Iran condemns Israel’s allegations against UNRWA staff in Gaza
Press TV – January 28, 2024
Iran has condemned Israel’s allegations against several employees of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA as yet another “malicious” move and part of the regime’s “inhumane” treatment of the Palestinians.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said on Sunday that Israel has leveled the allegations to justify its restrictions on humanitarian organizations active in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
He said the accusations also seek to make Israel get away with the unprecedented and heinous crime of killing at least 150 members of international institutions, such as UNRWA, since early October.
The Iranian official also deplored the move by Western countries to cut UNRWA funding against the backdrop of the Israeli allegations.
“Such a behavior practically means accepting the claims of a criminal regime, which, according to a ruling issued by the International Court of Justice, stands accused of genocide of the Palestinians and must be held accountable before this court and the world’s public opinion,” Kan’ani stated.
He said pressuring UNRWA and restricting its activities or preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people who are suffering from critical war conditions and are facing the threat of genocide indicates nothing but the declaration of trust in the story of a war criminal.
Instead of announcing their decision to suspend funding for UNRWA, those countries had better halt their military and diplomatic assistance to Israel, the Iranian official said.
Iran calls on all freedom-seeking nations, particularly the Muslim countries, to resist Israel and make every effort to support the Palestinians, Kan’ani said.
The United States announced on Friday that it was halting funding to UNRWA because of the Israeli allegations against the agency’s 12 employees.
Canada and Australia followed suit and announced a similar funding pause to UNRWA, which is a critical source of support for people in Gaza.
On Saturday, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland, and Finland joined the United States in pausing the funding.
Ireland and Norway, however, expressed continued support for UNRWA, saying the agency does crucial work to help the displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel made the allegations on the same day the International Court of Justice issued an interim ruling on the emergency measures requested by South Africa in connection with the regime’s war on Gaza. In its interim ruling, the ICJ ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide in Gaza, saying the regime must ensure its forces do not commit genocide and also ensure the preservation of evidence of alleged genocide.
In a post on his X account on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian hailed the ICJ ruling and reiterated Iran’s support for South Africa’s initiative.
Here’s why the ICJ ruling on genocide is a crushing defeat for Israel
The Hague-based court has not called for a ceasefire and has no enforcement power, but its decision is resounding nonetheless
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | January 28, 2024
The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled on the case that South Africa had brought against Israel. Those who mistake realism for simplistic materialism – the ‘it’s only there if I can touch it’ variety – may underestimate the significance of that ruling. In reality, it is historic. Here’s why.
First, and most importantly, the court has ruled against Israel. South Africa’s well-prepared brief was over 80 pages long, closely argued, and very detailed. But its gist was simple: It had applied to the ICJ – which only handles cases between countries, not individuals – to find that Israel is committing genocide in its attack on Gaza, thereby infringing on fundamental Palestinian rights as brutally as possible.
Such a finding always takes years. For now, at this preliminary stage, South Africa’s immediate request was for the judges to decide that there is, in essence, a high enough probability of this genocide taking place to do two things: First, continue the case (instead of dismissing it) and, secondly, issue an injunction (in this context called “preliminary measures”) ordering Israel to abstain from its genocidal actions so that the rights of its Palestinian victims receive due protection.
The court has done both, with a majority of 15 to 2. One of the two judges dissenting is from Israel. Those voting, in effect, against Tel Aviv included even the president of the court, from the US, and the judge from Germany, a country that has taken a self-damagingly pro-Israel line. As to the Israeli pseudo-argument claiming ‘self-defense,’ the court rightly ignored it. (Occupying powers simply do not have that right regarding occupied entities under international law. Period.)
This is a clear victory for South Africa – and for Palestine and Palestinians – and a crushing defeat for Israel, as even Kenneth Roth, head of thoroughly pro-Western Human Rights Watch recognizes with commendable clarity.
It is true that the ICJ has no power to enforce its rulings. That would have to come through the UN Security Council, where the US is protecting Israel, whatever it does, including genocide. Yet there are good reasons why representatives of Israel have reacted with statements so arrogant and aggressive that they only further damage Tel Aviv’s badly damaged international standing:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, has displayed his legal nihilism by dismissing as “outrageous” the closely reasoned finding of the court, at which Israel had every opportunity to argue its case. Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, convicted racist and terrorist supporter Itamar Ben-Gvir, has derided the ruling with an X post simply saying: “Hague schmague.”
And, of course, as always, everyone not toeing Israel’s line is smeared as an “antisemite”: The ICJ is now joining the UN, the World Health Organization and, by now, almost everyone and everything outside the ideological bubble of Zionism on the list of those slandered in this manner.
Notwithstanding the ICJ’s lack of an army to compel Tel Aviv to obey the law, these outbursts of rage betray great fear. You may ask why. After all, the one thing the ICJ did not do was order a ceasefire. Some commenters have focused on that fact, to argue – gleefully on the side of Israel and its allies, with great disappointment on the side of Israel’s victims, opponents, and critics – that this vitiates the ruling.
They are wrong. As, for instance, the Palestinian legal expert Nimer Sultany (based at the London School of Oriental and Asian Studies) has explained, a direct ceasefire order was always unlikely. There are several reasons for that: The ICJ cannot issue such an order to Hamas, so issuing one to Israel alone would have been difficult in principle and, by the way, would also have provided ammunition for Israeli propaganda. Since only the UN Security Council could give teeth to the ICJ’s ruling, trying to decree such a one-sided ceasefire would have made it easier for the US to sabotage the Council by discrediting the court’s ruling as biased. Although it was consistent for South Africa to ask for a ceasefire at the ICJ, the best institution to order one is still the Security Council. And it is plausible to interpret the specific demands that the ICJ has made of Israel as practicable only under an official or de-facto ceasefire. Indeed, Arab countries are now, it seems, gearing up to take that position and use the court’s ruling to demand a ceasefire at the Security Council. This may very well fail again, but even that failure will serve to weaken the position of the US, Israel’s vital sponsor.
Beyond the issue of the ceasefire, there are other – and, from an Israeli perspective, probably more frightening – factors. For even if the US keeps shielding Israel, this is a bigger world. Western governments and politicians that have supported Tel Aviv unconditionally – with arms, diplomatic and public-relations cover, and by repressing Israel’s critics – will feel a chill: The UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute don’t just condemn perpetrating a genocide but also not preventing or being complicit in one.
With the ICJ now having confirmed at the very least that genocide is probable enough to merit a case and require immediate action, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Annalena Baerbock, to name only a few, should start worrying: While the ICJ does not go after individuals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) does. Despite dragging its feet as much as it could, it is now especially likely to be compelled to open a full-fledged investigation.
In addition, cases can also be brought under national jurisdictions. All of this will take years. But it could end very badly for hubris-addled Western politicians who never imagined that such charges could escape their control (where they serve as politicized tools to go after African leaders and geopolitical opponents) and become their very own, potentially life-changing problem. In sum, the cost of siding with Israel has gone up. Not all but most politicians are solid opportunists. Tel Aviv will find it harder to mobilize its friends.
It is true that some Western governments and leaders, for instance, Canada or Rishi Sunak, have hurried to show their disdain for international law by attacking the ICJ’s ruling. But there’s an element of desperate bravado, of whistling in a darkening forest. And there’s a Catch-22 as well: Because, the more representatives of the West display their arrogance, the more they alienate the world. They may think that they are relieving Israel’s isolation. In reality, they are joining it on its downward trajectory: They are showing, once again, that their touted “rules-based order” is the opposite of the equal rule of international law for all.
Non-Western powers like China and Russia that have long resisted the hypocrisy of that ‘rules-based order’ and are not complicit in Israel’s atrocities, are earning global good will and geopolitical advantage. Hence, their positions and strategy will be confirmed by the ICJ ruling. This, as well, will weaken Israel further in the international arena.
If the world is bigger than the US or the West, it also contains much more than politics in the narrow sense of the term. In the realm of narratives, this is also a harsh setback for Israel and its supporters: Those who arrogantly dismissed the South African case as baseless or “a mockery,” for instance in The Economist, are now paying with their credibility. Their value as weapons in Israel’s struggle for global public opinion is reduced.
Last but not least, the domains of politics and narratives intersect, of course, with that of war: It is inevitable that those fighting Israel with arms will feel encouraged, and rightly so. For forces such as the Palestinian Resistance, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement de facto ruling Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iran, this ICJ ruling coincides with Israel’s military failure in Gaza: For while its troops have massacred civilians (and obsessively recorded proud evidence of their crimes that is now coming to haunt them), they are far from either “eradicating Hamas” (the putative war aim) or freeing the hostages by force. Seeing that Israel’s international isolation is getting worse, its opponents will have ever less reason to give up.
This, in short, was a great setback for Israel. Its political model, combining apartheid, militarism, and a might-makes-right outlook, is not ‘working’ any longer, not even on its own terms. The future is not predictable. That Israel will be in worsening trouble is.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul.
Lawsuit Filed Against Biden, Blinken, and Austin’s Complicity in Gaza Genocide
Al-Manar | January 27, 2024
The Center for Constitutional Rights in America (CCR) has filed a lawsuit accusing President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of being “complicit in the crimes of genocide committed by `Israel` in the Gaza Strip.”
On Friday, a federal court in Oakland, California, held a hearing to consider this lawsuit, which Judge Jeffrey White described as the most challenging case for the court.
Legal representatives for Biden, Blinken, Austin, and the Center for Constitutional Rights were present at the hearing session. Attorneys, activists, and medical professionals from Gaza provided testimonies, elucidating the adversities faced by Palestinians in the Strip.
According to media reports, the plaintiffs emphasized in their pleadings that the current US administration is allegedly contravening the 1948 Genocide Convention by supplying weaponry to the Zionist entity. Conversely, the defense asserted that the court lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate on this matter.
The Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States, focusing on civil liberties, initiated a civil lawsuit against Biden, Blinken, and Austin last November. This legal action was taken on behalf of Palestinian organizations, Palestinians in Gaza, and American citizens with relatives in the Strip.
The plaintiffs allege that Biden and his ministers failed to leverage their substantial influence to set conditions or limits on Zionist aggression against Gaza.
Palestine slams Peru for allowing citizens to fight alongside Israel in Gaza
Residential areas of Gaza at the border line between Israel and Gaza after Israeli attacks continue in Israel on January 10, 2024. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | January 27, 2024
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry criticized Peru on Saturday for allowing its citizens to fight with the Israeli army in its war on Gaza, Anadolu Agency reports.
This statement followed Peru’s condolences for a soldier killed during the war.
In a tweet on its official account, Peru’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday: “The Peruvian government regrets the death of Yuval Lopez, a Peruvian-Israeli citizen who served as a reservist in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Palestine, in its statement, interpreted Peru’s acknowledgment as “permitting its citizens to participate in the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This was seen through the case of Israeli soldier Yuval Lopez, who held both Peruvian and Israeli citizenships, and the Peruvian government expressed condolences for his death.”
The Palestinian ministry said it expected Peru to “revoke the citizenship of its citizens who hold Israeli citizenship and are involved in the conflict, instead of offering condolences after their deaths and praising them.“
Palestine considered “these times crucial in determining countries’ actual positions on humanity, commitment to international law, and humanitarian law.”
Furthermore, Palestine renewed its call for all countries to “verify the citizenship status of individuals in the Israeli state and the possibility of their participation in these crimes.”
It emphasized that the involvement of citizens of these countries in the aggression on Gaza means their direct participation in this attack against the Palestinian people.
There has been no immediate response from Peru to the statement from the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.
Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 26,257 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 64,797 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Federal Court Judge Pulls Canada Back from the Brink
By Bruce Pardy | Brownstone Institute | January 25, 2024
The Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. The Trucker Convoy did not constitute a national emergency. So said a judge of the Federal Court on Tuesday. The decision may help to pull Canada back from the brink of authoritarian rule.
The Federal Court decision contains four conclusions. Two prerequisites for invoking the Emergencies Act, said Justice Richard Mosley, were not met. Moreover, the two regulations issued under it were unconstitutional. Predictably, the government has promised to appeal. For the government to prevail, an appeal panel would have to overturn all four. But there is a wrinkle, which I will get to momentarily.
Between 1963 and 1970, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a separatist organization in Quebec, committed bombings, robberies, and killed several people. In October 1970, they kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross, and then kidnapped and killed Pierre Laporte, a minister in the Quebec government. In response, Pierre Trudeau’s government invoked the War Measures Act, the only time it had been used in peacetime. In the years that followed, the invocation of the Act became regarded as a dangerous overreach of government powers and breach of civil liberties.
The Emergencies Act, enacted in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, had higher thresholds. It was supposed to be more difficult for governments to trigger. Before Covid and the trucker convoy, it had never been used.
The Freedom Convoy arrived at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on January 29, 2022 to protest Covid vaccine mandates. The truckers parked unlawfully in downtown Ottawa. They violated parking bylaws and probably the Highway Traffic Act. Authorities could have issued tickets and towed the trucks away. But they didn’t.
In the meantime, protests in other parts of the country emerged. Trucks blocked border crossings in Coutts, Alberta and at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. Local and provincial law enforcement dealt with those protests and cleared the borders. By February 15, when Justin Trudeau’s government declared a public order emergency and invoked the Emergencies Act, only the Ottawa protests had not been resolved.
The government issued two regulations under the Act. One prohibited public assemblies “that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” The other outlawed donations and authorized banks to freeze donors’ bank accounts. On February 18 and 19, police brandishing riot batons descended on the crowd. They arrested close to 200 people, broke truck windows, and unleashed the occasional burst of pepper spray. By the evening of the 19th, they had cleared the trucker encampment away. Banks froze the accounts and credit cards of hundreds of supporters. On February 23, the government revoked the regulations and use of the Act.
Governments cannot use the Emergencies Act unless its prerequisites are met. A public order emergency must be a “national emergency” and a “threat to the security of Canada,” both of which are defined in the Act. A national emergency exists only if the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” “Threats to the security of Canada” can be one of several things. The government relied upon the clause that requires activities “directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective.”
The trucker protests were neither a national emergency, Mosley concluded, nor a threat to the security of Canada.
There was no national emergency:
Due to its nature and to the broad powers it grants the Federal Executive, the Emergencies Act is a tool of last resort. [Cabinet] cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient, or because it may work better than other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces.…in this instance, the evidence is clear that the majority of the provinces were able to deal with the situation using other federal law, such as the Criminal Code, and their own legislation…For these reasons, I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires.
A threat to the security of Canada did not exist:
Ottawa was unique in the sense that it is clear that [Ottawa Police Services] had been unable to enforce the rule of law in the downtown core, at least in part, due to the volume of protesters and vehicles. The harassment of residents, workers and business owners in downtown Ottawa and the general infringement of the right to peaceful enjoyment of public spaces there, while highly objectionable, did not amount to serious violence or threats of serious violence…[Cabinet] did not have reasonable grounds to believe that a threat to national security existed within the meaning of the Act and the decision was ultra vires.
Nor were the regulations constitutional. The prohibition on public assemblies infringed freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Empowering financing institutions to provide personal financial information to the government and to freeze bank accounts and credit cards was an unconstitutional search and seizure under section 8. Neither was justified, Mosley concluded, under section 1 of the Charter, the “reasonable limits” clause.
To prevail on appeal, the government would have to reverse all four conclusions. Justice Mosley did not make obvious errors of law. But there are a couple of odd bits. In particular, Mosley admits to doubts about how he would have proceeded had he been at the cabinet table himself:
I had and continue to have considerable sympathy for those in government who were confronted with this situation. Had I been at their tables at that time, I may have agreed that it was necessary to invoke the Act. And I acknowledge that in conducting judicial review of that decision, I am revisiting that time with the benefit of hindsight and a more extensive record of the facts and law…
Which brings us to the wrinkle. In April 2022, Richard Wagner, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, gave an interview to Le Devoir. Speaking in French, he characterized the protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa, where Parliament and the Supreme Court are located, as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” Wagner said that “forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters… should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.” He did not mention the Emergencies Act by name. But his comments could be interpreted as endorsing its use.
The government’s appeal will go first to the Federal Court of Appeal but then to the Supreme Court of Canada. Its chief justice appears to have already formed an opinion about the dispute. Having made his public comments, the chief justice should announce that he will recuse himself from the case to avoid a reasonable perception of bias. That too would help bring Canada back from the brink.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Israel clinches new US arms deal as Gaza atrocities mount
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
The US is finalizing three major military aircraft sales to Israel, as it continues to bomb Gaza, across a series of meetings led by the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Eyal Zamir, Haaretz reported on 25 January.
Progress was made toward purchasing 25 F-35 fighter jets, 25 F-15 fighter jets, and a new squadron of Apache attack helicopters, possibly involving 12 units. These jets and helicopters will reportedly be paid for using the US aid provided to Israel.
Zamir, alongside other officials, held a series of meetings in Washington with senior Pentagon and State Department officials. The Israeli officials met with arms dealers, namely Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the F-35, and Boeing, manufacturer of the F-16 and Apache.
Haaretz reports that the sale “demonstrated the urgent need to deploy attack helicopters to hit enemy targets and to assist [Israeli army] ground forces.”
The F-35 and F15 purchases will be carried out after completing previous purchases of a second F-35 squadron. The third F-35 group will arrive in Israel from 2027 onward, and the new F-15s will be received a year later. The Apaches are expected to arrive in Israel within two years.
Alongside the procurement of jets and helicopters, Israel has also increased its aerial munitions purchases, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, that are expected to arrive shortly.
These arms are needed to both replenish their quickly depleting stockpile in the fight against Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza as well as to prepare the front in the north against the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
The US has voiced concerns over its potential need to stretch an already thin ammunition stockpile to support Israel as well as continue its support for Ukraine.
Israel’s new proposed budget has increased its weapons spending budget by an extra $8.3 billion, now projecting it to a historic high of about $37 billion.
Israel has been carrying out a brutal bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip since their war on the besieged enclave began in October. To date, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 26,083 Palestinians have been killed and with over 64,000 injuries.
ICJ orders Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza
Press TV – January 26, 2024
The United Nations’ top court has ordered the Israeli regime to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
The order by the International Court of Justice was part of its interim ruling on the emergency measures requested by South Africa in its genocide case against Israel over its war on the Gaza Strip.
The court demanded Israel try to contain death and damage in the Gaza Strip and warned it to “take all measures in its power to prevent” acts that could fall under the UN Genocide Convention set up in 1948.
The court also ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Israel must take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians,” the court said.
It ordered the regime to report back in one month on the measures it has been asked to carry out.
Palestinians appear to be a protected group under the genocide convention, the court said, noting that it has jurisdiction to rule in the case.
Friday’s ruling at the ICJ did not deal with the core accusation of the case – whether genocide occurred – but focused on the urgent intervention sought by South Africa.
The case was brought by South Africa, which has accused Israel of breaching the UN Genocide Convention.
Over two days of hearings earlier this month in the gilded hall of the Peace Palace, where the ICJ sits, lawyers from both sides battled over the interpretation of this Convention.
South Africa said Israel had carried out “genocidal” acts that were intended to cause the “destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”
It urged the court to order Israel to “immediately suspend” its military operations in Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to reach the civilians there.
The question now is whether the court’s rulings will be obeyed. Although its rulings are legally binding, the ICJ has no mechanism to enforce them and they are sometimes completely ignored.
South Africa has been one of the outspoken critics of Israel’s ongoing onslaught against Palestinians and has led some initiatives to hold Israel accountable for its actions in Gaza. The African country, which has experienced long years of an apartheid regime, has been praised by activists as the vanguard of the global conscience and voice of the oppressed.
At least 26,083 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, young children, and adolescents, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since October 7.
CHD, Parents Take on Philadelphia Health Officials in Bid to Overturn Law Allowing Kids to Get Vaccines Without Parents’ Consent
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.| The Defender | January 23, 2024
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and seven Pennsylvania parents last week opposed the City of Philadelphia’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s law that allows minors as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without their parents’ knowledge.
Tricia Lindsay, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender it is important the case be heard and that its significance goes beyond the City of Philadelphia.
“This case is one which addresses pivotal issues, and is significant for all citizens,” Lindsay said, adding, “The right of a parent to the care, custody and control of their children is not a right which should be taken lightly, and is not one that can simply be extinguished with the stroke of a pen.”
The lawsuit, filed Nov. 1, 2023, alleges the City of Philadelphia engaged in a “wink and a nod” practice of vaccinating children behind parents’ backs without informed consent for the past 15 years, under the cover of its 2007 General Minor Consent Regulation (MCR).
That rule allows children 11 and older to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge as long as they receive a “vaccine information statement” for the administered shot.
It also absolves the vaccine administrator of liability related to the vaccine if the minor gives consent.
On May 14, 2021, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health enacted an additional COVID-19 Minor Consent Regulation, allowing children ages 11 and up to consent to the COVID-19 vaccine then available under emergency use authorization.
In its motion to dismiss, filed on Jan. 5, the city and its health department argued that none of the plaintiffs had been directly harmed or are likely to be harmed by the regulations and therefore they lack standing to sue.
City and health officials also argued that even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the complaint failed to “state a claim,” or show sufficient facts and legal justification, that Philadeliphia’s law violated federal or state law or that it violated parents’ constitutional rights to make decisions about their children’s upbringing.
But the defendants ignored a key relevant federal court decision — Booth v. Bowser — cited by the plaintiffs to support their claim and which legally “eviscerates” the regulations, CHD told the court.
Plaintiffs in Booth v. Bowser sought to stop the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, a bill that similarly would have allowed children as young as 11 in the District of Columbia to be vaccinated without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Defendants in that case tried to have the case thrown out using the same rationale invoked by Philadelphia plaintiffs — lack of standing and failure to state a claim.
In Booth v. Bowser, the court found the plaintiffs did have standing, had adequately pleaded their claims and were likely to win their case. When the amended version of the bill — Consent for Vaccinations of Minors Amendment Act of 2022 — took effect March 10, 2023, the section allowing children under age 11 to consent to vaccines without their parents’ knowledge had been repealed.
But in the Philadelphia case, rather than following that precedent and repealing the regulations, CHD attorneys wrote:
“Defendants here refuse to acknowledge that children, particularly those as young as eleven, are simply incapable of making vaccination decisions on their own, especially when defendants engage in manipulative tactics directly targeting children with false statements of safety and efficacy, calculated bullying, and peer pressure campaigns.
“Defendants have the audacity to say they are not actively interfering in compelling children to be vaccinated without parental knowledge and consent when they are blatantly manipulating children to the point of compelling children to make critical health decisions on their own and then, through the MCRs, providing the vehicle for children to obtain healthcare in secret.
“The MCRs are a critical part of [the] defendants’ propaganda machine. Without the MCRs, children cannot receive these vaccines in the absence of parental consent.”
Videos pressuring teens promote ‘name calling, outright bullying and violence’
CHD and the parents suing the city argued that whether or not their children were vaccinated without their consent, they were injured because the regulations put their children at risk of imminent vaccination, violating their constitutionally and statutorily protected parental rights.
The parents — all of whom are either residents of Philadelphia or travel frequently to Philadelphia — said they are concerned their children may be pressured into vaccination when they are in the city because of measures put in place targeting teens to get vaccinated.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphia, like the district, created a “pressure-cooker environment,” in which children could be psychologically manipulated into defying their parents and getting vaccinated, the plaintiffs allege.
The plaintiffs’ memo included several examples illustrating the intense pressure teens could be subject to, which along with the arguments in the brief, “exposed the underbelly of city officials’ methods of persuasion and coercion by directing extreme forms of psychologically manipulative peer pressure under the guise of empowerment, equality, freedom and health,” Ray Flores, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender.
That evidence included two videos that Flores called “cringeworthy.”
In one video, teens perform a skit where one teen pressures another to go with her to get the COVID-19 vaccine, by pushing her and calling her an idiot. The video, Flores said, “promotes name calling, outright bullying and violence.”
No parents are present or referenced and the teens in the skit go to get vaccinated alone.
After the skit, another teen presents a series of “facts” about the vaccine, including a guarantee that the vaccines do not affect DNA, they have no adverse effects and that they provide immunity to the virus.
“We provide the facts, so you can get the vax!” the teens chant.
In a second video, a “Teen Vaxx Ambassador” talks about how effective “teen-to-teen” conversations are in convincing others to get vaccinated. She also details how they make getting the vaccine fun by creating a “party-like atmosphere” around the vaccine.
“The city indoctrinates these children to convince peers to make rash decisions without any professional information,” Flores said. “Given that these children can receive nearly any injection without parental permission, the dangers are clear and obvious since a plethora of vaccination sites are located within the city limits.”
The memo also included links to several news stories celebrating the city’s policy allowing minors to consent to vaccination and promoting vaccination to teens.
The plaintiffs also underscored several key arguments from the complaint.
They argued that Philadelphia’s regulations conflict with the consent requirements of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), the federal law that has primacy over conflicting local laws on such matters, according to the U.S. Constitution, and must be applied equally in all places.
They also argued that children are not “capable of providing informed consent” for vaccines, as the regulations suggest, because the vaccine information sheets or COVID-19 fact sheets are not written for children to understand. Additionally, children may not know their health history, or understand and be able to navigate the process for identifying and seeking compensation should they become vaccine-injured.
The memo reiterates that vaccinating a child without parental consent violates parental constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing. In their motion to dismiss, the defendants argued this right is only violated if the child is compelled to be vaccinated.
The plaintiffs countered that the injury occurs when parents are deprived of their right to make the decision in the first place.
They wrote:
“The Defendants have crafted a procedure to clandestinely bypass parents lawfully exercising their authority. Meanwhile, the City has ratcheted up the pressure on children whose parents have opted out of vaccines and even on children who do not know their vaccination status and thus even are susceptible to over-vaccination.
“The City has publicly and vocally encouraged children to be vaccinated as part of its program to do an end-run around parents.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
UAE enlists Al-Qaeda, US mercenaries to operate in Yemen: Report
The Cradle | January 24, 2024
A BBC investigation released on 22 January reveals that the UAE hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in Yemen.
A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.
Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.
These militants were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen at the behest of Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation.
The BBC also points to a shadowy group of US mercenaries, known as Spear Operations Group, hired by the UAE to carry out assassinations.
Isaac Gilmore, a former US navy seal who later became Spear’s chief operating officer, is “one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.”
“He refused to talk about anyone who was on the ‘kill list’ provided to Spear by the UAE — other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden.”
Saudi and UAE-backed mercenary groups have run rampant across Yemen since the start of the war in the country nine years ago. Aside from assassinations, these mercenaries have also been implicated in a number of crimes, including the looting and illegal trading of Yemeni cultural heritage.
Several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen. There are also accounts of underage girls being raped by militants of such groups.
This is not the first time that UAE-backed armed groups in Yemen have been accused of working or coordinating with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
According to documents obtained by Yemen’s Al-Masirah media outlet in February last year, Takfiri militants affiliated with the UAE-backed mercenary group, the Giants Brigade, looted large amounts of oil from the reserves in the energy-rich province of Shabwah, south of the country.
“We have all the evidence of the UAE’s relationship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen,” Saleh al-Jabwani, Saleh al-Jabwani, a minister in the former Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, said in 2019.
The BBC investigation comes one month after UAE-backed mercenaries came under the spotlight once again, following reports that the US was working to recruit members of these mercenary groups to “distract” Ansarallah from its military operations against Israel.
“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 8 December.
According to Hebrew media, the UAE-backed STC has approached Israel and offered to help protect Israeli shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement and the armed forces of the government in Sanaa.
Since November, Yemen’s Armed Forces and Ansarallah have seized one Israeli-linked vessel and have targeted over a dozen other ships, either owned by Israelis or Israeli firms or en route to Israeli ports. The Red Sea blockade by Yemen is in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, which Sanaa has vowed to continue until the war and siege in Gaza ends.
Yemeni armed forces have also launched drones and missiles towards Israel’s southern port city of Eilat.
These attacks are garnering significant amounts of popular support for Ansarallah in Yemen.
According to Yemeni officials and analysts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft on 24 January, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party – which has, for the most part, been opposed to Ansarallah throughout the Yemen war – have been providing them with material support and have praised their pro-Palestine operations.
Ukrainian military comments on Belgorod plane attack
RT | January 24, 2024
Ukraine has used “measures of destruction” against Russian transport aircraft in Belgorod Region and will continue to do so, the General Staff in Kiev said on Wednesday after an Il-76 carrying Ukrainian prisoners was shot down.
The transport crashed at 11:15am local time in the Korochansky district, about 90 km (55 miles) from the border. Initial reports in Ukrainian media, since deleted, claimed that Ukrainian forces had shot it down because it had been carrying S-300 missiles.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday evening, the Ukrainian General Staff accused Russia of “terror” attacks on Kharkov and said the “recorded intensity of shelling is directly related to the increase in the number of military transport aircraft that have been heading to Belgorod airport in recent times.”
”In order to reduce the missile threat, the Armed Forces of Ukraine not only control the airspace, but also track in detail the rocket launch points and the logistics of their supply, especially with the use of military transport aviation,” the General Staff said, adding that AFU will “continue to use measures of destruction of means of delivery and airspace control to eliminate the terrorist threat.”
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the plane was transporting 65 Ukrainian POWs, who were scheduled to be exchanged later in the day at the Kolotilovka checkpoint. Ukraine was informed of the flight in advance, so the military in Kiev knew it was carrying POWs, the Russian military said. Another plane with 80 more prisoners turned around after the first transport was struck and landed safely.
Russian radars detected the launch of two missiles from the village of Liptsy in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. Six crew members and three Russian soldiers on board the IL-76 were killed along with the 65 Ukrainian captives.
”By committing this terrorist act, the Ukrainian leadership showed its true face, disregarding the lives of its citizens,” the Russian military said.
This would not be the first time Ukraine has targeted its own POWs in Russian custody. In August 2022, Ukrainian artillery used US-supplied HIMARS launchers for a rocket strike on a penal colony in Yelenovka, in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The facility housed almost 200 prisoners from the notorious neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ unit, who had surrendered in Mariupol several months prior. The missile strike killed 50 of them and wounded another 73. Russian authorities later revealed that the location was known to the Ukrainians because the government in Kiev had requested to have the prisoners moved there.
Kiev deliberately shot down plane carrying its POWs: Russian Defense Ministry
RT | January 24, 2024
A Russian IL-76 heavy transport plane was carrying 65 captured Ukrainian military personnel when it crashed in Belgorod Region some 90km (55 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The Russian Defense Ministry has claimed that the aircraft was brought down by Kiev’s forces.
Here is what we know so far about what happened.
The plane crash On Wednesday at 11:15 Moscow time, reports came in that an IL-76 military transport plane carrying Ukrainian POWs had crashed and exploded in a field near the village of Yablonovo in the Korochansky district of Belgorod Region, which neighbors Ukraine.
Several people captured footage of the crash and shared videos of the incident on social media.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the plane was flying from the Chkalovsky airfield to Belgorod and was transporting the Ukrainian personnel for a prisoner swap with Kiev. Aside from the POWs, there were also six crew members and three accompanying personnel.
All those on board the aircraft were killed in the crash, according to the governor of Belgorod Region, Vyacheslav Gladkov. However, the crash did not cause any damage to structures or people on the ground, landing five to six kilometers from the nearest village.
According to Russian officials, another plane carrying an additional 80 Ukrainian POWs was also in the air at the time of the incident. After the first plane crashed, the second aircraft was diverted, according to MP Andrey Kartapolov.
What was the cause? Following the incident, the Russian Defense Ministry released a statement accusing Kiev’s forces of shooting down the plane using an anti-aircraft missile system. The ministry claimed that the radars of Russia’s Aerospace Forces recorded the launch of two Ukrainian missiles from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov Region.
The ministry has also stated that the Ukrainian side was informed of the flight ahead of time and was aware that it was carrying POWs, noting that the prisoner exchange was supposed to take place later in the afternoon at the Kolotilovka checkpoint.
Ukrainian media reports Shortly after the crash, the Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainskaya Pravda released a report claiming that it had received confirmation from the Ukrainian military that the plane was shot down by Kiev’s forces, but was told that the aircraft was believed to be carrying S-300 missiles.
Shortly after, however, the outlet redacted that statement, stating only that Kiev had confirmed that it was aware of the plane crash but could not confirm it was carrying Ukrainian POWs.
Meanwhile, other Western media outlets such as Radio Liberty have confirmed from sources within the Kiev government that a prisoner exchange with Russia was indeed scheduled for Wednesday, but no further comments have been provided.
Kiev’s intelligence A representative of the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, Andrey Yusov, has also confirmed the scheduled prisoner exchange.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Coordinations Headquarters for matters regarding prisoners of war has refused to confirm the planned swap, only stating that it was “collecting and analyzing all the necessary information” while urging the media and its citizens to refrain from speculating on the incident. The body also noted that Russia is “actively carrying out special information operations” aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society.
Russia’s reaction The head of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has suggested that the IL-76 was shot down using Western Patriot or Iris-T air defense missiles. He has also proposed calling off any further prisoner swap negotiations with Kiev and insisted that Ukraine should officially be branded a terrorist state and its government a terrorist cell.
State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has called on Russian lawmakers to make a formal address to the US and Germany, urging them to stop actively supporting the “Nazi regime” in Kiev, which has stooped to killing its own POWs.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that Kiev had once again “shown its true colors” by committing this “terrorist act” against its own citizens in an attempt to slander Russia’s forces.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that this act of “mindless barbarism” puts into question the possibility of reaching future agreements with Kiev, noting that “there is no doubt” that the Ukrainian authorities will eventually violate any guarantees that they give.
The ministry also stressed that the regime of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which was propped up by the US and its NATO allies, has once again proven to be a threat not only to Russia, but to “Ukraine itself, its citizens and the whole world.”
Former Russian President and current deputy chairman of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that the downing of the IL-76 may have been the result of internal political turmoil between “neo-Nazi elites in Kiev.” He suggested that “it’ll be even worse in the future” as the Ukrainian government will continue slaughtering its own troops and POWs and bombing its own cities to protect its power and money.
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From the Archives
Politicians lie
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- RSF military group defects, joins Sudanese army: State media
- Ireland goalkeeper refuses to play ‘Israel’ as squad weighs boycott
- China pushes back against US on Cuba, Iran
- Ukrainian Soldiers, Potential Mercenaries: Have Gun, Will Travel!
- Burnham’s UN debut… A masterclass in British disinformation
- Iran flights continue despite US aviation sanctions
- Global Tipping Points Lead the World Into a State of Entropy
- The day-after at the White House: USA and Xi Jinping
- The Geopolitical Balance in the Red Sea: The UAE Being Displaced by New Players
- Iraqi resistance group vows to stage airport sit-ins over Iran aerial blockade
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
