Iraqi Government Rejects “Normalization” Conference Held in Erbil
Al-Manar | September 25, 2021
The Iraqi government highlighted its rejection of the conference held by some tribal figures in Erbil city in Kurdistan for advocating the normalization of ties with the Israeli enemy.
The Iraqi government also stressed that the tribal figures who attended the conference did not represent the cities they came from, adding that the assembly was aimed at stirring sectarian sedition amid the national preparations for the upcoming public elections.
The government further indicated that normalization is constitutionally, legally and politically rejected in Iraq, reiterating support to the Palestinian cause and rights in face of the Israeli aggression.
Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough for the victims of drone attacks
By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | September 20, 2021
Palestine Action is, as its name implies, involved in direct action against some of the arms trade’s most deadly production lines, notably Israel’s Elbit Systems. Since it burst onto the scene, quite a few members have been arrested at some of Elbit’s ten known factories and offices in Britain.
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest arms company; it makes deadly “unmanned aerial vehicles”, known as drones. Palestine Action’s trademark calling card is deep red paint; it has used gallons since last year, symbolising the blood of innocents spilled in drone strikes.
Recently, the group has expanded its brief from targeting weapons factories to spraying the tented entrance of Britain’s biggest arms fair — DSEI at London’s ExCel Centre — to remind those seeking to buy weapons of the bloodshed caused by the products marketed within. Key exhibitors such as Elbit Systems, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin use arms fairs to market their deadly technology and products to governments from around the world. Perhaps they should be the focus of police interest rather than members of Palestine Action.
Palestine Action activists dyed security tent blood red and threw red and green flares on the Excel exhibition centre in London – Sunday, Sept 12, 2021 [VX Photo/ Vudi Xhymshiti]
Like many others, I am sick and tired of half-hearted apologies from the armed forces which use (or misuse) their weaponry. There’s nothing “smart” about a precision-guided missile which kills innocent civilians as — and I hate this term — collateral damage. There is no such thing as a clinical kill, a point agreed by several protest groups which have criticised the arms fair for its role in enabling the destructive US-UK war in Afghanistan over the past twenty years.
According to US policy, attacks by drones are not to go ahead if there is a probability that innocent civilians will be killed or injured. As we found out a few days ago, the US doesn’t really have a clue who it’s blowing up. Call me naïve, but it seems that the only certain thing when a drone takes to the air is, that innocent civilians will die, whether they’re Afghani, Iraqi, Pakistani, Yemeni, Syrian, or Palestinian.
Drone attacks were much favoured by Barack Obama who joked about their efficiency. One news story illustrated how much he ordered their use by pointing out that it would take the former US president more than three years to get through them all if he apologised to one innocent person a day. Human rights groups have demanded transparency from all US presidents since the Bush administration launched its drone wars, but there remains very little clarity on the number of civilians killed.
I’ve suspected this for many years. After the most recent US apology for killing civilians, I had a sense of déjà vu. In April 2003, I travelled solo to Paktika in Afghanistan after hearing rumours of an atrocity against innocent civilians in a district called Bermal. All eyes were focused on Iraq so even though I got the story, it was difficult to find someone to publish it. There’s only so much injustice against the people of Asia and the Middle East that the media is prepared to broadcast or publish.
While I was investigating the atrocity in southern Afghanistan, a senior US army officer was also in the district with hush money to keep Afghan villagers quiet. He did not want people talking to me in case I found out that America had killed eleven children in another deadly blunder.
The Pentagon had claimed that it destroyed a Taliban stronghold when, in fact, US forces had destroyed a house. The grieving mother — Sawara was her name —lost all of her nine children in the attack. She was like an empty shell when I finally spoke to her.
She and her husband Mawes Khan had put their children to bed in the family home they shared with his brother Sardar, and his wife and their seven children. By morning, the corpses of eleven brothers, sisters, and cousins lay in a neat row in the courtyard. The Americans realised the full extent of their mistake and gave the family the equivalent of £6,350 and an apology.
That happened two years into the war when the number of dead Afghan civilians was not deemed important enough to register. How much compensation will the Americans pay to Zemari Ahmadi after wiping out ten members of his family, including eight children? The admission of guilt and an apology were only forthcoming because the world’s media was in Kabul on the day of the attack and had access to the scene of devastation as well as eyewitnesses and survivors to interview.
The media in Washington was briefed about how an unnamed ISIS-Khorasan fighter had been in a vehicle with an associate at the time of the strike, which was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper drone. Captain Bill Urban, spokesman for US Central Command, assured journalists that the military had used specially chosen precision munitions in order to minimise civilian casualties. In essence, the compliant media was being fed propaganda packed with deceptive euphemisms.
The drone attack on the eve of the departure of the last US troops had come three days after Isis-Khorisan terrorists killed dozens of Afghan civilians, nearly 30 Taliban soldiers, and thirteen members of the US military in a suicide bombing at the gates of Kabul Airport. Civilians always suffer when the US rushes in to wreak revenge.
This week we heard US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin apologise for a “horrible mistake” after he admitted: “We now know that there was no connection between Mr Ahmadi and Isis-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.”
Compare this with the narrative pushed out on 29 August when the US military claimed triumphantly to have taken out ISIS terrorists and that there had been “significant secondary explosions from the vehicle”, suggesting that explosives were on board. Journalists were told that there were “no indications” of civilian casualties. As I said, America would have got away with the lies had there not been so many foreign journalists on the ground.
It emerged that Zemari Ahmadi is an engineer for aid group Nutrition and Education International. He was observed placing large water bottles or jugs into the back of his white car. US intelligence (surely a contradiction in terms) interpreted this as an ISIS-K member packing explosives into a vehicle for another suicide mission.
It is time for the world to accept that there’s no such thing as a surgical strike and that unmanned drones are among the worst weapons for producing civilian casualties. It would, therefore, make more sense to listen to groups like Palestine Action rather than deploy deadly weapons which have a track record of killing innocent people.
The theme of the DSEI fair at the ExCel Centre was “Integrated Response to Future Threats”, with a focus on drone warfare and surveillance technology. Palestine Action says that this will mean a greater role for drones in British policing as the government enters new procurement and training contracts with the likes of Elbit Systems. According to the activists’ press release, the London fair and a similar exhibition in Liverpool “serve a similar purpose of normalising these firms’ operations and providing an open market for the exchange of the weapons of war. Palestine Action is calling for the cancellation of both events and the ceasing of these firms’ operations on British soil, failing which direct action will continue and will escalate.”
Drone strikes outside the declared war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq are the province of the CIA and the secretive US Joint Special Operations Command. Various US administrations have treated them as official secrets. In the absence of justice for the families of those killed accidentally and/or targeted in drone strikes, civil disobedience and resistance is thus the duty of all reasonable people in war zones like Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.
It is easy for governments to demonise dead civilians as “terrorists” because most are killed in remote areas where the absence of justice or journalists makes it easier for the authorities to bury their mistakes. With governments prepared to lie or twist the facts, weapons manufacturers should be careful about those to whom they sell their arms, or be ready to be accused of complicity in war crimes.
We now suspect that the Palestinian children killed while playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014 were hit by an Israeli drone strike. The manufacturers are surely just as complicit as the Israeli soldiers who targeted young boys. Again, had journalists not been in an adjacent hotel when the strike took place, Israel might have got away with insulting everyone’s intelligence by claiming that Hamas “terrorists” were on active duty that day.
These are the sort of crimes that British police officers should be investigating, instead of arresting the people who draw attention to international war crimes and criminal negligence which led to the killing of Palestine’s 9-year-old Ismayil Bahar, 10-year-old Aed Bahar, 10-year-old Zacharia Bahar, and 11-year-old Muhammed Bahar on that Gaza beach; the Ahmadi family in Kabul earlier this month; and the Khan’s eleven children in Bermal in 2003, as well as the tens of thousands of others in-between. The law of universal jurisdiction exists to allow states to prosecute those responsible for international crimes committed elsewhere. The fact that few, if any such prosecutions go ahead, signals a degree of complicity at the highest levels of governments and judiciaries.
In such cases, it is not always the law that is an ass, but the people charged with implementing it and ensuring that justice is seen to be done for people like the Bahar, Ahmadi, and Khan families. Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough.
Hamas calls for revoking Abraham accords with occupation state
Palestine Information Center – September 19, 2021
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has called for renouncing the shameful Abraham accords and ending all forms of normalized relations with the Israeli occupation state, urging the Muslim and Arab nations to restore their role in defending Palestine.
In a press release on Saturday, Hamas stressed the need “to swiftly correct such wrong political trajectory and respond to the aspirations of the peoples in the region who reject any sort of normalization with the occupation state.”
“The so-called Abraham accords are a Zio-American project par excellence, aimed at establishing regional openness and normalization with the Zionist entity, integrating it into the region and forging alliances with it to shift the conflict priorities, instead of being with the Zionist entity that is occupying Palestine and considered the greatest danger to the region,” the Movement said.
“The US administration and the Zionist entity are working on deceiving our nations and anesthetizing their awareness through an intensive marketing and promotion campaign for the Abraham accords that have been brokered with rogue regimes working against the region’s history, present and future,” it added.
“Those accords are aimed at consolidating and achieving the Zionist hegemony over the region militarily, politically and economically, plundering its wealth, marginalizing the Palestinian cause and isolating our Palestinian people from its Arab and Islamic surrounding and depth,” the Movement underscored.
On September 15, 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain officially signed normalization deals (Abraham accords) with the occupation state under the auspices of the previous US administration. Sudan and Morocco followed suit soon later.
Australia: Petition EN3196 – Alternate treatment options for Covid 19
Petition Request
Millions of Australians are extremely concerned about the federal government’s push to force hastily approved and poorly tested novel vaccines on the population, when adequate long term safety data is unavailable.
It is also is of great concern that many notable doctors and medical researchers reporting successful treatment using cheap, safe generic anti viral drugs appear to be ignored by the government and TGA, due to these generic drugs being of little commercial value and not sponsored by pharmaceutical companies for approval by the TGA.
We therefore ask the House to formally request that the TGA assess the use of Ivermectine and Hydroxycloriquine, in the recommended dosages and combination with complimentary drugs, based on the peer reviewed studies and data, and the recommendation of notable Australian medical researchers such as Professor Thomas Borody and Professor Robert Clancy.
We ask that the house requests this of the TGA in the absence of sponsorship by a pharmaceutical corporation, seeing as both of these drugs are generic and of little commercial value to an individual company, and due to the conflict of interest many of these companies have with competing patented vaccines of far higher commercial interest.
We believe that if this is performed thoroughly and transparently it will restore public faith in the federal government, and also provide confidence to the public that all options for treatment are being honestly explored.
The petition is currently open for signatures. [until September 29th]
To see more and sigh the petition, see here: aph.gov.au
Deaths From Covid Vaxcine are government mandated genocide
NZ OUTDOORS PARTY | SEPTEMBER 12, 2021
A rush of student deaths and serious heart problems since the government’s decision to roll out the Pfizer vaccine to 12-17 year olds is government mandated genocide says the NZ Outdoors Party. The rollout to teenagers only started a few weeks ago, and already two deaths and two other post Vax admissions to Starship hospital have been reported. Another two serious post vaccine injuries in students are under investigation, including a boy who collapsed in Whangarei and another in the South Island. All are understood to have been healthy until sudden post vaccine heart issues, attributed to blood clots or myocarditis. These are well known adverse effects of this mRNA injection, which is known overseas as the #clotshot.
“The Prime Minister is floundering as the community networks are proving far more efficient at collecting and sharing information than the bureaucrats” says Sue Grey, co-leader of the NZ Outdoors Party. “This highlights one of the problems we have been raising for months. With a novel vaccine that is yet to complete clinical trials, there should be active follow-up of each recipient, to check on their health and to ensure all adverse effects are reported and assessed. The devastating effects on so many families could likely have been avoided if only the government had been more pro-active and transparent about the harm.”
Information obtained under the OIA shows that Medsafe, the government regulator, declined consent for the Pfizer Vaccine in January because it was not satisfied that the benefits exceeded the risks. Since then Medsafe has acknowledged the Pfizer Vax may cause myocarditis, pericarditis and thrombocytopenia ( blood clots).
In February the PfizerVax was given “provisional consent for the restricted treatment of a limited number of patients”, and subject to 58 conditions requiring more research and information.
After the High Court case raised questions about the legality of the Vaccine rollout, the government undertook an emergency law reform within 24 hours to remove the restricted use.
Recently the age limit was reduced to 12 year olds. it is understood the Prime Minister wants to inject everyone in New Zealand.
Despite its own advisors concerns, government advertising has repeatedly claimed the PfizerVax is “safe and effective” and “approved by Medsafe”. The Prime Minister herself claimed this recently in Parliamentary question time.
Many doctors and communities are furious about the ongoing devastation the PfizerVax is causing, and that people are not being told about the risks. A petition calling for an immediate suspension of the Vaccine rollout to teenagers launched today reached over 2000 signatures within hours. http://www.oursay.co.nz
The Outdoors Party says the ongoing rollout must stop immediately, and the government must start to listen both to the people they were elected to represent, and to the many doctors and international experts who have been issuing warnings for months.
“This programme must stop today, without any further excuses, and whoever is responsible must resign immediately” says Outdoors Party President Alan Simmons . End For more information call Alan Simmons alan@outdoorsparty.co.nz 0274 980304 or Sue Grey 22 6910586 suegreylawyer@gmail.com
Anti-Tyrany Protests Growing Worldwide, Truckie Victory In Australia
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | September 8, 2021
All across the world there were massive protests against medical tyranny and COVID vaccine passports this past week, but most of these are not being reported by the corporate media.
In Australia, people are reporting that the cell phones of truckers were blocked so that they could not communicate and take photos and videos of their nationwide strike, which is apparently still in effect. There have been videos of empty shelves in some grocery stores, but the corporate media is reporting that it has nothing to do with the trucker strike.
South Australia, however, did drop their COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truck drivers.
In France, the reports are that the demonstrations against the vaccine passports are getting larger and larger every weekend.
I have put together a short video update, which also includes massive protests in Brazil, allegedly against pharmaceutical companies.
The corporate media in Brazil has reported that at least 32,000 people have now died after taking one of the COVID shots. See:
Over 32,000 People DEAD in Brazil Following COVID-19 Vaccines According to Official Media Report
We are also now seeing video clips of local protests in the U.S. One in New York City over the Labor Day weekend, and one in Waikiki, Hawaii.
This is from our Bitchute channel, and it will also be on our Rumble channel shortly.
Ticket Sales “Flatlining” as Rebellion Against Vaccine Passports Grows
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 6, 2021
Ticket sales for events in the UK that could require vaccine passports are “flatlining” according to industry insiders, as the rebellion against the onerous system grows.
The government has asserted that it will continue to pursue the policy despite multiple warnings that it will create a two tier society and put countless venues out of business.
From the end of the month, people seeking to enter a nightclub in the UK will have to prove that they have been double jabbed.
Proof of a negative test will no longer be accepted despite the fact that vaccinated people can still carry and pass on the virus.
With nightclubs operating at a net profit margin of 15 per cent, and with around 25 per cent of young adults in the UK remaining unvaccinated, the industry faces potential financial ruin.
The scheme is also expected to cover all venues where crowds of over 500 people gather, which includes some of London’s larger west end theatres.
“There is a significant proportion of people who don’t want to use passports or are not vaccinated. It has settled at 20 per cent in France. We expect something similar here,” said Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of Hospitality UK.
Nicholls noted that with the industry already struggling desperately as a result of lockdowns, the administrative costs combined with the loss of income as a result of people staying away will deliver “a further nail in the coffin of returning for many venues.”
According to Michael Kill, of the Night Time Industries Association, ticket sales for events at the end of September and beyond are already “flatlining.”
“We are seeing a lot of pushback from people who don’t want to come and have to show their health status on entry,” he told the Telegraph.
Plans to introduce the passports are also going ahead despite Israel, which was the first major country to launch a similar scheme, now experiencing its highest COVID wave since the start of the pandemic.
Numerous major European countries have also been rocked by weeks of protests and rioting against the measures, while many businesses in France have simply stopped enforcing them.
As we highlighted earlier, the BBC is already reporting that vaccine passports are going to be rolled out with no mention of the fact that in a democratic society, such a scheme would require a Parliamentary vote.
Support our campaign to repeal the unjustifiable and dangerous Coronavirus Act
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | September 6, 2021
THE Coronavirus Act 2020 received Royal Assent on March 25 last year after passing through the House of Commons without a vote, such was the panic engendered by media images of overwhelmed medical services in Italy and Imperial College’s massively exaggerated Covid death predictions. The Act granted the government emergency powers to handle the Covid-19 pandemic. These allow the government to limit or suspend public gatherings, to detain individuals suspected to be infected by Covid-19, and to intervene or relax regulations in a range of sectors to limit transmission of the disease, ease the burden on public health services, and assist healthcare workers and the economically affected. Areas covered by the act include the National Health Service, social care, schools, police, Border Force, local councils, funerals and courts.
The Act was originally designed to expire at the end of March 2022 without interruption, but thanks to former Brexit Secretary David Davis it became subject to a six-monthly renewal vote in Parliament. Davis’s amendment tabled on March 21 last year to restrict the Act to a ‘brick-wall stop’ of one year failed, but this and the threat of a backbench rebellion led to the government’s own amendment to the Bill requiring parliamentary renewal of its powers every six months. The first of these came at the end of September 2020, the second in March 2021. Each time, shamefully, its extension has been voted through by a large majority of MPs. Only 24 MPs voted against the first time, and a very disappointing 76 the second time.
The one party to date to make a formal stand against its extension are the Liberal Democrats. Their leader, Ed Davey, has accused the Government of making ‘false claims’ over the need for an ongoing Coronavirus Act to enforce emergency lockdown restrictions. Notable critics to take a stand against it in the Conservative Party include Sir Charles Walker, Sir Graham Brady and Sir Desmond Swayne.
The argument that the Coronavirus Act is not important because most of the restrictions that have been irrationally imposed on society have been under section of the 1984 Public Health Act is mistaken. Nothing has been more symbolic of the slide into tyranny than this rubber-stamped Act. Numerous prosecutions have been attempted and indeed made under its provisions. If MPs fail to repeal it for the third time they will be allowing the government – and indeed the media which they appear to lead by the nose – to continue with the charade that there is a Covid crisis national emergency. There is not.
Powers in the Act remain dangerous. Schedule 22 gives the government extraordinary powers to prohibit gatherings, meaning that protests, vigils and political assemblies could be banned. It has never been activated in England and so is plainly unnecessary, but neither is it proportionate in a democracy. All the time it sits on the statute books it poses a threat to the right to free expression, freedom of assembly and democracy.
The fact is that none of the measures were ever necessary. They were granted in the middle of a panic to prevent a worst-case scenario that never came to pass. Since then the government has used these powers irresponsibly, if not abused them. The Coronavirus Act has made the problem worse, not better. There was and is no justification for extending these powers. All the data accumulated in the last eighteen months says this Act is not needed, as has been documented endlessly on these pages, on Lockdown Sceptics (now the Daily Sceptic), by HART and by numerous other independent scientists and doctors. As James Delingpole put it brutally and accurately at the beginning of the year, most of the government Covid statistical analysis is bollocks and designed to engender false fear.
Now, in less than three weeks, the vote for renewing this unjustifiable Act is coming up for a third time.
In March we advised readers to write to their MPs and set out a specimen letter. We fear repeating this letter is a waste of time. We suggest instead that readers concentrate their MPs’ minds by telling them that if he or she fails to vote against this next Coronavirus Act extension you will be giving your vote to the LibDems next time round, as the only party taking a decisive stand on the Act’s immediate repeal, or any other emergent party taking an equally decisive stand.
We’d also encourage you to sign this Repeal the Coronavirus Act petition here and forward it to like-minded friends.
Finally we invite readers to suggest or design their own TCW Defending Freedom car and window stickers to promote our ‘Repeal the Coronavirus Act’ campaign. And we invite your suggestions, below the line and via email to info@conservativewoman.co.uk on how to further our campaign and which other groups we could or should join forces with.
It’s time to end the charade. It’s time to end this legislative symbol of fear and to take away these tyrannical powers from an immoral government that looks quite capable of using them. Please make your voice heard.
Top Misinformation Article Attributed to Chicago Tribune
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 2, 2021
According to Facebook’s content transparency report for the first quarter of 2021, released in mid-August 2021, the most popular article shared on the platform between January 2021 and March 2021 was about a 56-year-old Miami, Florida, obstetrician who died two weeks after his first Pfizer injection.1
The story initially ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel 2 April 8, 2021, and was republished by the Chicago Tribune that same day.3 The doctor, Dr. Gregory Michael, received his first dose December 18, 2020.
Three days later, he developed small spots on his hands and feet, which prompted him to go to the emergency room, where they found he had an abnormally low blood count. Platelets stop bleeding by clotting, and when platelets drop too low, internal bleeding can occur, resulting in what looks like blood blisters on the skin.
Michael remained in intensive care for two weeks, but no matter what they did, his platelet count refused to budge. During the night of January 3, 2021, he died of a massive stroke. According to the coroner, the COVID injection could not be ruled out as a contributing or causative factor.
In a Facebook post, Michael’s widow stated he’d been “very healthy” and that he’d been a COVID-19 vaccine advocate. His death caused her to question the safety of the shot, however.
“I believe that people should be aware that side effects can happen, that the vaccine is not good for everyone and in this case destroyed a beautiful life, a perfect family and has affected so many people in this community.” she wrote. “Please do not let his death be in vain please save more lives my making this information news.”4
Even Viral Content Has Minor Reach
According to The New York Times,5 Facebook held off on publishing the first-quarter report for fear the findings might “look bad for the company.” Executives decided they wanted to make some “key fixes to the system” before releasing it. That’s why it wasn’t published until August.
Interestingly, the report reveals that even when something goes viral, the total number of views is still a tiny fraction of the overall content. Even the biggest accounts make up but a small portion of overall content views. Combined, the top 20 accounts with the most views during the first quarter — which included UNICEF, The Dodo and LADbible — accounted for only 1.18% of all U.S. content views.
As noted in the report, this “shows that, even though it may seem like a page or post has extensive reach on the platform, that isn’t the case when measured against the total amount of content available on the platform.”
Facebook Calls Out CCDH for Manufacturing ‘Faulty Narrative’
As you may know, an obscure one-man organization funded by dark money called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has published several reports, including “The Anti-Vaxx Playbook,”6 “The Disinformation Dozen”7 and “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”8 in which the founder, Imran Ahmed — an unregistered foreign agent — claims to have identified the top most influential “anti-vaxxers” in the U.S.
In a completely unexpected turn of events, Facebook is now calling out the CCDH for having manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its reports (myself included).9
This is important, seeing how the CCDH reports have been the primary “reference” source of authority used by media and government officials to smear, threaten and infringe on American citizens’ right to free speech.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security even lists promulgating “false narratives” around COVID-19 as a top national security threat, which basically puts a “domestic terrorist” target on the backs of those of us who have been identified by the CCDH as the most prolific “superspreaders” of COVID misinformation.
As reported by GreenMed Info :10
“Google now shows an astounding 84,700 search results for CCDH’s defamatory phrase ‘disinformation dozen. ’Amazingly, this includes 16,000 news stories within the international press, approximately 100% of which are word-for-word amplifications of CCDH’s claims/defamatory statements and reported uncritically as fact.
In addition, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and president Biden all used CCDH’s report as the sole source for their own defamatory accusations, reaching a dangerous rhetorical climax on July 20th when Biden stated that these 12 individuals are literally “killing people” [by spreading misinformation].”
No Evidence to Support ‘Misinfo Superspreader’ Claim
In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, sets the record straight, and in the process, demolishes the CCDH’s claims:11
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …
That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.
We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.
The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.
In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”
It’s worth restating the key point in this quote: Combined, the top 12 individuals and organizations identified by the CCDH as being responsible for a whopping 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are in fact only responsible for 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. That’s no small discrepancy.
CCDH Claims Blasted as Unjustified and Biased
Bickert goes on to refer directly to the CCDH report “The Disinformation Dozen,”12 stating:
“The report13 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.
They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.
Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”
CCDH Meets Definition of ‘Hateful Extremists’
Ironically, while the CCDH claims to “counter hate” online, and Ahmed sits on the Steering Committee of the U.K. Commission on Countering Extremism, CCDH itself actually meets the Commission’s definition of hateful extremists.14 In the 2019 Commission document, “Challenging Hateful Extremism,” the term is defined as:15
“Behaviours that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence; And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group; And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society.”
In addition, in the forward of the report, lead commissioner Sara Khan notes that “Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country.”
All of these definitions and clarifications of what hateful extremism is fit the CCDH to a T. Ahmed manufactured data to create a false narrative that 12 individuals pose a threat to the well-being and survival of the whole world, and then used that narrative to incite hate against us and curtail our freedom of speech.
Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers?
In related news, the self-appointed arbiter of factual truths, NewsGuard, has had to backpedal in recent months and issue dozens of corrections to “fact checks” in which they’ve labeled the Wuhan lab leak theory as a debunked conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, NewsGuard has wrongly down-rated 225 websites for articles mentioning the lab leak theory.16 In reality, there’s far more evidence to support the lab leak theory than any other theory, but it took over a year before the weight of this evidence became too obvious for the media to ignore.
NewsGuard’s erroneous fact checks were recently highlighted in an August 11, 2021, report by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).17
AIER decided to take a closer look at NewsGuard after receiving a request for comments on a NewsGuard fact check article regarding AIER and the Great Barrington Declaration — a statement written by public health experts from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford that calls on government to implement focused protection rather than lockdowns and self-isolation. AIERS investigation found that:18
“… NewsGuard falls far short of the very same criteria for accuracy and transparency that it claims to apply to other websites. Most of the company’s fact checkers lack basic qualifications in the scientific and social-scientific fields that they purport to arbitrate.
NewsGuard’s own track record of commentary — particularly on the Covid-19 pandemic — reveals a pattern of unreliable and misleading claims that required subsequent corrections, and analysis that regularly conflates fact with opinion journalism in rendering a judgement on a website’s content.
Furthermore, the company’s own practices fall far short of the transparency and disclosure standards it regularly applies to other websites … NewsGuard’s staff primarily evaluates scientific claims by appealing to the authority of public figures who they designate as ‘experts’ on the subject in question.
Their approach generally avoids direct examination of the evidence surrounding contested claims, and instead cherry-picks a figure to treat as an authoritative final word … many of their preferred authorities are political officeholders rather than persons trained in scientific or social-scientific methods.
By selectively curating cherry-picked political authorities rather than evaluating evidence directly, NewsGuard’s approach to fact-checking effectively sidesteps the scientific method. This strategy is rendered even more problematic by the general lack of scientific expertise within NewsGuard’s team of writers.
We examined the educational credentials, including the highest degree listed, for 28 publicly identified staff members on NewsGuard’s website. The company’s staff page reveals shockingly little expertise in either the hard sciences such as medicine or social sciences such as public policy, economics, and related fields …
Most NewsGuard articles on Covid-19 topics and policies are written by [NewsGuard Deputy Editor for Health, John] Gregory, whose only identified qualification is a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts … Gregory would not qualify as an expert in most of the fields he is responsible for fact-checking …
Of course, non-experts have every right to offer opinions on scientific and social-scientific matters. Whether or not they should be taken seriously as fact checkers or act as arbiters of scientific disputes is another question entirely.”
NewsGuard Staff by Field and Highest Degree Attained
NewsGuard Apologizes for Erroneous Fact Checks
After being confronted about its erroneous fact checks on the lab leak theory, NewsGuard offered the following apology in a statement sent to AIER:19
“NewsGuard either mischaracterized the sites’ claims about the lab leak theory, referred to the lab leak as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ or wrongly grouped together unproven claims about the lab leak with the separate, false claim that the COVID-19 virus was man-made without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated, and the other was false.
NewsGuard apologizes for these errors. We have made the appropriate correction on each of the 21 labels.”
AIER commented on the apology:20
“Gregory and his colleagues appear to have simply decided that their own premature dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis equated to ‘fact’ and proceeded to penalize other sites not for factual errors, but rather for diverging from NewsGuard’s own editorial position on the same subject.
When this position turned out to be mistaken, NewsGuard pivoted to remove the errors — albeit in non-transparent ways that downplay the significance or pervasiveness of their mistake.”
NewsGuard Fails to Fulfill Its Own Credibility Criteria
In their report, AIER goes on to apply the criteria NewsGuard uses to evaluate a website’s credibility to NewsGuard itself. It’s ranking? A paltry 36.25 out of 100. According to AIER:21
“This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards, and should be used with extreme caution as a source for verifying the reliability of the websites it purports to rate …
When we see fact checkers like NewsGuard, who not only fail to uphold their high-sounding principles but even publicly encourage working with the government to suppress speech, we should raise red flags.”
The NewsGuard ratings are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. That it would serve as the thought police of the technocratic establishment that seeks to silence dissent and bury information that doesn’t help move the Great Reset agenda forward is no surprise.
Especially considering its primary startup capital came from Publicis Groupe,22 a PR group that represents most of Big Pharma, including vaccine makers, and Big Tech. NewsGuard is also backed by Microsoft23 and Google.
The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet.
With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or sugar, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big industries. Publicis was recently sued24 for its deadly and illegal marketing of Purdue Pharma’s opioid products.
When you consider that Publicis describes its business model approach as putting clients and their needs and objectives at the center of all they do so their clients can “win and grow,” it’s easy to see what’s driving NewsGuard.
Overall, NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competitors and analysts who empower you with information that runs counter to any given industry’s agenda.
If you’re as disturbed by censorship as I am, be sure to contact your local library today to find out if they’re one of the more than 700 libraries using NewsGuard. If they are, then ask them if they’re aware of NewsGuard’s censorship of truthful news that is now encroaching on scientific freedom and threatening the very roots of our democracy.
If your local library is using NewsGuard, it would be helpful to start a campaign to get it removed. Contact your neighbors and let them know what is happening so they can kick out this public health threat. Likewise, whenever you see someone referencing reports by the CCDH, call them out on it.
Sources and References
- 1 USA Today August 23, 2021
- 2 Sun Sentinel April 8, 2021
- 3 Facebook Heidi Neckelmann
- 4 Chicago Tribune April 8, 2021
- 5 New York Times August 20, 2021 (Archived)
- 6 The Anti-Vaxx Playbook (PDF)
- 7, 12, 13 CCDH, The Disinformation Dozen
- 8 Misinformation Dozen: The Sequel
- 9, 11 Facebook August 18, 2021
- 10 GreenMed Info August 19, 2021
- 14 Greenmed Info March 25, 2021
- 15 Challenging Hateful Extremism 2019
- 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 AIER August 11, 2021
- 22 Washington Post March 3, 2018
- 23 axios.com August 23, 2018, NewsGuard Launches First Product With Help From Microsoft
- 24 Reuters May 6, 2021
La Résistance: French Create Their Own Makeshift Restaurant Again to Protest Vax Passports
Reims demonstrators return in greater numbers
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 2, 2021
Another example has emerged of French people creating their own makeshift outdoor restaurant in protest against the country’s vaccine passport system.
Video footage out of Reims shows large numbers of people, including many families, camped out on the street enjoying picnics in defiance of the new rule, which bans the unvaccinated from entering bars, cafes or restaurants.
Vaccine passports are also being used to prevent people who haven’t been jabbed from using public transport and accessing a multitude of other venues.
The sit down protest took place at Place d’Erlon, near to restaurants that demonstrators are unable to enter because they haven’t taken the clot shot.
This is the second time the protest has taken place in this location, although this time the numbers appear to be even larger.
As we highlighted last month, anger at the vax pass system is running so rampant that many businesses are refusing to enforce it.
Former Google software engineer Mike Hearn revealed how compliance with the new rules was minimal as he was able to enter numerous venues without showing proof of vaccination or a valid negative test.
This contrasted with the early days of the introduction of the program, during which police were seen patrolling cafes demanding to see people’s medical papers.
‘Blood for Blood’: On Jenin and Israel’s Fear of an Armed Palestinian Rebellion
By Ramzy Baroud | MintPress News | August 26, 2021
The killing of four young Palestinians by Israeli occupation soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, on August 16, is a consequential event, the repercussions of which are sure to be felt in the coming weeks and months.
The four Palestinians – Saleh Mohammed Ammar, 19, Raed Ziad Abu Seif, 21, Nour Jarrar, 19, and Amjad Hussainiya, 20 – were either newly born or mere toddlers when the Israeli army invaded Jenin in April 2002. The objective, then, based on statements by Israeli officials and army generals, was to teach Jenin a lesson, one they hoped would be understood by other resisting Palestinian areas throughout the occupied West Bank.
In my book, Searching Jenin, published a few months after what is now known as the ‘Massacre of Jenin’ or the ‘Battle of Jenin’, I tried to convey the revolutionary spirit of this place. Although, in some ways, the camp was a representation of the wider Palestinian struggle, in other aspects it was a unique phenomenon, deserving of a thorough analysis and understanding.
By the end of that battle, Israel seemed to have entirely eliminated the armed resistance of Jenin. Hundreds of fighters and civilians were killed and wounded, hundreds more arrested and numerous homes destroyed. Even voices sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle have underestimated Jenin’s ability to resurrect its resistance under seemingly impossible circumstances.
Writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, on June 10, 2016, Gideon Levy and Alex Levac described the state of affairs in the small camp. “Jenin, always the most militant of the refugee camps, was battered and destroyed, suppressed and bloodied, by Israel. These days its spirit seems to be broken. Every person is dealing with his own fate, his own private struggle for survival,” they wrote. The title of their article was “Jenin, Once the Most Militant of Palestinian Refugee Camps, Waves a White Flag”.
Being suppressed and shattered by an overwhelming force, however, is entirely different from “raising the white flag”. In fact, this truism does not just apply to Jenin but to the entirety of occupied Palestine, where Palestinians, at times, find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: Israeli occupation, armed illegal Jewish settlers, and the co-opted Palestinian Authority.
However, May 2021 changed so much. The Israeli attempt at ethnically cleansing Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the subsequent war on Gaza and the unprecedented uprising of unity, bringing all Palestinians, everywhere, together, lifted Jenin and other Palestinian areas from their state of despondency. The stiff resistance in Gaza, in particular, has had a direct impact on the various fighting groups in the West Bank, which were either disbanded or marginalized.
An unprecedented scene in Ramallah, on May 17, tells the whole story. Tens of fighters, belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is affiliated with the Fatah movement – the political party that dominates Mahmoud Abbas’ PA – marched on the streets of Ramallah, where the Authority is situated, in a relatively calm environment. The fighters chanted against the Israeli occupation and their ‘collaborators’ before clashing with Israeli soldiers, who were manning the Qalandiya military checkpoint.
This event was quite unusual, for it ushered in the return of a phenomenon that Israel, with the help of its ‘collaborators’, had crushed during the Second Palestinian Intifada – or uprising – between 2000-2005.
The Israeli military understands that the May war and uprising have triggered an unwelcomed transition in Palestinian society. Long-suppressed, occupied Palestinians are ready to rebel, eager to move on, beyond octogenarian Abbas and his corrupt clique, past the stifling factionalism and self-serving political discourses. The questions are how, where and when.
This is precisely why Israel is back in Jenin, once more trying to teach the nearly 12,000 refugees there a lesson, one that is also meant for Palestinians throughout the West Bank. Israel believes that if the nascent armed resistance in Jenin is suppressed now, the rest of the West Bank will remain ‘quiet’.
According to Palestinian journalist, Atef Daghlas, the Israeli occupation forces killed ten Palestinians during their frequent nightly raids on Jenin. Eight of the victims have been killed since the end of the Gaza war alone. There are two main reasons behind the increased number of casualties among the Palestinians in the last few months: first, the increased number of Israeli raids – where occupation soldiers, often disguising themselves as Palestinians, enter the camp at night and attempt to capture young Palestinian fighters; second, because of the growing number of youth enlisting in various resistance groups. According to Daghlas, the rifles carried by these youth are purchased by the young men themselves, as opposed to being supplied by a group or a faction.
“Blood for blood, bullet for bullet, fire for fire,” were some of the chants that echoed in the Jenin town and its adjacent refugee camp, when the Palestinian residents carried the bodies of two of the four killed youth, before burying them in the ever-crowded martyrs’ graveyard. The fact that Jenin is, once more, openly championing the armed struggle option is sending alarm bells throughout occupied Palestine. Israel is now worried that an armed Intifada is in the making, and Abbas knows very well that any kind of Intifada would spell doom for his Authority.
It is obvious that what is currently taking place in Jenin is indicative of something much larger. Israel knows this, thus the exaggerated violence against the camp. In fact, two of the bodies of killed Palestinians are yet to be returned to their families for proper burial. Israel often resorts to this tactic as a bargaining chip, and to increase the psychological pressure on Palestinian communities, especially those who dare resist.
It might be relevant to note that the Jenin refugee camp was officially formed in 1953, a few years after the Nakba of 1948, the year when historic Palestine was destroyed and the State of Israel was created. Since then, generation after generation, Jenin’s youth continue fighting and dying for their freedom.
It turns out that Jenin never waved the white flag, after all, and that the battle which began in 2002 – in fact in 1948 – was never truly finished.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press).
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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
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- Iran Has Won the War, It Will Be Up to the US to Secure the Peace: Mohammad Marandi
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- Mearsheimer reveals how Israel dictates US policies on Iran, Gaza – video
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