Trump’s Picks for Surgeon General and Top Posts at FDA, CDC Earn Mixed Reviews
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 25, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead three key federal public health agencies “would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health” — but they’re also “controversial,” according to NPR.
Trump tapped Dr. Marty Makary to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general.
“The roles will be key to helping to enact Trump’s second term health agenda, which could include agency reform and changes to public health policies,” Axios reported.
The three agencies report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Earlier this month, Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to lead HHS.
Weldon previously criticized COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. Makary and Nesheiwat first expressed support for vaccines and other pandemic-related policies but have become more critical in recent years.
Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who has worked with the FDA as a consumer representative, addressed mainstream criticism of the nominations. She told The Defender that “the pharmaceutical and medical-industrial complex is very worried.”
She added:
“The pharmaceutical and food industries have faced little resistance from regulators and Congress. The strong pushback we’re seeing now suggests they fear what might happen under an administration willing to challenge the status quo.”
Dr. Joseph Varon, president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender, “Leadership in these agencies is critical for fostering trust in public health and ensuring evidence-based policies. We hope the nominees are committed to transparency, innovation and addressing the ongoing challenges in healthcare, particularly the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Makary: U.S. government the ‘greatest perpetrator of misinformation’
Makary, a public health researcher and surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, developed the surgical safety checklist, adopted by the World Health Organization and credited with saving many lives. Makary worked with the first Trump administration, including on surprise medical billing, NPR reported.
Earlier this year, Makary published “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” The book highlighted evidence that many modern-day health crises in the U.S. were caused or hastened by the medical establishment.
According to The Gateway Pundit, “Makary was initially an advocate for the COVID vaccine but changed his perspective as more data became available.” NPR noted that Makary “voiced support for lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking” but later “became increasingly outspoken” against such policies.
In 2021, Makary called the Biden administration’s CDC “the most political CDC in history” for not being forthcoming with the public about COVID-19 and the vaccines. According to the New York Post, he criticized the CDC and Biden administration for their “unsupported claims” about COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.
Makary has also been vocal about the potency of natural immunity to COVID-19, criticizing the medical establishment’s “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”
In May, he criticized The New York Times for being slow to report on the thousands of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Last year, Makary said during congressional testimony that “public health officials have made many tragic mistakes during the pandemic.” Those mistakes included ignoring natural immunity, dismissing the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab leak, closing schools, masking toddlers and “pushing boosters for young people.”
In September, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy at a congressional roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the chronic disease epidemic. During the roundtable, Makary said, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government.”
In his announcement, Trump said Makary would work with Kennedy to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender Makary has a “steep learning curve regarding vaccines in general” but has taken “encouraging stances late in the pandemic about the COVID vaccine and countermeasures.”
Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, said Makary represents “a mixed bag of mainstream medicine and outside-the-box thinking.” He credited Makary for opposing “mandatory COVID-19 injection boosters” and criticizing the FDA’s rejection of natural immunity.
Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead praised Makary’s nomination. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a physician with a deeper understanding of what ails our healthcare system and what’s needed to restore integrity to the FDA after six decades of regulatory capture.”
“Makary seems uniquely positioned to bring meaningful change,” Witczak said. “He understands the systemic harm caused by overmedicalization and the corporate capture of healthcare. His history of challenging mainstream narratives during COVID shows he isn’t afraid to speak out.”
Weldon sponsored bill to ban mercury from vaccines
Dr. Dave Weldon is an Army veteran who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1995 and 2009.
In a statement, Kennedy praised Weldon’s experience, saying he “will bring the truth and transparency needed to restore the public’s confidence” in the CDC.
In 2007, Weldon sponsored a bill that would have banned mercury from vaccines, expressing concern about “an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC,” because the agency promotes vaccination while assessing their safety.
According to Politico, Weldon also “raised concerns about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and Gardasil, Merck’s papillomavirus virus, or HPV vaccine.
While in Congress, Weldon also introduced legislation outlawing human cloning and helped secure a deal that banned patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos, according to The Associated Press.
According to NPR, Trump said Weldon would “proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic,” and “prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards.”
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said Weldon “was sounding the alarm on failures in the vaccine system 20 years ago.” He said Weldon attended conferences like Defeat Autism Now and listened to mothers of vaccine-injured children, which is “not a behavior many doctors are inclined to do.”
Hooker said he was “very encouraged” by Weldon’s nomination, and that he’d like to know more about Weldon’s position on “the bloated vaccine schedule as well as COVID-19 countermeasures.”
He credited Weldon with helping independent thimerosal researchers gain access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a collaborative project that monitors vaccine safety and conducts studies on vaccine side effects.
Hooker, who participated in that project, said “Our access to the VSD was rescinded months later because [the CDC] didn’t like our results, which included a definitive link between thimerosal and autism. Weldon indeed will need to implement myriad changes to the flawed and fraudulent process.”
Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will face a Senate confirmation process, due to legislation passed in 2022, NPR reported.
Nesheiwat: ‘egregious unethical & harmful’ to add COVID shots to childhood schedule
Nesheiwat, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is a medical contributor to Fox News and medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.
Nesheiwat previously promoted the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, NPR reported. According to The Gateway Pundit, Nesheiwat has since changed her position and her “recent statements indicate a significant shift in her perspective.”
In October 2022, Nesheiwat tweeted, “If CDC approves a COVID vaccine addition to the routine schedule of vax for kids, it will mark the most egregious unethical & harmful decision to children. No mandates. Especially for a vax that can’t prevent disease.”
Nesheiwat has also questioned the efficacy of the COVID shots, tweeting in February 2023, “Covid vax does not prevent disease like we once thought it did per the cdc /Pfizer etc.,” and has tweeted in support of natural immunity.
In a statement, Trump called Nesheiwat an advocate for preventive medicine and praised her “commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”
Mead said Nesheiwat’s about-face on vaccines “shows she has the ability to think critically,” which could help her “serve as a bridge builder at a time of deep division.”
A ‘historic opportunity to shake up the establishment’
Calling healthcare in the U.S. “horribly broken,” Hooker said the three nominees will face several challenges if confirmed because federal public health agencies require reforms.
Hooker said:
“Corporate influence, including the corporate capture of these agencies, is the biggest problem to be tackled. First and foremost, we need to protect children … from the highly flawed policies of these agencies.
“All influences from Big Pharma, Big Food and Big Ag need to be completely rooted out and the whole edifice should be rebuilt brick-by-brick to include only those policies that help and never harm children.”
Gilmore said public health agencies should publicize “all the data they have available.” He also called for a ban on vaccine mandates. “We have to be able to sue in a real court for vaccine injuries,” he added.
Varon called for independent clinical trials and for “independent scientific inquiry and reducing undue influence from corporate or political pressures.” He also called for promoting early treatment protocols for emerging diseases and giving physicians “the flexibility to treat patients with evidence-based approaches.”
“This moment represents a historic opportunity to shake up the establishment,” Witczak said. “After years of feeling like leaders were paying lip service — or working against the public — I finally see hope for meaningful reform. It’s time to restore these agencies’ missions to serve the public, prioritize safety, and act with integrity.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Picked For NIH Chief as Free Speech Takes Center Stage in Science
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 26, 2024
With a decision that has garnered the attention of both supporters and skeptics of America’s public health establishment, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. For a nation battered by years of pandemic policies, conflicting narratives, and public mistrust, there’s more to this nomination— it’s a declaration.
Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and a leading voice in health policy, has been a consistent advocate for evidence-based decision-making and open scientific discourse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he gained national attention for his principled stance against lockdowns and sweeping mandates, which he argued caused more harm than good. Now, he’s poised to bring that same conviction to one of the most influential scientific institutions in the world.
Rather than being welcomed as a critical voice, Bhattacharya faced vilification from a system allergic to dissent.
Fighting for Free Speech in Science
Perhaps Bhattacharya’s most defining moment came when he fought back against censorship. The Stanford professor became a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of colluding with Big Tech to silence dissenting voices on public health.
The suppression of ideas, Bhattacharya argued, isn’t just an affront to the First Amendment; it’s antithetical to the scientific method. By standing up, he wasn’t just defending his views but ensuring that future debates about public health policy could happen in the open, where they belong.
A New Era for the NIH
With his appointment as NIH director, Bhattacharya is stepping into a role that carries enormous responsibility. But for a man who has spent his career challenging conventional wisdom, this is an opportunity to turn the page on a period of public disillusionment with science.
In an X post following the announcement, Bhattacharya, who was once blacklisted from Twitter under the old regime, promised to reform America’s scientific institutions to make them “worthy of trust again” and to ensure that NIH-funded research would focus on improving health outcomes for all Americans.
President Trump underscored this vision, calling Bhattacharya a leader who will restore the NIH to its “Gold Standard” while addressing America’s greatest health challenges. Paired with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another advocate for reform, Bhattacharya is set to tackle systemic issues such as chronic illness, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and the erosion of public trust in science.
Stunning Revelations in Massive Robert Koch Institute Leak
Breathtaking November 2 presentation in the German Parliament
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 9, 2024
A massive leak of internal e-mails and memos from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (federal agency and research institute for controlling infectious disease) reveals that the institute’s scientists understood that virtually every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic response was NOT guided by science, but by political machinations to spread fear, control the population, and promote the experimental vaccines. On November 2, 2024, Professor Stefan Homburg gave a presentation on the leaked documents in the German Parliament.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have suspected that governments throughout the world were committing the greatest organized fraud in history, but I still found Professor Homburg’s presentation to be absolutely breathtaking in the sheer ruthlessness of the lies and manipulation revealed in these leaked documents. Perhaps the most perfidious is a memo from September 28, 2020.
Translation: 28.09.2020: FDA approval [of COVID-19 vaccines] before the US Elections is not desired, also not by European authorities.
In other words, both U.S. and European public health authorities were afraid the COVID-19 vaccines—which had been heralded as the forthcoming saviors of mankind—could help to get Donald Trump elected if they were approved before the election. And so they found it expedient to withhold approval until after the election, even though they claimed the vaccines could save millions of lives.
I strongly encourage everyone to watch the video presentation (in German with English subtitles) and to share it far and wide.
A whistleblower obtained 10GB from Robert-Koch-Institute, the German CDC. This so-called RKI-Leak reveals that Covid was a scam from start to finish. The presentation took place in the second largest room of the German Bundestag, which is actually intended for committees of inquiry. Recorded 2 November 2024 in Berlin, English subtitles provided by the speaker.
Internet sources:
The RKI-Leak The Federal Ministry of Health has confirmed the authenticity of the leak. You can download the entire material anonoymously and free of charge from https://rki-transparenzbericht.de/
Here is a convenient search tool: https://www.rkileak.com/
Lauterbach‘s Post on X: https://x.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/…
Lauterbach and political independence https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/rk… Spahn: Test, test, test https://www.aerztezeitung.de/Politik/…
CNN reporting emergency authorization https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/11/he…
RKI-Grapah Influenca like illnesses (ILI) https://influenza.rki.de/Wochenberich…
WDR-Graph vaccine development https://www.quarks.de/gesundheit/medi…
Lauterbach on the unvaccinated https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschla…
Citation Dr. Brigitte Keller-Stanislawki https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/gesun…
Steinmeier, Merkel, Scholz, Lauterbach, Spahn were allegedly vaccinated https://www.bundespraesident.de/Share… https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichte… https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutsc… Lauterbach on child vaccination https://x.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/…
RKI risk levels (deleted, only available from the internet archive) Go to https://archive.ph and type:https:/www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Risikobewertung.html Intensive care unit occupation https://infektionsradar.gesund.bund.d…
The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide
By Jeffrey A Tucker | Brownstone Institute | November 7, 2024
No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse.
Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed.
It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back.
Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.
Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel.
The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy.
It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”
“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings. This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data. Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”
By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided.
The meaning of “shielding” is “to reduce the number of severe Covid-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (‘high-risk’) and the general population (‘low-risk’). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or ‘green zones’ established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector, or community level depending on the context and setting. They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.”
In other words, this is what used to be concentration camps.
Who are these people who would be rounded up? They are “older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions.” Who determines this? Public health authorities. The purpose? The CDC explains: “physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population” allows authorities “to prioritize the use of the limited available resources.”
This sounds a lot like condemning people to death in the name of protecting them.
The model establishes three levels. First is the household level. Here high-risk people are“physically isolated from other household members.” That alone is objectionable. Elders need people to take care of them. They need love and to be surrounded by family. The CDC should never imagine that it would intervene in households to force old people into separate places.
The model jumps from households to the “neighborhood level.” Here we have the same approach: forced separation of those deemed vulnerable.
From there, the model jumps again to the “camp/sector level.” Here it is different. “A group of shelters such as schools, community buildings within a camp/sector (max 50 high-risk individuals per single green zone) where high-risk individuals are physically isolated together. One entry point is used for exchange of food, supplies, etc. A meeting area is used for residents and visitors to interact while practicing physical distancing (2 meters). No movement into or outside the green zone.”
Yes, you read that correctly. The CDC is here proposing concentration camps for the sick or anyone they deem to be in danger of medically significant consequences of infection.
Further: “to minimize external contact, each green zone should include able-bodied high-risk individuals capable of caring for residents who have disabilities or are less mobile. Otherwise, designate low-risk individuals for these tasks, preferably who have recovered from confirmed COVID-19 and are assumed to be immune.”
The plan says in passing, contradicting thousands of years of experience, “Currently, we do not know if prior infection confers immunity.” Therefore the only solution is to minimize all exposure throughout the whole population. Getting sick is criminalized.
These camps require a “dedicated staff” to “monitor each green zone. Monitoring includes both adherence to protocols and potential adverse effects or outcomes due to isolation and stigma. It may be necessary to assign someone within the green zone, if feasible, to minimize movement in/out of green zones.”
The people housed in these camps need to have good explanations of why they are denied even basic religious freedom. The report explains:
“Proactive planning ahead of time, including strong community engagement and risk communication is needed to better understand the issues and concerns of restricting individuals from participating in communal practices because they are being shielded. Failure to do so could lead to both interpersonal and communal violence.”
Further, there must be some mechanisms to prohibit suicide:
Additional stress and worry are common during any epidemic and may be more pronounced with COVID-19 due to the novelty of the disease and increased fear of infection, increased childcare responsibilities due to school closures, and loss of livelihoods. Thus, in addition to the risk of stigmatization and feeling of isolation, this shielding approach may have an important psychological impact and may lead to significant emotional distress, exacerbate existing mental illness or contribute to anxiety, depression, helplessness, grief, substance abuse, or thoughts of suicide among those who are separated or have been left behind. Shielded individuals with concurrent severe mental health conditions should not be left alone. There must be a caregiver allocated to them to prevent further protection risks such as neglect and abuse.
The biggest risk, the document explains, is as follows:
“While the shielding approach is not meant to be coercive, it may appear forced or be misunderstood in humanitarian settings.”
(It should go without saying but this “shielding” approach suggested here has nothing to do with focused protection of the Great Barrington Declaration. Focused protection specifically says: “schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”)
In four years of research, and encountering truly shocking documents and evidence of what happened in the Covid years, this one certainly ranks up at the top of the list of totalitarian schemes for pathogenic control prior to vaccination. It is quite simply mind-blowing that such a scheme could ever be contemplated.
Who wrote it? What kind of deep institutional pathology exists that enabled this to be contemplated? The CDC has 10,600 full-time employees and contractors and a budget of $11.5 billion. In light of this report, and everything else that has gone on there for four years, both numbers should be zero.
Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
Appeals Court Rules Against CHD, RFK Jr. in Landmark Censorship Case
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 5, 2024
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is weighing next steps after an appeals court late Monday ruled against CHD and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in their landmark censorship case against the Biden administration.
The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the plaintiffs — CHD, Kennedy and news consumer Connie Sampognaro — have no legal basis to sue the Biden administration for pressuring tech giants to censor their social media posts.
Monday’s ruling overturned a lower court decision, made in August by Judge Terry Doughty from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, who ruled the plaintiffs do have standing to sue the administration.
Standing is the legal doctrine requiring plaintiffs to show they’ve suffered direct and concrete injuries and that those injuries could be redressed in court in order to sue.
The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Biden — filed in March 2023 — alleges top government officials and federal agencies “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor their constitutionally protected speech.
“We are, of course, disappointed with and disagree with the 5th Circuit’s decision here,” CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.
Mack Rosenberg added:
“We believe that the additional evidence CHD presented more than sufficiently established standing for Children’s Health Defense. We pointed the court to ongoing censorship activities by the government and we demonstrated that the government has a significant and improper role in the social media platforms’ censorship of CHD.”
Mack Rosenberg said that plaintiffs are weighing the next steps.
Censorship lawsuits against Biden administration continue to drag on
The decision marks the latest major development in the ongoing anti-censorship litigation against the Biden administration.
Two separate cases — Murthy v. Missouri (originally Missouri v. Biden) and Kennedy v. Biden were filed in May 2022 and March 2023 respectively against the Biden administration in Louisiana District Court.
The cases have different plaintiffs but make similar allegations: that the administration colluded with social media companies to censor plaintiffs’ speech.
Both cases cited the disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter Files,” other lawsuits and news reports — revealing threats by President Joe Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor content that ran counter to official narratives, including those on COVID-19 origins and vaccines.
Doughty consolidated the two cases, allowing them to share processes, such as discovery of evidence. However, the courts continued to hear and rule on the cases separately.
Plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden sought and won a preliminary injunction in the lower court to prevent the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to censor certain content. The administration appealed in July 2023 and in June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the injunction.
The Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing because there was insufficient evidence they were directly injured by the government’s actions.
The Louisiana District Court later granted a preliminary injunction in the Kennedy v. Biden case; however, the court simultaneously issued a stay pending the Supreme Court’s decision on the injunction in Missouri v. Biden.
After the Supreme Court struck down the injunction in Missouri v. Biden, the 5th Circuit sent the Kennedy v. Biden case back to the District Court to rule on standing, where plaintiffs presented supplementary evidence.
The Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs argued they had a stronger case for standing than the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden because there is explicit evidence that both Kennedy and CHD were specific targets of censorship and that they continue to be censored.
In a declaration by CHD President Mary Holland, Holland said CHD was deplatformed from Facebook and YouTube in August and September 2021 and continues to be deplatformed from major social media sites to this day.
Doughty found the government’s conduct is traceable to direct statements and instructions to social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. He said Kennedy and CHD showed they faced ongoing injuries that could be redressed by the court.
In October, a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit heard oral arguments in the Kennedy v. Biden case.
In its ruling late yesterday, the 5th Circuit disagreed with Doughty and concluded CHD, Kennedy and Sampognaro lacked standing for the same reasons the Supreme Court found the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs lacked standing.
The court didn’t deny that pressure to censor and subsequent censorship of Kennedy and CHD had happened. Instead, it said the meetings between the government and social media companies had stopped in 2022.
Even if pressure exerted at that time led to the platforms censoring CHD, the organization could not tie ongoing censorship to government action, the court ruled. Therefore, plaintiffs have a “redressability problem,” and don’t have standing, it concluded.
Kennedy’s campaign Chief of Staff Brigid Rasmussen also described a series of content moderation actions taken by social media platforms against the Kennedy campaign.
The court ruled that Kennedy’s argument that he would be subjected to future censorship is speculative — and even more speculative now that his presidential campaign is suspended — and that he also therefore lacks standing.
The 5th Circuit’s decision voided the preliminary injunction and sent the case back again to the District Court.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Alberta court certifies class-action lawsuit against the provincial government for COVID-19 health orders that impacted businesses during the pandemic
The Canadian Independent | October 31, 2024
Rath & Company, the law firm representing Alberta business owners in a class action lawsuit against the provincial government over COVID-19 restrictions, has cleared a crucial legal hurdle.
Justice Colin C.J. Feasby of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta certified the case, allowing it to proceed as a class action.
The lawsuit, led by plaintiffs Rebecca Ingram and Christopher Scott, challenges the authority of Alberta’s government in implementing business restrictions through Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) orders, which the plaintiffs allege were unauthorized and illegally imposed.
The class action seeks compensation on behalf of a broad group of Alberta business owners, claiming that the health orders, issued ostensibly under public health directives, resulted in devastating financial losses.
In a ruling that highlights concerns around government accountability, the court confirmed that the lawsuit can proceed on multiple claims, including negligence, bad faith, and misfeasance in public office.
The lawsuit’s roots go back to a ruling by Justice Romaine in 2023 (Ingram v. Alberta [2023]), which found that key pandemic health orders were issued outside the legal authority of the Public Health Act. Rather than being made independently by the CMOH, Deena Hinshaw, the orders were shown to have been directed by the Alberta Cabinet, according to Justice Romaine’s findings.
The plaintiffs allege that the CMOH orders were improperly authorized and were issued in a way that obscured Cabinet’s role, thus avoiding political accountability during a critical public health crisis.
A key component of the plaintiffs’ argument is that Alberta’s Cabinet acted in bad faith by issuing these orders under the guise of health directives to avoid democratic oversight. In doing so, they argue, the government failed to protect Alberta business owners’ rights to property and due process under the Alberta Bill of Rights. Justice Feasby’s decision allows these claims, as well as those for punitive damages, to be addressed in court.
The Court’s certification encompasses several types of claims, including allegations of negligence and misfeasance. It specifically allows the plaintiffs to pursue punitive damages, which are intended to hold the government accountable and discourage similar conduct in the future. Unlike compensatory damages that vary by individual losses, punitive damages in a class action address the alleged wrongful intent and actions affecting the whole class.
The certified class includes “all individuals who owned, in whole or in part, a business in Alberta that was subject to full or partial closure, or operational restrictions, mandated by the CMOH Orders between March 17, 2020, and the date of certification.”
Justice Feasby’s decision paves the way for the case to proceed to trial, where the claims and evidence will be examined more closely. The certification does not decide on the merits of the case but rather affirms that the plaintiffs meet the legal threshold to pursue their claims as a unified class.
Rath & Company is encouraging any affected business owners to retain records of losses related to the CMOH orders. They urge those who may be eligible for inclusion in the class action to visit their website for further information on the certification and to access intake forms to join the lawsuit.
You can join the class action at the link below.
https://rathandcompany.com/business-class-action/
You can see the class action certification at the link below.
House Panel Refers Andrew Cuomo for Prosecution
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 1, 2024
NBC News just reported the following:
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accusing the former governor of providing false statements to the panel when he testified on June 11.
In the Republican-led committee’s referral, it says Cuomo “knowingly and willfully made materially false statements” to the panel during its investigation into the New York’s Covid-19 response. The statements in question stem from exchanges about a New York state Department of Health report on nursing home infections and deaths that was released on July 6, 2020.
The report caught my eye because I have long followed the New York nursing home scandal, which I thoroughly investigated for our book The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.
This particular chapter about the mindbogglingly stupid and criminal pandemic response is so noteworthy that I believe it is worth republishing.
CHAPTER 11: “Cuomosexuals”
On the same day (March 23) that Dr. Bright initiated his scheme to restrict hydroxychloroquine to hospitalized patients, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the following executive order:
No pharmacist shall dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine except when written as prescribed as an FDA-approved indication; or as part of a state approved clinical trial related to COVID-19 for a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19 with such test result documented as part of the prescription. No other experimental or prophylactic use shall be permitted …
This order prohibited New York pharmacies from filling off-label prescriptions for Covid patients. The exceptionally determined Dr. Zelenko found a way to get around it, but it made his practice much more difficult.
Two days later, on March 25, the New York Department of Health issued the following directive to nursing home administrators:
No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.
As anyone who has ever worked in a nursing home knows, respiratory viruses can rip through the facility and cause severe illness. Virulent common cold rhinovirus outbreaks have resulted in multiple deaths in this setting. By March 25, it was crystal clear that the risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19 is by far the highest for patients over the age of seventy-five. Thus, ordering “confirmed or suspected” Covid patients to be readmitted to nursing homes was the equivalent of forcing foxes into henhouses. What was the New York State Health Department thinking?
On March 27, the United States set the world record of COVID-19 cases, and New York City was the nation’s epicenter—a five-alarm fire of serious infections. On April 10, New York State recorded more Covid cases than any country on earth except the United States in total and its nursing homes were devastated by the contagion. The legacy media was slow to notice this, perhaps because it was blinded by Governor Cuomo’s stardom. He gave daily press conferences in which he spoke about the measures he and his team were taking to keep New Yorkers safe. Millions across the country watched these performances for which he later received an Emmy.
As the spring wore on, reports of mass casualty events in nursing homes emerged, and these drew scrutiny to the Health Department’s March 25 directive. On May 21, the Associated Press reported that over 4,500 Covid patients had been sent back into New York nursing homes. This number would later be revised upward to over 9,000. The AP report coincided with growing suspicion the Health Department wasn’t being transparent about mortality data in these facilities. Suspicion was confirmed on January 28, 2021, when New York Attorney General Latitia James reported that the Department of Health had undercounted nursing home deaths by 50%.
On February 11, 2021, the New York Post published a leaked audio recording of Governor Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, speaking confidentially with the New York State Democratic Committee. On this tape she can be heard apologizing for concealing nursing home data. Though mealy-mouthed, her apology revealed that Cuomo’s team had acted out of fear of getting into trouble with the DOJ.
Basically, we froze because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.
After making this confession, she changed the subject to “the context” of their decision—namely, they were concerned that President Trump would try to politicize the incident in the upcoming election.
“Right around the same time, he [Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” she told the Committee.
For many who followed the New York nursing home story, it seemed emblematic of many pathologies afflicting the U.S. political and media class. First was the nepotism of the Cuomo family, with CNN Anchor Chris and Governor Andrew regularly putting on shows for their fawning, sentimental fans, many of whom called themselves “Cuomosexuals.” T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and even a popular music video appeared bearing the term’s definition: In love with competent, reassuring governance by a leader who uses complete sentences and displays common sense during a pandemic.
The Governor’s cult of personality yielded a $5.2 million book deal with Penguin Random House, initiated by an acquiring editor on March 19, 2020, three days before the state went into lockdown. The deal for American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic stipulated the book be ready for publication before the November elections. Governor Cuomo purportedly wrote a 70,000-word typescript in three months while at the same time executing his duties as full-time “Leader” in handling New York’s Covid crisis. The state ethics board approved the deal on the condition that no state resources were used in the book’s production, but that didn’t stop Cuomo from using his staff and a ghostwriter.
Complementing the governor’s book deal was his Emmy Award. As Bruce Paisner, CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, explained in his announcement of November 20, 2020:
The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure. People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.
All these awards and extravagant expressions of adulation for the Governor’s leadership overlooked his executive order impeding access to hydroxychloroquine and his Health Department’s catastrophic directive to nursing homes. Protecting nursing homes was the only contagion control policy for which there was a crystal clear rationale. While general lockdowns did little to stop the spread, extraordinary measures to secure nursing homes probably would have given some protection to society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the New York Health Department sent thousands of Covid patients back into these facilities and then concealed the ensuing death toll. On June 2, 2020, USA Today reported that “Over the last three months, more than 40,600 long-term care residents and workers have died of COVID-19—about 40% of the nation’s death toll attributed to the coronavirus …”
After flying high in 2020, the Cuomo brothers fell back to earth in 2021, when multiple women accused the Governor of sexual harassment. He was then further accused of using his executive power to suppress these allegations. Chris Cuomo was likewise accused of using his powerful media connections to aid and abet his brother in the concealment.
A cynic might be tempted to wonder about the timing of the sexual misconduct allegations—right as reports emerged that New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Attorney Seth Ducharme of the Eastern District of New York, and the FBI were opening investigations into allegations of malfeasance resulting in nursing home deaths. Especially disturbing was the allegation that Governor Cuomo provided legal immunity to nursing home executives from whom he received campaign contributions, possibly giving them carte blanche to cut costs at the expense of the care and safety of their residents. As the Attorney General stated in her preliminary findings:
On March 23, Governor Cuomo created limited immunity provisions for health care providers relating to COVID-19. The Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA) provides immunity to health care professionals from potential liability arising from certain decisions, actions and/or omissions related to the care of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is reasonable to provide some protections for health care workers making impossible health care decisions in good faith during an unprecedented public health crisis, it would not be appropriate or just for nursing homes owners to interpret this action as providing blanket immunity for causing harm to residents.
With multiple allegations of sexual misconduct made in March 2021, the subject in mainstream media reporting was largely changed from New York State’s possible liability for the preventable deaths of thousands to Governor Cuomo’s inappropriate behavior with women.
On August 7, 2021, the New Yorker published a coda to Governor Cuomo’s rise to superstardom and his crashing fall from grace. In an essay titled, Diving Into the Subconscious of the “Cuomosexual,” reporter Lizzie Widdicombe posed the question:
How could we have witnessed the Governor’s narcissism, bullying, and hackneyed paternalism and found these qualities attractive?
To answer it, she interviewed psychoanalyst Virginia Goldner, who explained that Governor Cuomo “was radiating an eroticized masculinity that has within it hostility and a little tenderness. That combination of soft and hard—mostly hard, but also soft—is what so many women crave in some way.”
Dr. Goldner’s remarks pointed to a key feature of how the public responded to official Covid policy. Approval of policies had little to do with their substance. Mostly it derived from impressions of the personal qualities, political affiliation, and perceived authority of the officials who presented the policies. Governor Cuomo exuded masculine confidence and gave the impression of taking bold action against a foreign invader. His performances were fascinating to watch, but they had little to do with reality.
By late March of 2020, the virus had spread far beyond the possibility of being contained. The Swedish state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, pointed this out in a March 28, 2020 New York Times interview, but no major public health official in the United States acknowledged this reality. Because the virus was far beyond containment, it was unlikely that any of Governor Cuomo’s contagion control orders such as his statewide lockdown or shutdown of “nonessential businesses” made any positive difference. He was awarded an Emmy for embodying “the determination to fight back” against the virus. In fact, he disarmed New Yorkers by impeding their access to the only weapon (hydroxychloroquine) known at the time for fighting it. Covid patients, including thousands of sitting ducks in nursing homes, were consequently left defenseless.
From: The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, SKYHORSE, New York, 2022.
The Most Devastating Report So Far
By Jay BhattacharyaJayanta Bhattacharya | Brownstone Institute | October 27, 2024
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a physician, epidemiologist and health economist. He is Professor at Stanford Medical School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Member at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Lights out for the city on the hill
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 20, 2024
Throughout the decades of the Cold War, whilst the blocs were competing, two major attractions worked powerfully to the advantage of the West. Firstly, the comfort and prosperity that it was able to provide to its citizens, which its Eastern rivals could hardly match. The second feature that in the eyes of the world gave the West a huge competitive edge was the comparatively better performance of its institutions with regard to individual liberties.
The twin advantages of prosperity and the impression that the West valued freedom successfully neutralised much of the theoretical critique of the capitalist social and economic model. In particular, the West’s ostensible commitment to personal liberties acted as a powerful magnet. As a political weapon it served its purpose effectively. It is indisputable that so long as scrupulous adherence to the rule of law and respect for individual rights were seen as the distinguishing characteristic of Western societies they were widely perceived as a desirable alternative to the competing systems, which often disregarded strict legality and did little to diminish arbitrariness.
This is the state of affairs that prevailed until roughly the 1990s, when the Western bloc finally reached the pinnacle of its global might and was widely perceived as triumphant over its adversaries. But ever since the social gains which had made the lives of common people relatively comfortable and safe, and society cohesive across class lines, are being dismantled throughout the Western world. The sense of legal security that for decades citizens of Western countries unquestionably enjoyed proved equally evanescent. The phenomena of lawless abuse and vulnerability to the powers that be, normal elsewhere but long extirpated from the practice of Western societies and largely faded from the memory of their citizens, have reappeared with a vengeance. On both the domestic and international levels, the “rule of law” rapidly morphed into its unrecognisable caricature. That metamorphosis ultimately became jokingly known as the “rules based order.”
With scant internal opposition or even much public awareness, the core countries of the collective West became infected with the contagion of arbitrariness in the interpretation of inherent human rights and application of legal principles erected to protect them. The transformation, which in historical terms took place with lightning speed, was spearheaded by a ruthless and duplicitous political cabal and was implemented with the connivance of a judiciary which was utterly corrupt and shamefully impotent.
The breakdown of legality is generally a precursor of worse things to come, which almost invariably takes the form of increasingly egregious abuse of power. The point can be illustrated with disturbing but by no means isolated examples of the emerging state of affairs in the countries of the collective West that used to be envied for their freedom. Readers will recall the famous line, “they hate us for our freedom.” The utterance in 2001 of that false assertion whilst doing nothing to advance the cause of freedom did introduce an orgy of destruction and mass slaughter.
The most striking representation of the breakdown of the legal order can be cited today is the illegal kidnapping and incarceration by the German judicial system of German-American lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, under fabricated embezzlement charges. There are many solid reasons for deep state cabal’s virulent hatred of Dr. Fuellmich. He was the spoiler who in 2020 had the temerity to found the Covid pandemic research committee, just as the social control experiment was gaining momentum. The committee’s outstanding work in uncovering the sordid motives and homicidal objectives of the orchestrators of the bogus medical emergency was a major blow to them, especially because it was delivered successfully under conditions of nearly total informational blockade. Dr. Fuellmich’s ultimate, and perhaps overambitious and naively conceived goal of a medical Nurenberg to bring the culprits to justice was never achieved but the very thought of it must have caused nightmares to those he intended to be prosecuted.
“This agenda has been long planned,” Dr. Fuellmich summarised his Committee’s findings. “It’s ultimately unsuccessful precursor was the swine flu some 12 years ago, and it is cooked up by a group of super-rich psychopathic and sociopathic people who hate and fear people at the same time, have no empathy, and are driven by the desire to gain full control over all of us, the people of the world.”
The time came for the psychopaths to seek their sweet revenge, and the operation was not exceedingly difficult because they happen to control the mechanisms of power. Eleven months ago Dr. Fuellmich was imprisoned in Germany on the false allegation of a colleague who had been infiltrated into the Covid Committee that he misused the organisation’s assets for personal benefit. A charge that under German law is a misdemeanour and for which there is no precedent of lengthy pre-trial imprisonment resulted in incarceration that has now lasted for over 400 days under Abu Ghraib conditions, except that it is in Germany and not in Iraq. For a shocking portrayal of those detention conditions, see here. And see here for the disgraceful procedural deficiencies of the trial itself, which is currently in progress, stained by practices incompatible with the image of Rechtsstaat, that Germany along with the collective West regimes associated with it are misleadingly cultivating.
The lawless persecution of Dr. Fuellmich for the “offence” of performing a remarkable public service by uncovering and documenting the fraudulent nature and sinister background of the Covid “pandemic” is, however, but the tip of the iceberg in the collapse of the rule of law in the societies that portray themselves as its champions. Additional examples illustrate the breakdown and flesh out the picture of the legal disarray which undercuts the elementary freedoms of citizens and renders them defenceless before the demands of unaccountable Power.
In Ireland, the entire Burke family of Christian believers who refuse to bend their knee to the dictates of gender ideology is being targeted for vindictive persecution. One of the sons, Enoch, who is a school teacher, has so far spent over 400 days in solitary confinement, like Dr. Fuellmich in Germany. His “offence” is that in formerly Christian and Catholic Ireland he refuses to use the pronoun preferred by one of his students who claims other than his biological gender, because Burke holds that acquiescence to the gender identity charade would be a violation of his religious principles. Enoch Burke is being punished for refusing to debase himself as a professional educator and as a free human being by falsely confessing under the duress of his persecutors that 2 + 2 = 5. Nothing short of such a recantation of his conscientiously held beliefs would satisfy his country’s legal and educational overseers, who have gone berserk. He therefore remains in an Irish prison, despite being assured of instant release if only he manifested submission to their lunatic demand. For an insight into the broad official scope of that lunacy, see here.
Enoch’s brother Simeon, who has completed his law studies with honours, is being excluded from admission to the Irish Bar for reasons that have not yet been revealed with full clarity but which appear to also be related to his firmly held religious world-view, identical to his brother’s, which in contemporary Ireland apparently disqualifies one from working in a professional setting. For good measure, Enoch and Simeon’s father, Enoch Burke Sr., has been punished for objecting to LGBT symbols on Irish postal vehicles. For his temerity, taxpayer Burke was informed that henceforth he may come to the local post office to pick up his mail, but that it will no longer be delivered to him.
As in the Fuellmich case, the collective and exemplary punishment meted out to the Burke family is being kept out of the public eye as much as possible. Political and even religious figures refuse to take a stand or comment on it, and the controlled media studiously avoid discussing the subject.
Not to round off this complex picture of civilizational decline but merely to supplement it with another unsettling detail, the institution of thought crime portrayed in George Orwell’s novel, once considered no more than literary fiction, appears now to be enshrined in British law. For the present it appears to be a pilot programme, perhaps a precursor of even more frightening things to come. It operates as a prohibition of prayer within a designated exclusion perimeter around abortion “clinics” in Great Britain. The incriminating prayer would presumably be for the souls of children that departed this world due to the medical attention that they received in those establishments. The private performance of such unauthorised religious offices is now prohibited as it may cause “harassment and distress” to the employees of the “clinics” and their clients. And ominously, according to the Home Office, “anyone found guilty of breaking the law will face an unlimited fine.” One wonders if the European Court of Human Rights would have anything to say about such open-ended punishment schemes. Was anything of the sort ever before recorded in the annals of civilised jurisprudence?
Interaction between the thought police, who of course are merely “following orders,” and citizens suspected of mentally violating the “law” may be watched here by all who cherish their liberty and human integrity.
Wretched British jurisprudence (sceptics should also see here) now boasts its first successful prosecution of a thought crime violator. British Army veteran Adam Smith-Connor was recently found guilty of silently praying for his aborted son inside an abortion “clinic” buffer zone, was sentenced conditionally to two years in prison, and fined £9000 in costs for His Majesty’s court’s expense and trouble in prosecuting him. The courts still are not imposing “unlimited fines,” as the Home Office recommends, but for a retired person who must support a family arguably even that is a considerable sum.
Smith-Connor, be it noted, is far from the only victim of abortion-related thought crime harassment in the United Kingdom.
And also for the record, the theme here is not one’s personal position on Covid, transgenderism, or abortion. The central issue in every one of the cited instances, and others of a similar nature too numerous to mention, is the evident crumbling in the collective West of the legal order. That now makes it possible to impose on peaceful citizens draconian punishments wholly disproportionate to the alleged conduct they are being accused of. To what limits will the severity of punishment extend, or is it potentially as “unlimited” as the threat of monetary assessment the British Home Office is prepared to impose on those undertaking to silently pray in public for unborn babies?
The famed “City on the Hill” that many had been tricked into believing was illuminating mankind from on high is now forlorn and largely deserted. Its lights are getting progressively dimmer, life in it increasingly intolerable. Its deceived inhabitants and ardent admirers are dispersing in every direction. Word is out that a new City of great luminosity and magnetic attraction is being erected elsewhere, and that its architects will soon meet, in Kazan.
Fired for Free Speech: Alison Morrow’s Battle Against Government Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 19, 2024
Alison Morrow (formally Westover), an accomplished journalist, found herself in the throes of a legal battle over her right to free speech. Represented by the Silent Majority Foundation, Morrow has filed a lawsuit against the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and its top officials, citing wrongful termination after she was dismissed for airing an interview on her YouTube channel. The channel, a personal project crafted during her tenure as an environmental reporter at KING 5 in Seattle, became the subject of controversy following her post featuring a highly censored doctor, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, and his views on COVID-19.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Morrow’s career at KING 5, which spanned from 2013 to 2019, was marked by significant accolades, including two Emmy awards. Recognized for her independent journalism, DNR was fully aware of her YouTube activities when they recruited her as a communications specialist. Initially, her independent media pursuits were supported by DNR, but the tide turned with her decision to feature Dr. Kheriaty. DNR’s leadership warned Morrow that her continued interviews could lead to termination, a threat she met with a staunch refusal to abandon her First Amendment protections.
Determined to uphold her freedoms of speech, press, and association, Morrow chose to defy DNR’s directive to adhere to approved narratives. This act of resistance ultimately led to her dismissal, prompting her to seek legal assistance from the Silent Majority Foundation, which took up her case to safeguard these fundamental rights.
“The 1st Amendment is one of the most sacred rights of Americans. It is what differentiates our country from most others, that we have the freedom to question our government. It is also central to a free press. I was willing to lose my job – and all that it provided for our family – in order to stand up against the encroaching erosion of this right that I was witnessing at the time, not just in my case but in thousands of others across the country during the pandemic,” Morrow stated. “There was no way to do science or journalism, in the culture of censorship that was driven by our government at the time. That meant millions of people made decisions without informed consent. Given my commitment to seeking truth wherever it leads, I was unwilling to acquiesce to a demand that I remain silent.”
New Zealand’s “Disinformation Project” Shuts Down Amid Accusations of Silencing Opposition
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 18, 2024
The Disinformation Project, launched in early 2020 in New Zealand as a “disinformation research” group, but slammed by critics as seeking to usher in ideological censorship, is no more.
The project is the product of the Covid era, initially focused on what was at the time considered “disinformation” but then branching out to things like vaccine skepticism in general, climate change – and, apparently, even local politics.
The group, which coordinated with the New Zealand government, described its activities as research and analyses of all manner of “extreme conspiratorial beliefs” as well as their compatriots’ “descent” into those.
Critics, however, point out that silencing the opposition, including by supporting “hate speech” laws, was among the activities of the now-shut-down endeavor that was led by Kate Hannah.
These critics accuse the Disinformation Project of moving from being a handy tool for the New Zealand government to spread its narratives promoting COVID-19 measures (some of the most restrictive in the world), to becoming a political weapon promoting a certain agenda.
Back in April, some commentators were concerned about where the Disinformation Project’s shift from the “abandoned pandemic” to political influencing might lead.
We now know that it has led to the group’s demise – but it is only one of the many similar efforts that appeared during the Covid era around the world.
A specific accusation against this one comes from New Zealand-based journalist Chris Lynch, who claims that Hannah, along with Sanjana Hattotuwa, attempted to effectively manipulate the 2023 election in the country by influencing the media via “secretive briefings.”
This didn’t succeed in this instance because they got “called out” – but over the past four years, the Disinformation Project has been accused of getting increasingly desperate to stay relevant, and finding ways to do that, with the policies it pushed accepted without critical examination by the legacy media.
Lynch is optimistic that the demise of this project and the rise of some that challenge the established media-political narratives means that New Zealand has turned the corner when it comes to censorship disguised as concern for democracy and the fight against “disinformation.”
However, it’s equally possible that where one such outfit exits the scene, another, under a different name and leadership but with the same purpose, might take its place.
German Government Cancels Review of Pandemic Response
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | October 13, 2024
If the last twenty-five years have taught us anything, it’s that people who work in the government are absolutely abysmal at quantifying and managing the risks of their own ambitious schemes. Already in 2020, Dr. McCullough and I intuitively sensed that the COVID-19 mass vaccination program was a major gamble that would probably end up blowing up in the faces of the people who so aggressively pushed it.
To be sure, it would only eventually blow up in their faces if they allowed the truth of the matter to come out. For at least two years now, we have been in the cover-up phase of this criminal misadventure—not only in the United States, but also in the UK, Europe, and Australia.
C.J. Hopkins—an insanely persecuted American ex-pat author in Berlin—just mentioned on his Substack an extraordinary commentary in the Berliner Zeitung.
Please check out (below) my translation of this excellent essay.
Traffic light coalition cancels Corona investigation: Who would have thought?
Back in September, Lauterbach said, “Anyone who doesn’t review things seems like they have something to hide.” Is anyone surprised by the cancellation of this review? A commentary.
Ruth Schneeberger
“We need this review. I have called for it myself on several occasions,” said Karl Lauterbach less than a month ago in the ARD Report from Berlin. “If we don’t do it,” continued the SPD health minister, “then the impression will simply arise that we have something to hide. Therefore, such a review is necessary and should take place.”
Lauterbach would certainly have liked to have had a reappraisal carried out.
Lauterbach’s own coalition government has now denied him this wish. Some say to protect him.
Lauterbach himself has not exactly been at the forefront of the reappraisal process. In March, on the ZDF morning magazine, he rejected an inquiry commission because this type of reappraisal was “politically charged” and “right-wing groups” would turn the issue into an “ideological battle.”
Then came the RKI [Robert Koch Institute] protocols and the health minister changed his publicly stated opinion surprisingly quickly—not only with regard to their assessment, but also regarding purported “interference by foreign powers.”
At that point, he offered an assurance that he would have the protocols de-redacted as soon as possible—something that has not officially happened during his term of office to date. So now [we are told] he is in favor of a review of Corona policy.
However, the majority of his colleagues apparently do not want such a review. This week, the “traffic light” coalition agreed that there can be no political review of the pandemic in the current legislative period because they cannot agree on what form such a review would take.
This means that there will not be a review of the corona pandemic in this country before 2026, because there will be new elections in September 2025, and after that they will need to resuscitate the issue.
Review á la Citizens’ Council may therefore be discarded
Why is the government refusing to review the situation?
The SPD’s justification is that the FDP refused to hold a Citizens’ Council. Well, what a surprise. Citizens’ Councils have recently produced such groundbreaking results. In other words, this political issue is simply too hot for the SPD. The actors who voted in favor of the compulsory vaccination are still in office.
Lately it’s become fashionable to reinterpret one’s own role in the pandemic, but in politics, this is more difficult to do than in other domains. Politicians’ votes from this period are public record unless they were secret votes. During the big debate in the Bundestag in April 2022 about compulsory vaccination, the voting behavior of the parties was recorded and is still circulating on the internet.
This is yet another reason why it is still vividly remembered that the SPD and the Greens voted almost unanimously in favor of compulsory vaccination, while everyone else almost entirely voted against. And so, is anyone really surprised that the SPD—which is already having a hard time—is calling off the political review of the pandemic?
There is so much to review—including the vaccination campaign
The voting behavior on compulsory vaccination is also such a popular meme because it shows the extent to which politicians were prepared to put the supposed common good above the possible well-being of the individual. Compulsory vaccination remains an intervention in the body over which the individual can no longer decide.
The fact that vaccination—contrary to all assurances at the time—can go horribly wrong is evidenced by countless vaccine victims, whose fate Karl Lauterbach now says he is touched by. Nevertheless, this does not really prompt him and his colleagues to take action.
To this day, we do not know exactly how many vaccine injured there are, and how they can be helped. We do know, however, that around 20 times more suspected cases were reported to the Paul Ehrlich Institute for corona vaccinations than for other vaccines.
We made it through the pandemic alright in Germany—everything is okay, right? Wrong. The bad consequences are merely poorly concealed. Trust in government, politics and institutions has been permanently damaged; some no longer even trust their own doctors.
The next pandemic is supposedly just around the corner?
A thorough review would also be very important because there are warnings everywhere about new pandemics that are certain to come, sooner or later. The World Health Summit in Berlin will be hotly discussing this prospect over the next three days.
It is ridiculous that the coalition would cancel the review under these circumstances, and the decision could potentially cost them their jobs. Their decision is also negligent.
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On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
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