political conservatives. Musk responded to Greenblatt’s “intimidation tactics” by suggesting that “Perhaps we should run a poll on this… with the ‘we’re labeling everything we don’t like as hateful/racist/dangerous/far-right’ BS.” He also observed accurately that “The ADL, because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform.”
One hopes that Elon Musk’s proposed lawsuit will proceed and bring about the dismantlement of ADL and the dethronement of Greenblatt, but as important as the free speech issue is, there is also another aspect to the entitlement and immunity that groups representing narrowly construed Jewish and Israeli interests currently enjoy. ADL is firmly entrenched with the power brokers in Washington and is even involved in training new FBI agents how to recognize antisemites and other types of racists. Nevertheless, one might suggest that the labeling of all critics and many white Americans as antisemites just might be a weapon that is beginning to lose its effectiveness since it is used so promiscuously by Greenblatt and others.
Beyond constitutional rights, there is a national security issue which no one in government dares touch and that is the corruption of American foreign policy on behalf of the state of Israel by Greenblatt and his friends. Jewish and Israeli power is sometimes jokingly referred to as “wag the dog” but when it is employed to involve America in unnecessary wars and to gift one of the world’s wealthiest countries with billions of dollars in “aid” every year, something is seriously wrong. And it all happens out in the open due to something called “hubris” whereby most major Jewish organizations meet regularly with Israeli Embassy diplomats and spies to cooperate on activities that benefit both Israel and its Jewish partners.
A key bit of legislation intended to monitor the activities of foreign agents residing in the US is the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.) which “imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interest. It requires ‘foreign agents’—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons (‘foreign principals’)—to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation. FARA does not prohibit lobbying for foreign interests, nor does it ban or restrict any specific activities. Its explicit purpose is to promote transparency with respect to foreign influence over American public opinion, policy, and laws; to that end, the DOJ is required to make such information publicly available. FARA was enacted in 1938 primarily to counter Nazi propaganda.”
The actual legislation, which perfectly describes groups like ADL and AIPAC interact with the Israeli government, reads as follows: “The term ‘agent of a foreign principal’ means–(1) any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and who directly or through any other person (i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal.”
Famously, President John F. Kennedy tried to compel AIPAC’s predecessor organization the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs to register under FARA, but he was assassinated before that could be accomplished. He also was seeking to block Israel’s nuclear program, which has suggested the obvious conclusion about how and why he died. That aside, for today’s US government the question becomes, “When is our Attorney General Merrick Garland, who seems to be preoccupied with finding Russian war criminals in Ukraine and white supremacists in America, going to enforce the FARA statute on the numerous Jewish organizations like ADL and AIPAC and compel them to register?” That will require them to be transparent both on their “foreign” relationships and also reveal the sources of their funding. ADL had a reported $238 million in assets in 2021. The act of registering will also confirm that they do no routinely represent American interests but rather Israeli priorities, which will hopefully shift the public perception on what they represent. Jewish and Zionist Garland who works for a declared Zionist president who claims to be Catholic is hardly likely to do the right thing, but we can always hope that ADL’s recent foray will prove to be a step too far!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Instagram Censors Chloe Cole After She Shared DeTransition Journey
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 11, 2023
Instagram has taken action against Chloe Cole, a 19-year-old who identifies herself as a “former trans kid” and had undergone a double mastectomy at the tender age of 15. The platform has restricted her profile, deeming its content to be “violent.”
Chloe Cole shared the news with her followers, saying, “Facebook has notified me that my Instagram bio is too ‘violent.’ If you think reading it is violent, imagine actually living through all that!” Cole’s bio explicitly states, “19, female (XX), former trans kid, started T & Blockers at 13, Double Mastectomy at 15, detransed at 16.”
The decision has led to her content being less accessible, with Instagram notifying her that her account “can’t be shown to non-followers,” and that her “account and content won’t appear in places like Explore, Search, Suggested Users, Reels, and Feed Recommendations.”
In a detailed response to The Post Millennial, Cole remarked, “Facebook is absolutely correct in stating that my bio describes something violent-that is, my own life experiences.”
She believes that by sharing her journey, she is raising awareness and urging compassion for others. Cole commented on the platform’s decision, stating, “It is upsetting that they can claim I am promoting violence and using this narrative to hide my content from parents, children, and those who need to hear my message the most.”
Beyond her digital platforms, Cole has taken legal steps, suing her healthcare providers for alleged malpractice, claiming that they misled her and her family regarding the treatments she received.
The Childhood Vaccination Schedule – Part One: The First Vaccine – Hepatitis B
By Michael Bryant | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2023
Introduction
As more vaccines are added to the US childhood immunization schedule it’s imperative that there be a broader public discussion about the prominence of vaccines in public health policy, what benefits they convey and a forthright assessment of the risks involved.
Though vital to both the short and long term health of children, exploratory questions, in-depth rational discussion and comprehensive analysis about vaccines are considered off-limits for the mainstream medical establishment.
In the conventional narrative it is accepted as an article of faith that vaccines are miraculous discoveries responsible for global disease eradication and are the most important medical product for disease prevention.
For today’s pediatricians promoting and implementing the childhood immunization program has become their primary duty.
It is widely believed that if we stopped, or even reduced vaccinations, we would be going back to the dark ages. Any individual that challenges this vaccine orthodoxy is seen as a heretic.
Despite the deeply ingrained belief system of the vaccine ideology a growing number of parents and health advocates are beginning to ask many of the questions which have been swept under the rug for years.
Are all of these vaccines necessary? Are they safe? Are the diseases they are supposed to prevent truly diseases of concern?
Does the claim that vaccines are responsible for reductions in disease, disability, and death from a variety of infectious diseases fit with the facts when scrutinized?
Why such an increase in the number of vaccinations through the years? Has this escalating vaccine program produced an accompanying improvement in health outcomes?
What happens if I don’t give my child all of these vaccines? What happens if I don’t give my child any of these vaccines? What happens to children who don’t get vaccinated?
These are some of the questions parents are not supposed to ask and precisely the questions that need to be addressed.
While the information presented in this series is publicly available it is denied admittance into the public discourse by means of systematic indoctrination by a compromised media apparatus and a medical establishment which has created a mystique around vaccines while persuading the public they are the holiest of all medicinal products.
As an antidote to this institutional programming we embark upon a series of articles which take a close look at each of the vaccines on the childhood schedule and the diseases they are designed to prevent.
Our series begins with an overview of the US Childhood Immunization Schedule and a detailed look at the initial shot given to infants on the first day of life- the Hepatitis B vaccine.
The United States Childhood Immunization Schedule – An Overview
In the past few decades the childhood vaccine schedule in the United States has exploded into what is now the most aggressive childhood vaccination schedule in the world. It wasn’t always this way. Most baby boomers likely had only 2 or 3 vaccinations- polio, smallpox and DTP with never more than one shot given per visit.
With the recent addition of the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood schedule the number of recommended injections ballooned to a regimen of 72 injections of 90 antigens by age eighteen for any child that undergoes the full immunization schedule circa 2023.
To understand how this came to pass we need to understand the history of how we got here.
The first vaccine mandate in the United States was enacted in Massachusetts in 1810 and was centered on smallpox. The legislation was essentially an ad hoc law which gave local health boards the authority to require vaccination.
The first public school mandate was issued in Massachusett in the 1850’s. At that time the only vaccine of interest was for smallpox. By the end of the 1800s most states in New England had smallpox vaccine requirements for children attending public schools.
The next significant stride in vaccine recommendations and requirements for children would arrive a century later in 1954, focusing on the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk.
By 1955, the polio vaccine was fully licensed and through the Polio Vaccine Assistance Act Congress appropriated funds to provide federal grants for states to purchase the vaccine and for the costs of planning and conducting vaccination programs.
This Act would become the template for the utilization of federal funds to cover various costs of vaccine programs and would provide the impetus for a mass inoculation campaign for polio.
At this time there were no codified mechanisms to mandate vaccine uptake, doctors recommendations were considered just that- guidance with no strict obligation or enforcement for adherence.
In 1962 the Vaccine Assistance Act would establish a permanent mechanism to provide ongoing financial support to state and local health departments. This Act would allow the CDC to appropriate federal funds for the provision of vaccines and establish an advisory group to assist in managing vaccination programs.
To this day the 1962 Act remains one of the most important mechanisms for aligning local and state health department immunization activities with federal funds to deliver vaccines to children.
In 1964 the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was created under the US Public Health Service. Its mission was to review the science and evidence of vaccines given to children and to make recommendations on when those vaccines should be given and at what age.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a wave of new vaccines hit the market. A second type of polio vaccine was developed along with the first Hepatitis B vaccine. Measles vaccines were developed as a single vaccine and then combined with the mumps and rubella vaccines to create the “MMR” vaccine.
Paralleling the increase in the volume of vaccines came the creation of global immunization programs. In 1974 the World Health Organization established the Expanded Programme on Immunization which was designed to ”strengthen vaccine programmes, supply, and delivery, and ensure universal access to all relevant vaccines for all populations across the life course.”
These changes radically altered the business landscape of vaccine manufacturing. What was once a cottage industry of small pharmaceutical companies, individual investigators and physician scientists evolved into the mega corporations that exist today.
By 1977, the U.S. federal government had set up the Childhood Immunization Initiative which sought to increase vaccination rates in children against seven diseases (diphtheria, measles, mumps, pertussis, poliomyelitis, rubella, tetanus) for which vaccines had been developed. This began the process by which all 50 states would adopt mandatory school vaccinations.
In the 1980s, vaccines against Hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and pneumococcal disease were recommended for children at different ages. By 1983 the number of recommended injections had increased to 23 doses of 7 vaccines by age six.
In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act created a system of passive and active surveillance for cases of adverse reactions to vaccines as well as a mechanism to compensate any persons injured by vaccines.
With the passage of the 1986 Act and its implementation in 1988, a liability shield for pharmaceutical companies was created. On the heels of the 1986 Act the number of vaccines placed on the CDC schedule would escalate.
Even as the list of available vaccines was growing local and state health boards had differing opinions on when to give vaccines, which children should get them and how many should be given.
In order to standardize vaccine uptake, the first “harmonized” childhood immunization schedule was issued in 1995 by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). combining recommendations of all three national groups.
This initial schedule included diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, polio (oral), Haemophilus influenzae type b, and Hepatitis B vaccines. (The DTP and MMR vaccines were combination vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis; and measles, mumps, rubella.)
Since then, the schedule has been adjusted as new vaccines have been developed, taken off the market or the risk profile for children changed.
Today, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), all 50 states have legislation requiring specific vaccines for students with exemptions varying from state to state.
These laws apply not only to children attending public schools but also to those attending private schools and day care facilities.
There are 45 states and Washington D.C. that grant religious exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations and 15 states which allow for philosophical exemptions.
All school immunization laws grant exemptions for medical reasons.
Six states (California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York, and West Virginia) do not allow religious or philosophical exemptions from vaccination requirements as of 2021.
NCSL also states that the laws and regulations on vaccine requirements in all 50 states and DC follow the vaccine schedule set forth by CDC.
The trajectory of this vaccine program would result in 54 injections of 72 antigens by 2019 for US children by age eighteen who adhered to the full CDC schedule- with even more shots added as the Covid vaccines were placed on the child immunization schedule.
This dizzying array of injections in the childhood immunization schedule begins on a child’s first day of life with the Hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis B – The Disease: A Case Study In Manufacturing Public Perception
The first question every parent should ask when considering the Hepatitis B vaccine is, “Does my child need a vaccine for Hepatitis B on the first day of life?”
Given the low risk of newborns acquiring the HepB infection and the ease with which pregnant mothers can be screened it’s fair to ask why a newborn would need the HepB vaccine?
Before arriving at that answer we look back at how Hepatitis B, the disease, was transformed from a relatively obscure disease which impacted a limited population into a widespread public health predicament.
The conventional characterization of Hepatitis B is as a type of viral hepatitis which causes acute and chronic liver infection. It is generally accepted that in order to contract HepB direct contact with infected blood or other body fluids is required. Transmission routes that by any standards pose little or no risk to infants.
This is in fact how public health officials characterized the disease back in 1981 when the Hepatitis B vaccine initially gained approval. The CDC’s own Fact Sheet on HepB the disease does not include newborn babies as a risk group for that disease.
The risk groups listed are, “injection drug users, homosexual men, sexually active heterosexuals, infant/children of immigrants from disease-endemic areas, sexual/household contacts of infected persons, infants born to infected mothers, health care workers and hemodialysis patients.”
What was it that changed the CDC’s earlier 1982 recommendation, which targeted only a small “at-risk” population, into a set of more aggressive policies that would result in the 1991 recommendation that all infants get three doses of HBV by 18 months of age?
And how did the HepB vaccine become compulsory for all schoolchildren in 47 states by the year 2000 even as the CDC admits that they lack proof of HepB being transmitted in a school setting?
In large part the answer to these questions lies in how the public’s perception of HepB was radically altered through orchestrated media messaging and deliberately provocative depictions of the disease by industry and public health officials. Notably the change in HepB’s image came immediately following the vaccine’s development, licensure and introduction.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the approval of the vaccine, HepB was a disease which had little to no relevance to most Americans and nowhere to be found on the media radar. Before the Hepatitis B vaccine was developed and marketed most Americans had little reason to view the disease as a threat to their health.
New cases of HepB were quite low in the 1970’s, began to rise in the 1980’s, concurrent with the AIDS crisis, and then began to fall again in the 1990’s.
By its own admission the CDC attributed this decline to, “reduction of transmission among men who have sex with men and injection-drug users, as a result of HIV prevention efforts.”
As scientific discoveries leading to the vaccine moved forward HepB acquired a more public image.
The advent of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, the development of genetically-engineered pharmaceuticals in the late 1980s, and the political push for health reform in the early 1990s all led to changes in how HepB was presented to Americans.
The media, medical and scientific community would all contribute in altering the image of HepB through the 1980s and 1990s. Media outlets would often conflate HepB with HIV/AIDS in order to arouse public attention and induce fear towards this obscure disease.
Provocative headlines and stories began to surface with claims that Hepatitis B was similar to HIV and possibly worse.
The historical medical view that HepB was a disease which only impacted a narrow subset of the population was replaced by hysterical media representations that anyone could be at risk of Hepatitis B.
In her article, “Do We Really Need Hepatitis B on the Second Day of Life?”, Vaccination Mandates and Shifting Representations of Hepatitis B, history of health sciences professor Elena Conis chronicles some of this history:
“Outlets from the Philadelphia Tribune to Good Housekeeping reported that a third of people with the disease were not in any of the known risk groups. Redbook warned readers that hepatitis was “spreading fast,” and the Boston Globe noted that hepatitis was spread by sharing gum, food, toothbrushes, and razors and by body piercing. New York magazine, in a feature titled, “The Other Plague,” recounted the stories of a young woman who contracted a fatal case by getting her ears pierced, a young man who was infected when mugged at knife-point, and a woman infected at a nail salon. Frequent mention of the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers heightened the sense of an immediate health threat: in the words of the New York magazine reporter, anyone could be one of the U.S.’s 1.5 million “Typhoid Marys,” unwittingly transmitting hepatitis B to people unaware of their risk.”
Such media reports citing HepB disease statistics would normally originate with statements generated by officials at the CDC.
Most of the inflated disease statistics found in the media reports were generated in the very same ACIP Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which called for mass vaccination with hepatitis B vaccine.
In that report the CDC stated that there are an “estimated 1 million-1.25 million persons with chronic hepatitis B infection in the United States” and that, “each year approximately 4,000-5,000 of these persons die from chronic liver disease” and that, “an estimated 200,000-300,000 new [Hepatitis B] infections occurred annually during the period 1980-1991.”
To generate those statistics the CDC, in what at best would be considered duplicitous, circled back to itself citing an MMWR 1990 report as the basis for their claims. Nowhere in either report were scientific references used to support those claims.
Despite the media campaign, vaccine uptake for HepB was not rising to desired levels as vaccinating high-risk adults was proving to be difficult. This would result in a more systematic strategy at the national level.
In September of 1991 the Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (ACIP) would develop and codify a national program for the HepB vaccine- Hepatitis B Virus: A Comprehensive Strategy for Eliminating Transmission in the United States Through Universal Childhood Vaccination.
In 1992 the World Health Organization (WHO) would follow suit recommending that “all infants should receive their first dose of hepatitis B vaccine as soon as possible after birth, preferably within 24 hours, even in countries where Hepatitis B virus is of low endemicity.”
Acknowledging children were not in the at-risk group for HepB the ACIP committee lamented that “HBV transmission cannot be prevented through vaccinating only the groups at high risk of infection.”
Using this rationale they declared a blanket vaccination policy for all newborns- “a comprehensive strategy to prevent HBV infection, acute hepatitis B, and the sequelae of HBV infection in the United States.”
Earlier that year, June 11,1991 in a Boston Globe article titled, “U.S. To Urge All Children Be Vaccinated for Hepatitis B,” an official from the CDC admitted, “We do not feel that targeting adults for vaccination has worked. This will be the first time that a vaccine is recommended for children to prevent a disease that primarily occurs in adults.”
In testimony before Congress Michael Belkin summed it up neatly, “So in the CDC and ACIP’s own words, almost every newborn US baby is now greeted on its entry into the world by a vaccine injection against a sexually transmitted disease for which the baby is not at risk -because they couldn’t get the junkies, prostitutes, homosexuals and promiscuous heterosexuals to take the vaccine.”
Not to be swayed by logic, the CDC would effectuate a comprehensive HepB vaccine program and a medical product with an initial target population of drug addicts and homosexuals would become compulsory for every child in the country.
The Hepatitis B Vaccine Clinical Trials- The Devil’s In the Details
It is a near certainty that few physicians will study the details of a vaccine clinical trial found in the package inserts of each vaccine. Rarely will a pediatrician or physician initiate a conversation with a patient or parent about what those trials entailed and what else the package insert reveals.
Yet that is exactly the first place one should go to get a clear picture of the safety profile for any vaccine.
In 2017 the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) received a tip from a supporter that the clinical trials used by the FDA to license the two children’s HepB vaccines, Engerix-B and Recombivax HB, only reviewed safety data for a few days after injection.
ICAN was so stunned by this revelation that they assumed the supporter was making false claims. Upon reviewing the package inserts for both vaccines ICAN found the claims to be true.
The package insert for GlaxoSmithKline’s Energix-B vaccine, approved in 1989, acknowledges that the subjects were monitored for only 4 days after administration of the vaccine. By any standards 4 days of post-injection data is inadequate to assure a product’s safety. As noted by ICAN, “the review period for a vaccine given to infants and young children should be longer as neurological and developmental disorders are often discovered until the child is a few years old.”
A 2019 study authored by researchers at the FDA and Duke University confirmed ICAN’s position, stating that compared to licensing time period for adults, “data on drug efficacy and safety in children may require an additional 6 years.”
Another troubling facet of GSK’s pre-licensure clinical trials is that ENGERIX-B was administered to 5,071 healthy adults and children. Of the 13,495 doses administered in 36 clinical trials nowhere is it listed how many of those subjects were adults, how many were children and how many were infants.
As there were no specifics on how many individuals from each age group were involved the results of these trials are uninterpretable with respect to the risks of vaccinating infants.
While the trials for Energix-B were certainly less than rigorous the pre-licensure trials for Merck’s Recombivax HB vaccine might hold the dubious distinction for being the most unscrupulous and underpowered trials in the annals of the Pharmaceutical Industry.
In only three clinical studies, 434 doses of RECOMBIVAX HB, 5 mcg, were administered to a whopping 147 healthy infants and children (up to 10 years of age) who were monitored for a mere 5 days after each dose.
Along with the fact that 147 subjects is a grossly insufficient number upon which to base any determination on vaccine safety, the ages of the trial participants are not even listed. How many infants were in the study? Was there even a single newborn in the study?
Additionally, as is the case with virtually all vaccine clinical trials, neither of these two HepB trials used a proper randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Beyond the untrustworthy nature of the composition and execution of these trials there is also the nagging problem with the difference between the noted outcomes of the clinical trials versus the post marketing experience.
In the clinical trials, effects are only studied for a few days immediately following vaccination, (with no true placebo), and only minor adverse reactions such as irritability, fever, diarrhea, fatigue/weakness and injection site pain are mentioned.
But in the “post marketing data”, which means post-approval injections in the general population, a laundry list of more serious adverse reactions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia, meningitis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, tachycardia and many more are reported.
This is one of the elemental tricks the Pharmaceutical Industry uses to conceal the nature and extent of injuries which may be attributable to the shots.
More serious adverse reactions are swept under the rug by asserting that “no causal link has been established” between the injection and these reactions.
In the trials subjects are observed for only a few days and nothing is found to cause concern.
But when the general public starts reporting real world serious adverse events, these are dismissed as no long term studies are done which could establish causal relations.
ICAN’s lawyer Aaron Siri in a 9 hour deposition brought these many problems to the attention of Stanley Plotkin, the ‘Godfather of Vaccines’, who authored what is considered the bible on vaccines,
In the deposition Siri gets Plotkin to admit that the Hepatitis B vaccine (given to babies on their first day of life), has not had an adequate safety study:
Siri asked, “How long does it say that safety was monitored after each dose?”
Dr. Plotkin responded, “Five days.”
Siri responded, “Is that long enough to detect an autoimmune issue that arises after five days?”
Dr. Plotkin stated, “No.”
Siri then asked, “Was there any control group in this trial?”
Dr. Plotkin, who had just argued how important control groups are to cause and effect, answered, “It does not mention any control group, no.”
Based on the weight of the evidence ICAN is currently petitioning the FDA to withdraw the licensure of these Hepatitis B vaccines and asserts that these vaccines should never have been approved.
Given that the utility of the Hep B vaccine for toddlers is unsubstantiated and the clinical trials are at best problematic it would seem incumbent upon the manufacturers to at least provide ironclad evidence for the safety of these products.
Is this the case?
The data tell a different story.
Dangers of the HepB Vaccine- An Open Secret
In the first months of life a child’s brain and biological systems are at critical stages of development. Throughout pregnancy parents are bombarded with directives from their physician telling them a multitude of vaccinations will be essential to protect their child from the pending torrent of infectious diseases.
In addition to the medical stipulations given by their pediatrician, parents understand that they will be faced with mandates for day care and schooling as well as ever-present societal pressures. The combination of these forces create a climate of fear and coercion intended to bring about automatic compliance.
Little to no information about vaccines are volunteered at most pediatric visits. Parents are expected to obediently trust their physician and place their faith in a medical system that assiduously claims vaccinations are necessary, safe and effective. Questions challenging the utility and safety of a vaccine are typically discouraged and dismissed.
In the United States the journey into this world of mass vaccination begins on the day of birth with the Hepatitis B vaccine.
To the extent that Hepatitis B is a danger to anyone, that risk is understood to be through sexual contact or sharing needles. A sexually transmitted risk or a needle exchange risk means there is little to no chance of Hepatitis B infection for infants calling into question the fundamental rationale for this vaccine.
Less than one percent of all HepB cases occur in children under 15 years old. In North America, Europe and Australia a mere one-tenth of one percent are said to be carriers of HepB. Of adults infected, 90-95% clear the virus on their own, without intervention.
While it is thought that infants born to mothers who are infected with HepB carry a greater risk of contracting the disease, pregnant women can easily be screened for this disease if there is a concern.
Given this risk profile, as infants and young children receiving this vaccine face little to no chance of hepatitis B infection, we have to ask, Is this vaccine worth the potential risk of neurodevelopmental disorders or other adverse impacts associated with this vaccine?
The answer to those questions can be found in answering the most important question for any medical product, “Is it safe?”
From the earliest days of development and production safety concerns have dogged the various iterations of the Hepatitis B vaccine.
The original HepB vaccine, Heptavax B, manufactured by Merck Sharp & Dolme and approved by the FDA in 1981, was unlike previous vaccines in that it contained inactivated virus collected from plasma of HepB-infected donors rather than live, weakened virus or killed, denatured virus.
Maurice Hilleman hypothesized that he could make a HepB vaccine by injecting patients with Hepatitis B surface protein using three treatments of blood serum together with rigorous filtration. To obtain the necessary plasma Hilleman collected blood from gay men and intravenous drug users—groups said to be at risk for viral hepatitis.
Hilleman believed the immune system would recognize the surface proteins as foreign, and manufacture specific antibodies which would destroy these proteins. His theory went that if the patient were infected with HepB in the future the immune system would produce protective antibodies which would destroy the viruses.
On November 16, 1981, CBS Evening News reporter Dan Rather touted Hilleman’s vaccine as the “first completely new viral vaccine in 10 years,” and hailed it as, “the first vaccine ever licensed in the United States that is made directly from human blood.”
Though lauded as a revolutionary medical achievement at the time, the original plasma derived HepB vaccine was not intended for widespread use in the US due to the fact that liver cancer was relatively uncommon in the US at the time and the cost of the vaccine was seen as prohibitive.
Excitement surrounding this novel plasma vaccine soon dissipated due to a public relations problem. It came to light that the clinical trials which tested the vaccine in the 1970s had included only gay men who had been identified as being at high risk of the infection.
The approval of the serum derived vaccine had the added misfortune of coinciding with the AIDS crisis which heightened concerns over the safety of using potentially contaminated human serum in vaccines due to fears of transmission of live HepB or other blood-borne pathogens.
As gay men and injection drug users were frequent blood donors for the vaccine this brought about fears that blood plasma could be infected and the vaccine itself could become a carrier for HIV/AIDS.
These concerns of potential contamination with human viruses led to the 1986 introduction of a second hepatitis B vaccine, Recombivax-HB. This new type of vaccine, known as a recombinant vaccine, manufactured by Merck Sharp & Dolme, was the first vaccine produced using recombinant DNA technology.
The creation of this new type of vaccine entailed inserting the gene of the HepB virus protein envelope into yeast cells, eliminating the risk of viral contamination from using human serum to produce the vaccine.
Frank E. Young, FDA Commissioner at the time, heralded this development as yet another medical marvel declaring, “This vaccine opens up a whole new era of vaccine production. These techniques should be able to be extended to any virus or parasite to produce other vaccines that normally cannot be propagated in the laboratory.”
Noting that the plasma-derived vaccine had annual sales of only $45 million, Edward E. Penhoet, president of Merck’s collaborator Chiron Corp., suggested that the new recombinant HepB vaccine would be more profitable for Merck as genetically engineered vaccines are “cheaper to produce” than those derived from human blood.
By 1989, a second recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, Engerix-B manufactured by The SmithKline Beecham Company, was approved for use in the U.S.
While the new HepB vaccines tempered anxieties surrounding the previous plasma-based vaccines a different set of problems materialized in the manufacturing processes and with certain ingredients in the HepB recombinant vaccines.
A 2005 French study, Multiple sclerosis and hepatitis B vaccination: Adding the credibility of molecular biology to an unusual level of clinical and epidemiological evidence, highlighted issues with HepB virus polymerase contamination asserting, “We reviewed evidence showing that hepatitis B vaccine HBV has a marked potential to induce auto-immune hazards, neurological as well as non-neurological. We emphasized that for a drug used as a prevention, HBV was remarkable by the unusual frequency, severity and variety of its hazards.”
The authors came to the stark conclusion that, ‘‘the principle of precaution’’ should urgently be applied [with] regard to the tiny benefit (if any) of large HepB vaccination in low-endemic countries. In addition, the benefit/ratio of this costly prophylaxis should be seriously re-assessed even in countries where the frequency of HepB is higher.”
Soon issues surrounding genetically modified yeast proteins used in the HepB vaccines cropped up.
Links to yeast-containing vaccinese and autoimmune disease were observed, creating concerns that the genetically engineered yeast in the HepB vaccines may cause children with an allergy to yeast to react severely to the vaccine.
Bioinformatics and epidemiological evidence link the yeast protein found in the Hepatitis B vaccines to numerous autoimmune disorders. Part of the study’s stark conclusion was, “Vaccine makers have refused to perform such checks, resulting in devastating consequences.”
The Hepatitis B Foundation warned, “The vaccine may not be recommended for those with documented yeast allergies or a history of an adverse reaction to the vaccine.”
The CDC’s Pinkbook on Hepatitis B identified another potential problem with latex packaging in the vaccines observing, “Some presentations of HepB vaccines contain latex, which may cause allergic reactions.”
As the first dose of the HepB vaccine is recommended and usually given on the day of birth this presents a conspicuous problem. How is it possible to know if a newborn has an allergy to yeast or latex or any of the other vaccine ingredients?
While certainly not insignificant, even more alarming safety concerns than yeast and latex allergies have been identified with certain ingredients found in the HepB vaccine.
Until the early 2000s the original gene based HepB vaccines, Recombivax and Engerix, contained the mercury preservative thimerosal, a mercury- and thiosalicylate-containing organic compound with antiseptic, bactericidal, and fungicidal properties. Certain exposures to thimerosal are known to be toxic to the central nervous system, kidneys, liver, spleen, and bone marrow. Some believe that even the tiniest amounts of methylmercury, found in thimerosal, carry a risk of adverse neuropsychological outcomes.
A 2016 longitudinal study of the relationship between Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccination and developmental delays made an assessment that, “During the decade in which Thimerosal-HepB Vaccines (T-HBVs) were routinely recommended and administered to US infants (1991–2001), an estimated 0.5–1 million additional US children were diagnosed with specific delays in development as a consequence of 25 μg or 37.5 μg organic Hg from T-HBVs administered within the first 6 months of life.”
The study added, “[This] study provides compelling new evidence to confirm and extend previous epidemiological studies finding a significant relationship between organic Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and the subsequent increased risk of a diagnosis for specific delays in development.”
A 2018 cross-sectional study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health strongly suggested that the 1990s-era thimerosal-containing HepB vaccine caused considerable harm to children concluding, “This cross-sectional study provides new evidence consistent with and extends the results from previous epidemiological and biological studies on the adverse effects of Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines. This study supports a significant about nine-fold increase in the risk of adverse effects as measured by receipt of special education services among boys receiving infant Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccination.”
The study added to the chorus of voices demanding thimerosal be removed from all vaccines given to pregnant women and children.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act of 1997 called for the FDA to review and assess the risk of all mercury-containing food and drugs.
In 1999 the FDA determined that, “under the recommended childhood immunization schedule, infants might be exposed to cumulative doses of ethylmercury that exceed some federal safety guidelines established for ingestion of methylmercury, another form of organic mercury (Ball et al., 2001). In July 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) issued a joint statement recommending the removal of thimerosal from vaccines as soon as possible.”
The statement also recommended, “a temporary suspension of the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine for children born to low-risk mothers until a thimerosal-free alternative became available.”
Merck responded by making a new vaccine available immediately, gaining FDA approval for its thimerosal-free Recombivax HB vaccine on August 27, 1999 with distribution beginning in September.
SmithKline Beecham reformulated its thimerosal-free Engerix-B which the FDA approved in 2000.
Neal Halsey, M.D., director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety, assured the public the new Engerix-B contained only trace amounts of thimerosal (<1 mcg), which will “have no clinically relevant effects making it equivalent to a thimerosal-free product.”
While recommending newborns and infants up to the age of six months avoid vaccinations with thimerosal the CDC still allowed those over the age of six months to receive the thimerosal-containing HepB vaccines.
Even as thimerosal was being phased out of children’s vaccines, safety concerns surrounding ingredients in the Hepatitis B vaccine persisted. Disturbing reports relating to aluminum adjuvants found in the vaccines emerged and continue to this day.
In a 2008 article in Mothering magazine pediatrician Robert Sears sounded alarm bells about the dangers of vaccinations which contained aluminum adjuvants.
While embarking upon an inquiry to see if anyone had actually tested and scientifically assessed “safe” levels of injected aluminum he discovered an FDA document on aluminum toxicity which warned:
“Aluminum may reach toxic levels with prolonged parenteral administration [i.e., injected into the body] if kidney function is impaired. Research indicates that patients with impaired kidney function, including premature neonates [i.e., babies], who received parenteral levels of aluminum at greater than 4 to 5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day, accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity. Tissue loading [i.e., toxic buildup in certain body tissues] may occur at even lower rates of administration.”
A second document produced by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) also emphasized a daily limit of 4 to 5 mcg of aluminum per kilogram (2.2 lbs) of body weight for babies being fed an IV solution containing aluminum.
While neither of these documents mentioned vaccines specifically, both the ASPEN group and the FDA agreed that all injectable solutions for children should be limited to a maximum amount of 25 mcg of aluminum within a 24-hour period.
The FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations explicitly states, “The aluminum content of large volume parenteral (LVP) drug products used in total parenteral nutrition (TPN) therapy must not exceed 25 micrograms per liter ([micro]g/L).”
The unsettling fact regarding the HepB vaccine in regards to aluminum is that each dose, given at birth, 2 months and 6 months, is laced with 250 mcg of aluminum– far exceeding the recommended safe levels for large volume parenteral (LVP) drug products.
In a 2011 study Canadian scientists Professor Christopher Shaw and Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic asked the question, Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are they Safe?
The answers they discovered are worth quoting at length:
“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. Despite almost 90 years of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science’s understanding about their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor.
Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”
…
“Given that multiple aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines are often given to very young children (i.e., 2 to 6 months of age), in a single day at individual vaccination sessions, concerns for potential impacts of total adjuvant-derived aluminum body burden may be significant. These issues warrant serious consideration since, to the best of our knowledge, no adequate studies have been conducted to assess the safety of simultaneous administration of different vaccines to young children.” [Bold Added]
In a 2013 study, Aluminum in the Central Nervous System: Toxicity in Humans and Animals, Vaccine Adjuvants, and Autoimmunity, Shaw and Tomljenovic concluded, “In young children, a highly significant correlation exists between the number of pediatric aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered and the rate of autism spectrum disorders. Many of the features of aluminum-induced neurotoxicity may arise, in part, from autoimmune reactions, as part of the autoimmune/inflammatory induced by adjuvants (ASIA) syndrome.”
UK Professor Christopher Exley, known as Mr. Aluminum, has devoted much of his life to studying the dangers of aluminum, with a particular focus on the use of aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines.
With numerous studies and papers to his credit Exley is particularly recognized for his discovery which proved that cells known to populate a vaccine injection site actually take up aluminum adjuvant into their cell bodies.
Accompanying this finding was his pioneering revelation that antigens and adjuvants are taken up as separate particles. Both discoveries have implications for the possible role of aluminum adjuvants in instigating serious adverse events distant from the vaccine injection site.
Multiple studies have aligned with Exley’s findings that the intramuscularly injected aluminum vaccine adjuvant is absorbed into the systemic circulation and travels to different sites in the body such as the brain, joints and the spleen where it accumulates and is retained for years post-vaccination.
Cui Bono?
According to statistics, Hepatitis B causes death in fewer than one quarter of one percent of those infected. It is a near certainty that even that rate is an overestimate since deaths of hepatitis B infected drug addicts and alcoholics is more likely due to their habits which destroy their liver and other vital organs and not the disease.
In 1986, five years before the CDC began pushing for vaccination of all newborns, the US had documented fewer than 280 cases of hepatitis B infection in children under age 14. Newborns are probably the least likely human beings on the planet at risk of actually getting hepatitis B.
Given that most infants are not at risk for Hepatitis B in the United States and given the copious documentation linking the Hepatitis B vaccine to various pathologies (here, here and here) we return to the question: Why the fanatical push for universal HepB vaccination for children?
If we look at the HepB childhood vaccination program from a perspective of health and “saving lives” we are confronted with a world of contradictions and manipulations- none of it makes sense.
If looked at it through the lens of power, money and control everything makes perfect sense.
A 2005 letter written by Dr. Marc Girard to the Director General of the World Health Organization referenced a correspondence he had with an Indian colleague, Dr J. Puliyel, on the false data being disseminated by the WHO about the epidemiology of hepatitis B in India.
This exchange gives us insight into the processes by which a once non-existent threat is turned into a public health crisis and the motives behind this.
Girard noted that, “the mechanisms of the deception described by Dr Puliyel were exactly comparable to those I observed in my own country — and of course with the same results: a plea of “experts” to include hepatitis B vaccination in the national vaccination program, in spite of its costs and, its unprecedented toxicity.” [Emphasis added]
Dr. Girard went on to state: “It is blatant that in the promotion of the hepatitis B vaccination, the WHO has never been more than a screen for an undue commercial promotion, in particular via the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), created, sponsored and infiltrated by the manufacturers.
In Sept 1998, while the dreadful hazards of the campaign had been given media coverage in France, the VHPB met a panel of “experts”, the reassuring conclusions of which were extensively announced as reflecting the WHO’s position: yet some of the participants in this panel had no more “expertise” than that of being employees of the manufacturers.” [Emphasis added]
Girard also drew attention to a 1997 interview published in the French journal Sciences et Avenir in which GlaxoSmith Beecham’s business manager admitted, “We started increasing the awareness of the European Experts of the World Health Organization (WHO) about Hepatitis B in 1988. From then to 1991, we financed epidemiological studies on the subject to create a scientific consensus about hepatitis being a major public health problem. We were successful because in 1991, WHO published new recommendations about hepatitis B vaccination.”
This cynical admission by one of the primary manufacturers of the Hepatitis B vaccine offers a glimpse into how the time honored strategy of problem-reaction-solution is applied in the Pharmaceutical Industry
The disease itself is seen as superfluous, all that is necessary is to create the perception that there is a widespread public health crisis which requires a heroic and international medical intervention in the form of a vaccine which, curiously, was already in production leading into the “crisis.”
Such a frank admission reinforces the facts surrounding the history of Hepatitis B, there was little to no problem with this disease until after the vaccine became available and for marketing reasons they had to change the image of the disease.
Tracing the breadcrumbs of the entire production of the Hepatitis B vaccine campaign a pattern emerges which appears to be a non-medical agenda that leads to the reliable predictor-follow the money.
For years vast amounts of financial and political capital were invested in the Hepatitis B vaccine as well as enormous amounts of resources allocated towards research and development. Each new HepB vaccine was hailed as a medical wonder.
Despite these efforts the medical industry couldn’t get people to take the vaccine which meant meager returns on these enormous investments.
To solve this dilemma, and address the sunk costs, the pharmaceutical industry, through its cadre of captured policy makers, invented regulations fashioned to make the vaccines compulsory thusly creating a captured customer base and guaranteeing revenue.
The “at-birth” vaccines have the added benefit, from the manufacturers perspective, of providing “vaccine training wheels” for new parents, conditioning them for a steady routine of immunization appointments.
The 12 million doses of Hepatitis B vaccine administered to children each year in the US alone represents a substantial annual income stream for vaccine manufacturers.
The NY Times reported that the average cost to fully vaccinate a child to the age of 18 in a private doctor’s office soared from $100 in 1986 to $2,192 by 2014.
To get every dose of every recommended vaccine in a private pediatricians office circa 2023 that cost now exceeds a staggering $3,000.
Heading into the 21st century the commercialization of vaccines has expanded into a colossal and profitable global enterprise, and according to International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva, vaccine policy is now one of the most important drivers of global economic policy.
A Final Word
In two separate hearings in 1999 Michael Belkin, whose daughter died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) immediately after receiving a Hepatits B vaccine dosage, called the HepB vaccine policy a ”bureaucratic vaccination program that is on auto-pilot flying into a mountain” and accused CDC bureaucrats of “hav[ing] a vested interest in the status quo.”
Mr. Belkin’s conclusions merit reciting in full:
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Newborn babies are not at risk of contracting the hepatitis B disease unless their mother is infected.
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Hepatitis B is primarily a disease of junkies, gays, and promiscuous heterosexuals.
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The vaccine is given to babies because health authorities couldn’t get those risk groups to take the vaccine.
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Adverse reactions out-number cases of the disease in government statistics.
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Nothing is being done to investigate those adverse reactions.
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Those adverse reactions include numerous deaths, convulsions and arthritic conditions that occur within days after
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Hepatitis B vaccination. The CDC is misrepresenting hypothetical, estimated disease statistics as real cases of the disease.
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The ACIP is recommending new vaccines for premature infants without having scientific studies proving they are safe.
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The U.S. vaccine recommendation process is hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest with vaccine manufacturers, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC.
While Mr. Belkin was addressing the Hepatitis B vaccination specifically as an injection which may present risks for health complications, the risks of toxicity and adverse reactions for all vaccines is a question that demands far more rigorous scrutiny than has been provided to date.
We hope that this series will provide a framework for a long overdue assessment of this highly contentious medical issue.
Our next installment takes a look at the Rotavirus vaccine.
EU Chief Boasts About Vaccine Passports, Calls For More Global Digital Collaboration – Paving The Way For Digital IDs
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | September 10, 2023
With an ominous call for increased global collaboration and centralization, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen at a G20 Summit session, dubbed “One Future,” today appealed for an international regulatory body for Artificial Intelligence and digital ID systems similar to coronavirus vaccine passports.
Von der Leyen audaciously proclaimed our collective future to be digital, hence the implied necessity for global entities to draw boundaries and enforce regulations.
Von der Leyen, in her position as the EU Commission President, touched on AI and the digital landscape in her address. She acknowledged the potential dangers and gargantuan opportunities linked with advancing AI technology and emphasized the importance of channeling such explosive technology.
“Today I want to focus on AI and digital infrastructure. As it has been described, AI has risks but also offers tremendous opportunities. The crucial question is how to harness a rapidly changing technology.
“In the EU, in 2020, we presented the first-ever law on artificial intelligence. We want to facilitate innovation while building trust. But we need more. What the world does now will shape our future. I believe that Europe — and its partners — should develop a new global framework for AI risks,” von der Leyen said.
Von der Leyen praised the European Union’s move in 2020 to introduce the first legal framework on AI, a step taken with the intent of fostering innovation alongside trust. However, she insisted that this wasn’t sufficient. She suggested a multinational adoption of a coping mechanism for managing AI risks.
The EU Chief also stressed that globally accepted standards must be created under the purview of the United Nations, akin to their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Humanity stood to benefit, she argued, if an international authority could clarify the risks and rewards related to AI, akin to the IPCC for climate concerns.
Concurrently, von der Leyen championed the concept of digital public infrastructure similar to the coronavirus passport system – a system developed by the EU as a response to the Covid saga. The World Health Organization embraced it with open arms as a global standard for combating health threats.
“Many of you are familiar with the COVID-19 digital certificate. The EU developed it for itself. The model was so functional and so trusted that 51 countries on 4 continents adopted it for free. Today, the WHO uses it as a global standard to facilitate mobility in times of health threats,” von der Leyen continued.
Alarmingly, von der Leyen praised the EU’s strides towards a bloc-wide digital identity app capable of storing a citizen’s personal information, including credit cards, driver’s license, and passport data.
These developments ring alarm bells for individuals and nations valuing free speech and privacy.
5th Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Government Censorship
We got a big win Friday in Missouri v. Biden: Appellate Court Forbids White House, CDC, Surgeon General, and FBI from Censoring Americans Online
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | September 10, 2023
Here’s my five-minute summary and reaction to the appellate court’s decision on Friday upholding the central provisions in our injunction against the government. (I’ll post the full interview soon when it’s available.)
The unanimous three-judge panel ruled: “The White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content, rendering those decisions state actions. In doing so, the officials likely violated the First Amendment.” The appeals court thereby confirmed that for last several years, our Federal government has been systematically violating the highest law of the land—the United States Constitution—by censoring the protected speech of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans tens of millions of times. News of the ruling was front page above-the-fold yesterday in The New York Times and The Washington Post, suggesting that the legacy media cannot ignore this issue any longer.
Not all the defendants in the suit were enjoined by the appellate court’s decision, which focused on the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI. This is not, however, an indication that the other agencies named as defendants, such as CISA, are free to engage in censorship of protected speech. It simply means that at this early stage of limited discovery the appellate court did not think we have presented sufficient evidence to meet the very high legal bar required for a preliminary injunction. Although the injunction focuses on four agencies, the entire federal government is now on notice: any future communications between government officials and big tech are subject to subpoena and scrutiny in our case. If those come from any of the four enjoined agencies, those officials may now be subject not only to civil liabilities but to criminal penalties as well.
The ruling also confirmed that not only coercion but even “significant encouragement” by government officials to modify content is a form of unconstitutional censorship. The judges ruled that evidence we presented demonstrated both coercion and significant encouragement.
Contextualizing the scope of the violations of constitutional rights in our case, the judges noted that there are virtually no prior free speech cases of this scope and magnitude: “The Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life. Therefore, the district court was correct in its assessment—’unrelenting pressure’ from certain government officials likely ‘had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.’ We see no error or abuse of discretion in that finding.”
You Should Be Very Worried About the Digital Services Act
By David Thunder | The Freedom Blog | September 9, 2023
Article 11 of The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which replicates a part of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, protects the right of European citizens to “hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers,” and affirms that “the freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.” Sadly, the fate of freedom of expression in Europe now very much hangs in the balance, as the European Union has just enacted a law that empowers the Commission to significantly restrict the ability of citizens to use digital platforms to engage in robust and sincere democratic discourse.
Under the recently enacted Digital Services Act, the European Commission may apply significant pressures upon digital platforms to curb “hate speech,” “disinformation” and threats to “civic discourse,” all of which constitute notoriously vague and slippery categories, categories that have historically been co-opted to reinforce the narrative of the ruling class. By giving the European Commission broad discretionary powers to oversee Big Tech content moderation policies, this piece of legislation holds freedom of speech hostage to the ideological proclivities of unelected European officials and their armies of “trusted flaggers.”
The stated purpose of the Digital Services Act (DSA) that has just come into force in Europe is to ensure greater “harmonisation” of the conditions affecting the provision of “intermediary” digital services, in particular online platforms that host content shared by their customers. The Act covers a bewildering array of issues, from consumer protection and the regulation of advertising algorithms to child pornography and content moderation. Among other purposes that appear in the wording of the Act, we find the fostering of “a safe, predictable and trusthworthy online environment,” the protection of citizens’ freedom of expression, and the harmonisation of EU regulations affecting online digital platforms, which currently depend on the laws of individual member States.
At a superficial glance, the Digital Services Act (DSA) might look rather innocuous. It places fairly formal requirements on “very large online platforms” such as Google, Twitter/X, Facebook and Tiktok to have clear appeals procedures and to be transparent about their regulation of harmful and illegal content. For example, section 45 of the Act reads as a fairly light touch requirement that providers of online digital services (“intermediary services”) keep customers informed of terms and conditions and company policies:
Providers of the intermediary services should clearly indicate and maintain up-to-date in their terms and conditions the information as to the grounds on the basis of which they may restrict the provision of their services. In particular, they should include information on any policies, procedures, measures and tools used for the purpose of content moderation, including algorithmic decision-making and human review, as well as the rules of procedure of their internal complaint-handling system. They should also provide easily accessible information on the right to terminate the use of the service.
But if you start to dig into the Act, you very soon discover that it is poisonous for free speech and is not in the spirit of Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which guarantees citizens the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” Below, I detail certain aspects of the Act that, taken together, pose an unprecedented threat to freedom of speech in Europe:
1. DSA (Digital Services Act) creates entities called “trusted flaggers” to report “illegal content” they identify on large online platforms. Online platforms are required by the act to respond promptly to reports of illegal content provided by these “trusted flaggers” nominated by member State-appointed “Digital Service Coordinators.” The Act requires large online platforms to “take the necessary measures to ensure that notices submitted by trusted flaggers, acting within their designated area of expertise, through the notice and action mechanisms required by this Regulation are treated with priority.”
2. Strictly speaking, while digital platforms are required to respond to reports of illegal content submitted by “trusted flaggers,” it appears from the wording of the Act that the platforms have discretion to decide how exactly to act upon such reports. They might, for example, disagree with the legal opinion of a “trusted flagger” and decide not to take down flagged content. However, they will face periodic audits of their actions’ compliance with the Act by auditors working on behalf of the European Commission, and these reviews will hardly look favourably upon a pattern of inaction in the face of flagged content.
3. The Digital Services Act also requires “very large online platforms” (platforms such as Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter) to undertake periodic “risk mitigation” assessments, in which they address “systemic risks” associated with their platforms, including but not limited to child pornography, “gender violence” (whatever that means), public health “disinformation,” and the “actual or foreseeable negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, as well as public security.” Platforms have “due diligence” obligations under the Act to take appropriate measures to manage these risks. Unlike a voluntary code of practice, opting out is not an option, and failure to comply with these “due diligence” obligations will be subject to hefty sanctions.
4. The sanctions attached to non-compliance with the Act are remarkable. The Commission, if it deems that a large online platform such as X/Twitter has not been in compliance with the DSA, may fine said platform up to 6% of its annual global turnover. Because the idea of non-compliance is hard to quantify and pretty vague (what exactly is required in order to meet “due diligence obligations” of systemic risk management?), it seems likely that companies that wish to avoid legal and financial headaches would prefer to err on the side of caution, and put on a show of “compliance” to avoid getting fined.
5. The periodic audits envisaged by this Act will serve as a tool for the Commission to pressure large online platforms into taking action to “manage” the “risks” of disinformation and threats to “civic discourse and electoral processes,” risks which are notoriously vague and are probably impossible to define in a politically impartial fashion. The threat lurking in the background of these audits and their associated “recommendations” is that the Commission may impose multi-billion dollar fines upon online platforms for non-compliance. Because of the rather vague idea of non-compliance with “due diligence obligations,” and the discretionary nature of the financial sanctions threatened in the DSA, this Act will create an atmosphere of legal uncertainty both for online platforms and for their users. It heavily incentivises online platforms to police speech in a way that passes muster with the EU Commission, around vague categories like “disinformation” and “hate speech”, and this will obviously have repercussions for end-users.
6. According to the European Commission, “hate motivated crime and speech are illegal under EU law. The 2008 Framework Decision on combating certain forms of expressions of racism and xenophobia requires the criminalisation of public incitement to violence or hatred based on race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.” It is important to point out that the EU Commission favours expanding the categories of illegal hate speech at a Europe-wide level to include not only “race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin,” but also new categories (presumably, including things like gender identity). So illegal hate speech is a “moving target” and is likely to become ever broader and more politically charged as time goes on. According to the the European Commission’s own website,
On 9 December 2021, the European Commission adopted a Communication which prompts a Council decision to extend the current list of ‘EU crimes’ in Article 83(1) TFEU to hate crimes and hate speech. If this Council decision is adopted, the European Commission would be able, in a second step, to propose secondary legislation allowing the EU to criminalise other forms of hate speech and hate crime, in addition to racist or xenophobic motives.
7. The most disturbing aspect of DSA is the enormous power and discretion it places in the hands of the European Commission – notably, an unelected commission – to oversee compliance with DSA and decide when online platforms are non-compliant with respect to their “due diligence obligations” to manage risks whose meaning is notoriously vague and manipulable, such as hate speech, disinformation, and anti-civic discourse. The European Commission is also giving itself the power to declare a Europe-wide emergency that would allow it to demand extra interventions by digital platforms to counter a public threat. There will be no legal certainty about when the EU Commission might declare an “emergency.” Nor is there any legal certainty about how the European Commission and its auditors will interpret “systemic risks” like disinformation and hate speech, or assess the efforts of service providers to mitigate such risks, since these are discretionary powers.
8 Nor is clear how the Commission could possibly undertake an audit of “systemic risks” of disinformation and risks to civic discourse and electoral processes without taking a particular view of what is true and untrue, salutary and harmful information, thus pre-empting the democratic process through which citizens assess these issues for themselves.
9. Nor is it clear which checks and balances will be in place to prevent the DSA from becoming a weapon for the EU Commission’s favourite causes, whether the war in the Ukraine, vaccine uptake, climate policy, or a “war on terror.” The broad power to declare a public emergency and require platforms to undertake “assessments” of their policies in response to that, combined with the broad discretionary power to fine online platforms for “non-compliance” with inherently vague “due diligence obligations,” give the Commission a lot of leeway to lord it over online platforms and pressure them to advance its favoured political narrative.
10. One particularly sneaky aspect of this Act is that the Commission is effectively making disinformation illegal *through a backdoor*, so to speak. Instead of clearly defining what they mean by “disinformation” and making it illegal – which would probably cause an uproar – they are placing a “due dilegence” requirement upon large online platforms like Twitter and Facebook to take discretionary measures against disinformation and to mitigate “systemic risks” on their platforms (which include the risk of “public health disinformation”). Presumably, the periodic audits of these companies’ compliance with the Act would look unkindly on policies that barely enforced disinformation rules.
So the net effect of the act would be to apply an almost irresistible pressure on social media platforms to play the “counter-disinformation” game in a way that would pass muster with the Commission’s auditors, and thus avoid getting hit with hefty fines. There is a lot of uncertainty about how strict or lax such audits would be, and which sorts of non-compliance might trigger the application of financial sanctions. It is rather strange that a legal regulation purporting to defend free speech would place the fate of free speech at the mercy of the broadly discretionary and inherently unpredictable judgments of unelected officials.
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The only hope is that this ugly, complicated and regressive piece of legislation ends up before a judge who understands that freedom of expression means nothing if held hostage to the views of the European Commission on pandemic-preparedness, the Russia-Ukraine war, or what counts as “offensive” or “hateful” speech.
P.S. Consider this analysis as a preliminary attempt by someone not specialised in European law, to grapple with the troubling implications of the Digital Services Act for free speech, based on a first reading. I welcome the corrections and comments of legal experts and those who have had the patience to wade through the Act for themselves. This is the most detailed and rigorous interpretation I have developed of the DSA to date. It includes important nuances that were not included in my previous interpretations and corrects certain misinterpretations – in particular, platforms are not legally required to take down all flagged content, and the people who flag up illegal content are referred to as “trusted flaggers,” not “fact-checkers.”).
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From the Archives
Wartime internment camps in Australia
National Archives of Australia
World War I
During World War I, for security reasons the Australian Government pursued a comprehensive internment policy against enemy aliens living in Australia.
Initially only those born in countries at war with Australia were classed as enemy aliens, but later this was expanded to include people of enemy nations who were naturalised British subjects, Australian-born descendants of migrants born in enemy nations and others who were thought to pose a threat to Australia’s security.
Australia interned almost 7,000 people during World War I, of whom about 4,500 were enemy aliens and British nationals of German ancestry already resident in Australia.
Records of World War I internment camps
World War II
During World War II, Australian authorities established internment camps for three reasons – to prevent residents from assisting Australia’s enemies, to appease public opinion and to house overseas internees sent to Australia for the duration of the war.
Unlike World War I, the initial aim of internment during the later conflict was to identify and intern those who posed a particular threat to the safety or defence of the country. As the war progressed, however, this policy changed and Japanese residents were interned en masse. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also interned on the basis of nationality, particularly those living in the north of Australia. In all, just over 20 per cent of all Italians resident in Australia were interned. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Diplomats slam US negotiators’ performance in Iran talks
- Trump Refuses Exit Ramp, War with Iran will Continue
- Trump Says US Naval Blockade in Strait of Hormuz Will Begin Shortly
- US, Iran end 21-hour talks without agreement
- US IRAN TALKS: Who Are the Crazy Ones Here? /Lt Col Daniel Davis
- Talks with the US end without a deal over excessive US demands: Iran
- Feeling Better, Getting Worse: How Psychiatric Drugs Create the Illusion They Cure
- ‘Nobody Told Me’: Former Mental Health Patient Calls Out Dangerous Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs
- Dr. Abu-Sitta: Beirut ‘felt like a day in Shifa Hospital’
- Iran Has Won the War, It Will Be Up to the US to Secure the Peace: Mohammad Marandi
- If Americans Knew
- US-Iran ceasefire negotiations make zero progress – Daily Update
- Pro-Israel ‘Thinktanks’ and Individuals who Influence U.S. Foreign Policy
- Mearsheimer reveals how Israel dictates US policies on Iran, Gaza – video
- After killing 350+, Israel still has a “score to settle” with Lebanon before ceasefire – Daily Update
- Military aid to Israel emerges as the latest political litmus test for Democrats
- The only Palestinian children’s rights organization closes following years-long Israeli campaign against it
- ‘I Can’t Forget the Smell’: Lebanese Reel After Israel Kills Over 300 in Single Day
- DNC Shoots Down Resolutions Calling Out AIPAC and Limiting Arms to Israel
- TCN: Is Israel Blackmailing President Trump?
- Israel killed at least 303 Lebanese yesterday – who were they? Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
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