Christians in occupied Jerusalem see marked surge in Israeli settler attacks
The Cradle | July 12, 2024
Settler attacks on the Christian community in occupied Jerusalem have surged since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, according to Hebrew reports.
Hebrew news outlet Channel 13 reported on 12 July that over the past three months, there have been at least 36 recorded incidents of violence or abuse against Christians.
This includes 17 incidents of Israeli settlers spitting on Christian worshippers, nine acts of vandalism, five assaults, and five cases of verbal abuse – all under police protection.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been imposing taxes on Churches and Church property. The Israeli government claims the taxes are routine financial matters, yet the Christian community has accused Tel Aviv of a “coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land” and a violation of a centuries-old status quo.
“In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land,” wrote the heads of the major Christian denominations in a joint letter to Netanyahu late last month.
Earlier in June, a report released by Israeli NGO Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue reported a significant increase in Israelis attacking Christians throughout 2023.
“The ongoing shift towards the far-right, a growing sense of nationalism, and the emphasis on Israel primarily as a state for the Jewish population have collectively undermined both the legal and perceived sense of equality for any minority within the country,” the report read.
Attacks and restrictions against Christian worshippers by Israeli police are also common in the holy city.
While Christians face an uptick in abuse and oppression under Netanyahu’s far-right government, they have always suffered under occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In 2019, the head of the Sebastia Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, accused Israeli forces of trying to kill him after he was hospitalized with poisoning following an Israeli tear gas attack on his church.
The Ways of the Jewish Slave Traders
NOI RESEARCH GROUP • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 8, 2024
“As Mr. Yakub continued to preach for converts, he told his people that he would make the others work for them. (This promise came to pass.) Naturally, there are always some people around who would like to have others do their work. Those are the ones who fell for Mr. Yakub’s teaching, 100 per cent.” — The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, chapter 55 of Message to the Blackman in America titled “The Making of Devil”
“Three blessings a Jewish man is obligated to pray daily: ‘(Blessed art Thou,) Who did not make me a gentile; Who did not make me a woman; and Who did not make me a slave.’” — Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b–44a[*]
The story of the Jewish American experience that most Jews want to believe, and want the world to believe, is one of almost endless historical victimhood. They insist that they fled anti-Semitic oppression in Europe, landing safely on Ellis Island long after the Civil War’s end in 1865, and certainly some did. By their hard work, strong religious bonds, and reverence for communal education they succeeded against all odds, becoming, as Isaiah exhorts,[1] “a light unto the world.” As their story goes, they altogether eluded the ugly business of plantation slavery—but had they been here, they assure us, Jews would have been leading the abolitionists. After all, their own alleged enslavement to Pharaoh would have made them—of all the groups of Caucasian people—more sympathetic toward Black suffering.
To a trusting, Bible-believing people this Jewish self-portrait sounds plausible and is consistent with a Christian doctrine that sanctifies God’s Chosen People, the so-called Children of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6–11). But the people who today call themselves Jews have now collided with their own Jewish scholars and historians who have presented an entirely different and far more troubling story about American Jewish history and the central role of Jews in the greatest crime in world history—the Black African Holocaust.
For the most part, Americans—white and Black—are entirely unaware that when the trans-Atlantic slave trade began in the 1500s, it was focused on shipping enslaved Africans to the sugar plantations of South America and the Caribbean islands centuries before expanding to the cotton fields of the American South in the mid-1700s. In the entire history of slavery in the western hemisphere as many as 9 out of 10 stolen Africans were shipped to those tropical climes—not to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina. The map below illustrates by the thickness of the arrows the relative proportions of Africans shipped to the New World, and, as shown, relatively few made it into what was to become the United States.
And all during this unprecedented racial tragedy Jews claim they were preoccupied in Europe, nowhere near the scene of the crime. Dr. Robert Swierenga very directly challenges that oft-repeated Jewish alibi (emphasis ours):
“At the birth of the United States in 1787 the Jews of the slave islands [Caribbean] outnumbered those in North America by five times and may have equaled those in England. Surinam had fourteen hundred Jews and Curaçao fifteen hundred—both nearly one half of the total white population. By contrast, the entire United States in 1790 numbered less than fifteen hundred Jews.”[2]
Seeking Religious Liberty?
But doesn’t this early Jewish presence in the “slave islands” conflict drastically with the prevailing image of the Jews as freedom-loving religious refugees? This is the perfect time to have an adult conversation about the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Jewish role in it, and we must start by putting to bed the infantile notion endemic in this Jewish American fairy tale that Europeans sailed across the ocean “seeking religious liberty.” Every school child learns about the brave and pious Pilgrims who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 “seeking religious liberty” from the tyrannical king of England. But the reality is that the “Pilgrims” were under contract with a private business named the Company of Merchant Adventurers, which expected them to acquire lumber, beaver and otter furs, and any other riches to be found or stolen. Thus, the “Pilgrims”—who referred to themselves as “separatists,” not as “pilgrims”—worked under contract to a private enterprise whose investors cared nothing about religion. More than a century before those Separatists, a Spaniard named Christopher Columbus was privately financed for his infamous voyage of discovery in 1492, by a wealthy Jew named Luis de Santangel. According to Simon Wiesenthal, in his book Sails of Hope (p. 168), “But for this man, Columbus’s expedition would never have taken place.” A practiced slave dealer, Columbus captured 600 of the aboriginal people he encountered to auction off back in Spain. And so it is with the Jewish newcomers who were seeking profits in sugar, cotton, tobacco, and other riches of the New World. Jewish scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi describes them:
“[T]hese Jews engaged in an almost untrammeled range of economic activity, bore arms in the militias, owned land and ran plantations, and were represented in local councils. They had arrived at the closest point to full legal equality possible for Jews prior to the emergence of the modern nation-state.”[3]
They were seeking not “religious freedom” but the freedom to trade on an international scale. In fact, when they were first barred from acquiring Black slaves in the colonies they entered, the Jews considered it an act of “anti-Semitism.” The riches they sought could not be extracted without free and forced African labor. And as Jewish merchants followed their Yakubian directive—making others work for them—this is where the Black–Jewish relationship in the West truly begins.
In fact, there are scant references to the Jewish faith, Judaism, in any of the extant records of these early Jewish settlers. Nothing about Moses, Aaron, The Ten Commandments; no mention of the Ark of the Covenant; and nothing about being any “Light unto the Worlds.” If there were no profit in it, there was no “Jew” in it—and there was plenty of profit in Black slavery.[4]
Surinam, located in northeastern South America, holds the distinction of having the oldest Jewish community in the Americas, Jews having formed a synagogue in 1665. British Jewish historian Dr. Cecil Roth tracks them in his History of the Marranos: “The Jews of [Surinam] were also foremost in the suppression of the successive negro revolts, from 1690 to 1722: these as a matter of fact were largely directed against them, as being the greatest slave-holders of the region.
And here is where—unbelievably—we find the first inkling of the Jewish religion. The very first published Jewish prayer in their New World paradise, was a prayer titled “Old Hebrew Prayer in Time of Revolt of the Negroes,” in which the rabbi asked their God to give them strength “to conquer and destroy beneath their feet all cruel and rebellious Africans, our enemies who are planning evil against us…. Amen.”[5]
Roth continues: “These disturbances, together with the inroads of the climate, led ultimately to the abandonment of the settlement, of which nothing but the ruin now remains.” Dr. Roth hits on a theme here that may be difficult for most to comprehend. Not only were Jews present in the Americas long before the actual founding of the United States, but they were “the greatest slave-holders” in one of the major destinations of enslaved Africans. Further, these same “liberty-seeking” Jews actually went to war against the Africans that had escaped from Jewish plantations! Scholar Steven Sallie:
“There is little dispute, however, that Jews were quite often in charge of raiding adventures and the severe punishing of the maroons [escaped slaves]. In response to the cruelty of some Jews, maroons quite often attacked selected Jewish plantations. These Jewish-African conflicts were numerous, well organized, and persisted into the 1800s. Given their names, the leaders of the maroons tended to be Muslims.”[6]
One must also note that the decorated scholars quoted above spoke of “Jews” as a collective, neither making any qualification about the term that would limit responsibility or culpability to “some” or “a party among” or “a portion of” the Jewish community. This is particularly important given the magnitude of the crime they are describing—Black slavery.
Two major Jewish historical associations concur with, and elaborate on, this generally unknown aspect of the Jewish role in Black slavery. The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) is the oldest and most prominent, having its founding in 1892. Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael was its longtime editor of its publications when he wrote in 1983 that in the Caribbean and South America,
“Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the ‘triangular trade’ that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies…”
“FREQUENTLY DOMINATED” and “played a major role” are the terms Rabbi Raphael used almost a decade before the Nation of Islam published its never-refuted book on Jews and the slave trade, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 1. Drs. Swierenga, Sallie, Raphael, and Roth are all addressing a startling duality in the 500-year Black–Jewish relationship—that the Jewish self-image of a biblical people yearning for freedom directly contradicts the actual fact that the Jewish people were attracted to, and often dominated the economies in, the very places where existed the most brutal forms of chattel slavery.
The American Jewish Archives (AJA) was founded in 1947 by the “Dean of American Jewish scholars,” Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus,[7] and is the repository of “ten million pages of documentation” on Jewish history in the Americas. Turns out, the AJA has a lot to say about these early “oppressed” Jews who migrated from Europe and somehow found unprecedented prosperity in the “slave islands.” In several articles the AJA casually makes several references to the interdependent relationship between the most brutal forms of slavery and the Jewish pilgrims: “[I]ndividual Jews can be found on almost every island of the Caribbean prior to the abandonment of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century,”[8] thus firmly linking slavery to the Jews’ very presence.
In the plantation colony of Surinam the AJA points out that Jews “fared well, thanks to the abundance of slaves and plantations…”[9] Rabbi Dr. Raphael adds that
“Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam, which was a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers spent more than 25 percent of the total funds exchanged.”[10]
A more recent analysis of Surinam’s Jews by Dr. Aviva Ben-Ur only solidifies this linkage and adds to the horrors:
“The liberty Jews enjoyed…was inextricably intertwined with violent coercion….African slaves were routinely tortured on the village’s roadsides or along the fence enclosing the synagogue square.”[11]
The AJA hits on a theme that is repeated over and over again: “the abolition of the slave trade in 1819 and the formal emancipation of slaves in 1863 made plantations unprofitable and so decimated Jewish trade that [the Jews] all but disappeared.” Recognize the import of that statement: the freeing of the Black slaves “DECIMATED” and “DISAPPEARED” the Jewish community.
Jews had a presence on the island of Barbados in about 1628 and historian Stephen Fortune wrote that “the reputed prosperity of the Jews contrasted with the inexcusable and disgraceful plight of the slaves.”[12] Jews flocked to this hell on earth, and here again the AJA sounds the uniquely Jewish refrain: “Unfortunately, economic depression resulting from the earthquake and the emancipation of slaves led to the emigration of many of the island’s Jews.”[13] They pose the freeing of African slaves as a disaster equal to that of an earthquake—causing the “unfortunate” Jews to permanently flee.
The Encyclopedia Judaica (EJ) reports that the island of Curaçao was called the “Mother of the Caribbean Jewish communities,” yet Jewish scholars describe the island as a distribution center for the slave trade[14]— “a large slave depot.”[15] The AJA affirms that “The slave trade helped Curaçao to prosper, and her Jewish community grew rapidly,” even building a synagogue “for the convenience of the plantation owners who lived outside of the city.”[16] In fact, Jews owned 80 percent of Curaçao’s plantations, and Jewish slave traders were responsible for distributing the slaves from Curaçao to the Spanish American ports throughout the Caribbean and South America.[17] In 1765, the Jesurun family owned a record number of 366 Black people; the closest Gentile had 240 slaves. In one documented case in 1701, the Jewish Senior brothers arranged the shipment of 664 Africans; 205 perished en route to Curaçao.[18] And historian of the island Johan Hartog confirms a familiar Jewish theme—that the Jewish community suffered a “steep decline” the same year that the slave trade was curtailed.[19]
When Jews settled in Haiti, the Encyclopedia Judaica admitted,[20] they “specialized in agricultural plantations [but] with the slave revolts at the end of the 18th century, Jews gradually abandoned Haiti for other Caribbean islands or for the United States (New Orleans, Charleston).” Here again Jews are not sticking around for Black freedom; nor were they part of the process of achieving it. As soon as emancipation becomes a reality, Jews abandon Haiti for slavier environs.
Jamaica also had a robust Jewish colony, writes the AJA (p. 151): “The growth of the sugar industry enlarged the Jewish immigration and a number of Jews became plantation owners.”[21] The EJ boasted that “Jews with agricultural plantations controlled the sugar and vanilla industries, and …were the leaders in foreign trade and shipping.”[22] In its section on “Sugar”—the product most responsible for the enslavement of millions of Africans—the EJ puts Jews at the epicenter:
“The Jews of Brazil were not important as proprietors of [sugar] mills but rather as financial agents, brokers, and export merchants. When Brazil came again under Portuguese rule in the second half of the 17th century, many Jews emigrated to Surinam, Barbados, Curaçao, and Jamaica, where they acquired large sugarcane plantations and became the leading entrepreneurs in the sugar trade.”[23]
And then it reveals the other, now predictable, Jewish reality: “The abolition of slavery in the British dominions (1833) lowered the economy and scattered the Jews.” Note here the AJA writes that freedom for enslaved Blacks “scattered” the Jews.
Many of those Jews “scattered” to the North American mainland, says the AJA: “The end of slavery in the Caribbean saw Jews from the islands arriving almost daily…” Many ended up in the colony of Georgia, described as “suffering from the trustees’ idealistic insistence on no slaves or liquor…”[24] As the AJA frames it, “no slaves” meant Jewish “suffering.” In fact, the refusal of the leaders of Georgia to permit Black slavery triggered a Jewish exodus from the colony! By 1740 only three Jewish families were left. They bounced, according to Rabbi Marcus, because “Negro slavery was prohibited, the liquor traffic was forbidden.”[25] Jew Abraham De Lyon said he left for “the want of Negroes…whereas his white servants cost him more than he was able to afford.”[26]
From their own archival documents the most lettered Jewish scholars have painted an alarming portrait of the earliest of their founding fathers. In every case examined, Jewish “liberty” and prosperity were entirely dependent on Black slavery, and once Black “liberty” was achieved the Jewish world imploded and the Jews fled. The Encyclopedia Judaica summarizes nicely:
“A general decline of the Spanish-Portuguese communities in the Caribbean set in during the 19th century. Growing competition in agricultural products, the abandonment of the plantations by the Afro-American laborers due to the abolition of slavery, assimilation, and emigration were the main causes of this decline.”[27]
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote that after being bound in Europe for 1,000 years, “they were loose (free) to travel over the earth and deceive the people.” Further, “They have been here now over 400 years. Their worst and most unpardonable sins were the bringing of the so-called Negroes here to do their labor.”[28]
Jewish scholars have thus affirmed that no one better fits Mr. Muhammad’s description of the traveling deceiver and “unpardonable” slave-making sinner than the Jew.
NOTES
[*] See also Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered (2008), p. 375.
[1] Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3.
[2] Robert Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), p. 36.
[3] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curaçao and the Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History,” American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 190.
[4] Yda Schreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 70. Also, Steven S. Sallie, “The Role of the Semitic Peoples in the Expansion of the World Economy Via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Literature Extraction and an Interpretation,” Journal of Third World Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 173.
[5] “Miscellaneous Items Relating to Jews of North America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 27 (1920), pp. 223–24.
[6] Sallie, “The Role of the Semitic Peoples,” p. 173.
[7] https://www.americanjewisharchives.org/about/jacob-rader-marcus/
[8] Malcolm H. Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), p. 142.
[9] Allan Metz, “Those of the Hebrew Nation…The Sephardic Experience in Colonial Latin America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), p. 226.
[10] Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), p. 24.
[11] Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), p. 76.
[12] Stephen Alexander Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for the British West Indian Caribbean, 1650-1750 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984), p. 109.
[13] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 143.
[14] Lavy Becker, “A Report on Curacao,” Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, December 5, 1969.
[15] Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in ‘Europe’s Other Sea’: The Adventure of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 236.
[16] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 147; Emma Fidanque Levy, “The Fidanques: Symbols of the Continuity of the Sephardic Tradition in America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 184–85.
[17] Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), p. 24.
[18] Isaac S. and Susan A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherland Antilles (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1973), p. 77.
[19] Johan Hartog, Curaçao From Colonial Dependence to Autonomy (Aruba, Netherland Antilles, 1968), p. 276.
[20] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 473.
[21] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 151.
[22] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 474.
[23] See also James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), p. 476.
[24] Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim in the Americas,” p. 164.
[25] Jacob Rader Marcus, Memoirs of American Jews 1775-1865, vol. 2 (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1974), p. 288.
[26] Edward D. Coleman, “Jewish Merchants in the Colonial Slave Trade,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 34 (1938), p. 285.
[27] Second Edition, Volume 4, p. 470.
[28] Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 104, 267; “Is There a Mystery God?” Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 18, 1956.
Republished from Nation of Islam Research Group
Canada Allocates $146.6M for New Censorship Commission to Enforce Online Harms Act
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2024
Canada’s government has decided to spend some $146.6 million (CAD 200 million) and employ, full-time, 330 more people to be able to implement the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63).
That is the monetary cost of bureaucratic red tape necessary to make this bill, which has moved for a second reading in Canada’s House of Commons, eventually happen.
At the same time, the cost to the country’s democracy could be immeasurable – given some of this sweeping censorship legislation’s more draconian provisions, primarily focused on what the authorities choose to consider to be “hate speech.”
Some of those provisions could land people under house arrest, and have their internet access cut simply for “fear” they could, going forward, commit “hate crime” or “hate propaganda.”
If these are found to be committed in conjunction with other crimes, the envisaged punishment could be life in prison. Meanwhile, money fines go up to $51,080. And, to make matters even more controversial, the proposed law appears to apply to statements retroactively, namely, those made before Bill C-63’s possible passage and enactment as law.
The new body, the Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsperson, and Office will be in charge, and this is where the money will go and where the staff amount to 330 people. The spending estimate that has recently come to light covers the five years until 2029.
The office’s task – if the bill passes – will be to monitor, regulate, and censor online platforms, as per the Online Harms Act.
Critics of the law are making a point of the distorted sense of priorities among Canada’s currently ruling regime, where a large amount of money is to be spent here, while vital sectors – such as combating actual, real-life serious crimes face funding restrictions.
Some of the purely pragmatic opposition to the bill has to do with the belief that it will – while violating citizens’ freedoms and rights – actually, prove to be unable to tackle what it is supposedly designed to do – various forms of online harassment.
And that’s not all. “Canadian taxpayers will likely be stuck footing the bill for a massive bureaucracy that will allow Big Tech companies to negotiate favorable terms with non-elected regulators behind closed doors,” is how MP Michelle Rempel Garner articulated it.
New ‘Volunteer’ Legion in Poland: Blatant Scam to Force Ukrainians to Front Lines
Sputnik – 09.07.2024
A security pact inked by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday outlines the creation and training of a so-called Ukrainian Legion. This new formation will recruit Ukrainian “volunteers” living in Poland and other EU countries.
“Among the citizens of Ukraine who fled to EU countries, there are no volunteers seeking to participate in the hostilities,” Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, told Sputnik. “Everyone who theoretically had the motivation to participate in the conflict would have returned to Ukraine a long time ago and, accordingly, would have joined combat units on the contact line.”
“Therefore, I think that this is an artificial simulacrum. They will forcefully recruit Ukrainian draft dodgers into this legion, one way or another, under pressure from local intelligence services and police forces,” the pundit continued.
In April, Poland and Lithuania signaled that they would assist the Kiev regime by sending potential draft dodgers home, despite demonstrating reluctance to extradite conscript-aged Ukrainians last year.
Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz asserted on April 24 that “Ukrainian citizens have obligations towards the state,” while his Lithuanian counterpart Laurynas Kasciunas insisted that evading conscription was “not fair to those citizens who are fighting for their country.”
For months, EU member states had rejected Kiev’s request for repatriating Ukrainian men eligible for mobilization, citing European conventions that do not permit extradition in cases of desertion or draft evasion.
Speaking to reporters in April, Kosiniak-Kamysz and Kasciunas asserted that there were multiple ways the authorities could repatriate Ukrainians without resorting to deportation. These included implementing bans on social benefits, work permits, and necessary documentation, in addition to enacting specific legislation aimed at Ukrainian refugees.
Apparently, the Ukrainian Legion is yet another “legal” loophole to send Ukrainian refugees to the battlefield, according to Korotchenko.
“We are not talking about forced extradition, we are talking about forced enlistment in this foreign legion,” he stressed. “Human rights activists will obviously not be interested in whether [Ukrainians] enlist voluntarily. These procedures would de facto mean forced extradition after they join the legion. The mechanism that is taking shape is absolutely illegal, but has a veneer of legitimacy,” he explained.
EU Commission Urges Digital ID, E-Health Records, and Touts “Anti-Disinformation” Efforts in Digital Decade Report
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 8, 2024
Earlier this week the EU Commission (EC) published its second report on what it calls “the state of the digital decade,” urging member countries to step up the push to increase access and incentivize the use of digital ID and electronic health records.
At the same time, the bloc is satisfied with how the crackdown on “disinformation,” “online harms,” and the like is progressing.
In a press release, the EC said the report was done to assess the progress made in reaching the objectives contained in the Digital Decade Policy Program (DDPP), targeting 2030 as the year of completion.
EU members have now for the first time contributed to the document with analyses of their national “Digital Decade strategic roadmaps.” And, here, the EC is not exactly satisfied: the members’ efforts will not meet the EU’s “level of ambition” if things continue to develop as they currently are, the document warns.
In that vein, while the report is generally upbeat on the uptake of digital ID (eID schemes) and the use of e-Health records, its authors point out that there are “still significant differences among countries” in terms of eID adoption.
To remedy member countries falling short on these issues, it is recommended that they push for increased access to eID and e-Health records in order to meet the objectives set for 2030.
The EU wants to see both these schemes available to 100% of citizens and businesses by that date – and reveals that eID is at this point available to 93% of citizens across the 27 of the bloc’s countries, “despite uneven take-up.”
Still, the EC’s report shows that policymakers in Brussels are optimistic that the EU digital ID Wallet will “incentivize” eID use.
And, the document’s authors are happy with the way the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA) is getting enforced. Critics, however, believe it is there to facilitate crackdowns on speech – under the guise of combating “disinformation,” etc.
The EU calls this, “strengthening the protection against online harms and disinformation,” while also mentioning that it is launching investigations (into online platforms) to make sure DSA is enforced.
And in order to reinforce the message that DSA is needed as a force for good, the report asserts that “online risks are on the rise and disinformation has been identified as one of the most destabilizing factors for our societies, requiring comprehensive, coordinated action across borders and actors.”
3 Palestinians found dead after Israel released them
Press TV – July 8, 2024
Israeli forces have killed three more Palestinians shortly after their release from a detention camp in the occupied territories.
The bodies were found handcuffed and without clothing on Sunday in the vicinity of the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in southern Gaza.
The three were among several Palestinians detained on Saturday.
Abdel Hadi Ghabayen said he went searching for his nephew, Kamel Ghabayen, early Sunday morning.
“I found him left on the ground along with the other two martyrs. They were without clothes, and their hands had plastic cuffs put on them by the Israeli army.”
Ghabayen said his nephew and the other two men were attacked by Israeli forces shortly after their release. One man was missing a leg, and his body was “in pieces.”
When Ghabayen tried to recover the man’s dismembered leg, Israeli troops “started shooting at me, so I stopped,” he said.
He later collected the bodies and took them in his truck to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.
According to another released detainee, Israeli forces fired on them shortly after their release.
“We reached Karkar Street [in Gaza]. After 10 minutes of being there, we found a bomb thrown at the people with me. Thank God I was at the front. The bomb hit six or seven people who were detained with us. Thank God I am alive,” Mahmoud Abu Taha said.
Israeli forces recently killed more than a dozen Palestinian detainees, hours after releasing them from a detention center in the southern city of Rafah.
On June 6, the New York Times published a report with accounts of torture at Israel’s Sde Teiman camp. Israeli guards used sexual violence and electric chairs to shock detainees and forced them to sit on hot, electrified metal rods.
At least three dozen Palestinians from Gaza detained at the Sde Teiman detention facility have died, the Times reported.
Some of the former Gaza abductees have said they were blindfolded, beaten and bitten by dogs during detention.
Palestinians and international human rights observers arrested in Masafer Yatta, occupied West Bank
International Solidarity Movement | July 7, 2024
Israeli Occupation forces arrested three Palestinians, including a 14 year old child, together with three internationals (including a US citizen) and one Israeli human rights observer in at-Tuwani, Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills area.
This morning, armed Israeli settler shepherds invaded Palestinian land with their flocks, provoked the family that was working on their land and attempted to steal one of their donkeys. The Palestinians tried to prevent them from going on their land and were attacked by the settlers. They called the police to remove the settlers, but the army and police chose to arrest three Palestinians, one of whom is a 14 year old child, three international and one Israeli human rights observers. No settlers were detained. They have all been taken to an Israeli police station. As of 5.45 pm (Jerusalem time), the family has been released but the human rights observers remain under custody.
The family, including the child, was already detained for around 3 hours on their land a couple of weeks ago and they have suffered numerous attacks over the years from violent settlers and the army. A couple of weeks ago, settlers cut newly planted trees and destroyed the water connections.
Land theft and ethnic cleansing have spiralled since October 7 in Masafer Yatta, and in other areas of the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers who live in illegal settlements have been heavily armed and have escalated harassment and threats towards Palestinian communities, with the backing of the Israeli occupation forces. Umm al-Khair, one of the villages in Masafer Yatta, has lately come under almost daily attack from settlers and the army. On June 26, occupation forces demolished a dozen structures in Umm al-Khair displacing dozens of residents, including children. Since then, settlers have raided the village, shot live ammunition, erected a tent in the village and destroyed the water system, leaving the whole community of Umm al Khair without access to water.
On July 4, settlers carried out a pogrom in the village of Khalet a Dabaa. About 200 settlers reached the village at midnight, set agricultural land and trees on fire and attacked villagers, shot live ammunition and kidnapped a villager. An Italian activist from the NGO Mediterranea was also badly beaten. There are daily incidents in Masafer Yatta, with settlers coming on what remains of Palestinian land to herd in order to harass and push Palestinians further away from their land.
These are not isolated incidents. They are a part of a bigger plan of annexation of the West Bank/Area C. Between October 7 and July 1, over 1,050 attacks from settlers on Palestinians have been recorded by OCHA. At the beginning of March, Israeli authorities approved the construction of almost 3,500 illegal housing units in settlements around the West Bank. More recently, almost 5,295 new illegal housing units have been approved. This all comes amidst the biggest land seizure in the West Bank in over 30 years. Far-right Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has vowed to bring a million more settlers under his expansion plan.
In a quiet move, about a month ago, more control was moved from the Israeli army’s civil administration to the recently established governmental body “Settlement Administration”, led by Smotrich. Last Thursday, Orit Strock, Minister of Settlements and National Missions, was reported praising a master plan to build over 100 housing units in the South Hebron Hills area, saying this was “a miracle time” and “a sacred mission,” highlighting her efforts to invest in the area.
All of this is happening while the Israeli authorities are repressing human rights solidarity in the area, with at least six more international and three Israeli human rights observers banned from the area in the previous few weeks, with the aim of isolating Palestinian communities and promoting their propaganda unchecked.
Hamas denies Israeli allegations of presence in UNRWA school
Press TV – July 7, 2024
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has condemned a deadly Israeli attack on a UNRWA-affiliated school in central Gaza, dismissing as “pure lies and deception” Israel’s claim that resistance fighters had been present in the building.
Hamas in a statement on Saturday called the Israeli airstrike on Al-Jaouni school, a UN-run school sheltering 7,000 displaced people at Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, a “horrific massacre” in which 16 Palestinians were killed and many others wounded.
The Palestinian group’s statement came after the Israeli forces claimed the UNRWA-run school was used by Hamas fighters as a command center.
“This criminal enemy is trying to pass and market its crimes to public opinion, and hide its clear objectives, which it seeks to implement by exterminating our Palestinian people and destroying all the components of life in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said in the statement.
Hamas’s statement noted that shelters, schools, and UNRWA facilities have been systematically targeted and destroyed, resulting in the killings of hundreds of displaced individuals, including children, women, and the elderly.
“The number of UNRWA facilities targeted has reached one hundred and ninety centers, confirming the criminal intentions of the fascist occupation government and its pursuit of destruction and inflicting the maximum number of unarmed civilians inside, in a continuation of the war against our people,” the statement added.
Hamas labeled the Israeli attacks as war crimes and blatant violations of international law, urging the international community to take a firm stand in denouncing these attacks, taking action to stop them, and ensuring that those responsible, including occupation leaders, are held accountable for their actions.
Moreover, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a statement strongly condemned the Israeli assault on Al-Jaouni school, describing it as a new chapter of Zionist brutality that highlights a surge in Zionist aggression backed by the American government.
“These massacres will not undermine the determination and steadfastness of our people, who refuse to succumb to oppression, massacres, and aggression. The enemy will certainly pay the price for its crimes,” the statement added.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced that 250,000 people have been impacted by Israel’s latest evacuation order for parts of southern Gaza.
The mass displacement of Gaza in the war-torn territory comes amid the World Health Organization’s warning of a public health catastrophe as it says diarrhea, chickenpox and jaundice are spreading fast among Gaza’s displaced population due to lack of clean water and personal hygiene materials.
More than 38,098 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 87,705 wounded so far throughout Israel’s brutal military onslaught.
British Columbia Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Defeated on Judicial Notice
Case of Dr. Charles Hoffe Kills Deferral to Government Offices as Agents of “Truth”
Courageous Discourse™ | July 6, 2024
This was written by Canadian attorney Lee Turner after discussion with Dr. McCullough.
Dr. Charles Hoffe is a family and (former) emergency room physician in British Columbia who is the subject of disciplinary proceedings before the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia for making public statements about SARS-CoV-2, the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, and other alternative treatments including ivermectin. Hoffe has successfully defeated an application made by the College seeking judicial notice of the truth of facts alleged by the College concerning these issues. In its efforts to discipline the physician, the College has alleged that the statements made by the physician are misleading, incorrect or inflammatory and constitute professional misconduct. The College asked the discipline panel to take judicial notice of the following facts and thereby prevent the doctor from presenting any contrary evidence in his defence:
- The Covid virus kills or causes other serious effects;
- The virus does not discriminate;
- Vaccines work;
- Vaccines are generally safe and have a low risk of harmful effects, especially in children;
- Infection and transmission of the COVID-19 virus is less likely to occur among fully vaccinated individuals than for those who are unvaccinated; vaccines do not prevent infection, reinfection or transmission, but they reduce the severity of symptoms and the risk of bad outcomes;
- Health Canada has approved COVID vaccines, and regulatory approval is a strong indicator of safety and effectiveness;
- Health Canada has not approved ivermectin to treat COVID-19; and
- Health Canada advises that Canadians should not consume the veterinary version of ivermectin.
In its June 29, 2024 decision, the disciplinary panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia declined to take judicial notice of items 2-5, did take judicial notice of items 7-8 (the straightforward ivermectin claims), and took judicial notice of a revised version of items 1 and 6.
The panel was prepared to take judicial notice of item 1 that reads: “COVID-19 can kill or cause other serious effects”.
The College explained their rationale for taking judicial notice of a revised version of item 1 by referencing evidence presented by the doctor in his defence that included the following:
- risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19 is extremely skewed to those above 70 years of age, especially those with multiple comorbidities. The average age of persons that died from COVID-19 in Canada was approximately 84 years old;
- very low proportion of COVID-19 related deaths in Canada occurred in those under 50 years of age-the data shows very high (although not 100%) survival rates for those under 70;
- average rate of lethality from COVID-19 for Canadians is much lower than estimates given by public health officials; and
- reported hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 have been over-counted, because many hospitalizations and deaths “with, and not from” COVID-19 were wrongly attributed to COVID-19
With respect to item 6, the panel endorsed findings of an earlier provincial Court of Appeal decision that held the safety and efficacy of any drug is always relative and as a rule the safety and efficacy of a pharmaceutical product cannot be discussed in such blunt fashion as to say that it “is” or “is not” safe and effective. The panel held that the issues raised in the citation should be determined based upon the evidence that is tested through cross-examination rather than by taking judicial notice of one party’s assertion of the facts, and in this case, based upon statements made by public health officials or public health agencies. The panel held that it was prepared to take judicial notice of the fact that Health Canada had approved the COVID – 19 vaccines, but declined to take judicial notice that Health Canada’s approval was a strong indicator of safety and effectiveness.
This decision on the issue of judicial notice, is consistent with the June 28, 2024 decision of the US Supreme Court in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo Secretary of Commerce et. al. which overturned the landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The Chevron decision had given rise to what is commonly referred to as the Chevron deference doctrine. Under this doctrine, federal agencies had the power to interpret a law that they administer when that law is vaguely written, and courts were required to defer to the agency’s interpretation of a statute. In Loper, the US Supreme Court rejected the Chevron deference doctrine calling it “fundamentally misguided.” They said court should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws rather than having to accept the agency’s interpretation. Commentators have suggested that the Chevron deference doctrine gave the powerful – the people who control the agencies like the FDA, CDC and FCC – a significant advantage in court making them essentially the ultimate decision-makers in interpreting ambiguous laws. Commentators have pointed out that many of these agencies are captive agencies with close ties, including financial ties, to the industries that they are charged with regulating and therefore they lack objectivity with respect to those industries. The ruling in Labor means that federal judges now have more authority to interpret these laws. The decision by the British Columbia Disciplinary Panel of the College of Physicians of Surgeons of British Columbia prevents regulatory bodies from saying “it is so because we say it is so”. They have to prove the facts they assert and those who disagree will be allowed to challenge those facts and present contrary evidence.
The case against Dr. Hoffe is far from over. This development is significant in that a government agency cannot make the rules, interpret them, and claim they hold the truth on an evolving scientific or medical issue.
Lee C. Turner, Partner, Doak Sherriff Lawyers, LLC, Kelowna BC V1Y 2A9
(Professional Law Corporation)
The Supreme Court’s Superb Dissenting Opinion
At least three justices understand what is at stake here
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | July 5, 2024
Three justices of the Supreme Court actually read and understood the record in our case. Justice Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote an important dissenting opinion. I’d like to share a few highlights here, as it provides a roadmap to ultimately prevailing in our case.
The three dissenting justices clearly recognize that we the plaintiffs were victims of the government’s unconstitutional censorship activities:
Among these victims were two States, whose public health officials were hampered in their ability to share their expertise with state residents; distinguished professors of medicine at Stanford and Harvard; a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine; the owner and operator of a news website; and Jill Hines, the director of a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. All these victims simply wanted to speak out on a question of the utmost public importance.
Echoing the district court and circuit court opinions, the dissenting justices indicate the landmark importance of this free speech case:
If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years. Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government, and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts.
Unlike the majority opinion, which took the government’s claim to be combating “misinformation” at face value, the dissenting opinion recognized that much of the speech that the government suppressed was true:
The speech at issue falls squarely into those categories. It concerns the COVID–19 virus, which has killed more than a million Americans. Our country’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic was and remains a matter of enormous medical, social, political, geopolitical, and economic importance, and our dedication to a free marketplace of ideas demands that dissenting views on such matters be allowed. I assume that a fair portion of what social media users had to say about COVID–19 and the pandemic was of little lasting value. Some was undoubtedly untrue or misleading, and some may have been downright dangerous. But we now know that valuable speech was also suppressed. That is what inevitably happens when entry to the marketplace of ideas is restricted.
The majority opinion suggested, without evidence, that our censorship was the result of the actions of social media platforms, who may have censored us even in the absence of government coercion. The dissenting opinion explains the flaws with this unwarranted assumption:
Of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, see National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024), and that is what happened in this case.
The record before us is vast. It contains evidence of communications between many different government actors and a variety of internet platforms, as well as evidence regarding the effects of those interactions on the seven different plaintiffs.
Alito focuses on Facebook and co-plaintiff Jill Hines as the clearest example (though by no means the only example) to illustrate the nature of the problem:
Here is what the record plainly shows. For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Not surprisingly, Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result Hines was indisputably injured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy.
It’s hard to know how much more harm the Supreme Court would need to see before agreeing that at least one of the plaintiffs has standing. These examples could be multiplied. By refusing to examine the record and rule on the merits, Alito suggests that the Court actually provides a roadmap for future government censorship efforts:
This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue, and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.
That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.
Alito then echoes arguments I published in The Federalist following oral arguments, regarding the key differences between newspapers and social media companies in terms of their interactions with government:
Internet platforms, although rich and powerful, are at the same time far more vulnerable to Government pressure than other news sources. If a President dislikes a particular newspaper, he (fortunately) lacks the ability to put the paper out of business. But for Facebook and many other social media platforms, the situation is fundamentally different. They are critically dependent on the protection provided by §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U. S. C. §230, which shields them from civil liability for content they spread. They are vulnerable to antitrust actions; indeed, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described a potential antitrust lawsuit as an “existential” threat to his company. And because their substantial overseas operations may be subjected to tough regulation in the European Union and other foreign jurisdictions, they rely on the Federal Government’s diplomatic efforts to protect their interests.
This dynamic sets social media companies up to be vulnerable to government coercion, in precisely the way we argued before the Court:
For these and other reasons, internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability. When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of “killing people” and subtly threatened with retaliation.
Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were “deplatformed” or otherwise injured.
Alito perfectly describes how this abusive Stockholm Syndrome dynamic played out between Facebook and the White House:
What these events show is that top federal officials continuously and persistently hectored Facebook to crack down on what the officials saw as unhelpful social media posts, including not only posts that they thought were false or misleading but also stories that they did not claim to be literally false but nevertheless wanted obscured. And Facebook’s reactions to these efforts were not what one would expect from an independent news source or a journalistic entity dedicated to holding the Government accountable for its actions. Instead, Facebook’s responses resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster. Facebook told White House officials that it would “work . . . to gain your trust.” When criticized, Facebook representatives whimpered that they “thought we were doing a better job” but promised to do more going forward. They pleaded to know how they could “get back to a good place” with the White House. And when denounced as “killing people,” Facebook responded by expressing a desire to “work together collaboratively” with its accuser. The picture is clear.
Here we have a major social media platform responding as though they are entirely subservient to government interests. The more they try to please the government by ramping up censorship, the more abusive and demanding the government becomes.
To the dubious claim that plaintiffs cannot allege potential future injuries because—on their word—the White House has backed off the social media companies, Alito (in contrast to the majority opinion) calls the government’s bluff:
The White House threats did not come with expiration dates, and it would be silly to assume that the threats lost their force merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis.
As Alito later quips, “death threats can be very effective even if they are not delivered every day.”
Drawing an analogy to another free speech case (Vullo) that was heard on the same day as ours, Alito explains:
In Vullo, the alleged conduct was blunt. The head of the state commission with regulatory authority over insurance companies allegedly told executives at Lloyd’s directly and in no uncertain terms that she would be “‘less interested’” in punishing the company’s regulatory infractions if it ceased doing business with the National Rifle Association. The federal officials’ conduct here [in Murthy] was more subtle and sophisticated. The message was delivered piecemeal by various officials over a period of time in the form of aggressive questions, complaints, insistent requests, demands, and thinly veiled threats of potentially fatal reprisals. But the message was unmistakable, and it was duly received.
The Supreme Court majority was ready to knock down ham-fisted censorship (in Vullo) but gave a pass—at least for now—to sophisticated and debonair censorship (in Murthy).
The government’s defense of its behavior included the argument that it had the right to use the bully pulpit to “persuade” social media companies to do its bidding—”the government has free speech rights, too, don’t you see?” Alito sees right through this ruse:
This argument introduces a new understanding of the term “bully pulpit,” which was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to denote a President’s excellent (i.e, “bully”) position (i.e., his “pulpit”) to persuade the public. But [Rob] Flaherty, [Andy] Slavitt, and other [White House] officials who emailed and telephoned Facebook were not speaking to the public from a figurative pulpit. On the contrary, they were engaged in a covert scheme of censorship that came to light only after the plaintiffs demanded their emails in discovery and a congressional Committee obtained them by subpoena. If these communications represented the exercise of the bully pulpit, then everything that top federal officials say behind closed doors to any private citizen must also represent the exercise of the President’s bully pulpit. That stretches the concept beyond the breaking point.
In any event, the Government is hard-pressed to find any prior example of the use of the bully pulpit to threaten censorship of private speech.
To repeat what I have said many times before: this case is not about constraining the government’s speech—as they falsely claim; it’s about stopping the government from constraining the speech of U.S. citizens.
The dissenting justices argue that the majority opinion applies a “new and heightened standard” of traceability in our case (p.20). Alito explains, again using the case of co-plaintiff Jill Hines, that she clearly has standing to bring the case (and we only need one plaintiff with standing to prevail):
Here, it is reasonable to infer (indeed, the inference leaps out from the record) that the efforts of the federal officials affected at least some of Facebook’s decisions to censor Hines. All of Facebook’s demotion, content-removal, and deplatforming decisions are governed by its policies. So when the White House pressured Facebook to amend some of the policies related to speech in which Hines engaged, those amendments necessarily impacted some of Facebook’s censorship decisions. Nothing more is needed. What the Court seems to want are a series of ironclad links—from a particular coercive communication to a particular change in Facebook’s rules or practice and then to a particular adverse action against Hines. No such chain was required in the Department of Commerce case, and neither should one be demanded here.
Furthermore, the Court’s majority opinion developed a novel, higher standard of repressibility of potential future harms to avoid ruling on the merits of our case:
As with traceability, the Court applies a new and elevated standard for redressability, which has never required plaintiffs to be “certain” that a court order would prevent future harm.
Having established that the Court should have found that we have standing, Alito proceeds to analyze the record on the merits, using the following legal framework:
The principle recognized in Bantam Books and Vullo requires a court to distinguish between permissible persuasion and unconstitutional coercion, and in Vullo, we looked to three leading factors that are helpful in making that determination: (1) the authority of the government officialswho are alleged to have engaged in coercion, (2) the natureof statements made by those officials, and (3) the reactions of the third party alleged to have been coerced. 602 U. S., at 189–190, and n. 4, 191–194. In this case, all three factors point to coercion.
Although the government tries to spin their interactions with social media platforms as fairly benign, examination of the record in this regard leaves no doubt: “The totality of this record—constant haranguing, dozens of demands for compliance, and references to potential consequences—evince ‘a scheme of state censorship.’” Lest there be any doubt in this regard, “Facebook’s responses to the officials’ persistent inquiries, criticisms, and threats show that the platform perceived the statements as something more than mere recommendations.” Alito concludes, “In sum, the officials wielded potent authority. Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield.”
From here we return to the District Court in Louisiana for trial, where we have an excellent judge (Terry Doughty). We will be granted additional discovery, in which we anticipate getting enough additional “smoking guns” to cross the high standing bar set by the majority Supreme Court opinion. The District court has combined our case with an analogous case filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is clearly named and targeted in several government censorship missives—so between Hines and Kennedy there should be no questions on the issue of standing, even under the novel and strict criteria that SCOTUS requires in this case.
In other words, we will prevail in the end. I anticipate being back at the Supreme Court in another year or two for the final ruling. At that point, SCOTUS will not be able to temporize or look away as they did this time. And when judges examine the record in our case, they have only reached one conclusion: the government engaged in unconstitutional censorship on a mass scale. And it has to stop.
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From the Archives
Mossad ‘in contact from very beginning’ with killers of Italian PM, reporter reveals
By Kit Klarenberg and Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | October 5, 2025
A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
For years, Israel’s Mossad monitored and secretly influenced a violent communist faction that carried out the March 16, 1978 kidnapping and murder of Italian statesman Aldo Moro, veteran investigative journalist Eric Salerno has documented.
Having worked closely alongside multiple Italian heads of state during his 30-year career as a correspondent, Salerno published an expose of their secret relationship with Israeli intelligence in 2010 called Mossad Base Italy. … continue
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