Israel launched fresh airstrikes on Syria’s Aleppo in the late hours of 1 May, killing one soldier and once again putting Aleppo International Airport out of service.
“At about 11:35 PM, Israel carried out an aerial aggression using waves of missiles from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting its airport and several sites in its vicinity,” a military source told SANA.
“The Israeli aggression claimed the life of a military personnel and caused the injury of seven others [including two civilians],” the source added.
This is the second time in less than two months that Aleppo International Airport has been crippled as a result of Israeli airstrikes.
On 7 March, Israeli jets bombarded Aleppo airport, damaging its runway and forcing aid deliveries for quake-struck Syria to be redirected to Latakia and Damascus airports.
A few days later, the UN issued a statement condemning the strikes and saying that such attacks “impede humanitarian access and could have drastic humanitarian consequences for millions of people who have been affected by the earthquake.”
“Attacks must never be directed against civilians or civilian objects. The humanitarian community has been responding to one of the worst crises that hit Syria since 6 February against the background of 12 years of conflict, economic decline, and a desperate humanitarian situation,” the UN statement said at the time, adding that Aleppo is “one of the worst earthquake-impacted governorates in Syria.”
Both Damascus and Aleppo airports have been regular targets for the Israeli air force. At the start of this year, Israeli strikes left Damascus International Airport crippled and out of commission.
This is the eleventh Israeli attack against Syria since the devastating earthquake ravaged much of the country in February. Just two days ago, Israeli strikes in Homs left several injured.
Israel’s airstrikes on Syria are illegal under international law but frequently happen under the pretext of targeting Iranian and Hezbollah targets. More often than not, however, the strikes target the Syrian army.
As a result, Tehran has expressed its willingness to bolster Syria’s air defenses to counter the continuous Israeli attacks better.
Tucker Carlson made headlines this week for being suddenly ousted by Fox News — but in the latest release of the “Twitter files” the former news commentator made headlines for a different reason.
Carlson’s op-ed cited information that was, up until that point, publicly viewable on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) website. However, after Carlson’s op-ed was published, that information disappeared from the site.
The files released Thursday also reveal that Twitter executives held internal debates over how best to censor the content in Carlson’s op-ed — an initiative that was led by a former press secretary for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
In an exclusive interview with The Defender on Thursday, Thacker expounded on the significance of these findings — and hinted at what the next “Twitter files” dump might reveal.
Twitter ‘clipping Tucker Carlson’s wings’
Thacker, who wrote about his findings on his Substack, said that the “bird factory” — referring to Twitter — engaged in “clipping Tucker Carlson’s wings” via its attempted censorship of his op-ed.
Despite being “controversial and polarizing,” Thacker said, Carlson was “One of the few Americans to challenge the official framework of acceptable narratives” and, as such, was “hated by the mainstream reporters for daring to throw darts at liberal pieties.”
“Why did Twitter censor Tucker Carlson? Better yet, who helped Twitter do that?” Thacker asked.
Thacker noted that while he was “reading an endless sea of #TwitterFiles” pertaining to efforts to “censor alleged ‘COVID misinformation,’” he unexpectedly discovered documents detailing attempts to censor Carlson.
These efforts appear to have begun on June 24, 2021, when Elizabeth Busby, a policy communications specialist with “Twitter Comms,” sent an email to colleagues inquiring if an op-ed Carlson had written the previous day should be flagged for COVID-19 “misinformation.”
In her email, Busby inquired whether links to Carlson’s op-ed “violate our COVID-19 misleading information policy and qualify for enforcement under our URL policy.” She added, “We’ve seen some Tweets with the link … and some that contain counterspeech.”
In the same message, Busby noted that “in the past,” Twitter had applied a boilerplate warning “to sites containing COVID-19 misinfo” and “Given Tucker’s visibility, we anticipate there may be some press interest regardless of the enforcement outcome.”
Thacker discovered that Busby was not just an ordinary Twitter employee. She joined Twitter in 2020, after leaving the U.S. Senate, where she worked as the deputy national press secretary to then-Senate Majority Leader Schumer.
According to Thacker, “Busby’s work history includes a stint at SKDKnickerbocker, a PR and lobby shop closely aligned with the Democratic party. Busby now leads ‘trust and safety communications’ at Twitch.”
WHO ‘stealth-edited’ its COVID vaccine guidance for children after Carlson’s op-ed
What was all the fuss about? Carlson’s June 23, 2021, op-ed for Fox News — “The COVID vaccine is dangerous for kids, Big Tech doesn’t want you to know that” — referred to language available on the WHO’s website that explicitly did not recommend the COVID-19 vaccines for children.
In that op-ed, which was adapted from Carlson’s opening commentary on that day’s broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” he referred to then-new guidance from the WHO and also recommendations from medical experts.
Carlson said:
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, key pieces of medical guidance from the World Health Organization have proven to be disastrously false — false enough to cost lives. It was the WHO, you’ll remember, that told us COVID couldn’t be transmitted between people, even as the virus was spreading into the United States. It was the WHO that worked in stealth with the Chinese government to obscure the source of the outbreak at the beginning, and then hide its origins from the world. …
“… bureaucrats at the WHO published new vaccine guidance. Here’s what it says: Children should not take the coronavirus vaccine. Why? The drugs are too dangerous. There’s not nearly enough data to understand the long-term effects or to show that the benefits are worth the risk that they bring.
“This is terrible news, of course, for the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma has been planning to test the vaccine on 6-month-olds.”
According to Thacker, the WHO published an evaluation of vaccine safety and efficacy on April 8, 2021, for the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
For children, the WHO issued the following recommendation:
“Children should not be vaccinated for the moment. There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults. However, children should continue to have the recommended childhood vaccines.”
The information that Carlson appears to have referenced was still on the WHO’s website as of June 22, 2021, according to Thacker. However, after Carlson’s op-ed was published, the WHO “stealth-edited their page,” according to Thacker, and replaced it with new guidance, which stated:
“Unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.
“More evidence is needed on the use of the different COVID-19 vaccines in children to be able to make general recommendations on vaccinating children against COVID-19.
“WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) has concluded that the Pfizer/BionTech vaccine is suitable for use by people aged 12 years and above.”
“In other instances where the WHO has updated their vaccine guidance, they note this change with a date at the top of the webpage,” Thacker wrote. “But no update exists for changes the WHO made the day of Tucker’s essay.”
Thacker added:
“While some of the language in Tucker’s piece could be viewed as inflammatory — the WHO did not say the vaccines were ‘dangerous’ — independent experts also were advising that children not receive the COVID vaccines, as rare but serious adverse events were not studied.”
The subtitle to Carlson’s op-ed read: “Even posting WHO guidance could get you censored.”
On April 10, 2021, WHO tweeted: “#COVID19 trials for children are under way. Following proven health measures is still the best way to keep everyone, including children, safe from COVID-19.” The tweet remains online to this day.
Twitter sought to censor Carlson while avoiding ‘political risks’
According to Thacker, the day after the WHO “stealth-edited” its vaccine guidance, Twitter officials began discussing Tucker’s essay — after Busby brought it to their attention.
Twitter employee Brian Clarke responded to Busby’s June 24, 2021, email that same day, writing, “We are going to proceed with labeling any Tweets linking to the article we detect that advance the claim that WHO has deemed the vaccine dangerous for children.”
However, Clarke said, “Given that this article’s narrative is related to ‘big tech censorship’, I want to be mindful that taking action on the URL level could lead to this particular article gaining more traction rather than mitigating the harm associated with it.”
“We’re going to keep an eye on any ongoing discussions related to the article and if it happens to gain traction we will review again under our URL guidelines,” Clarke added.
According to Thacker, “Twitter officials also discussed looping in top Twitter execs, such as the general counsel, due to the ‘political risks’ associated with such actions. Yoel Roth [then-head of Trust and Safety for Twitter] agreed with this approach to ‘escalate.’”
This included a recommendation that then-general counsel for Twitter Vijaya Gadde review any actions taken against Fox News, “given political risks,” while Roth stated that any action against Fox would be “escalated” internally within Twitter.
Joseph Guay, at the time Twitter’s senior policy specialist for “misinformation,” then shared an email with Busby, Clarke and other Twitter personnel, advising them on various options they had available to them to take action against tweets containing a link to Carlson’s op-ed, without directly censoring Fox News.
Thacker noted that Guay, who “seems to have made the [final] call on Tucker’s op-ed,” departed Twitter earlier this year for a position as TikTok’s “Global Policy Lead on Deceptive Actors & Behaviors.”
Upon departing Twitter, Guay, in a post on his LinkedIn page, referred to his work at Twitter policing “the bad guys”:
“Our teams worked tirelessly to ship bold new policies (such as the COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy, or the Crisis Misinformation Policy) to prevent virulent misinformation and cognitive manipulation from bringing harm to vulnerable people.
“I remain as committed as ever to building resiliency to weaponized information, and making it a little harder for the bad guys.”
Guay’s LinkedIn profile states he is engaged in “fighting information threats globally.”
Thacker also noted that Twitter’s apparent distaste for Carlson was evident in more than just this instance.
“Tucker Carlson would have never known this happened, but when Twitter held a meet and greet months, later, they wrote of Tucker’s producer, ‘[I]t was pretty apparent from the get-go we understood the very different goals we have at work,’” Thacker tweeted, referencing internal Twitter documents regarding a meeting between Twitter officials and Alex Pfeiffer, Carlson’s producer.
Thacker wrote:
“Months after Twitter took action against tweets advancing claims in Tucker’s essay, the company met with reporters in New York to strengthen ties with journalists covering social media.
“In their assessment of reporters, one Twitter official noted of Tucker’s producer, Alex Pfeiffer, ‘[I]t was pretty apparent from the get-go we understood the very different goals we have at work, this was mainly to relationship build.’”
In remarks he shared with The Defender, Thacker noted that Twitter was attempting to strike a balancing act between censoring Carlson’s narrative while not running afoul of Fox.
“They were trying to limit Tucker Carlson’s impact,” he said, “and they were doing it in a way that they would not be brought into direct conflict with Fox.”
According to Thacker, this balancing act nevertheless belied Twitter’s political bias.
“There’s this issue they had with conservative media, and they’re biased in one direction,” Thacker told The Defender. “The way you know this is that the person who brings it to their attention is the former deputy national press secretary of Sen. Chuck Schumer.”
Thacker said that while some of what Carlson had written in his op-ed was “inflammatory,” it nevertheless “wasn’t inaccurate.” He added:
“The WHO edited its website on the same day Tucker’s article came out, and the next day, Twitter starts to go after his story. What do you say about that? Who does Twitter work for?
“Apparently, you don’t question the WHO, or you don’t write what the WHO says. It shows you that you cannot trust these social media people. They are in the tank in one direction.”
Furthering this point, Thacker highlighted a potential conflict of interest between Twitter and one of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, J&J. In Thacker’s previous “Twitter files” revelations, he found that Twitter partnered with J&J on a COVID-19 vaccine “marketing strategy.”
Such efforts were not limited to COVID-19 vaccines. “By the summer of 2021,” Thacker wrote as part of his previous “Twitter files” release, “Johnson & Johnson began a full court press to market a ton of their products on Twitter, including a controversial antidepressant.”
“I don’t know what else is influencing Twitter,” Thacker told The Defender. “Johnson & Johnson was one of the vaccines mentioned on the WHO site, and that was a client of Twitter’s.”
Remarking on the revelations made in the “Tucker Twitter files,” Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom” and a former New York University liberal studies professor, told The Defender :
“This installment of the Twitter files proves that not only the government but also international governance bodies like the WHO established direct censorship channels within Twitter — to censor information that contradicted the narrative of vaccine safety, even when ‘the science’ contradicted the narrative.
“No doubt we will learn that international NGOs like the World Economic Forum also had such channels.”
Rectenwald was a guest on the final “Tucker Carlson Originals” broadcast on Fox News before Carlson was let go by the network.
WHO partnered with social media platforms to combat ‘misinformation’
Indeed, in several instances, the WHO has partnered with social media platforms such as Twitter to police alleged “misinformation” and “disinformation” pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures — and has also previously expressed misgivings about Elon Musk’s plans to allow more “free speech” on the platform.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, stated on April 26, 2022 — when Musk was contemplating purchasing Twitter — that Musk will have a “huge influence” over the curbing and potential spreading of vaccine misinformation on Twitter, and that Twitter and all social media platforms must address “misinformation.”
Thacker: Twitter attempted to ‘manufacture consent’
Thacker compared Twitter’s actions to what Noam Chomsky once described as “manufacturing consent.” Chomsky described manufacturing consent in a 2018 interview, during which he said:
“The myth is that the media are independent, adversarial, courageous, struggling against power.
“That’s actually true of some. There are often very fine reporters, correspondents. In fact, the media does a fine job, but within a framework that determines what to discuss, not to discuss.”
“If people decide ‘I am willing to be a danger to the community by refusing the vaccine’ they should then say, ‘well, I also have the decency to isolate myself. I don’t want a vaccine but I don’t have the right to run around harming people.’
“That should be a convention. Enforcing is a different question. It should be understood, and we should try to get it to be understood. If it really reaches the point where they are severely endangering people, then of course you have to do something about it.”
In a follow-up interview, Chomsky doubled down on his previous remarks. “How can we get food to them? Well, that’s actually their problem.”
On his Substack, Thacker noted that the media’s response to the recent news that Carlson was ousted from Fox News is characteristic of what Chomsky had once warned about. He wrote:
“The majority of reporters have shrugged aside their colleagues’ reporting fiascoes and the damage done to their own reputations, and continue to blame most failures in journalism on one person: Tucker Carlson.
“So it was not surprising that reporters began a week-long celebration this Monday when Fox fired Tucker.”
Referring to the latest Twitter files revelations about Carlson, Thacker told The Defender, “I can’t believe this is not everywhere, that everyone is not reading this right now.”
He said he will soon release more documents as part of the “Twitter files”:
“There are more stories. I had another story that I was working on, and I pushed that aside to work on this one.
“There’s probably another 10 stories, with more examples of the way they were working with the media, especially the media they favored.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
I always say that the most common way people change their mind is that they rewrite their memories and imagine they always agreed with you. Years ago, we published a provocative paper that qualified the percent of cancer patients eligible for genomic drugs. (it was ~8%), and the same doctors who had until recently claimed that these drugs have changed care for most people, were quick to say, “I always said only a fraction are eligible.” Sure you did, buddy. Sure you did.
To some degree, it is forgivable. The human ego is strong, and it is hard for many to admit they were wrong. When it comes to everyday Americans, I support their right to mis-remember their historical views on COVID19 policy. In fact, I predicted a great swing on this issue specifically — schools.
But, my concession does not extend to the architects of school closure. The experts who went on TV and repeatedly scared the public out of sending their kids to schools, and scared Governors, districts and teachers out of their duty to kids. These people should be remember as being on the wrong side of history, and receive the punishment they deserve: being precluded from shaping policy every again.
That includes Anthony Fauci and Randi Weingarten— two people who are doing an aggressive media campaign to distance themselves from the policies they set in motion.
One of Fauci’s defenses is that he just gave advice, and did not shut anything down. This is contradicted by the fact that he previously took credit for lockdowns, and specifically noted that in early march 2020, Trump faithfully followed his advice.
Of course the NIAID director and WH Covid counsel member has a special responsibility to give good advice, and should know the probability his advice shapes policy is high.
Additionally, he controls a multibillion dollar research budget. Why did he run zero RCTs of masking? School reopening? Distancing? Cohorting? Busing? Ventilation? That was entirely in his power, and there is no excuse for giving advice while not studying your advice, when you control the entire research budget!
In the summer of 2020, Fauci was still opposed to schools.
In spring 2020, when DeSantis reopened Fauci went on multiple news outlets to sabotage those efforts
As for Randi, the most accurate comment was in this clip from a distressed parent:
“On behalf of millions of American parents, I am stunned at what you have said…you are the tip of the spear of school closures… I hear no remorse whatsoever.”
Even CNN throwing Randi Weingarten under the bus over COVID school closures now too. Yikes…https://t.co/UB6FLEWvUJ
Randi claims she just wanted to open schools safety, but the problem is you didn’t need 750 billion dollars and hepa filtration to open safely. Even masks were unnecessary. Ultimately, schools reopened and ~100% of kids got COVID anyway, the vast majority did fine, most did not have the vaccine beforehand, and there is no reliable evidence the vax lowered the risk of severe disease for kids. All you needed to reopen were teachers with courage, sadly Randi and Tony sapped that away from them with constant inaccurate rhetoric.
The truth is Randi asked for things she knew she would not get, so she could justify her position that teachers be paid, get first dips on vaccine (over the elderly), and continue to not work in person.
School closure has already destroyed a generation of kids. The full damage is not yet appreciated, but the first signs are showing.
The virus was comparable to other viruses in healthy children, and no one should have disrupted their lives. It was not only wrong in retrospect, it was wrong at the time, and many of us saw it instantly and clearly. It was a human rights violation to close schools for kids.
Fauci and Weingarten are the tip of the spear of school closure. History should remember that, and no one should ever entertain their opinion on a policy matter again. The media coverage of them has been meek and toothless.
In a recent publication by a group of experienced geneticists, more contamination in mRNA “vaccines” (Pfizer and Moderna), excluding metal residues, which had been identified in the past, was found. Multiple methods highlighted high levels of DNA contamination.
Of special concern was that they found replicable DNA, so-called plasmids, in both the monovalent and bivalent vaccines, which should not be there at all. This time the researchers found DNA contamination that far exceeded the European Medicines Agency (EMA) requirement and the U.S. FDA’s dose requirements.
But why is this find so alarming?
The Threat of DNA Integration
As we knew from the beginning, Covid-19 (C19) injections have been a gene therapy, and the definition of a vaccine had to be altered to call them a vaccine. While we are still told of the safety and the effectiveness of the injections, Swedish researchers have shown that the mRNA of the Pfizer vaccine was integrated into liver cells.
This raised many eyebrows about whether the interference with our genome could pose the risk of integration of the mRNA coding into our genome. Usually, the body needs an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to do so. But now, findings of this new paper suggest a different scenario in which DNA integration may occur.
The Role of So-Called Plasmids
Plasmids are circular DNA that enable bacteria to exchange information. When scientists became aware of this, they soon started using these plasmids to produce custom-made proteins by genetically modifying their information. This is, for example, how insulin is currently produced. Plasmids are also the “production site” of the novel mRNA used in the Covid-19 injections. Once the DNA templates or plasmids are transcribed into strands of mRNA the injection vials should be filtered out to prevent continuous production of the information. Yet these plasmids are precisely what the scientists found. Why it is there gives rise to many explanations ranging from carelessness, the impossibility of ensuring complete separation, or even potential intent, which, knowing what we know, can no longer be excluded.
Plasmid Integration into Bacteria
So what could be so concerning about the integration of this information? The human body contains far more bacteria than cells, known as the human microbiome. The origin of the used plasmid stem from E. coli bacteria, which also happens to be a part of our intestinal microbiome, suggesting that there is the possibility for plasmid integration into our microbiome.
Plasmid Integration into Human Cells
While it was believed that plasmid integration was restricted to bacteria, other researchers observed that integration could occur in the telophase of cell division. Whether this can now occur with the mRNA injections should be a top priority for all regulatory bodies like EMA and FDA to address. Residual injected DNA can result in so-called type I interferon responses and increase the potential for DNA integration. A so-called SV 40 promotor also enables the plasmid integration into human cells.
An urgent evaluation into these mechanisms in the context of the covid mRNA-producing plasmids is needed to determine the extent to which this foreign genetic information is able to become a part of us.
Implication of Integration
The highly concerning consequence of genomic integration into microbiome cells is that this would ensure the ongoing production of mRNA and, thus, the production of pathogenic viral particles, the spike proteins. Typically, mRNA begins to degrade in the body after 10 minutes. Genetic modification, however, has made the C19 ‘vaccines’ mRNA more stable and it has now been observed to last up to 60 days. In autopsies in Germany, it was even found that mRNA was produced in endothelial cells after 12 months. mRNA has also been found in breast milk.
Could the persistence of plasmids and, thus, the integration into our genome be the reason for this?
Potential of Shedding
In a recent publication: “Persistent Nonviral Plasmid Vector in Nasal Tissues Causes False-Positive SARS-CoV-2 Diagnostic Nucleic Acid Tests” by Beck at al., asymptomatic laboratory workers who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were found to harbor a laboratory plasmid vector containing SARS-CoV-2 DNA, which they had worked with in the past, in their nasal secretions. While prior studies had documented contamination of research personnel with PCR amplicons (bits of DNA sequences artificially produced), their observation was novel, as these individuals shed the laboratory plasmid over days to months, including during isolation in their homes.
This suggests that the plasmid was in their nasal tissues or that bacteria containing the plasmid had colonized their noses. Thus we urgently ask the global health care systems to screen for plasmids in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
As we breathe out, we usually exhale multiple elements from our gut microbiome. If we now can assume that cells from it have been instructed to produce mRNA, what will be the consequence for people in proximity to the individual spreading them? We need to find out as soon as possible.
Plasmid Contamination
The paper also alerts us to plasmid contamination from E. coli as preparations are often co-contaminated with lipopolysaccharides (LPS). E. coli endotoxin contamination can lead to anaphylaxis upon injection and thus should certainly not be present.
Antibiotic Resistance
For plasmids to remain stable, they are usually antibiotic-resistant to two antibiotics (Neomycin, Kanamycin). This information could also be integrated into the microbiome or body cells.
What WCH Health and Science Committee Conclude
First, it demonstrates again the apparent neglect of scientific and regulatory board standards.
The Nuremberg Code (August 19, 1947) Article 10 clearly states that:
“During the experiment, the scientist in charge must be prepared to interrupt the experiment at any moment when he begins to believe that the continuation of the experiment may involve injury, disability, or death to the subject.”
This has happened multiple times, and the crossing of several safety signals questioning safety and efficiency has filled countless pages.
Apart from the manufacturers’ fraudulent approach, the more concerning aspect is the regulatory bodies’ failure to react to these apparent problems. This is not surprising as they are mainly financed by the industry itself (EMA around 90%). Ensuring the ongoing distribution of these harmful and dangerous injections lacks any moral and ethical backbone.
This also highlights the EMA limits for DNA contamination, which doesn’t consider the nature of the DNA contaminants. Replication-competent DNA should arguably have a more stringent limit. DNA with mammalian promoters or antibiotic resistance genes may also be of more concern than just background E. coli genomic DNA from a plasmid preparation. More mRNA means more production of the pathogenic part of SARS-CoV-2 that was chosen to be produced by our own cells, namely the spike protein.
The potential of shedding even to the unvaccinated poses a serious question for the entire population of this planet.
We can only speculate how it will end, but what needs to happen today after the publication of this paper is an immediate stop of the “Covid-19 vaccine” program.
Meanwhile, we should boost our oral and nasal microbiome by walking in the woods and inhaling beneficial microbes. And improve our gut microbiome through the consumption of fermented foods such as freshly unpasteurized Sauerkraut or Kimchi and prebiotic foods such as colorful root vegetables.
In a recent interview with The New American, Dr Mark Trozzi explains the role of bacterial plasmids and E. coli bacteria in the manufacturing process of mRNA injections. Watch the full interview here.
A recently filed lawsuit alleges that a pediatrician who works at MedStar in Washington, D.C., forcibly vaccinated two minors without parental consent. According to the lawsuit:
two minor children were held in a room by Defendant until she overcame their will and forcibly vaccinated them while physically preventing them from consulting with their mother, who was right outside the room.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the lawsuit further alleges:
Minor children W.M. and K.M. were additionally provided with false and fraudulent information in order to obtain purported consent to a procedure in the absence of actual or freely given consent. Specifically, Dr. Rethy told the children that they were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school and that they had no lawful option to decline such vaccination.
What makes this story even more incredible is that this is the same pediatric practice that sought to vaccinate a minor child in the lawsuit we broughtto strike down the “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020” passed by Washington D.C. in 2020. We succeeded in winning an injunction which resulted in the repeal of that law.
Before being repealed, the law permitted doctors in D.C. to vaccinate a child, 11 years of age or older, without their parent’s consent or knowledge, and created an elaborate and deceitful scheme in which the healthcare provider, insurance company, school, and health department all participated to hide from those parents the fact that their child had been vaccinated. According to the law, a child did not even need to be a resident of the District of Columbia in order to be vaccinated without parental consent!
In this previous case, the minor was subject to intense pressure and coercion to get vaccinated by a doctor and her staff at MedStar in D.C. When she eventually refused the vaccines, the doctor and staff took physical positions in the room that made her feel trapped! Thankfully, she was eventually able to escape without getting vaccinated.
These lawsuits expose a deeply concerning trend that must be stopped dead in its tracks. And these lawsuits should hopefully have that exact effect.
To any doctor out there who injects a minor without parental consent, you should know this: if that child’s parent contacts our firm, expect to receive an unwanted injection of justice in return.
For now, I am pleased to celebrate the repeal of the D.C. law that permitted vaccination of minors without parental consent and thank ICAN for making that lawsuit possible!
Last November Philip Zelikow and “the Covid Crisis Group” published a 352 page book, Lessons from a Covid War, An Investigative Report. The book went on sale April 23, 2023 and was launched April 24 in a five hour presentation at the National Academy of Medicine in Washington, DC. The launch of the book has lately gotten attention in the news. By its emphasis on war, the book inadvertently confirms recent evidence uncovered by Sasha Latypova snd Katherine Watt that the Covid psy-op was not a supposed public health emergency but a type of 5th generation warfare carried out by the US Department of Defense against US citizens, and much of the rest of the world, in collusion with many other governments.
Who is Philip Zelikow? He was the director of the so-called 9-11 Commission appointed by the G.W. Bush Administration in 2002. He was the editor of theresulting 9-11 Commission Report. He was and still is a University of Virginia history professor said to specialize in public myths and the effect of “catastrophic terrorism” in making abrupt changes in of the course of human history. As we know, both myth and terror were in full play in the 9-11 and the covid operations. Zelikow was among the neocons of the Project for a New American Century which said in its “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” September 2000, that it would take “a new Pearl Harbor” to motivate the American public to support the militarily aggressive US global hegemony that the Project called for. Exactly a year later, 9-11 provided the neocon-controlled US government with a pretext for just such aggression against a list of Arab and Muslim countries that did not threaten US hegemony, but did happened to be enemies of the state of Israel, which the neocons happen to adamantly support. So many coincidences!
Twenty years later, Zelikow was called in for another coverup, this time unofficially. Under Zelikow’s guidance 9-11 was painted as a series of tragic failures by the US government, the Pentagon, NORAD, and US intelligence agencies to either predict or prevent the hijacking of four passenger airliners by 19 nefarious hijackers. Using the same formula again, Zelikow assembled a group of 34 academic, medical, and government apologists — the “Covid Crisis Group” — to write the authoritative report on the US handling of the “Covid 19 pandemic.” Once again. the entire US government was totally blindsided. It was found woefully inept, incompetent, and completely unprepared to deal with this terrible out-of-nowhere attack.
Zelikow and his hand-picked authors leave no stone unturned in pointing out the failures of almost all the measures a helpless Uncle Sam took to deal with the “pandemic.” The problems listed by Zelikow’s mainstream mouthpieces were: “operational challenges,” lack of preparedness, “policy failures,” ignorance of the source of SARS CoV-2, the failure of Trump’s leadership in “Operation Warp Speed,” a ”fragmented health care system,” and “poor communication” which led to poor “vaccine uptake” and a failure to prevent people being led astray by “misinformation.” The solution offered by the Crisis Group: organize from the top down, globally, with a single authority, for the next predicted “pandemic,” much like what we’re hearing from the World Heath Organization. This is not new thinking. It’s a copy and paste of the globalist agenda.
The strategy for covering up an attack by the US government on US citizens is to make it look like the government was a victim of the attack, not the perpetrator. That lie is facilitated by what sounds like a tough critique of government incompetence, crafted by the same people who were involved in the crime. This is like letting a murderer off the hook by hearing nothing but his apology for serious and reprehensible failures in stopping the murder, and forgetting that he committed the murder.
Of course, Zelikow’s exhaustive report passed over the pre-planning, the trail of predictive pharma patents, the economic devastation, the gigantic upward transfer of wealth, the government corruption, the psychological harm, the extensive injury to human health, the thousands of deaths caused by the US “response” to C-19 — all of it deliberate. The report starts with the premise that a never-before-seen virus attacked us all at once and nobody knew what to do about it. This is more or less how Zelikow and his previous stable of authors said 9-11 happened: our innocent nation was attacked from out of the blue; we were caught totally unaware. It is interesting to see how the public myth and the “catastrophic event” intertwine. Zelikow is not just an academic observing that catastrophic terror changes history. He is an advisor to people who want to change history by creating catastrophic terror. He almost certainly advises on how to do it. Not only has he nicely tied his two academic theses together, he has won handsome rewards and respectability, AND completed the major deception of being the one to write the official history of the operations his handlers planned. Zelikow is the consummate insider. Had he not appeared with this coverup masquerading as an earnest critique, we might have missed seeing that the neocons had to be involved in the covid operation just as they were in 9-11. The Project for a New American Century was not a plan for a robust American empire. Just the opposite. It was a plan to use the US and its people as pawns in what was really the Project for a New World Order. America’s contribution to that was to let itself be robbed physically, morally, and spiritually by a parasite class whose goals for control of the world can’t even be understood as human. Indeed, transhumanism is a stated goal of these people.
Zelikow has tipped his hat with this monstrosity of establishment lies. He has announced that he is involved, despite no one asking, and we can infer from this that the neocons were also involved. “The wicked run when no one is chasing them,” says the proverb. With all the power the neocons wield, most notable today in the Nuland- and Blinken-led attack on Russia, the neocons must of course be connected with the would-be masters at Davos. How clever this clique must think they are to have fooled the whole world. With such arrogance, how hard the fall.
Two leading GOP congressmen renewed calls for the White House to send cluster bombs to Ukraine. Representative Mike Rogers (R-MS) claimed the US has 3 million rounds of the controversial munitions in stock that will have to be destroyed if they are not sent to Kiev.
Rogers, head of the House Armed Services Committee, issued the demand during a committee hearing on Wednesday. “The administration [is] not giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to win. Chief among them is cluster munitions,“ he said.
Typically intended for use against personnel and light vehicles, cluster bombs carry smaller explosive submunitions which are released in flight and scattered across a target area. However, the bomblets often fail to detonate and remain on the ground as ‘duds,’ causing countless civilian deaths in former warzones, sometimes even decades into the future. After the Vietnam War, as many as 20 million bomblets remained unexploded in Laos. Thousands of children have been killed and injured when stumbling upon the live submunitions.
The United States has a large inventory of 155-millimeter Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM) left over from the Cold War, with many entering service in the 1970s and 80s. While the aging cluster weapons are no longer used by US forces, Pentagon officials have claimed they could still serve a purpose in the hands of Ukrainian troops.
“It’s very effective against mixed targets, of personnel and equipment, especially when those targets are gathered into dense formations,“ Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander for US operations in Europe, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “It is happening in Bakhmut and it happens on most battlefields when one force goes into the offense. As a strictly military matter, it is a useful and very effective munition.“
More than 120 nations have agreed to ban such weapons under the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty which Washington, Moscow and Kiev have each refused to sign. Though a 2009 US law prohibited exports of cluster bombs with a ‘dud’ rate of more than 1% – which applies to most of the US stockpile – President Joe Biden can waive that restriction at any time.
Kiev has made several requests for US cluster munitions since Moscow’s invasion last year, and both Ukraine and Russia are reported to have deployed the bombs throughout the conflict. According to Foreign Policy, Turkey supplied some of its own US-designed DPICMs to the Ukrainian military last November, after Washington denied Kiev’s initial calls for the weapon.
Rogers went on to argue that providing cluster bombs to Ukraine could actually be a cost-saving measure for the government and a way to dispose of the Cold War-era explosives. “The US military has over 3 million cluster munitions that can be fired by 155mm Howitzers in Ukraine’s possession,“ he said. “We are going to spend millions of dollars destroying them if we don’t use them and Russia is using them right now against the Ukrainians.“
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) backed Rogers’ proposal. “Those should be provided,“ he argued, voicing hopes that “every effort will be made to look into providing the cluster bombs. We have 2 million available right now, it’s inconceivable that we don’t do more.“
Wilson is also preparing to introduce a bipartisan resolution which “affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders,“ which would include the Russian-occupied Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as well as Crimea. Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen is set to co-sponsor the measure.
The comments from Rogers and Wilson come amid a greater push in Congress to provide Kiev with cluster weapons. Last month, Rogers signed a letter with Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which called on the White House to send Ukraine cluster bombs, including DPICMs.
Ignoring all Russian advice, the British government confirmed on April 26th that its depleted uranium weapons are already on Ukrainian soil. Moscow’s officials, anti-war activists and experts have repeatedly warned that such an escalation in the conflict should be avoided, but London has not observed the advice and has further violated a red line by sending radioactive weapons to the Kiev regime. It remains to be seen what the consequences of this dangerous measure will be.
The confirmation of the delivery of weapons was made by the Minister of Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, James Heappey, during a speech to the British Parliament. According to Heappey, depleted uranium ammunition was sent to Ukraine along with other projectiles suitable for use in Challenger 2 tanks. The minister also added that British officials will not try to track where these weapons will be used.
“We have sent thousands of rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition to Ukraine, including depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds (…) [These weapons] are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) (…) [UK’s Ministry of Defense] does not monitor the locations from where DU rounds are fired by the AFU in Ukraine”, the Minsiter said during the statement.
When asked by some parliamentarians about the health dangers posed by these weapons, Heappey claimed that this threat would be “low”. Interestingly, he even mentioned that the risk assessment is based on monitoring UK veterans who have already used them on the battlefield. In fact, the minister seems to completely ignore that a series of recent studies point to the opposite, showing serious health problems both in the soldiers who manipulated this equipment and in the victims of the ammunition. The problems include several risks commonly attributed to radioactive substances, such as cancer, fetal deformity, deficiency of fertility, among others.
Commenting on the case with journalists, Doug Weir, an expert linked to the Conflict and Environment Observatory, stated that when DU penetrators strike a target “they fragment and burn, generating chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate that poses an inhalational risk to people”. Several other scientists have expressed similar views after analyzing the results of these munitions in Iraq and other countries where NATO troops have used them. However, London and Washington continue to deny evidence of these dangers.
It must be remembered that Moscow has repeatedly asked London to reconsider its plan to send these munitions to Kiev. In a recent statement, spokespersons for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia stated that the British measure would be an absolute “imprudence, irresponsibility”. Furthermore, in March, the Russian Ministry of Defense warned that the use of such projectiles could “cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians as well as inflict “tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex” in the region, citing the weapon’s impact during the previous experience in Iraq.
However, despite the warnings, the shipment of these weapons was already expected. In March, US and British troops held a training program with Ukrainian soldiers to teach them how to properly handle depleted uranium munitions. The plan was very well prepared and echoes NATO’s interest in taking the proxy war with Russia to the most dangerous levels of military escalation, ignoring any humanitarian, environmental or social concerns.
Legally, depleted uranium weapons are a complex issue. There is no international convention banning them as there is no consensus among specialists on how to define these weapons. These munitions are really radioactive, which is why some experts believe they should be considered nuclear weapons under the legal principle of analogy. However, its radiation is lower than that of natural uranium, which leads other specialists to reject this classification.
Some other experts believe that a viable solution to the problem of these projectiles would be to consider them chemical weapons, since they contain toxic substances, regardless of the level of radioactivity. But this creates a problem for the western powers that have them, since the US and the UK are signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would oblige them to destroy their depleted uranium stocks. Not by chance, both countries reject any initiative in this sense and prefer that these weapons remain without specific legislation, so that they can continue using them with impunity.
Indeed, given the absence of specific regulation, Moscow could consider the use of depleted uranium against its troops as a true nuclear attack, which would allow the Russians to react with their arsenal of mass destruction. This is unlikely to happen, as Moscow has repeatedly shown its interest in seeking the most peaceful and humanitarian solutions possible to the conflict, sometimes even ignoring violations against red lines just to avoid escalation.
However, regardless of what the Russian response will be, it is certain that damage to Ukrainian soldiers and the civilian population in the combat zone are inevitable. And the responsibility for that lies with NATO.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist is a researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Russia has condemned the UK’s decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, saying the move marks an “all-out escalation” after the British Defence Ministry confirmed the radioactive weapons were already in Kiev’s hands.
Moscow’s UK embassy issued a statement on Tuesday after senior official James Heappey acknowledged that the British DU munitions had arrived on the battlefield, to be fired from Challenger 2 tanks also supplied to Ukraine.
“James Heappey’s comments are a grim testament to the ruthlessness of the Anglo-Saxons’ policy of all-out escalation of the ‘proxy conflict’ they themselves unleashed in Ukraine,” it said. “He cynically stated that London is not monitoring the deployment of these weapons and has no obligation to eliminate the consequences of their use following the end of the conflict.”
“It has by now become self-evident that the West intends this country to become not only an anti-Russian military “shooting range,” but also a radioactive landfill – with all the ensuing grave consequences for the health of local residents and the environment in the region.”
The embassy went on to say that the British government would be responsible for the effects of the “toxic ammunition” and could not escape accountability by passing them off to Ukrainian forces.
In an interview with RT last week, Russia’s envoy to Britain, Ambassador Andrey Kelin, warned that DU munitions will be a “terrible thing… for the agriculture and for the people” of Ukraine, saying radioactive residue could contaminate the country’s water and soil “for at least six generations.”
Both UK and US officials have disputed the purported health hazards associated with DU shells – which use a dense uranium core to improve their armor-piercing capabilities – and deny allegations that the weapons were linked to a spike in cancer and birth defects in Iraq.
Heappey has claimed depleted uranium carries only “low” health and environmental risks, pointing to a 2007 government study. He later added that the Defence Ministry would make no effort to track where Ukrainian forces use British-supplied DU rounds, and had “no obligation” to assist clean-up efforts after the conflict.
However, according to Doug Weir, an expert with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, uranium munitions generate “chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate” when they strike hard targets, adding that the dust poses “an inhalational risk to people.” Other recent research has also indicated the weapons could produce “adverse health outcomes” given the “chemotoxic and radiotoxic” properties of DU.
Moscow has urged foreign powers to cease all weapons shipments to Ukraine, arguing the aid would not deter its military aims but only prolong the conflict. After the UK announced its decision to supply depleted uranium rounds to Kiev last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Western nations would like to “see Ukraine completely destroyed” and are acting with “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity.”
Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the Western participation in attacks against Russians abroad. In a recent report it was revealed that the US and its proxies had a secret plan to assassinate some commanders of the private military company Wagner Group in Africa. Wagner’s representatives would be in Mali at the time of the attack, which would make them easier targets than inside Russia. The case shows how in fact Washington and Kiev coordinate and jointly perform terrorism and sabotage actions against Russian citizens, which brings possible answers to other recent cases.
The plan was leaked by sources to an important western media outlet. The purpose of the operation would be to prevent the growth of Russian influence in Africa. As well known, the Wagner Group operates in some African countries, responding to requests made by the local governments themselves. Faced with the failure of initiatives by western countries – mainly France – to halt the advance of terrorism in Africa, cooperation in defense and security with Russia has emerged as an alternative for some countries on the continent, which apparently worries western authorities.
It was reported in the media that the Ukrainian intelligence agency GUR planned to operate an attack in Mali, which would be commanded by Kiev’s officer Kirill Budanov. On that occasion, several Wagner officers would die at once, seriously damaging the Group’s presence in Africa – and consequently boosting the growth of terrorism, as Wagner combats criminal organizations on the continent. However, for reasons still unknown, the operation did not happen – perhaps because there were more serious priorities on the Ukrainian battlefield.
On the other hand, the report exposes a successful plan by the same agents interested in assassinating Wagner’s officials. The case supposedly occurred in Libya, where a Wagner logistics aircraft would have been shot down. No details were given about the case, and there is no concrete data on what exactly the contents of the aircraft’s cargo would be. However, the report makes it clear that US and Ukrainian agents in fact operate together to kill Russian nationals outside the combat zone, which suggests answers to many other questions.
In several recent cases, Russian authorities have claimed that Ukrainian agents are involved in attacks against ordinary, innocent citizens, as well as against civilian infrastructure in the country’s demilitarized zones. In most cases, there is also a strong suspicion of US involvement, as Ukrainian forces are too weak to coordinate major attacks and intelligence actions abroad.
For example, Russian authorities have claimed on several occasions that the GUR was responsible for the attack on the Crimean Bridge, which took place in October last year. On that occasion, a truck driver who was transporting a bomb in his vehicle (apparently involuntarily) died after detonating the explosive, also killing two other civilians who were on the bridge at the time. In fact, knowing that the GUR planned to kill Russians in Africa and probably participated in the attack on a Wagner’s aircraft in Libya, the suspicions surrounding the participation in the Crimea case gain even more strength, since it is clear that terrorism is really a practice of the Ukrainian agency.
The same can be said for attacks against specific human targets. The homicides of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, both journalists with no military involvement, were the ones that made obvious the existence of Ukrainian terrorism abroad. Moscow identified those responsible for both attacks and exposed their connections with Ukrainian intelligence. In the specific case of Daria, US military informants even admitted Kiev’s responsibility. It only remains to be seen to what extent the Ukrainians would be acting “alone” in such incidents.
Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime has proved many times that it is not capable of acting alone. The actions of the Ukrainian armed forces are nothing more than the execution of orders coming from Washington. This becomes clear in the mere fact that the Ukrainian army and its allied militias continue to fight against the Russians despite being heavily weakened, without any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict. So, it is to be expected that the same happens with Kiev’s intelligence agencies, which certainly work as mere proxies for the US, in addition to being extremely dependent on foreign aid to operate any kind of complex action – even more so when outside Ukrainian territory.
Knowing that Americans and Ukrainians jointly planned attacks against Russians in Africa, it is even more difficult to deny that the same certainly happened in the attacks inside Russian territory. Washington will certainly not admit this and will try to blame its neo-Nazi proxy alone, but it is evident that the Ukrainians do not have the operational force, technical capacity or even autonomy to make these decisions on their own. In this sense, as American participation in brutal crimes committed by Ukrainians becomes clearer, the greater the need for an international reaction to NATO, which must begin to be seen as an organization that sponsors terrorism.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and a researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Those who accepted lockdowns, virtuously donned their masks, and eagerly lined up for the jabs and the boosters – people who think that I’m crazy to suggest that the covid measures adopted by New Zealand were as reprehensible as they were inefficacious – the people who have swallowed hook, line and sinker the lies of State over lo these many years – share one important characteristic, perhaps the one that defines their unwillingness to think for themselves.
They cannot bring themselves to believe that their governmental authorities are capable of evil.
You see, it’s that simple.
Despite a list of State atrocities over the lifespan of our human species that is nearly infinite, we here in the post-World War II West, refuse to countenance the idea of a murderous power elite masquerading as government for the good of all.
But how did such a conviction in the truthfulness of the State occur? How can so many be so certain of the unfailing goodness of the West?
Yes, this is a Western phenomenon – the advanced democratic, virtuous and egalitarian West of superior moral values, led by America. It is, furthermore, directly linked to the Second World War – and, in particular, to a myth fostered by the Western victors, which goes like this:
In genocidal Nazism, the most heinous and exceptional evil was concentrated. We who vanquished this evil are therefore good, and will always be good, regardless of our occasional peccadilloes. State-sponsored evil is a phenomenon of Nazi Germany, and it has been laid to rest.
America in the Fifties, when I was born, through the Seventies as I grew into myself, provided comfort, opportunity and even wealth for the lower and middle classes, factors that contributed to a feeling that life was good and that the country creating such an environment was also good.
When JFK was murdered by the CIA/Deep State of the time, most looked the other way and naively bought the fish tale of a lone marksman and a magic bullet. When the Twin Towers – AND WTC Building 7, let’s not forget – collapsed at freefall speed into their footprints as pulverized rubble on 9/11, no amount of uncanny physics and just plain common sense and eyewitness reports of multiple explosions could unconvince a majority that a rag-tag group of fanatic hijackers guided by an Arab mastermind from a Middle Eastern cave were to blame.
The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 that became the pretext for American escalation in Vietnam was as much of a lie as the Colin Powell’s 2003 assertion at the United Nations that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. How many lives were lost, how many people were displaced, how much misery ensued as a result of these callous and willful deceptions?
You see, the American government could never be guilty of such heinous crimes, never. Other countries of the English-speaking West and most of Europe, though quick to expose Soviet criminality and the profligate depredations of Communist Mao, turned a blind eye to American State terrorism and murder, and refused to acknowledge the coterie of covert agencies engaged in secret destructive operations against their very own citizens.
So, here, and in our very now, a transnational terrorist and genocidal operation on a scale never yet seen – I am referring of course to the Corona Wars – has engulfed the globe. The covid jab is killing us softly, and sometimes loud, and everywhere, and yet people who themselves have experienced the dangerous adverse effects of this agent cannot or will not connect the dots.
For example, a fully jabbed and boosted neighbor of mine recently developed a deep venous thrombosis and, two days later, a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. At the time not one medical practitioner queried the role of the jab as a causative or contributing factor, she informed me. A week later, however, her healthcare personnel had miraculously grown wiser and managed to come up with a theory: they blamed it on covid, from which she had recovered months before. No surprise, I suppose. Covid, long or short or in-between, is the perfect fall-guy to take the rap for any jab-related malfeasance.
As I’ve written and spoken about many times before, good doctors here in New Zealand – who questioned the wisdom of universal inoculation, who offered treatments, who tailored their care to an individual’s needs, and who stuck to the necessity of informed consent – are being hounded, harassed and persecuted by a vacuous and corrupt medical council in league with a private organization based in Dallas, Texas – the Federation of State Medical Boards.
One exceptionally responsible and informed physician was recently put through the ordeal of a week-long Health Professionals Disciplinary Tribunal. The Medical Council of New Zealand accused him of undermining public confidence in the Pfizer jab by discussing covid prevention and treatment. Yes, you read that correctly.
Gaslighting, witch hunts – so it goes.
But allow me to return to my thesis. Since when did people fall lock, stock and barrel for the obvious deceptions of their overlords? And how, and why?
I grew up in an America full of promise – for its citizens at least. An avid hard-working soul could acquire a superb education without mortgaging his or her lifetime of labor. Gas was cheap, travel was easy and the open road could be a dream.
Psychologically speaking, the concentrated evil of the Holocaust, with the Nazi death camps and inconceivable horror, would become a convenient repository of all that was morally reprehensible, all that was bad, while our Good Leaders would ensure that we might live under their benevolent protective shield. Heck, even the nuclear incineration of two Japanese cities was consecrated as an act of merciful necessity.
On the long narrow road ahead how many of us will be left to mourn the fearful, the ignorant, the naive, or the just plain selfish who, nurtured in a transient era of Western abundance, sacrificed good sense to an illusion, refused to make a peep about the obvious, and in a cavalier ‘yep, yep’ created a society along the apartheid fault lines of vaccination?
Fear, ignorance, naivete, selfishness – these are the Horsemen of our New World Order apocalypse.
To fight them off we need a little courage, wit and love: it’s truly that simple.
The Tennessee Legislature on Thursday passed a law that prevents healthcare providers in the state from vaccinating minors without parental consent. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Bill Lee’s signature.
The “Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act,” passed in the Senate last week and in the House Thursday, requires healthcare providers to obtain informed consent from a parent or legal guardian before vaccinating a minor.
During its COVID-19 vaccination campaign in 2021, the Tennessee Department of Health (DOH) invoked the “‘mature minor’ doctrine” — which says children of different ages have different maturities and capacities to consent to medical treatment.
The DOH used this doctrine to justify allowing minors ages 14 and older to consent to vaccination without informing their parents, as long as the child is deemed “mature” by their physician.
Many Tennessee lawmakers agreed. During an April 10 subcommittee meeting, bill sponsor Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) said the new law, then a bill, clarified the mature minor doctrine, which he said, “has been misinterpreted and shall we say, abused somewhat.”
Ragan added that by passing this law, legislators would be “giving parents back their rights to make medical decisions for their children.”
Hazelhurst told The Defender the law is “extremely important because it closes a legal loophole, which endangered parents, children and healthcare providers.”
In a Feb. 21 hearing of the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee, Hazelhurst testified that the law’s importance goes beyond Tennessee, because “nationwide, people are still relying upon Tennessee’s misinterpretation of the mature minor doctrine” to vaccinate children without parental consent.
Hazlehurst was the senior attorney in a lawsuit brought by CHD against the District of Columbia, seeking an injunction to block enforcement of a law passed in 2020 allowing children 11 and older to consent to vaccination.
In that case, Hazlehurst said, the district based the arguments in its briefs in part on the Tennessee DOH’s interpretation of the mature minor doctrine as legal precedent for its law.
The federal judge in the district case sided with the plaintiffs and issued an injunction against the law in March 2022.
The “mature minor” doctrine
The “mature minor” doctrine invoked by DOH is based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court case, Cardwell v. Bechtol, where the court ruled in favor of a doctor accused of medical malpractice for treating a 17-year-old girl for a herniated disk.
In that case, the court said the common law “Rule of Sevens” established that children have different capacities to consent to different medical treatments as they grow up, differentiating among children under the age of 7, ages 7 to 14 and over 14.
The Tennessee DOH summarized the “mature minor” doctrine in a memo on its website, interpreting it to mean that children under age 7 cannot consent to treatment. For children between the ages of 7 and 14, “a physician generally should get parental consent before treating.”
And for children ages 14 to 17, “The physician may treat without parental consent unless the physician believes that the minor is not sufficiently mature to make his or her own health care decisions,” it says.
In all cases, there are certain statutory exemptions where physicians can treat children without parental consent, including in situations involving emergencies, drug abuse, and contraception and prenatal care.
Based on this summary of the doctrine, the DOH concluded that county health departments follow Tennessee law and “provide medical treatment and vaccinations to patients as young as 14 without parental consent if the individual provider determines that the patient meets the definition of a ‘mature minor.’”
But the DOH’s summary of the doctrine “omit[s] critical elements of the mature minor doctrine,” CHD argued in a letter sent in August 2021 to Ragan and Sen. Kerry Roberts.
The Cardwell v. Becthol ruling explicitly stated that the “adoption of the mature minor exception to the common law rule [used in the ruling] is by no means a general license to treat minors without parental consent.”
Rather, the application of the mature minor doctrine is dependent “on the facts of each case,” to be determined by a jury. In other words, the DOH was taking a jury instruction in a medical malpractice case and stating it was a statewide standard for vaccination, contrary to the spirit of the ruling, the CHD letter said.
“We do not, however, alter the general rule requiring parental consent for the medical treatment of minors,” the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling states.
History of the controversy
The Tennessee DOH fired Dr. Michelle Fiscus, medical director of Tennessee’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program, in the summer of 2021, in part in response to an email she sent on May 12, 2021.
Fiscus sent the email to COVID-19 vaccine providers across Tennessee informing them that according to Tennessee’s “mature minor” doctrine, they could provide vaccinations to minors as young as 14 without parental consent if they deemed that patient to be a “mature minor.”
The email stated: “There is no federal, legal requirement for parent or caregiver consent for COVID-19, or any other, vaccine.”
Fiscus sent the email the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 12 and up, a decision she references in the email.
A few weeks after the letter went out, in the Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Government Operations Committee meeting on June 16, 2021, Dr. Lisa Piercey, health commissioner and Fiscus’ boss, came under fire by Republican legislators for the email and the DOH’s targeting of children more generally.
Piercey confirmed in her testimony that based on the “mature minor” doctrine, the state of Tennessee treated 14-year-old children as capable of making decisions themselves as to whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine that was under Emergency Use Authorization.
Sen. Mark Pody responded, “I don’t know the terms that I could use to express my extreme disappointment, that in the state of Tennessee, where the majority of adults said no, to think that a 14-year-old child could say yes.”
At that time, only 37-39% of Tennessee residents were vaccinated, according to Piercey.
At the June 16, 2021, meeting, Rolf testified that the memo was clearly written by a lawyer — which Fiscus later confirmed in defending the email — in order to set a statewide locality rule that children 14 and up could be vaccinated without their parents’ consent.
“If a parent brings a lawsuit based on lack of consent, I have no doubt whatsoever that that letter will be attached as an exhibit in the motion to dismiss and the motion for summary judgment,” he said, adding, “I can’t stress enough that this letter has tremendous legal effect.”
The Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act, which clarifies the rules about minor consent with respect to vaccination, was filed in the Tennessee General Assembly on Jan. 31.
That law allowed a minor, 11 or older, to receive a vaccine, “if the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard” and the vaccine is recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and provided according to the childhood immunization schedule.
The injunction stemmed from two lawsuits filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act.
During oral arguments in the case, Hazlehurst argued the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it contains multiple provisions that strip away the meager protections guaranteed to parents under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The preliminary injunction, which the defendants did not appeal within the required 30-day period and therefore remains in place, reverted the district to the standard age of consent of 18, at least until the conclusion of the case.
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.
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
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