Pakistan arrests opposition leader in crackdown on Imran Khan’s party
Press TV – August 19, 2023
Pakistani authorities have arrested opposition leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi in a widening crackdown on former prime minister Imran Khan’s party by the military-backed interim government.
Qureshi, who twice served as Pakistan’s foreign minister, was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Saturday in the capital Islamabad shortly after he denounced the newly installed caretaker government for its attempts to delay the elections which are scheduled to be held later this year.
“He was arrested from his residence by Islamabad police. We don’t have any further details yet,” a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
In recent months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting Khan’s PTI party in an attempt to crush his grassroots support, causing nationwide anger against the country’s powerful military, which most people believe is behind the crackdown.
According to several independent surveys, the PTI will win a landslide victory in the next elections if the party is allowed to run a political campaign without restrictions.
PTI spokesman Zulfi Bukhari condemned Qureshi’s arrest on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying the vice chairman of the party was “arrested for doing a press conference and re-affirming PTI stance against all tyranny and pre-poll rigging that is going on currently in Pakistan.”
“PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been illegally arrested once again,” the PTI said in social media post on X.
Qureshi was also arrested on May 11 and released on June 6.
In the meantime, Khan, 70, is currently serving a three-year jail term.
Khan was arrested earlier this month and taken to jail after a court found him guilty in one of the more than dozens of cases he has faced.
The former prime minister has maintained that some 200 cases against him are politically motivated to keep him out of power. He says the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.
The three-year jail sentence issued by a lower court disqualifies him from taking part in elections.
US Guantanamo judge dismisses ‘confession’ obtained by torture
Press TV – August 19, 2023
A US military judge has rejected a “confession” coerced out of a young Guantanamo Bay captive through torture following the September 11, 2001 highly suspicious terror attacks in Washington and New York that led to military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The judge in the military tribunals held for captives still held in the Cuba-based US Guantanamo Bay military prison and torture facility ruled that the “confession” obtained from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, was tainted by years of abuse and torture inflicted on him at the hands of the CIA and FBI intelligence agents and operatives.
“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” wrote the judge, Col. Lanny Acosta, in handing down his ruling.
“However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs.” Acosta further emphasized.
Attorneys for both Nashiri and five other suspects — accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks and held captive and tortured for decades without trial or legal representation — have struggled for over 10 years now in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them that was coerced through torture.
The six were captured separately after the 2001 attacks and shuttled through CIA-run “black sites” in numerous US-allied countries across the globe, such as Thailand and Poland, where they were subjected to intense torture techniques, including waterboarding, physical beatings and sleep deprivation.
Following the arrival of the captives at the Guantanamo military prison, some of them, including Nashiri were again subjected to intense interrogation and torture by FBI agents in early 2007 and other instances.
The judge’s decision comes as obtaining confession from prisoners through torture remains a major violation of international law.
The US military has accused Nashiri of being an al-Qaeda recruiter that plotted various attacks on American interests in the Arabian Peninsula.
US forces captured Nashiri in 2002 and transferred him to the Guantanamo prison in 2006 after he remained for four years in the custody of CIA interrogators and repeatedly tortured.
In September 2011, he was charged by a US military commission on nine counts related to his alleged involvement in planning al-Qaeda attacks.
His military trial showcased by the very entity that captured and tortured him has repeatedly faced delays, due to insistence by his assigned military lawyers that he suffered repeated torture while under detention of the CIA spy agency collaborating with US military forces occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dr. Meryl Nass sues Maine Medical Board over suspension, alleges Board violated her first amendment rights
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 17, 2023
Dr. Meryl Nass today filed suit against the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine and its individual members, alleging the board violated her First Amendment rights and her rights under the Maine Constitution.
The complaint alleges the board engaged in retaliatory conduct against Nass, a practicing internal medicine physician and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory board, when the board suspended her medical license for publicly expressing her dissenting views on official COVID-19 policies, the COVID-19 vaccine and alternative treatments.
“Because she was outspoken, the board targeted Dr. Nass as someone to silence,” her attorney, Gene Libby told The Defender.
In fall 2021, the board issued a position statement, quoted in the complaint, stating that licensees could face disciplinary action if they “generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation.”
In October 2021, soon after the statement was issued, the board received a complaint alleging Nass was spreading misinformation online and soon after launched an investigation.
The board suspended Nass’ medical license on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing, accusing her of engaging in “unprofessional conduct” by spreading “misinformation about COVID-19.”
It also accused her of improperly prescribing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for three patients for off-label uses of those drugs.
The board suspended Nass’ license and ordered a neuropsychological evaluation, implying she was mentally impaired or a substance abuser and incompetent to practice medicine.
“There were no grounds to order a mental health examination,” Libby said. “That was simply a means to communicate to the public that there was something wrong with Dr. Nass, to discredit her and tarnish her reputation.”
After Nass moved to have the board dismiss its complaint against her, alleging First Amendment violations, the board on Sept. 26, 2022, withdrew its accusations of “misinformation”, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.
The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.
Nass told The Defender :
“The two primary complaints against me were that my statements were misleading and that I was prescribing drugs off-label. My speech — which I should note, was not simply opinion, it was an educated opinion developed after consulting the medical literature — is protected by the First Amendment.
“And prescribing drugs off-label is a perfectly legal thing to do, as explicitly stated on the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] website. Somewhere between 20-50% of drugs are prescribed off-label. The lawyers on the board staff know all of this. It’s their job to know the law with respect to medicine.
“They didn’t do this because they thought I had committed some kind of violation. They did it because they thought I’m older and I wouldn’t have the money to challenge them and so they could get away with it — they thought they could turn me into a poster child to scare all the doctors in the country.
“It is part of this broader attempt by the U.S. government and governments across the world to criminalize dissent by criminalizing so-called ‘misinformation.’”
Libby said the remaining allegations against Dr. Nass “are simply a pretext to discipline her. Because now, from an institutional standpoint, the board has to do something. She’s been under suspension for 19 months, which is the longest suspension that I’m aware of for any physician in the state.”
The board refused to schedule hearings on Nass’ suspension on consecutive days. Instead, it has held one day of hearings every other month. There have been six days of hearings so far over 10 months — and Nass’ license has been suspended the entire time.
“This is fundamentally unfair to Dr. Nass, but she’s within the grip of an institution that doesn’t want her speaking out,” Libby said.
In her lawsuit, Nass alleges the board and its members used their power to “crush dissenting views and chill disfavored speech.”
Nass is asking the court for declaratory relief, for an injunction to stop the board from continuing to retaliate against her and for monetary damages and legal fees.
CHD is providing financial and legal resources to Nass’ Maine-based legal team.
CHD President Mary Holland told The Defender :
“CHD is proud to support Dr. Nass’ lawsuit against the Maine medical board and its individual members.
“The board and its members have deprived Dr. Nass of her license and livelihood for over a year with no basis whatsoever. This kind of censorship, intimidation and punishment of doctors of conscience must stop.
“People need independent, thoughtful, caring physicians like Dr. Nass to be honored, not hounded as the board has done.
“I am pleased to see this case move forward in the courts in the interests of justice, for Dr. Nass, her patients and the broader society.”
Board provided resources to ‘combat spread of vaccine misinformation’
The Maine board’s Fall 2021 position statement expressed its support for a statement by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) — a private organization with no regulatory authority — which threatened physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.
According to the statement, physicians have a high degree of public trust and therefore a responsibility to “share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health.”
The Maine board’s statement endorsed the FSMB statement, encouraged physicians to address misinformation when encountered, directed physicians to use circulated materials from the American Medical Association (AMA) and said that questioning the COVID-19 vaccine qualifies as “misinformation,” according to the complaint.
The AMA materials provide scripts, talking points and strategies for “combating the spread of vaccine misinformation.”
The Maine board’s chair, Dr. Maroulla Gleaton, is also an FSMB director.
Nass is a widely recognized expert on the anthrax vaccine and biological warfare. She testified before Congress six times and was quoted in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
She has also been a prominent critic of governmental handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the suppression of effective treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and the safety and risks of the vaccine — all topics she has discussed in her Substack, on the radio, in interviews and elsewhere.
But, the complaint notes, her positions have been in conflict with those asserted in the position statement and the resources it highlights as “supporting the fight against COVID-19 misinformation.”
This was merely an attempt by the board to justify its decision to immediately suspend Nass and to intimidate her, the complaint alleges.
Board’s only concern was ‘silencing’ Nass and ‘branding her as crazy’
When Nass questioned the board’s authority to investigate a complaint unrelated to the practice of medicine and instead “focused entirely on a statement made in her private life,” the board responded, on Oct. 14, 2021, that she was engaged in “alleged unprofessional conduct” by provisioning “misleading and/or inaccurate” information.
In the January board meeting where the board decided to suspend her license, the conversation focused on Nass’ “unprofessional conduct due to the spreading of misinformation about COVID-19.”
The board also cited three matters related to treating patients, alleging Nass improperly diagnosed a patient “over the phone,” that she had provided misinformation to a pharmacist about why she was prescribing ivermectin for a patient, and that she had improperly issued another prescription.
On Sept. 7, 2022, Nass moved to dismiss the complaint, alleging the board was violating her First Amendment rights.
The board responded by withdrawing all charges based on her speech, retaining only the charges related to the treatment of three patients.
Libby told The Defender that through the entire investigation and hearings, the board never even spoke to the three patients. It did not inform them their medical records had been subpoenaed, or ask them about their treatment by Dr. Nass.
“Yet the remaining disciplinary charges are all predicated on Dr. Nass’ consultation with and advice to these patients.”
Libby called the patients to testify in Nass’ hearings. They all made “glowing comments” about her availability, her medical advice and her handling of their cases and expressed anger that Nass was being targeted by the board for their cases.
Libby said he interpreted this to indicate the board’s singular focus was not to ensure patient well-being, but rather “silencing Dr. Nass and attempting to brand her as crazy.”
According to the complaint, the board’s animus against Nass is also demonstrated by the fact that it is flouting its own rules for selecting and paying expert witnesses.
Board guidelines stipulate that witnesses can be paid a maximum of $125/hour for preparation and $175/hour for testimony and that the witnesses should have the same specialty as the practitioner in question and be licensed to practice in Maine.
But the board is paying Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician from Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, $500/hour to testify.
And board member Gleaton, who has conflicts of interest because of her position as FSMB director and has acted in openly mocking ways, has refused to recuse herself.
The next medical board hearing is set for mid-September.
But in the meantime, Libby said “The actions of the board are so outrageous, they need to be acted on legally.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
YouTube Greatly Expands Its Medical “Misinformation” Policies
New rules, largely determined by the WHO
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 16, 2023
YouTube, the titan of online video content, has expanded its Covid misinformation policy to cover what it calls all forms of medical misinformation.
YouTube has also declared its plan to delist videos promoting “cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective,” effectively disallowing content creators from encouraging natural cures.
The platform pledges to implement its medical misinformation policies when a topic exhibits high public health risks, is supposedly prone to misinformation, and when official guidance from health authorities is accessible to the public.
The changes also see YouTube recommitting to groups such as the WHO and other health bodies on what information is deemed to be acceptable for people to talk about on the platform – despite these institutions having recently received major blows to their credibility.
According to the policy update, YouTube will no longer host content that:
- Misinforms about prevention techniques or contradicts current health authority guidelines, including inaccuracies regarding the safety or efficacy of approved vaccines.
- Promotes treatments that local health bodies or the WHO have neither approved nor recognized as safe and effective. Moreover, it bans content that advocates for harmful substances or practices that have been scientifically proven to be detrimental.
- Denies the existence of specific health conditions.
As stated in its blog post, YouTube intends to punish content promoting not only what it believes to be overtly harmful treatments but also unproven ones that are audaciously offered as replacements for recognized alternatives.
For instance, influencers suggesting vitamin C supplements or garlic for cancer may have their content removed, the post states.
This marks a substantial escalation in the Google-owned platform’s ongoing crusade against what it believes to be the dissemination of medical misinformation, heavily catalyzed by the controversial experience of battling narratives about themes such as COVID-19 and vaccines, something YouTube was heavily criticized for as truthful content ended up being censored on the platform.
YouTube had targeted vaccine “misinformation,” such as demonetizing and deleting vaccine skepticism, thereby refining their approach in response to the global pandemic situation.
Rutgers Set to Disenroll Students on August 15th if Not Compliant with COVID Vaccine Mandates
By Lucia Sinatra | Brownstone Institute | August 14, 2023
On March 25, 2021, Rutgers University became the first university in the nation to announce it would require students to take COVID vaccines for fall 2021 enrollment, retracting its January 8, 2021 announcement that “… with our stance of human liberties and our history of protecting that, the vaccine is not mandatory.” What happened within a few short months that made Rutgers ultimately decide to hell with student civil liberties?
Rutgers claimed and still does to this day that it has a “commitment to health and safety for all members of its community” even though on July 30, 2021, Rochelle Walensky issued a press release claiming that COVID vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. As if that press release is some figment of our imagination, in January 2022, Rutgers announced a booster mandate with a compliance date set for January 31st, leaving students with few options but to comply to stay enrolled.
As of today, Rutgers remains one of less than 100 universities out of 2,679 four-year colleges and universities that refuse to let go of COVID vaccine mandates, and according to anonymous sources, Rutgers is planning to disenroll non-compliant students beginning on August 15, 2023.
Perhaps this dogmatic adherence to COVID vaccine mandates has been a long time coming. In 2020 and 2021, Rutgers had some of the strictest pandemic lockdown restrictions, even when other colleges were finding ways to resume normalcy. Students quickly fell in line and anyone who questioned the lockdown or mask mandates was denounced as an anti-science MAGA supporter and a grandma killer. A former Rutgers student described her experience as being stuck in a maelstrom of fear, divisive partisanship, and social pressure leading her to self-censor rather than jeopardize relationships or lose standing in her beloved community.
When the vaccine distribution began in early 2021, pandemic fears quickly morphed into anger against anyone who dared to question the vaccine’s necessity, safety, and long-term effects. Dozens of classroom conversations were fueled by vaccine talk. Support for the vaccine mandate was seen as virtuous and altruistic, and anyone who had questions quickly learned to keep their mouths shut or else they were given the dreaded anti-vaxxer label, which begs the question that if it was okay for the CDC to announce that the vaccines were not protecting us from contracting the virus and MSM was reporting on it, why wasn’t Rutgers supporting its students so they could feel safe to talk about it?
Meanwhile, Rutgers insisted to its community members that nobody was forced to get vaccinated since they could request an exemption. What they were not advertising was that exemptions were hard to come by. Religious exemptions were mostly denied. Medical exemptions often took months and multiple appeals to be approved, if ever. While the University did give a 90-day extension on booster compliance based on a recent COVID infection, this extension could only be requested once, and any medical exemption requests based on positive antibody titers from prior COVID infections were denied.
One former Rutgers student described his experience requesting a booster exemption after developing significant cardiac issues. He was told explicitly that antibody titers made no difference. His medical exemption request written by his cardiologist was eventually denied after multiple rounds of back-and-forth. Apparently, the Rutgers Immunization Group, an opaque group of people in charge of handling exemptions, determined this young man’s cardiac issues were not a good enough reason to exempt him from a booster despite emerging data showing COVID vaccines could cause cardiac side effects, especially in young males.
Faculty and staff members at Rutgers arguably had it worse than students as federal Executive Order 14042, signed on September 9, 2021, required that employees of federally contracted entities, including research universities such as Rutgers, be vaccinated against COVID.
On January 4, 2022, Rutgers announced a booster mandate for all community members including employees, even though a booster requirement was not part of the federal mandate. Some employees—all of whom completed primary vaccinations, and most were COVID-recovered—reported that they received threatening notices to comply with the booster mandate stating that “…if you fail to comply with the Executive Order and the University’s requirements, you will be subject to discipline, up to and including termination of employment, but namely termination.”
While the Executive Order provided exemptions for medical or religious reasons, they were also very difficult to attain. As a result, many employees reluctantly complied, and some were forced to resign. The oppressiveness of the employee vaccine mandate also kept many prospective employees from accepting career-changing job offers at Rutgers, despite the administration lamenting about the ongoing labor shortage at the university.
On May 12, 2023, President Biden signed an Executive Order revoking 14042 thereby eliminating Rutgers’ reason for implementing an employee COVID vaccine mandate. Four days later, Rutgers dropped the booster mandate, yet the employee COVID vaccine mandate remains.
Now, in August 2023, months after the federal government announced the end of the public health emergency, Rutgers is one of a small minority of universities steadfastly holding onto COVID vaccine mandates. The pandemic is nowhere near over at Rutgers, not by a long shot.
Lucia Sinatra is a recovering corporate securities attorney. After becoming a mother, Lucia turned her attention to fighting inequities in public schools in California for students with learning disabilities. She co-founded NoCollegeMandates.com to help fight college vaccine mandates.
Pakistan’s Reported Suspension Of Russian Crude Oil Imports Was The Regime’s “Parting Gift”
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 15, 2023
The News International cited unnamed sources on Sunday to report that Pakistan suspended its import of Russian crude oil on the pretext that it’s not affordable to refine despite its lower price due to the lesser amount of petroleum that’s produced when compared to competitors’ crude. The problem with this explanation is that these refining differences were known ahead of time but the whole point in importing Russian crude was to get it at a lower price and reduce dependence on the Gulf Kingdoms.
Former Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik, who the abovementioned report claimed had insisted in vain on his country’s companies importing more Russian crude, earlier envisaged Moscow providing over one-third of his country’s needs. Nevertheless, it also deserves mentioning that he was reported to have told the National Assembly last week that Pakistan planned to officially pull out of its decade-old gas pipeline deal with Iran under pressure from US sanctions in spite of this project’s promising potential.
The precedent is therefore established for suspecting that US sanctions might also have played a role in Pakistan’s reported decision shortly thereafter to suspend its Russian crude oil imports too. Taken together, the impression is that the fascist post-modern coup regime that was installed after former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s (IK) scandalous ouster in April 2022 decided to destroy any hopes of energy security and the sovereignty it entails as their “parting gift” around the time of parliament’s dissolution.
This development is supposed to precede the next elections by 90 days, but there might be a delay since the latest census results require redrawing constituencies, which might not be completed within the next three months. In any case, the point is that IK’s replacements left a legacy of energy insecurity and lost sovereignty, not to mention economic collapse and the de facto imposition of martial law. The first two consequences are the most relevant to this analysis and will therefore be elaborated further.
The Intercept published a leaked copy of the Pakistani cable from March 2022 sent by its former Ambassador to the US warning about American pressure over Russia. His interlocutor, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Donald Lu, made no secret of the fact that the US considered IK’s energy-driven ties with Russia to be a threat to its national security. For that reason, Washington signaled that it wanted him gone otherwise there’d be severe consequences for Pakistan.
IK’s subsequent removal a little over one month later predictably led to his replacements dillydallying on the strategic energy deal that he sought to advance during his trip to Moscow in late February 2022. Although they eventually imported a test shipment of Russian oil earlier this summer, the over year-long delay between his meeting with President Putin and their purchase was suspicious. It now appears in hindsight that the only purpose of going through with this was to push a domestic political agenda.
The regime probably never intended to implement Musadik’s ambitious plans but instead sought American permission for the previously mentioned purchase solely to claim that it supposedly proves that they weren’t installed by the US as punishment for IK’s Russia policy. Following this first-ever import and the superficial fulfilment of their soft power objective, they then spent the rest of the summer sending false signals to Russia that they were on the brink of finally reaching that strategic energy deal.
It can only be speculated whether the former Petroleum Minister was in on this plot or if he sincerely came along to realizing the wisdom of IK’s plans in this respect and truly wanted them to succeed, but that doesn’t change the ultimate outcome either way. At the end of the day, Pakistan strung Russian experts and negotiators along for over a year despite nothing coming of the latter’s efforts, which they continued in good faith with the intent of strengthening their partner’s energy security and sovereignty.
Pakistan’s reported suspension of Russian crude oil imports probably also dooms their plans for the Pakistan Stream gas pipeline, which was supposed to become the flagship Russian project in Pakistan and an anchor for more future investments. The Kremlin might not want to waste any more time negotiating with Islamabad after feeling like it was just fooled for over a full year, and the bad blood between them over these two failed deals could prevent their ties from ever becoming strategic.
Private businessmen will still try to scale real-sector trade between their countries, and ties will remain cordial at the official level, including at multilateral fora on Afghanistan and other issues of shared interests. What’s expected to change, however, is that Russia will no longer continue to treat Pakistan like a potential strategic partner after this debacle. In practice, it won’t consider that country worth the opportunity cost of investing its time in at the expense of expanding ties with more serious partners.
Its finite human resources are better invested in Africa nowadays, whose countries are sincere in their desire for strategic relations with Russia, unlike Pakistan which just wasted over a year dillydallying on a strategic energy deal only to ignominiously abandon it on a misleading pretext. The fascist post-modern coup regime’s “parting gift” to the Pakistani people around the time of parliament’s dissolution ahead of likely rigged elections was that they killed the chance for strategic relations with Russia once and for all.
German media and political establishment ponder whether to ban the political preferences of 1/5 of the population
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | August 14, 2023
Since 19 June, polls have consistently placed support for the right-populist party Alternative für Deutschland at 20% or higher, making them the second most popular party in Germany – slightly ahead of government-leading SPD, and behind the CDU/CSU. Last week, Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), gave a state media interview in which he accused the party yet again of harbouring “a significant number of people … who repeatedly spread hatred and agitation against minorities.” Despite serious questions about whether Haldenwang’s repeated slander is even legal, spokesmen for all the major parties immediately declared themselves in agreement with the assessment.
It’s very important to note that Haldenwang is himself a member of the CDU. The Christian Democrats ought to be the big winners in the opposition, as Olaf Scholz’s coalition government stumbles from one crisis to the next. Yet they’re doing no better than they were in mid-2021. Angela Merkel has done the party no favours, implicating the Christian Democrats in the catastrophic pandemic response, as well as the ongoing mass migration crisis and even the ascendancy of the Green climate programme. They’ve failed to offer any real alternative to the present government, and the AfD is reaping the gains instead.
A day after Haldenwang’s renewed warnings, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier published an editorial in Der Spiegel, in which he condemned the AfD as directly as the dictates of etiquette permit, at one point even calling for “militant” resistance against the party:
Our constitution can tolerate the hardest and toughest disputes. It cannot, however, integrate enemies of the constitution – and we must not ignore the danger they pose. Political antagonism is one thing, constitutional hostility something else entirely.
So what is to be done? In the fight against extremism, there is a historical lesson that runs like a red thread through the earliest draft constitution set down at Herrenchiemsee – and which still applies today: A democracy must be fortified against its enemies. Never again should democratic rights of freedom be abused in order to abolish freedom and democracy. To be robust and defensible daily political life means first of all to demonstrate an openness to political debate and not to accept the trumped-up lies propagated by the enemies of freedom, whether with silence or appeasement, and thereby to encourage them. The democratic parties are required to demonstrate clear, resolute, even militant opposition …
That militant opposition is already here. On Friday night, the Augsburg AfD politician Andreas Jurca was beaten unconscious by immigrants in a targeted political attack, which left him with severe facial bruising and a broken ankle.
Hessen Antifa have also published the personal addresses of all AfD candidates for the state parliamentary elections in October. I doubt it is very easy to come by such information without help from the government.
Yesterday, SPD head Saskia Esken declared herself in favour of banning AfD, should the constitutional protectors declare the party guilty of “confirmed right-wing extremism,” something which is almost certain to happen sooner or later: “The fight against the AfD is a fight that the whole of society, all democrats, must wage together.”
There’s considerable doubt about whether a ban is feasible. Oliver Maksan, writing from the Berlin bureau of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, points out that the party falls far short of meeting the criteria, even accepting for the sake of argument all the establishment characterisations about its “anti-democratic” tendencies:
The Federal Government, Bundesrat or Bundestag would have to convince the Federal Constitutional Court that the whole party, not just individual members, has included anti-constitutional goals in its programme and pursues them in a planned, militant and effective manner. …
Even the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution … does not see the AfD as a unified bloc. Its 2022 annual report still reads that “In view of the continuing heterogeneity of content within the party … not all party members can be regarded as supporters of extremist tendencies.”
Moreover, it is not enough to point to the widespread rejection of the EU, sympathies towards Russia or NATO scepticism within the party. One may think such attitudes are wrong, but they are not forbidden. What would have to be proven are genuine attempts to eliminate the free democratic basic order, specifically the principles of democracy, human dignity and the rule of law, in whole or in part.
I might share Maksan’s optimism if Covid hadn’t happened. Clearly the German state will do whatever it wants and worry about how to justify it after the fact. Maksan is more convincing in his argument that the process of a formal ban would involve protracted procedures, and contribute enormously to AfD support in the meantime. It is a risk that the BfV seems to be on the verge of accepting:
“The political centre is currently melting like ice in the sun,” a high-ranking East German BfV recently told WELT on background. In the East, he said, there are now districts where it is not merely 20 to 30 percent voting for the AfD, but as many as 40 or 50 percent.
The major parties could at any moment deprive the AfD of considerable support simply by moderating their political programme. What is most ominous about these developments is the general refusal even to consider this path. As I said in another context, democracy has become for our rulers not a political system, but a series of desired outcomes. Formally democratic processes which threaten these outcomes are now considered anti-democratic and beyond consideration. It is not the AfD or their supporters who have been radicalised; many AfD statements denounced by the media as extreme and fascistic were in fact political commonplaces two decades ago. It is rather the political establishment that has grown extreme and lost touch with vast sectors of the electorate. I fear this is a unidirectional, self-reinforcing process, and that our rulers will never find their way back.
Imran Khan and the ‘successful’ outcome of US ‘interference’ in Pakistan: Fascism under a totalitarian military dictatorship
By Junaid S. Ahmad | Global Research | August 14, 2023
So, my friends and comrades in virtually the entire Pakistani Left spent more than a year mocking at least 80 percent of the country’s population for believing former Prime Minister Imran Khan about American ‘interference’ (to put it mildly) in Pakistan’s internal politics, and more specifically about removing him from office.
My comrades’ contributions to political life since Khan was ousted from power in April of 2022 have been a fanatical obsession with the man, an understandable deeply emotional envy of the tens of millions of people he was mobilizing, and a crazed fixation to convince the ‘Western Left’ that Khan isn’t really that popular (Democracy Now) and is no ‘anti-imperialist hero’ (Jacobin) – who cares about engaging other outsiders like suffering Kashmiris or Palestinians under occupation for whom Khan took a strong stand (apparently the ‘Western Left’ is just much more important). I guess my comrades thought that these were the most productive strategies to ‘liberate’ the Pakistani ‘working class.’
Ultimately, the Left with which I’ve always identified has facilitated not merely the return of the ‘ancien regime’ of kleptocratic politicians and an all-powerful military establishment, but the most fascist face of these two forces that the country has ever witnessed. We are now in a ruthless military dictatorship which is wholeheartedly supported by the two dynastic political parties akin to more like personal feudal fiefdoms which have taken turns in plundering and impoverishing the country since the late 1980s/early 1990s.
The new fascist regime has decimated the, by far and away, largest and most popular political party in the country, disappeared, arrested, illegally detained, tortured, sexually abused, and killed tens of thousands of not primarily men, but women, children, and the elderly – anyone that even remotely had any association with Khan’s political party, which included mothers, grand-mothers, children, neighbors, friends, etc. All of this was done in a deliberate and calculated way, and even though Democracy Now informed us that Khan’s views on women are identical to the Taliban, the majority of supporters of Khan are women, not men.
Pakistani journalists have been hunted down and killed as far away as in Kenya, forget about their mass disappearances, torture, and killing within Pakistan itself. And the final act being, since they failed in their assassination attempts, to throw Khan in a remote, wretched jail cell in which he can barely fit – to thoroughly and barbarically humiliate him.
The point was to strike so much terror in the population, and to show us that if this can be done to Imran Khan, then anyone and everyone is fair game to be disappeared, tortured, or killed.
Where has our Left been during all of this? Why were my comrades not confronting the ‘establishment’ we’ve always railed against? You had the most direct and persistent people’s confrontation with the sadistic military elite in the nation’s history (joined by many soldiers and junior and mid-rank officers, many former students of mine), and there was an astonishing absence of any of our Left in this struggle of many months.
This has and has not been about Khan. This is about Khan because he helped to politicize a society, the level of mass politicization not seen since the late 1960s/early 1970s. The popular reaction to his ouster from power, unlike any previous ouster of the country’s prime ministers (all of which elicited absolute indifference from the population precisely because civilian rule was not different for them from military rule – both were equally corrupt and repressive), literally shocked everyone (including Khan himself): tens of millions of people mobilizing and demonstrating in every corner of the country of 240 million.
And it is not about Khan because, since April 2022, each month you could see a population (the vast majority demonstrating were not card-carrying members of Khan’s party and had myriad criticisms of his term in power) becoming even more radically opposed to the cruelties and injustices of the social and political order – a situation which the Left could have completely taken advantage of to sharpen popular analysis and help organize and mobilize more effectively. There has been no moment more opportune for the country’s Left to help radically undermine the political status quo that has been the norm virtually since the nation’s birth in 1947, and have popular engagement – to make the case for more progressive values – as they struggle in solidarity with the bulk of the country’s population.
But that was not to be since, from the beginning, the Left dismissed Khan as the ‘military’s puppet’ simply because he and the military high command, at ONE particular moment in 2018, agreed on ONE single issue: ending the US occupation of Afghanistan. It was an absurd analysis of the most popular political and public personality – by far – in the country. And it was a convenient way to not only do nothing, but ridicule and mock (especially the youth and students) who were involved in these mobilizations.
Finally, the silence of Western governments and Western media on this barbaric period of military brutality in the fifth largest country in the world, nuclear-armed, contrasted with the obsession with a bloodless coup in Niger which seems either welcomed or just shown indifference by the majority of that country’s population, tells you everything how the Deepest State made sure its vassal Deep State resolve the ‘Khan problem’ once and for all.
Friends, imperialism and its domestic enforcers/torturers have taken my country to a period of darkness that I have never witnessed.
(The government in Pakistan has now blocked access to The Intercept for this exposé. This 20 minute video (see below) by the Intercept’s co-author Ryan Grim is an attempt at a workaround.)
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion and Global Politics, and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan.
The Jab Or Not The Jab
Tactics and strategy in our irregular war
By Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D. | August 11, 2023
Those of us in the ‘resistance’ or ‘opposition’ — we skeptics who question and have questioned the covidian debacle and all of its accoutrements — seem inevitably to fall into discussions about the Jab. Deaths, adverse events, excess mortality, turbo cancers, immune dysregulation — you name it — but it is almost as if the Jab is some kind of black hole with a gravitational pull that sucks us all in and, in the end, directs our tactics and strategy rather monomaniacally for dealing with the Covidian Onslaught.
Let me be clear about my own position. From the beginning, when Covid Mania swept across the world, I felt that there was never a need for a vaccine of any kind.
Why?
First, because the illness or conglomeration of symptoms that appeared to be the result of a contagious pathogen was never as lethal as the Corporate Media led us to believe. It was, in fact, no more lethal than a bad flu, as eminent epidemiologist John Ioannidis demonstrated relatively early. Second, because treatments for the illness had also been developed and appeared to have been quite successful. Third, because I had faith in sound preventive measures such as sunlight, exercise, nutrition, the vitamins C and D, among others, as well as the wisdom and strength of our natural immune response.
During one interview I said, in fact, that the only way I would receive the Covid Jab would be if I were shot dead first.
As events unfolded in 2020 and beyond, the push for the Jab as the only way out of the pandemic that never really was, became quite intense. Big Pharma could certainly smell the massive profits, profits guaranteed by agreements that absolved these manufacturers from any harms associated with their product, and governments around the world colluded by seducing, cajoling and then, ultimately, coercing people into receiving the one-size-fits-all solution.
At first they told us the Jab was our only way out, and that it prevented us from getting, transmitting and dying from Covid. The Jabs of course did nothing of the sort. Their mechanisms of action, which included tampering with our genome and manufacturing a spike protein in numbers far exceeding what could occur with a natural infection, bespoke disaster. And, indeed, disaster has befallen and disaster will, I am certain, only worsen, for those who were either naive, terrified, gullible, stupid or indifferent enough to queue up for inoculations, and for those who were coerced into receiving them upon pain of loss of income and loss of inclusion in society.
The Jab, however, disastrous as it is, is but one of a number of instruments employed to do us harm.
Let’s not forget the effects of the lockdowns, masking, ‘social’ distancing; let’s not forget the active suppression of early treatment; let’s not forget the demolition of small businesses and the upwards transfer of trillions to the already super-rich; let’s not forget the ceaseless and unremitting drumbeat of fear; let’s not forget how our medical and governmental institutions betrayed our trust; let’s not forget the intrusions upon our privacy and our bank accounts, and the stalwart push for universal health passes and digital identification.
We are, and have been, buffeted on many fronts, with a single end in sight for those in the Globalist Mafia Cartel who have been doing the buffeting: murder and enslavement.
How may we, who can see the agenda, best combat the onslaught? Is it by showing over and over the many instances of Jab-related adverse events and sudden deaths? Or is it by planting our stake in the ground in defense of basic human rights and freedoms?
I have argued and continue to argue that there will always be another Jab — in fact, there will be a plethora of Jabs in our future. The more fundamental and abiding issue is preservation of our unalienable rights to physical and mental sovereignty and freedom of expression.
We must understand that this massive and unique Covid psyops, global in scope and relentless in pressure, has been deviously constructed to be impervious to logical rebuttal. For example, a neighbour of mine who nearly died from a blood clot, was told by her doctors not that the Covid Jab may have been a causative factor, but that Covid itself was. In the face of our rightful assertions that the Covid Jab is dangerous, a Jab recipient who is healthy will think we’re crazy, thanks to fate, human individuality and resilience, and/or variable Jab batches.
It is now time for us to draw the larger picture for those who are sitting on the fence or wandering the pastures on its other side. The larger picture of how the Few are oppressing the Many, of how the rights we are born with — rights not conferred or bequeathed by governments — are being trampled, and how censoring dissident and questioning voices is never and has never been the work of democratically-oriented societies.
At the Parliament Protest of 2022 here in Wellington, New Zealand, people from all walks and echelons of the citizenry came together, in unity, against the unlawful and unjustifiable imposition of mandates, against the usurpation of our most cherished, fundamental and precious human inheritance: autonomy and freedom.
Directing our energies to this transcendent matter, the matter of preserving autonomy and freedom and choice, is paramount — and positive — and far more likely to breach the resistance of sleepwalkers than a focus on the perils of the Jab which they themselves have taken so readily, given their unshakable and unquestioning belief in the wondrous benevolence of vaccine medicine.
Let’s get started, let’s emphasize freedom and social connections and a new way of healing and let us, in so doing, lead by example.
Sen. Ron Johnson Says Pandemic “Preplanned By An Elite Group Of People” Who Conducted “Event 201”
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | August 13, 2023
And now, better late than never, a US politician recognizes that all may not have been what it seemed with the pandemic – and its tyrannical response.
Senator Ron Johnson on Friday told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that Covid-19, and its response, were “preplanned by an elite group of people” who conducted “Event 201” – a joint exercise conducted by John Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum – which envisioned the spread of a coronavirus pandemic in South America which included over 65 million deaths worldwide.
The simulation concluded that national governments are nowhere near ready for a pandemic.
“We are going down a very dangerous path, but it is a path that is being laid out and planned by an elite group of people that want to take total control over our lives, and that’s what they are doing, bit by bit,” said Johnson, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and is a ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
To which Bartiromo responded: “It is just extraordinary to me that the government was working with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth and has been doing so repeatedly. We just saw the Facebook story, the Twitter files, all of the all the way, government officials from the CDC, FBI, you know CIA, a thousand people according to the reporters working on the Twitter files, worked with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth.
Why couldn’t the American people know that, you know, there were other alternatives to treat Covid why can’t American people know there were side effects with the vaccine?
Johnson then said: “This is all preplanned by an elite group of people, that is what I am talking about, Event 201 occurred in late 2019, prior to the rest of us knowing about the pandemic. Again — this is very concerning in terms of what is happening, what continues to be planned for our loss of freedom,” adding “ It needs to be exposed but unfortunately, very few people even in Congress are willing to take a look at this. They all pushed the vaccine, they don’t want to be made aware of the fact that vaccines might have caused injuries or death, so many people simply just don’t want to admit they were wrong and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure they’re not proven wrong.”
“We are up against a very powerful group of people here, Maria.”
Watch:
Featured Video
Iran Blockade Complications
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- COVID Conniving Receives First Federal Indictment
- Iran Blockade Complications /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Nima Alkhorshid
- Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents
- Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran
- OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria
- Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot
- Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs
- Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not
- Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- Nun assaulted in Jerusalem amid ‘pattern’ of anti-Christian attacks by Israelis
- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
Aletho News 