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:
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:
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)
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.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 5, 2024
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is back in the headlines big time – what with the recent decision of X to rejoin the group, and now, as anticipated, the US Congress is stepping up its attempts to shed more light on what GARM actually does, censorship-wise.
Once again it is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan who is trying to hold Big Tech – and in this case, “the advertising industrial complex” as it were – accountable.
GARM is a World Economic Forum (WEF)-affiliated initiative, launched by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA); the latter by its own admission represents more than 150 biggest brands and over 60 advertiser associations around the world.
“Brand safety” is what the group says it is offering to these clients. But Jordan, and many conservatives and media outlets and businesses – allied or perceived to be allied with them – have strong suspicions that GARM can and is being used as yet another avenue of censorship and suppression – this time via actions that result in demonetization or boycott of those who hold “disfavored views.”
Concerning GARM, Jordan started fighting what supporters must see as “the good fight” last year (first by requesting information and then by issuing a subpoena once that was ignored).
Then, this March, the Committee sent letters to five members of the GARM Steering Team including Unilever and GroupM (a media investment group) asking for access to documents and communications that might prove the overall anti-conservative bias executed by the imitative.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Jordan was not in the mood to sugarcoat the issue, as he sees it: “This coordination does not always revolve around ‘brand safety’ and ‘harmful’ content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor,” he wrote, adding that this results in content creators losing revenue, in a way that may be illegal and collusive under the Sherman (antitrust) Act.
In late June, Jordan wrote to Unilever again, and the inclusion of GroupM is pertinent given that the March letter mentioned several leading conservative media outlets as alleged targets of this conduct.
The letter is asking top representatives of the two corporations to publicly testify regarding the Committee’s misgivings around their activities.
According to a Committee spokesman’s comments made in March, “everything is on the table” in case of non-compliance with this series of requests – including more subpoenas, and congressional hearings.
Press TV – July 5, 2024
An international human rights organization says Israel is using water as another weapon of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by deliberately reducing the amount of water available to them, especially potable water sources.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a new press release issued on Thursday that the Tel Aviv regime is purposefully causing the death of over 2.3 million people as part of its genocide war.
The Euro-Med noted that its field team observed significant damage to a desalination plant in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, as a result of an Israeli strike. The attack claimed the life of a young man who was filling a gallon with water there and left several other individuals wounded.
The station, which provided services to at least 50,000 people in several nearby residential neighborhoods, sustained significant damage after being struck by an Israeli guided bomb that broke through multiple stories and detonated on the first floor.
The statement noted that the residents of the Gaza Strip are facing significant challenges in getting access to water as summer temperatures rise.
Estimates show that the per capita share of water in the Gaza Strip has decreased by 97% due to the extensive destruction of water infrastructure. As a result of the Israeli onslaught, the per capita share of water in the territory has decreased to between 3 and 15 liters per day.
Euro-Med highlighted that continued destruction and devastation by the Israeli army renders the Gaza Strip unlivable, particularly after nine out of ten water tanks and half of the water networks were destroyed.
The Israeli regime has so far killed at least 38,011 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 87,445 others, since it waged the brutal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, according to the Gaza-based health ministry.
The occupying entity has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
The regime is facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice as the top court has ruled that Israel must stop its military activities in Rafah immediately. This is the place where more than a million Palestinians had taken shelter from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
Al-Mayadeen | July 5, 2024
Palestinian Resistance factions opposed any plans or proposals for the governance of the Gaza Strip that go beyond a solely Palestinian administration of the besieged territory.
The Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas released a strong-worded statement rejecting any proposals or remarks that support plans for the deployment of foreign troops in the Gaza Strip “under any justification.”
The movement said that the administration of affairs in the Gaza Strip, after the war on Gaza ends, is solely a Palestinian matter, which only the Palestinian people will determine.
Hamas stressed, “We will not allow any guardianship or the imposition of any external solutions or [plans] that detract from [the Palestinian people’s] principles,” which are based on their right to freedom and self-determination.
It invited all Islamic and Arab nations to press for an end to the Israeli genocidal war on the Palestinian people and to assist the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
The statement also called upon Islamic and Arab states to “fulfill their obligations toward [the Palestinian] people, their land, and the Islamic and Christian sanctities,” which have been desecrated by “fascist settler criminal gangs.”
Saudi Foreign Minister remarks stir up controversy
On Thursday, the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister, Faisal Bin Farhan, said that Riyadh would back the deployment of an international force in Gaza, via a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decision aimed at assisting the Palestinian Authority.
Bin Farhan made the remark while participating in a panel discussion at the European Council on Foreign Relations conference in Madrid.
Talks for the deployment of forces to manage affairs in the Gaza Strip, after the war on the besieged territory ends, have long been circulating in Israeli circles and international media outlets.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also suggested that “friendly” Arab states take on the responsibility of security and cultural affairs in the Gaza Strip. Among the top candidates to complete such tasks are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
However, there has been no official confirmation by both states on whether they are willing to participate in such a plan. The only public announcement backing the deployment of international peacekeeping forces came via the final statement of the 33rd Arab Summit in Bahrain.
Bin Farhan’s remarks are of importance as it marks the first public support of Riyadh for the deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip.
PFLP, Popular Resistance Committees warn against international forces plot
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also put out a statement condemning the remarks of the Saudi foreign minister, reiterating the Palestinian people’s indisputable right to self-determination.
The PFLP expressed its “outright rejection” of the remarks, adding that any attempt to deploy troops, whether via an international decision or not, would constitute a new occupation of the Gaza Strip.
It stressed that Resistance fighters will confront any foreign plot to undermine the Palestinian people.
Moreover, the Popular Resistance Committees affirmed positions similar to those expressed by Hamas and the PFLP, underlining that such a move would constitute an aggression against the Palestinian people.
It emphasized that it would deal with such foreign troops the way it dealt with Israeli occupation forces.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 2, 2024
Given how X has gone out of its way to reveal the depth and breadth of online censorship via the Twitter Files, this makes for an awkward reunion: the company has decided to rejoin the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
It’s a pro-censorship, World Economic Forum-affiliated advertisers’ group, that achieves its objectives through the “brand safety” route (i.e., the censorship “brand” here would be demonetization). And last summer, it was scrutinized by the US Congress.
GARM is one of those outfits whose roots are very entangled (comes in handy when somebody tries to probe your activities, though) – and the chronology is not insignificant either: formed in 2019 as a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) initiative, partnered with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).
Then came another “partnership” – that with WEF (World Economic Forum), specifically, its Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment, and Sport project – a “flagship” one.
In May 2023, the US House Judiciary Committee wanted to know what exactly was happening here, and whether “brand safety” as a concept, as exercised by these entities, could be linked to censorship of online speech.
So the Committee subpoenaed the World Federation of Advertisers (and GARM), asking for records that might show whether these groups “coordinated efforts to demonetize and censor disfavored speech online.”
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan was at the time concerned that this conduct might have run afoul of US antitrust laws.
For X, despite the strides the platform has made toward protecting users’ speech since the Twitter takeover, the GARM relationship is most likely simply about (ad) money – and one of the several efforts to make the platform profitable at last.
Those who were hoping for a “free speech absolutism” on a platform like this might be disappointed, the Congress might investigate some more; but ultimately, the move represents a “realpolitik-style” compromise.
And so X is “excited” and “proud” to be back as a GARM member. The company’s “Safety” account posted something about “the safety of our global town square” apparently being relevant to this decision, but did not elaborate.
Now listed by GARM along with X are YouTube and Chanel – and, in between, some of the biggest pharma and telecoms out there.
Big Money, one might say.
By Fayha Shalash | The Palestine Chronicle | June 26, 2024
Ramallah – Every summer, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank struggle with the lack of water as a result of official Israeli policy. This year, however, matters are expected to worsen as a result of an Israeli decision to further reduce the percentage of water available to Palestinians.
During the past few weeks, Israel decided to reduce the amount of water allocated to the cities of Hebron (Al-Khalil) and Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank, by about 35 percent, while increasing the settlers’ share of water resources.
The Israeli Mekorot water company, which controls the amount of resources that reach Palestinians in the West Bank, officially informed the Hebron municipality of the new provision.
The decision has intensified the state of anxiety among the residents of the two cities.
Summer Nightmare
For Muhammad al-Talahma, a resident of the city of Dura, south of Hebron, the summer season has been a nightmare for years, since the Israeli occupation decided to reduce water quantities.
The residents of Hebron, which is famous for its agriculture and fertile soil, are experiencing a state of continuous psychological pressure. Due to the reduction in water, many residents have been forced to reduce their crops because they cannot afford irrigation.
Al-Talahma told the Palestine Chronicle that he has become a policeman in his own home – constantly monitoring his six children’s use of water.
This, however, is not enough.
In the last weeks, the water has been cut off several times a month, making life almost impossible.
“We are reducing everything, including showering and cleaning the house. My wife is forced to use the water to wash the dishes to also clean the floor,” al-Talahma said.
“We live as if we were in the Middle Ages, in houses without water,” he added. “Every few days, we are forced to buy water for astronomical sums, if we find it at all.”
A water tank costs more than 400 shekels (108 dollars) but al-Talahma is forced to buy it regularly to meet his family’s needs.
He said this is a huge financial burden in light of the harsh economic conditions.
To make things worse, Palestinians in the Hebron area are aware that the settlements that were established on Palestinian lands can enjoy large amounts of water resources.
Moreover, the illegal Jewish settlers take control of the water springs throughout the city’s mountains, forbidding access to their Palestinian owners.
“It is painful to see that my children are thirsty, while settlers’ children are swimming and having fun in pools around the water springs that our ancestors built,” al-Talahma stressed. “Armed soldiers are deployed around them to ensure we do not approach them.”
Double Standards
Therefore, the recent announcement that water quantities for the Palestinians will be further decreased has made matters even more complicated.
The Hebron Municipality appealed to the international community to intervene to solve the water crisis, especially since the population is growing.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the population of the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem at more than 1.1 million people, noting that Palestinians depend mainly on water extracted from ground and surface sources. This amounts to 75.7 percent of the total available water.
According to the Bureau, “the Israeli occupation’s measures led to limiting the ability of Palestinians to exploit their natural resources, especially water, and forced them to compensate for the shortage by purchasing water from the Israeli water company Mekorot.”
The amount of water purchased from the Israeli company for domestic use amounted to 98.8 million cubic meters in 2022, which constitutes 22 percent of the amount of available water.
Also, according to the statistics, the average daily Palestinian consumption is 85.7 liters. In contrast, Israeli consumption is three times greater, at about 300 liters per day.
In the case of illegal settlers, numbers are even more shocking; they consume more than seven times the Palestinian per capita consumption.
Forced Displacement
Hassan Barijiyah, a Bethlehem-based expert on settlement affairs, told The Palestine Chronicle that the city is built on a pool of groundwater that would be sufficient for all its residents and even exceeds its needs.
Barijiyah believes that all of these Israeli practices – the most recent of which was the reduction of water – aim to forcibly displace the Palestinians by cutting off all means of life for them.
In parallel, there is a declared Israeli war on every Palestinian who tries to dig wells to store water under the pretext that they are not licensed.
“If the Israeli occupation did not exist, we would distribute water to all the Palestinians, but we are thirsty and we are forced to buy water from the Israelis who steal it from us,” he said.
“They always come to the Ancient Pools of Suliman, Ain al-Hiniya, and Fukin Valley, swim in them, and steal their water under the pretext that it is sacred, while we are prevented from accessing and benefiting from it,” Barijiyah said.
Fayha’ Shalash is a Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist. She graduated from Birzeit University in 2008 and she has been working as a reporter and broadcaster ever since.
MEMO | July 3, 2024
The Israeli army seized a large area of Palestinian land south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to a Palestinian government agency on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The Occupation authorities decided to seize a total of 12,715 dunams (3,141 acres) of land belonging to citizens in the village of Aqraba, south-east of Nablus,” the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission said in a statement.
The Commission said Israel designated the seized territory as “state land” to “convert citizens’ lands into an expanding settlement project”.
The decision was “part of a larger plan to control the eastern slopes of the West Bank, particularly those adjacent to the Jordan Valley and its outskirts by seizing vast areas in this region,” the statement said.
Since the beginning of 2024, Israeli authorities have issued four announcements converting private Palestinian lands into state lands, thereby prohibiting Palestinian citizens from accessing, cultivating or reclaiming them, the Commission noted.
The statement indicated that the area declared as “state land” in these announcements totals 24,000 dunams (5,930 acres).
According to the Commission, the total area of land seized under various designations since the start of 2024 has reached 39,000 dunams (9,637 acres).
On Tuesday, the Commission’s semi-annual report highlighted the establishment of 17 new Jewish-only settlement outposts, while the Israeli government granted legal status to 11 other outposts.
Settlement outposts are small communities established by illegal Israeli settlers on privately owned Palestinian land without approval from the Israeli government.
Estimates indicate that around 700,000 Israeli settlers live in roughly 300 illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
All Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories are considered illegal under international law.
Al Mayadeen | July 3, 2024
Iranian filmmaker and musician Bashir Biazar has been released from detention in France and is en route back to Iran, as confirmed by an official from Iran’s Presidential Office.
Bashir Biazar’s detention, which lasted over a month, sparked an international outcry and accusations of political motivations by French authorities.
He was arrested on charges that included “Iranian propaganda,” “anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism,” and alleged social media activities deemed detrimental to public order in France, according to documents obtained by Press TV.
The charges against Biazar were vehemently rejected by human rights activists, officials, and his supporters, who argued they were unfounded and driven by political agendas targeting Iran.
Rachid Lemoudaa, a French lawyer representing Biazar, told AFP that “There is nothing, in terms of law, that justifies this measure. Bashir Biazar expressed himself on his Instagram account, as anyone could do freely in a state governed by the rule of law,” adding that he believes the issue is “political, and politics has no place in law.”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 2, 2024
The EU Council has managed to nestle fighting “disinformation and hate speech” between such issues as the Middle East, Ukraine, and migration – not to mention while at the same time appointing a new set of “apparatchiks,” in the wake of the European Parliament elections.
This proceeds from the Council’s 2024-2029 strategic agenda, adopted on June 27. This document represents a “five-year plan” to guide the bloc’s policy and goals.
Under the heading, “A free and democratic Europe,” the document addresses different ways in which “European values” will be upheld going forward. The Council’s conclusions state that in order to strengthen the EU’s “democratic resilience,” what it decides is disinformation and hate speech will have to be countered.
These categories of speech are infamously arbitrarily defined, even in legislation, and habitually used as a tool of censorship – but the conclusions count combating them among the strategic goal of fending off foreign interference and destabilization.
In other words, those individuals or organizations that are found to be “guilty” of hate speech or disinformation might face the grim possibility of being treated as, essentially, a threat to the EU’s security.
Another promise the document makes in the same breath is that tech giants will be made to “take their responsibility for safeguarding democratic dialogue online.”
Does this mean there will be more or less censorship in the EU over the next five years? The Brussels bureaucrats are at this point so practiced at churning out platitudes that, theoretically, this statement could be interpreted either way.
However, in conjunction with the “misinformation” etc., talk, it is fairly clear which course the EU intends to keep when it comes to online freedom of expression.
AI is not explicitly mentioned as a threat (either to the EU or by the EU, as the technology that can be used to ramp up censorship, aka, “combat misinformation”).
However, you name it, the EU supposedly has it: under the part of the conclusions addressing competitiveness, increasing capacities related to AI sits right there with growing defense, space, quantum technologies, semiconductors, health, biotechnologies capabilities – not to mention “net-zero technologies, mobility, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and advanced materials.”
It’s a pretty comprehensive bridge the EU appears to be trying to sell to its member-states and their citizens.
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By Dr. Joseph Mercola | March 30, 2021
In 2000, everything about Bill Gates’ public persona changed. He morphed from a hardnosed and ruthless technology monopolizer into a soft, fuzzy and incredibly generous philanthropist when he and his wife launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.1
It was a public relations coup. May 18, 1998, the U.S. Justice Department, in collaboration with 20 state attorneys, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.2 At that time, the company was 23 years old and was ruling the personal computer market. The Seattle Times described the fallout from the antitrust lawsuit:3
“The company barely escaped being split up after it was ruled an unlawful monopolist in 2000 for using its stranglehold on the PC market with its Windows operating system to cripple competitors, such as Netscape’s Navigator Web browser.”
How would the world be different today if the company had been split? Yale law professor George Priest described the antitrust lawsuit as “one of the most important antitrust cases of its generation.”4 In 2002, a court settlement placed restrictions on Microsoft to curb some of its practices for five years.
It was later extended twice and then expired May 12, 2011. The lawsuit had a dramatic effect on “the emergence of an entirely new field called IP (intellectual property) antitrust,” Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp told the Seattle Times.5
Later, large sums donated from the foundation made the news multiple times, including $9.5 million to GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines), a second $7.5 million to GAVI and $6.8 million to the World Health Organization in 2017.6
By June 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, the Gates Foundation’s donations totaled 45% of WHO’s funding from nongovernmental sources.7 Once mainstream media’s attention was no longer on Gates’ antitrust activities and focused on the philanthropist actions of the foundation, Gates publicly turned his attention to vaccinating the world, long before COVID-19.8
Event 201: A Preplanned Pandemic
In a deep dive into the Gates Foundation’s charitable donations, The Nation found there were $250 million in grants to companies where the foundation held corporate stocks, including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi and Medtronic. The money was directed at supporting projects “like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.”9 … continue
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