German Courts Are Going FULL Dystopia
OffGuardian | August 23, 2023
It’s been an astonishing couple of days for German judges. Well, “astonishing” if you’ve been living in a cave for the last four years.
Many of you likely already know that satirist and playwright (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins is being prosecuted in Germany for “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,”
All because the cover of his book has a swastika on it.
Needless to say, the charges are absurd. Insultingly so. You can read CJ’s first-hand account of this nonsense here and here.
Anyone who isn’t a) stupid or b) delusional can plainly see these charges have nothing to do with a stock-image swastika, and everything to do with the content of the book. In short, they are politically motivated charges brought against an author for criticizing the state. The very essence of dystopian tyranny.
… and yesterday he was convicted.
He now faces 60 days in prison or a 3600 Euro fine.
That’s case one, and as we say one you are likely familiar with if you’re regular readers.
Something you probably haven’t heard is that, just this morning, a different German court sentenced a former judge to two years in prison.
His crime? Ruling that mask mandates in schools were not constitutional.
The case dates back to April 8th 2021, when Weimar District Family Court judge Christiaan Dettmar ruled that two schools in the district a) could not enforce mask mandates, b) must continue in-person classes and c) could not force pupils to test for “Covid”.
From Human Rights Blog :
The court case was a child protection case under to § 1666 paragraph 1 and 4 of the German Civil Code (BGB), which a mother had initiated for her two sons, aged 14 and 8 respectively, at the local Family Court. She had argued that her children were being physically, psychologically and pedagogically damaged without any benefit for the children or third parties. At the same time, she claimed this constituted a violation of a range of rights of the children and their parents under the law, the German constitution (Grundgesetz or Basic Law) and international conventions.
After listening to testimony from expert witnesses, the judge ruled in favour of the mother, writing in his verdict:
These are the risks [to mask mandates]. The children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and psychological well-being by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each other and from other persons, but they are also already being harmed. At the same time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the constitution and international conventions.
Two weeks after handing down this ruling, his home and office were raided by the police and his mobile phone was seized.
And now, two years later, he was found guilty of “judicial misconduct” and initially given two years in prison (the court has since suspended the sentence). “Judicial Misconduct”, for simply disagreeing with the government.
Free speech is the first and most vital liberty, without it no one is truly free. An independent judiciary is a must to preserve any kind of justice, judges who simply nod along with government edicts are the building blocks of authoritarian states.
The voice of the people and the power of the courts – ideally – work together to hold the government to account.
And yet, whether in the judiciary or the arts, the German legal system is now a machine for criminalizing and punishing dissent of any kind.
… I’d make a comparison to another German government that used to function in a similar way, but I really can’t afford a 4000 euro fine.
Meta Pays Supposedly Independent Australian “Fact-Checkers” 800 Dollars Per Fact-Check
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023
Those who doubt that “fact-checking” is an industry created around the push for internet censorship that’s been going on these last years might be persuaded otherwise by information that emerged from a lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by Australia-based reporter and commentator Avi Yemini, and it reveals the amount of money changing hands between Facebook (Meta) and its notorious “fact-checkers” whose purpose is supposed to be weeding out “misinformation.” And who are supposed to be “independent.”
However, these efforts disturbingly often end up in plain censorship of “disfavored” opinion on political and social issues.
And even though Yemini eventually had to withdraw his lawsuit in order to avoid costs he was unwilling or unable to pay, the legal process while it was ongoing produced some interesting findings, including the true nature of some of the “fact-checkers’” purported financial independence from Big Tech.
According to a deal cited in the court documents, the figure went up to half a million dollars annually – and that’s involving just one “fact checking” operation, RMIT University’s FactLab, also based in Australia.
The agreement was kept confidential, but surfaced in Yemini’s defamation suit naming RMIT FactLab as the plaintiff. Yemini claimed that this group subjected one of his reports to a false “fact-check.”
But, whether that’s true or false, RMIT lab was given 800 Australian dollars per “check,” up to 40,000 per month – with the contract stipulating that RMIT would run up to 50 articles through its “fact-checking machine” each month.
The issue that this discovery sheds light on is the nature of these arrangements – namely, “independent fact-checkers” seem to be very much involved in commercial dealings with social media giants, which has the inherent potential to sway the results of their work in a desired direction.
At the same time, given the reach and influence of the huge platforms where content is “arranged” in a certain way thanks, among other things, to the work of these organizations, this means that public opinion could be unfairly influenced through biased information.
RMIT University, which is behind RMIT FactLab, maintains that the group is in fact independent and that the money comes from “philanthropic donations and independent research grants.”
The UN is Building a “Digital Army” To Fight What it Calls “Deadly Disinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2023
The UN is tripling down on its role as an important global player in the “fight against online misinformation” and amplification of the narrative of a supposedly serious threat this allegedly new phenomenon brings to humankind.
Thus UN peacekeepers are adding another task to the duties the member-states fund when they approve their missions meant to help people and countries devastated by war and other disasters: they are now also “building a digital army.”
And according to a writeup on the UN website, “misinformation” is viewed by the world organization in exceedingly alarmist terms as, “deadly,” and posing “existential” risk to such core building blocks of modern societies as democratic institutions and fundamental human rights.
They really do make that connection, verbatim. And they now use the term “war” and “battlefield” to describe (mis)information and other goings on in the media, too.
We’ve heard this before, of course, from the Biden administration regarding the Covid vaccines/pandemic – but the identical wording may or may not be a coincidence.
In order to justify as much as it can this considerable shift in policy and focus from UN’s traditional operations and purpose, the UN article doesn’t talk only about things like undermining epidemic(s)-containing efforts, protecting scientific truths and facts (and, as recent experience has shown, “facts” as well ), and the like.
To prop up the argument, it is claimed that the peacekeeping work itself, and the safety and lives of peacekeepers are also falling victim to “large scale misinformation.”
The UN’s solutions: effectively testing “proactive” approaches to the problem they defined, and doing this in a number of war-torn African countries.
Leading the charge seems to be the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUSCO (a French-language acronym).
Then there’s something called the UN Verified initiative, which offers a course free of charge that is supposed to “educate” people in these physically dangerous places on how to keep themselves safe from – online “misinformation.”
This effort expands on several basic topics, including how to recognize “disinformation,” and the UN will also tell you why it is being spread.
Another one is to be able to discern emotional, dramatic, and provocative content (some might say the article from the UN site referenced here might easily qualify.)
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.
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Who Runs Our World?
Netanyahu addresses US Congress
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019
Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.
Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors. ... continue
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