Pregnant women deserve better than “trust us” science
A major study has been used to reassure pregnant women that Covid-19 vaccines are safe. But the data behind the claim are fatally flawed.
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | April 12, 2025
In medicine, few assurances carry more emotional weight—or greater responsibility—than the claim that something is “safe during pregnancy.”
Pregnant women are justifiably cautious about what they expose themselves to during this vulnerable time, and history has given them every reason to be.
The thalidomide disaster, diethylstilboestrol (DES), and other cautionary tales have shown what can happen when scientific rigour is sidelined in favour of commercial interests.
So, when a new study published in Pediatrics – the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics – claimed that Covid-19 vaccination in early pregnancy was safe, it came with an air of authority and reassurance.
News headlines followed suit, and public health recommendations continued to promote the vaccine’s safety in pregnancy.
But scratch the surface of this study, and something starts to unravel.
Not only are the data unverifiable and privately sourced, but the study contains a fatal flaw that renders its conclusions virtually meaningless.
The fatal flaw
The study analyzed 78,052 pregnancies that ended in a live birth—but left out 20,341 pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or other non-live outcomes.
That’s not a minor oversight.
The very purpose of studying vaccine safety in pregnancy is to assess whether exposure in utero leads to adverse outcomes—like miscarriage, birth defects, or foetal death. Yet one-fifth of the pregnancies were excluded from the analysis, removing exactly the kind of outcomes the study was supposed to detect.
This introduces what’s known as live-birth bias—a selection bias that arises when research includes only live births, disregarding the possibility that harmful effects may have caused some pregnancies to end prematurely.
Put plainly, if you only study babies who made it to birth, you’re ignoring the ones who didn’t—and any harm that may have played a role.
Even the study’s authors acknowledge this limitation, conceding that the exclusion “could lead to an underestimation of identified outcomes.” Still, they move forward to conclude there’s no association between the vaccine and birth defects.
Omitting over 20,000 pregnancies isn’t just a technicality – it’s a fatal flaw.
If even a small fraction of those pregnancies ended in miscarriage or birth defects linked to vaccination, the entire outcome could tip the other way.
Commercial data with no accountability
Then there’s the source of the data itself—a point entirely overlooked.
Rather than using clinical records from hospitals or national birth registries, the study relied entirely on a commercial database from Merative® MarketScan® Research Databases.
These databases are vast, aggregating de-identified insurance claims, prescriptions, lab results, and hospital records from more than 263 million Americans. But they are also privately owned, and their inner workings are entirely opaque.
Researchers using MarketScan data cannot verify whether the patients are real or theoretical, whether records have been altered, or how the data has been cleaned or processed before delivery.
In essence, they are working with a black box, one that comes with no guarantee of integrity.
Experts have already noted that the data from this unverified source shows signs of being unreliable.
The authors ran 93 separate statistical tests to look for differences in outcomes like birth defects. By chance alone, you’d expect a handful to be statistically significant. But none were.
The probability of that happening randomly is just 0.8%—a sign that the dataset may have been fabricated, or that its integrity is in question.
When two of the study authors – Dr Stacey Rowe and Dr Annette Regan – were asked if they had verified the authenticity of the MarketScan database—that is, if they could confirm these were ‘real’ patient data—they did not respond.
L: Dr Stacey Rowe, R: Dr Annette Regan
This isn’t a hypothetical problem.
The medical literature has already been rocked by the Surgisphere scandal, where fraudulent hospital datasets were used to produce papers in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine.
Those papers were eventually retracted, but only after independent researchers demanded to see the raw data and were denied – the data were likely fabricated.
Reassurance without evidence
Despite these glaring problems, the study’s conclusions are being used to reassure pregnant women.
In Australia, for example, the government’s official guidance recommends Covid-19 vaccination in pregnancy, stating that the “recommendations for pregnant women are the same as the general population.”
This, despite the fact that pregnant women were excluded from the pivotal clinical trials and no randomised studies have ever been completed to assess the vaccine’s safety in early-pregnancy.
The result is a landscape where pregnant women are asked to make a “shared decision” with their doctors—based on scientific literature that’s increasingly built on unverifiable data, flawed assumptions, and little to no independent scrutiny.
We are drifting into a new era where conclusions are based on data that sit behind corporate firewalls. An era where trust is expected, but no longer earned.
The Pediatrics study is a case in point.
It carries the imprimatur of authority, published in the flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. But, in reality, the analysis was based on commercial datasets that cannot be independently verified, and a methodology that systematically excludes the very outcomes it was supposed to assess.
This isn’t just bad science—it’s misleading by design.
And when it comes to pregnancy, where the stakes are literally life and death, that kind of scientific chicanery is a betrayal.
Pregnant women deserve better than a “trust us” approach to medicine.
They need full access to the data, honest communication about uncertainties, and above all, respect for their right to make informed decisions based on real evidence, not selective reporting.
Until that happens, we should remain sceptical of any study that asks us to believe in the evidence without seeing it.
NSW Premier Chris Minns Calls Free Speech a Government Liability
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 18, 2025
Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales, Australia, has done something that politicians rarely do — he’s said the quiet part out loud. In a rare moment of honesty, he’s admitted that the government sees free speech as a liability.
“I recognize and I fully said from the beginning, we don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in peace.”
Meaning: Your rights are negotiable, and the price is social harmony — as defined by the state.
The absurdity of this argument is hard to overstate. Historically, the country thrived on its rough-and-tumble political culture, where disagreements were hashed out in public rather than smothered under layers of legalese. The idea that Australians must now muzzle themselves to accommodate imported conflicts is an outright admission of failure by the political class.
Minns and his allies argue that restricting speech is necessary because multiculturalism has made Australia too volatile to handle open debate. But let’s take a step back. Why is Australia suddenly on edge? Is it because everyday Australians have become more hateful and intolerant, or is it because the government has spent decades encouraging division through identity politics?
The immediate context for Minns’ comments is the recent passage of hate speech laws, pushed through Parliament in a frenzy of moral panic. The justification? A crisis that turned out to be a hoax, reportedly concocted by criminals looking for lighter sentences — something the government allegedly knew early on.
MLC John Ruddick didn’t mince words when he addressed this in Parliament:
“Parliament was misinformed by the Minns government about the urgency of the bills referred to in one A, B, and C… this House calls on the Minns government to repeal the bills… and apologize for both misleading this Parliament, preventing a Parliamentary Inquiry, and further curbing free speech principles by these reactionary bills.”
Minns’ response? Doubling down:
“There have been some that have been agitating in the Parliament to nullify the laws to remove them off the statute books. Think about what kind of toxic message that would send to the NSW community.
“And I think the advocates for those changes need to explain what do they want people to have the right to say?
“What kind of racist abuse do they want to see or to be able to lawfully see on the streets of Sydney?”
This is an old trick — framing any challenge to speech restrictions as a demand for open racism. It’s dishonest, it’s lazy, and it conveniently ignores the fact that these laws will never be enforced evenly.
These laws will be used against dissenters. Against people who question government policies. Against critics of the ruling ideology.
If democracy means anything, it means the right to speak freely — even when that speech is unpopular. Even when it makes politicians uncomfortable. Because when free speech is sacrificed on the altar of “social harmony,” what you’re left with isn’t peace — it’s silence. And that silence is exactly what governments crave.
Russia’s Kursk Region Becomes Final Resting Place for NATO’s Top Tech
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – March 15, 2025
The near-total collapse of Ukraine’s operations in Kursk region has highlighted the folly of Zelensky’s obsession with throwing his best troops and materiel into a hopeless campaign. Here’s a selection of NATO equipment that has “found its peace in Kursk’s ground” over the past month, complete with photo and video evidence.
Russia’s Defense Ministry estimates that Ukraine has lost nearly 400 tanks, almost 2,800 armored vehicles and over 1,000 guns and mortars in fighting in Kursk region to date, and says over 85% of territories once occupied by Ukrainian forces have been freed.
Liberated areas contain scores of wrecked, burned out, damaged or abandoned vehicles, including some of NATO’s most advanced equipment:
M2A2 Bradley: Over 300 of these do-it-all American infantry fighting vehicles have been sent to Ukraine, with nearly half confirmed lost by Oryx. They’ve been spotted among other wrecked NATO equipment in Kursk region.
M1 Abrams: 31 of these custom-made monkey model American main battle tanks have been delivered to Ukraine. 20 lost to date. One recently spotted being towed away intact in Kursk region. Australia plans to send 49 more.
Leopard 1 AVLB Biber: Armored vehicle-launched bridge built on a German Leopard-1 tank chassis. 30+ sent to Ukraine. One recently found abandoned, in mint shape, in a Kursk village.
M777: A third of the 180 US-made 155mm howitzers sent to Ukraine have been lost, damaged, or abandoned to date, with several recently captured almost intact in Kursk region.
Stryker: Over 400 of these Canadian-built armored fighting vehicles have been transferred to Ukraine. At least 55 destroyed, some caught on Russian MoD FPV drone videos moments before meeting their fate.
BMC Kirpi II: 200 of these Turkish MRAPs have been sent to serve in Ukraine’s elite units. Scores destroyed, damaged or captured by Russian forces, including in Kursk.
HMMWV: 5,000 of these ubiquitous US vehicles, better known as Humvees, have been delivered to Ukraine. Scores captured on Russian FPV drone cam footage in Kursk region.
Roshel Senator: Over 1,700 of the Canadian-built armored cars have been delivered to Ukraine. Also spotted in Russian FPV drone videos.
MAXXPRO: About 440 these Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) have been sent to Ukraine by the US, with at least 197 lost to date, including in fighting for Kursk.
M113: 1,000+ of these ancient tracked APCs have been sent to Ukraine by the US and allies, with nearly 300 destroyed to date, including in Kursk region.
BATT UMG: Ukraine has received 116 of these US-made vehicles. Rarely seen, some are known to have met their fate on the battlefields of Kursk.
Bushmaster PMV: About 120 of these Australian-made Protected Mobility Vehicles have gone to Ukraine, some ending up in Kursk region, and at least 25 lost to date.
M240: Besides heavy equipment, an array of NATO small arms has also been destroyed or captured in Kursk as well, among them the FN M240 7.62mm machinegun, delivered to Ukraine by the US and France. In February, a Russian trooper in Kursk captured an M240 after storming a Ukrainian position and bringing the gun back to friendly lines.
Five Eyes Would Go Blind Without US Backing: US Army Vet and Intel Specialist
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 09.03.2025
Britain’s intelligence establishment reportedly started “rationing” what info to pass on to the US after Trump’s election, and his thrashing of Zelensky at the White House last month has sparked talk of a ‘breakaway’ ‘Four Eyes’ intel-sharing pact. Sputnik reached out to a leading US military intel specialist for details on what this could entail.
Sources told The Mail on Sunday that while joint work intercepting electronic communications could be ‘hard to disentangle’, human intelligence by agents on the ground could be held back from being shared with the US, especially “raw intelligence, which can be very exposing of sources if it falls into the wrong hands.”
Diplomatic sources, meanwhile, told the newspaper that the US intelligence establishment is “in a state of panic” over Trump’s approach, and actively destroying files on assets in Russia.
Five Eyes Without US is Nothing
“The US share is huge,” retired US Army Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik. “There’s very little the remaining Five Eyes would have without the US,” the observer noted, highlighting that America provides:
- Immense signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities including information from satellites (about 5,000 of the world’s roughly 8,000 satellites are American), in Rasmussen’s estimation
- a military feed from the US Defense Intelligence Agency
- substantive human intel
- real-time open-source info collection and analysis capabilities
- security intelligence via cooperation between the FBI and the Five Eyes’ allies’ analogs.
If the Five Eyes were to break up, Rasmussen doesn’t exclude the creation of new, regional intel-sharing alliances, like:
- Australia and New Zealand partnering up with Japan and South Korea
- The UK ramping up intel cooperation with France and Germany
As for the Five Eyes’ “global reach, the fusion of information, the mass experience, the analytical tools that are commonly operated…almost all the major ones have either been operated completely by the United States, or via a shared operation with the United States and another [country],” the observer summed up.
UK eyes intelligence alliance to share data with Ukraine
Al Mayadeen | March 9, 2025
The UK government is considering forming a new intelligence-sharing subgroup within the Five Eyes alliance in reaction to US President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday, citing anonymous defense officials.
The requests for the effort apparently arose after the US suspended information collaboration with Kiev and prevented the UK and other allies from sending American intelligence to Ukraine.
A new proposed subgroup would greenlight intelligence cooperation without a US veto, according to the British daily.
According to the Daily Mail, the new project is not about abandoning Five Eyes but rather about establishing a new Four Eyes suborganization within it.
Simultaneously, US allies are mulling lowering the intelligence they share with Washington, citing worries about the administration’s conciliatory attitude to Russia, according to NBC News.
These include “Israel” and Saudi Arabia, as well as Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, with the latter four being members of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence cooperation.
Officials in New Zealand, Australia, and Saudi Arabia declined to comment, while authorities in the United Kingdom, Canada, and “Israel” refuted the accusations.
The United States has temporarily suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine following a notable rift between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed on Wednesday.
The decision follows a public row between the two leaders during a meeting in the Oval Office last week, which also led to the suspension of critical US military aid to Ukraine.
Speaking to Fox Business, Ratcliffe stated that the pause in intelligence cooperation is linked to Trump’s concerns about Zelensky’s dedication to the peace process with Russia.
“President Trump had a real question about whether President Zelensky was committed to the peace process,” Ratcliffe said. He noted that the suspension is temporary and expressed confidence that the US would soon resume its close partnership with Ukraine.
For Ukraine, which is engaged in a war with Russia, US intelligence support is as vital as military supplies. The sudden halt in assistance has shocked many Ukrainians, who rely heavily on American backing in their war with Russia.
BP in crisis — The oil industry’s biggest loser on renewable energy
The iconic 120 year old company shares fall as rumors of a takeover spread
By Jo Nova | February 25, 2025
BP has lost a quarter of its share value in the last two weeks. The fall started when company profits turned out to be just $9 billion, down from $14b a year ago and $28b in 2022. As The Telegraph reports, “BP’s shareholders had realized that the green spending they supported in 2020 had halved their dividends.” But Shell, Chevron, and Exxon — the other oil giants — they were all doing much better.
Twenty years ago BP changed its branding to “Beyond Petroleum”. By 2020 the company was hellbent on getting there. Suicidally, the oil company pledged to reduce their own oil production by 40% by 2030, (which did nothing except help all their competitors) and promised to pivot into renewable power. BP set itself a target to increase renewables generation by a factor of twenty this decade. The media gushed — “BP Shuns Fossil Fuels“, said Politico. BP supposedly shone a light on “stranded oil and gas”!
Thus and verily, in mid 2020, with exquisite timing, BP management leapt headlong in the magical energy pit. They were sure that after the pandemic the world would ‘build back better’ with renewables “so their economies would be more resilient”... CEO Bernard Looney actually said that (probably while reading from the WEF handbook of “What to Wear for Billionaires”).
So BP flagged a write-down of $18 billion dollars in fossil fuel assets and talked of “accelerating” it’s green investments. Then everything went wrong. Just after BP bet the house on renewables, the Ukraine war broke out and everyone needed oil and gas and no one needed another wind farm. There was a bonanza selling fossil fuels as prices lifted off (seen in the BP income in 2022) but suddenly no one could afford to buy real energy to make solar panels and turbines, and no one had much cash left to buy randomly-failing generators either. It’s been all downhill in renewables ever since.
Prior to this, BP operated Australia’s largest oil refinery for 66 years in Kwinana, Western Australia until it closed in 2021. Until a few weeks ago, BP was planning to launch a $600 million biofuel project on the same site, and the Australian government was thinking of tossing $1 billion dollars at a hydrogen project there too. They were supposed to turn cooking oil into av-gas and renewable diesel, and be a hub for hydrogen. It’s sadly pathetic and unravelling at warp speed.
The Telegraph has all the sordid details as British Petroleum fights for life.
BP faces ‘existential crisis’ after ruinous attempt to go green
The energy giant has vowed a ‘fundamental reset’ after its costly foray into net zero
Johnathon Leake and Ben Marlow, The Telegraph
Five years on from that speech in February 2020, the company is beleaguered by a ruthless activist investor, under pressure to boost its flatlining share price and considering a return to the oil and gas exploration that made it so successful to begin with.
The abrupt turn follows decades of crisis at one of Britain’s most venerable institutions. Today, its future is more uncertain than ever.
To win round doubters, he is expected to announce a major break with the last five years – shifting away from net zero and back towards its oil and gas heritage.
Pushed by analysts, Auchincloss, Looney’s replacement, confirmed a halt to all investment in wind and solar. “We have completely decapitalised renewables,” he said.
We can blame management, who had been on the fruity green path since 1997, and screwed up majorly, but oddly, 88% of BP shareholders also voted in favor of cutting oil and growing renewables which doesn’t make much sense. Not unless the rank and file votes were unknowingly cast-by-proxy through their hedge funds and pension accounts. Were 88% of British Petroleum investors really fooled into thinking oil was “bad” — or was BP quietly undermined by the big banker blob cartel who may have bossed all the pension funds into voting for Hari Kari? Larry Fink, head of BlackRock, pumped up the whole renewables bubble in 2020, and the bankers were known to boss around whole countries with threats of high interest rates if they didn’t behave.
Hypothetically if the Big Bankers were heavily invested in renewable stocks (which they were), then during a bubble, it would work out well for them if one of the largest oil and gas companies performed a large public flip to renewables. And as a bonus, if BP shareholders were stiffed in the process, the wreckage of a great company could be picked up cheaply a few years later…
So management were crazy, but they probably had help from The Blob Bankers and the Blob Media to really screw things up.
USAID – AusAID: Same playbook different actors
By Alan Moran | Regulatory Review | February 18, 2025
Donald Trump tweeted “Looks like billions of dollars have been stolen at USAID and other agencies much of it going to the fake news media as a payoff for creating good stories about the Democrats”. Revelations about corruption in the USAID beg questions about the integrity of Australia’s aid programs.
There are long-standing questions dating back to the Clinton days and before the Rudd ALP Government.
The Clintons are estimated to be worth between $120 million and $240 million having been in debt by $16 million when Bill left office in January 2001. According to the newsagency, Associated Press, 85 private sector stakeholders, which is more than half of the non-government people who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state, gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. This amounted to $156 million. In addition, Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity. Australia was among these governments.
According to Grok, in:
- February 2006: $25 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer
- October 2006: Another 15 million was given for HIV/AIDS initiatives by the Clinton Foundation
- April 1 2008 – September 5 2008: Under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd $10 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation
- September 2012: Under Prime Minister Julia Gillard $14 million was donated while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. Gillard later Chaired the Foundation’s Global Partnership for Education
- September 22 2014: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced a commitment of $88 million over five years to the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a sister organisation to the Clinton Foundation
Miranda Devine reported, “The Abbott government topped up the left-wing organisation’s coffers with another $140 million in 2014, bringing total Australian largesse to $460 million, according to a press release from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. The funding ceased in 2016, when Trump assumed office.
Section 70.2 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 makes it illegal for Australian individuals or companies to bribe foreign officials. Apparently, the law does not extend to Australian officials and politicians!
AusAID (which Tony Abbott located within DFAT in 2013) follows a similar playbook to USAID. Thus:
- The Office of Development Assistance (ODA) investments valued at $3 million and above must have a gender equality objective.
- DFAT has a $3.5 million Inclusion and Equality Fund to support LGBTQIA+ organisations to catalyse change in their communities.
- ODA spent $619 million (15 per cent of its budget) on climate related issues in 2022/23. It is not clear that grants to NGOs pressing climate issues are included.
Other Australian agencies are also involved in foreign expenditures. These include considerable funding for activities associated with climate change under the IPCC and the biennial Conference of Parties in which Foreign Affairs participate (as do CSIRO, BoM, Industry, Agriculture and others). These activities will surely soon be fully recognised as the gross destructive squandering of resources that they always were.
The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) was initially launched in 2008 by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who committed up to $100 million annually as part of his aim to make Australia a global leader in CCS technology. Over 15 years of total failure has not daunted its subsidy-seekers’ zeal.
More recently, the Quad Clean Energy Supply Chain Diversification Program, a spin-off from the diplomatic partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United States, has a $50 million budget administered by “Business Australia”. Round 1, which closed on February 10, provides up to $2.5 million in funding for Australian and Indo-Pacific joint applications for studies to develop and diversify clean energy supply chains in the Indo-Pacific region. Such a scheme would not find support from President Trump but will program inertia allow it to survive the changed US agenda?
If Australia is ever to get the Trumpian leadership it needs, such programs will have to be excised, perhaps by using techniques, pioneered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), involving freezing bank accounts.
Whose Universities are Better – China vs. the US? Nature Magazine might upset the conventional wisdom
By Hua Bin | February 9, 2025
It’s a widely held truism that the US has the best universities in the world despite a mediocre secondary education system. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale and U Penn are marque brands that are admired worldwide. They attract students from every country and enjoy enormous financial resources from tuitions, endowments, and grants.
On the other hand, Chinese universities are generally considered by the west as diploma mills with unrecognizable and generic names – who can remember the Southern University of Technology.
While Chinese universities may not graduate many students that command astronomical starting salaries or hotly sought after by high flying hedge funds, they seem to be progressing quite nicely in one of the core missions of academic research institutions, i.e. conducing world class research in science and technology.
The prestigious Nature Magazine published its annual Nature Index ranking of the world’s top research institutions and universities in 2024. The Index is illuminating.
– The ranking was based on 75,000 high impact papers in the Nature Index 2024 Global Research Leaders from Nov 2023 to Oct 2024
– It ranked 18,588 research institutes and universities worldwide
– China Academy of Sciences (CAS) is ranked No. 1 global research institute, with 8881 counts of top research output, more than double of No. 2 ranked Harvard University (3830 counts). I wrote about the research prowess of CAS in an earlier Substack article.
– 8 out of top 10 research institutes are Chinese. They include the University of Science and Technology of China, Peking University, Zhejiang University (where the DeepSeek founder graduated from), and Tsinghua University. The other non-Chinese institutes are Harvard University and Max Planck Society in Germany.
– 12 out of top 20 research universities are Chinese. 3 are American (Harvard, Stanford, and MIT). Sichuan University (No. 15), a regional university in Southwest China, is ranked higher than Stanford (No. 16), MIT (No. 17), Oxford (No. 18) and University of Tokyo (No. 19).
– 26 out of top 50 are Chinese. 14 are American. Soochow University (No. 30), decidedly not considered a top tier school by Chinese high schoolers, outranks Yale (No. 31). Xiamen University (No. 37) is ranked higher than Berkeley (No. 38), Columbia (No. 39), Cornell (No. 44), and University of Chicago (No. 49).
– Roughly half of top 100 are Chinese. Hunan University (No. 51) outranks Princeton (No. 52). You get the drift. Interestingly, Russia Academy of Sciences (RAS) made a cameo at No. 98. No universities from India or Australia made it to the top 100 list.
Westerners look at Chinese technological breakthroughs like DeepSeek or Huawei in disbelief and sour envy. Once you dig into the foundational causes of the emergence of these tech successes, you will understand they only represent the tip of the iceberg. Soon enough, you will see the Bummock, i.e. the bulk of the iceberg. Many upsets waiting ahead.
Australian Tribunal Rules Against eSafety Commissioner’s “Informal” Censorship of X Post
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 7, 2025
An Australian woman whose X post was censored based on what are known as “informal” notices, issued by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to social platforms, has appealed against the decision and won.
This was more of an uphill battle than getting censorship decisions revoked usually involves: the “informal” nature of the notices means that normally they cannot even be appealed – and eSafety’s main argument was that the appeal should not even be considered.
But the X user, Celine Baumgarten, managed to convince the Administrative Review Tribunal the censorship notice should not be considered “informal” and that her complaint was therefore within the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
Baumgarten’s post from May 2024 detailed a “queer club” in Melbourne that was operating in a primary school, organized for children 8 to 12 years old.
“There is absolutely NO place for any type of LGBTxyz club in a PRIMARY SCHOOL, or any school for that matter,” Baumgarten, herself a bisexual and an activist, wrote at the time, adding, “Children should NOT be learning about sexualities at such a young, impressionable age. This is foul. Leave the kids ALONE.”
Next, in swooped Grant’s office, with what they maintain was no more than a “complaint alert” to X – as opposed to a removal notice – referring to “adult cyber-abuse material” as the reason to have Baumgarten’s post blocked for X users in Australia.
eSafety essentially tried to “sneak in” censorship under the guise of an “informal notice” – aware that an official takedown request was impossible given that they found their own rules were not violated, not in the entirety of their many parts.
X erred on the side of censorship and blocked the post for two months, to then inform Baumgarten this was done “in error.” Interestingly, Instagram, which received the same eSafety notice, ignored it.
And now the tribunal has done much more than vindicate Baumgarten; the judge broke down eSafety’s process to reveal that while asserting that the notice was “informal” and referring to the terms of use X has for itself – the complaint was actually lodged via X’s channels “for use by government authorities to submit valid legal requests for the removal from X of potentially illegal content.”
All this was interpreted by Justice Emilios Kyrou to mean that the censorship notice was clearly official and therefore eligible to be appealed.
Since eSafety prefers what it calls “informal” to “official” takedown notices (several hundred vs. three or four just over the past year), the implication of the ruling could be significant – prompting a review of other such “informal” reports.
Australian cricket commentator sacked for noting mass deaths in Gaza
By Oscar GRENFELL | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 5, 2025
For the second time, the cricket world has provided a petty, vindictive and downright ridiculous example of the broader campaign by the powers-that-be to silence opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
In December 2023, the International Cricket Council (ICC) forbade Australian batsman Usman Khawaja from taking the field in international matches with shoes that read “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right.” The bureaucrats, who run the game from the ICC’s headquarters in the dictatorial United Arab Emirates, deemed those statements to be “political” because they were regarded as a reference to Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians.
The ICC’s suspicious and hostile attitude to professions of human rights and basic decency has now been matched by the Sports Entertainment Network, which runs the popular SEN sports radio broadcaster.
Over the weekend, SEN unceremoniously dumped Peter Lalor, a widely-respected cricket commentator, over posts he made on his X/Twitter account referencing Gaza. The sacking was done in a hurry. Lalor was in Sri Lanka as a freelance commentator commissioned by SEN to cover the ongoing Australia-Sri Lanka Test cricket series when he was dismissed.
Lalor had commentated the first test in Galle without incident, and was scheduled to cover the second. Why then the sudden rush by SEN to sever all ties with a leading cricket expert? For anyone familiar with the witch-hunts of the past 16 months that have accompanied the Israeli war crimes, inevitably “upset” and “offended” Zionists were in the picture.
As per Lalor’s account, “I was asked by station boss Craig Hutchison, who was civil, if I didn’t care that my retweeting of events in Gaza made Jewish people in Melbourne feel unsafe. I said I didn’t want anyone to feel unsafe.” Predictably, Hutchison reportedly related accusations that Lalor may be an antisemite, which has been the go-to line for shutting down opposition to the assault on Gaza.
Lalor went on: “The following day Hutchison told me that because the ‘sound of my voice made people feel unsafe’ and that people are ‘triggered by my voice,’ I could not cover the cricket for them anymore.”
If Zionists were telling SEN management that Lalor’s measured commentary of a Test cricket match was making them feel “unsafe,” the appropriate response would have been to dismiss the remarks as absurd.
More to the point, SEN should have noted that the complainants were making a cynical bid to have someone sacked for disagreeing with them politically. They should have told the witch-hunters to stop harassing their employee.
But, as has so often been the case with the Zionist witch-hunts, SEN management rolled over.
After Lalor’s sacking, Hutchison issued a nauseating statement. “SEN Cricket is a celebration of differences and nationalities,” it proclaimed, although those “differences” evidently did not extend to opposing the unfolding genocide or referencing the mass killing of Palestinians. To justify its censorship, the statement went on to describe the station as a “a place where our SEN audience can escape what is an increasingly complex and sometimes triggering world.”
Like the saga of Khawaja’s shoes, the most striking aspect of this incident is the complete mismatch between Lalor’s “offence” and the response. Lalor is not accused of ever having mentioned Gaza during a broadcast, so the references to the sound of his voice are presumably because it reminds the Zionists of his X/Twitter feed.
Moreover, the posts on his feed are simply not of a highly controversial character. In any objective assessment, Lalor comes across as a humane and democratically minded man, disturbed by the mass killing of Palestinians and wishing for an end to war.
Most of his posts were retweets from other accounts. As per Lalor’s account, Hutchison indicated that SEN was hit with complaints over Lalor during the first Test match, played from January 29 to February 1. It is difficult to determine when something was retweeted, as against when it was posted by the original account.
But some of Lalor’s X content around that time included retweeting a post reporting that “Palestine Red Crescent teams have recovered another 14 decomposed Palestinian bodies from several areas on the Rashid Coastal Road in Gaza.”
Another was a statement by a Palestinian Christian leader, condemning the invitation by US President Donald Trump for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Washington. The pastor wrote, “The man who has an arrest warrant for him from the ICC [International Criminal Court] is invited to the White House as a guest of honor. This is the world we live in. Faith leaders must make their voices heard in times like this.” Other retweets by Lalor have highlighted the plight of Palestinian children and prisoners.
People instigating a witch-hunt over such content, which has nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism, are simply supporters of war crimes.
Media and cricket figures have spoken out in defence of Lalor.
Khawaja declared on Instagram: “Standing up for the people of Gaza is not antisemitic nor does it have anything to do with my Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia, but everything to do with the Israeli government and their deplorable actions. It has everything to do with justice and human rights.” He concluded: “Pete is a good guy with a good heart. He deserves better.”
As per Lalor’s account of the sacking, “I was told in one call there were serious organisations making complaints; in another, I was told that this was not the case.”
Throughout the genocide, right-wing Zionist lobby groups that collaborate closely with the Israeli state and support its every crime against the Palestinians have fraudulently been depicted by governments and the media as representative Jewish organisations. Their every pronouncement has been reported uncritically and they have had access to the corridors of power.
These groups have repeatedly instigated witch-hunts targeting critics of Israel. Journalist Antoinette Lattouf is currently in the Federal Court, having brought a case against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for unlawful termination. Lattouf was sacked halfway through a week-long fill-in position, after a concerted campaign by Zionist lawyers who barraged the ABC with vexatious complaints.
Lattouf’s sacking, ostensibly because she shared a post to her personal social media from Human Rights Watch condemning Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, occurred in December 2023. The dismissal of Lalor, more than a year later, in such similar circumstances, underscores the normalisation of witch-hunting and politically motivated sackings by the Australian political, media and corporate establishment.
Such repressive measures set a precedent for broader attacks on working people as they enter into struggle against the broader eruption of militarism, including Australia’s transformation into a frontline state for a US-led war against China, completed by the same federal Labor government that has consistently backed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
Why is the top US spy alliance afraid of Trump?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 01.02.2025
America’s Five Eyes partners – Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand – fear that US President Donald Trump’s deep state crackdown and spy apparatus overhaul could destabilize their intelligence network, reports The Wall Street Journal.
What’s driving their concerns?
Free Riders
- Trump may see Five Eyes as a bloated racket exploiting US resources, per the WSJ. The US spends nearly $100 billion on intelligence – 10 times more than the other four combined.
Russia Collusion Hoax
- Five Eyes were entangled in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, largely pushed by US intelligence.
- The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, later debunked, was triggered by an Australian tip in 2016.
- Britain’s GCHQ may have wiretapped Trump during his 2016 campaign, as the White House suggested in 2017.
- Trump hasn’t directly targeted Five Eyes lately, but their unease suggests they have plenty to hide.
What Triggered the Panic?
- The “world’s most powerful spy alliance” sounded the alarm as Trump’s intelligence picks, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, near confirmation in Congress.
- Gabbard, nominated for director of National Intelligence, vowed to fight weaponized intelligence, citing Iraq War lies and the Russia collusion hoax.
- Patel, set to lead the FBI, pledged to curb overseas operations and increase transparency.
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Is Israel Uniquely Evil?
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
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