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Missouri v. Biden, Part 1, by Tracy Beanz

Our lawyers were in court yesterday petitioning for an injunction to halt the activities of the government’s censorship-industrial complex while the case is tried.

Human Flourishing | May 27, 2023

Tracy Beanz is a reporter with Uncover DC who has been carefully following our Missouri v. Biden case. She just published a detailed Twitter thread with updates on our petition for a preliminary injunction. With her permission, I’m publishing a lightly edited version of her coverage here.

I’m happy to report that things appeared to go very well for us in court this week, as you will see below. We are hopeful that the judge will grant the requested injunction. This will be the first major step in dismantling the government’s vast, unconstitutional censorship regime. – AARON KHERIATY, MD

Many of you have heard me discuss this case in detail, as I have been reporting on it diligently for the past year. However, some of you are unsure of why it is important, or what it all means. This thread will serve as a summary to this point, and a detailed explanation of the last filing in the case which is a virtual handbook to government censorship based on the limited discovery provided so far.

Missouri v. Biden was filed on May 5, 2022. Since it was initially filed, it has taken quite a trip through the court system. The complaint has been amended three times, with the most recent amendment being to transform the case into a class suit—this due to the overwhelming evidence of broad harm to the constitutional rights of all Americans. You can view the docket by using the link here.

The complaint alleged that the US Government was not only threatening and coercing social media companies to censor Americans on social media, but they were also working with social media companies to accomplish that goal. It alleged that topics surrounding covid, the origins of covid, the Great Barrington Declaration, election integrity concerns, the covid shot, the Hunter Biden laptop story (and more) were under scrutiny by the White House and other government agencies—and that the government had very publicly threatened to take action against social media companies should they not act to censor viewpoints on those topics that were disfavored by the government.

The Plaintiffs in the case (the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other private plaintiffs, including Aaron Kheriaty, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff) moved for expedited discovery to be able to obtain a limited set of evidence as well as depositions of certain officials. This evidence, they argued, would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens.

Unlike what many have come to expect, the judge GRANTED the motion for expedited discovery and depositions. A struggle ensued between the Government and Plaintiffs, with the government fighting against the judge in this case (Judge Terry Doughty) to stop discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed. They took those complaints to the 5th circuit of appeals and a court in Virginia—a court that *usually* is friendly to the government.

At the appellate court level, the government argued really that NO ONE should have to leave their government jobs to sit for long depositions in this case, but certainly not the head of CISA, for example [the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security that now coordinates the censorship-industrial complex]. The appellate court wouldn’t play ball with the government, and remanded the case back to Louisiana with some guidance on how the judge should proceed. If memory serves me right this happened three times.

One particularly interesting exchange came with the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She made threats to social media companies from the podium. They sought to depose her about those threats. She left the office. The government said they had no responsive documents to explain her comments. So Missouri and Louisiana said, “then we have to depose Jen Psaki”. The court agreed and ruled that now private citizen Psaki needed to testify. The government and Psaki—represented by Rhee—went to a court in Virginia to try to get that judge to stop the deposition. The judge in that case laid into both the government and Psaki. It was so stunning I literally read the transcript of the hearing in this video.

This went back to Louisiana after the Virginia judge essentially said “you won’t like how I rule on this and your argument is terrible so I’m sending it back to the judge who should be making this decision.” The judge in Louisiana again decided Psaki should be deposed if the government didn’t have any responsive docs from the press office. Somehow, those documents must’ve appeared because she still has not been deposed.

Aside from this, all along the way the government has lost—over and over again. They were also caught hiding discovery materials—the judge rapped them and ordered them to produce or else—which they did. And then came the government’s motion to dismiss, which the government had once withdrawn and then refilled. The judge ruled against the government and said the case will continue. He also remixed the government that this was limited discovery—and that discovery will widen significantly once the actual trial gets underway.

Another interesting tidbit: once Fauci was deposed the government sought to seal all depositions and video—along with discovery materials arguing that the government “employees” were being threatened and harassed and faced imminent harm. But they couldn’t produce any examples of that happening. The judge ruled against sealing anything except personal information like addresses.

So far I’ve only really discussed the procedural happenings—however what limited expedited discovery in this case has exposed (separate and apart from the Twitter files) is both unprecedented and abhorrent. The most widespread and troubling discovery? CISA has designated YOUR THOUGHTS part of the governments infrastructure. They call it “cognitive infrastructure”.

They argue they can regulate what you think as they consider it under their purview. In this article I describe “The 6 Most Shocking Recent Revelations of Government Censorship,” if you want the details. One character of particular importance was White House director of digital communications and strategy Rob Flaherty. Flaherty was ABUSIVE to social media companies—like they were his battered wife. Many of them resisted the calls for censorship until threats forced them into action. I was actually stunned to see how averse they were to censoring—until forced to by the government.

Recently the Plaintiffs filed their motion in support of the temporary injunction—a hearing we have been waiting on for nearly a year because of the governments delays and obfuscations. It included 1,200 FACTS about government coordinated censorship. The government responded with a 1200 page monstrosity plainly arguing they did it all—but because of foreign actors and the “safety” of the American people—lest we be exposed to harmful “misinformation.” Then they asked the judge to give them another week and postpone this hearing—again, arguing they wouldn’t have time to digest Plaintiffs response to their last filing.

The judge told them he wouldn’t be postponing this hearing again. A few days ago Plaintiffs filed their response—and it really is an encyclopedia of their expedited and limited discovery so far. I will comment on it in detail below. But first I want to explain why this case is NOT like any other we have seen.

The judge has done the right thing the entire time. The appeals court has done the right thing the entire time. The depositions were granted, the discovery was granted, the motion to dismiss was denied—the judge has expressed several times his shock at what the plaintiffs have exposed. The judge plays by the rules and both he and the appellate court are significantly alarmed by what has come out. This isn’t what we are used to, namely, a weak judge capitulating to the government. In fact, the judge hasn’t capitulated ONCE. Neither has the appellate court and neither has a DC court.

What is the remedy sought by the plaintiffs? Well, if the temporary injunction is granted (I am nearly certain it will be) the remedy is to bar the government from working with social media companies to flag and censor posts. They will also be barred from working through NGO’s to do the same. (Here’s looking at you, Election Integrity Partnership and Stanford internet observatory and Atlantic Council)—no FBI task force inside Facebook or Twitter, no emails back and forth about “vaccine misinfo” and how to stop it. The government has to CEASE all of this unlawful behavior.

What will follow is going to be a relatively detailed breakdown of the latest filing from the plaintiffs—an answer to the governments excuses for why:

  1. What they did isn’t really censorship (mainly that they didn’t *force* the social media companies to take action).
  2. Why what they did is “OK.” The guise of national security and “safety” and protecting Americans from “Mis, Dis, and Malinformation”.

Share this with everyone you know. Yes, it’s that important. Here is the link to the filing I will be detailing.

Plaintiffs begin with a hypothetical, and they do this because the government tried to make all of this behavior “OK” by claiming that the Trump administration did the same thing. That is an exercise in futility—the Plaintiff’s don’t care what administration did it, only that it happened, and besides, the Trump White House directed NONE of this activity. As an added zing (in my opinion): they used book burning as their hypothetical—this appeals directly to the left angry that we don’t want pornographic books in kids libraries.

The defendants “Statement of Facts” is rife with “disinformation,” a term they have used as a guise to trample the 1st amendment rights of Americans…

In the very first sentence of the brief the government filed to argue for why there should NOT be a temporary injunction halting their communication and threats to social media companies, they hide behind the “Foreign” assaults on critical election infrastructure. However evidence obtained in this case demonstrates that the Federal government overwhelmingly targets DOMESTIC speech by American citizens. Depositions and evidence obtained in the case proves that actors responsible for censorship admit that most of what they consider “misinformation” was DOMESTIC in nature, including from the Election Integrity Partnership (Keep the EIP front of mind).

The Virality Project, the “medical bureaucracy” portion of the censorship apparatus, admits that for supposed covid misinformation, the majority of the “misinformation” came from domestic actors. An important thing to remember is this: Even though what many of us were saying about masks, the shot, covid origins, etc was TRUE, even if it WEREN’T, the government is forbidden from censoring. That important tenet aside, even when the FBI moved to censor “foreign” speech, it swept up hundreds of thousands of Americans and journalists—something we will explore further in a moment.

The government admits in their brief that they brought attention to posts they didn’t like on social media. And Plaintiffs made the argument that if not for the government taking an active role in flagging “wrong think” no action would have been taken—as more times than not this content DID NOT violate the social media companies’ terms of service. The government also claimed that all of these agencies worked independently of one another, that there wasn’t any coordination between them. As we will see, that is patently false. They didn’t all simultaneously just coincidentally decide to act to get social platforms to ban what they didn’t want you to see.

As the evidence proves, there was conspiracy behind the censorship. The White House campaign integrated with the Surgeon General, the CDC, and Census Bureau campaigns drew directly from White House pressure. NIAID and NIH censorship efforts draw from the CDC. CISA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and other agencies worked together and all participate in meetings together to facilitate pressure and censorship. CISA and the FBI worked together to censor the Biden laptop story. NIAID and NIH conspired together to censor the lab leak theory and Great Barrington Declaration [co-authored by plaintiff’s Bhattacharya and Kulldorff]. NIAID [Fauci’s former division at the NIH] is embedded in White House censorship activities. CISA and GEC [Global Engagement Center, the State Department’s censorship arm] coordinate with each other and with NGOs like the Election Integrity Project. This isn’t a guess. They have the evidence. This happened.

And if you thought it stopped with just executive agencies, you would be wrong. The Secretary of Homeland Security Himself describes the censorship apparatus as operating “across the federal enterprise.” High level congressional staffers coordinated with the FBI and social media in secret meetings. The partnership between the White House and Congress gives coercive force to the censorship activities, and there are documents to prove it. Jen Easterly, the director of CISA [the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency], texted that CISA wanted to play a “coordinated role” so that relevant agencies could try to “PREBUNK” (that’s a new one) and debunk trends of information, to prevent the “chaos” that would ensue if every agency was contacting platforms on their own.

And that is what they did: CISA became the hub for many other government agencies to filter their censorship requests through—sort of a censorship “help desk” if you will. I argue that this was the reason they attempted to stand up the “Disinformation Governance Board” several months back. They needed funding and an air of “official” to go along with their already clandestine activities. I also argue that this lawsuit is the reason they are attempting to ram through Congress the RESTRICT Act, or the misnamed “TikTok bill.” It is because they need Congress to approve their censorship actions here—this lawsuit is going to make it so the censorship regime can’t function.

The government argued, “but this happened before us!” It’s actually somewhat untrue. The Trump White House had no involvement in any of this—the bureaucracy was acting on its own. In fact, there was a secret text between [NIH Director] Collins and [NAIAID Director] Fauci where Collins stated the White House would disapprove of what they were doing, and Fauci assured him that they have “more important things to worry about.”

That’s all for now, folks, lest this email get too big for your inboxes. Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2, where Tracy’s coverage of this week’s events in court will continue. In the meantime, you may want to follow Tracy if you are on Twitter and thank her for her excellent coverage of this case.

May 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Henry Kissinger, Statesman, Centenarian, War Criminal

By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 27, 2023

So, Henry Kisisinger has done it. He has emulated Vietnam’s legendary General Võ Nguyên Giáp by reaching 100 years of age and not out. Congratulations! Happy birthday! Roll out the red carpet and give him a 100 gun salute! Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light….

But after all that superficial 4th of July, Apple Pie, Disneyland tinsel, go look at that guy’s rap sheet to get a grasp of how he and his have drowned the world with the blood of the innocents.

NATO awarded this bastard its 1973 Nobel Peace award for helping to end the Third Indo-China War, that led to independence for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In point of fact, it was not Kissinger’s alleged diplomacy but the heroic armed forces of Vietnam, led by the inestimable General Giáp, and armed and abetted by the Soviet Union and China, that ended that unremitting genocide the United States and its coalition of the willing (the United States, the ANZAC criminals, France, South Korea, the Philippines, Germany, Taiwan, Malaysia, Italy and Singapore) waged against the women of children of My Lai and tens of thousands of other Vietnamese villages, hamlets and towns. If Kissinger is hale and hearty enough to still opine on matters like Ukraine, then he is fit enough to swing for his culpability in America’s mass use of chemical and biological weapons in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. If he lived like a dog, then he should have no complaints about being hanged like one.

And, after hanging him over Indo-China, Kissinger should be dug up and hanged again over Chile, where he and his Chicago school of economic hit-men orchestrated the overthrow of Allende, the pauperisation of the Chileans and the installation of the CIA trained fascist butcher Pinochet.

Och sure that was so long ago, would you not leave the old war criminal alone to enjoy his old age, something that bastard denied so many millions of others? Chile and Vietnam are so yesterday.

If only they were. Leaving to one side the tens of thousands of Vietnamese babies who are born with congenital diseases as a result of Kissinger spraying Monsanto’s Agent Orange on their grandmothers and even forgetting that Kissinger’s Yankee mates this very day oppose Chinese aid to Cambodia, a country whose people they unmercifully slaughtered with the active help of their media shills, Kissinger’s neck must still answer for his complicity in the crimes of Pakistan, whose military, led by the United States, committed the most unspeakable outrages in Bangladesh, East Pakistan, which was the Donbas of its day, and which these gangsters are now perpetrating in Pakistan itself.

And then there is Israel, with whom Kissinger directly colluded not only against Egypt, Jordan and Assad’s Syria in the Yom Kippur war, but where he also colluded against POTUS Nixon. If that is not another hanging offence, what is?

Let’s momentarily forget, if we can, the hanging hyperbole and look at Kissinger the man if we can assume, for the sake of argument, he is a man and not the anti-Christ incarnate. Although many others before him, from at least the time of Cardinal Richelieu, had the ear of the king, it is fair to say that Kissinger’s control of Nixon was a turning point for the worst in the affairs of man. Kissinger, often with Nixon’s connivance and as often without, manipulated the Beltway’s movers and shakers to a degree that the world had previously not witnessed and people are still being slaughtered in Donbas, in Pakistan and in Latin America as a result.

Out were the self-made politicians, folk like Eisenhower, Kennedy, de Gaulle, Harold Wilson and Willy Brandt, who had excelled, as often as not in the field of battle, but always under their own steam, owing favours to no one. In were the mandarins, the Yes Prime Ministers, snivelling wretches like Kissinger, who owed their prominence to backroom deals and favours cut, thanks to the Epsteins and other shadowy king makers of the Beltway’s netherworld.

Let’s look at the U.S. military to illustrate this important point. There are currently 39 active duty four-star officers in the uniformed services of the United States: 13 in the Army, 3 in the Marine Corps, 10 in the Navy, 12 in the Air Force, 1 in the Coast Guard, 2 in the Space Force, and none in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

This bloated number, which is far in excess of what the Yanks had at the height of the Second World War, is explained by the Kissinger effect, creeping Jesuses like Kissinger playing their own game, rather than playing for Team America. The objective of the top brass is not to win wars, to defend America or any such thing but it is to enrich themselves and the defence companies they will be parachuted into upon retirement.

The same goes for the Beltway’s movers and shakers, those creeping Jesuses who have inherited Satan’s relay baton from Kissinger and who, like him, consider American domestic and foreign policy, along with America’s piggy bank, to be their own personal plaything. If you look at those at the Beltway’s centre, anti-Christs like Victoria Nuland, Lindsey Graham and John Bolton, you can trace a slime trail via the Bush Presidencies all the way back to Kissinger and Nixon. Though America might periodically change its king, its permanent government of war mongers and piggy bank robbers stays firmly in place.

But what then of General Giáp? Wasn’t he too around almost forever? Yes, but Giáp was tested not once, but always against the Japanese, the French and the hated Americans. And, because each and every time he proved his mettle, he is, arguably, the most outstanding leader of the twentieth century.

Although Giáp might conceivably have liked to have ended his adult life, as he began it, as a history teacher in provincial Vietnam, fate dictated otherwise. Not so with the Beltway’s creeps, Kissinger’s droppings, who have to this very day to see a war they did not like or profit from.

So, as the world’s hypocrites salute this degenerate’s 100th birthday on May 27th, let’s first of all remember the millions of Cambodians, Laotians, Vietnamese, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Chileans who died the most horrible of deaths because of this conniving creep, and then let’s also say an Ave for the millions of others whose lives were sacrificed on the altars of Blair, Bush, Clinton, Obama and Kissinger’s other criminal clones.

May 27, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Biden regime’s plan to tackle “antisemitism” is to make online platforms “accountable”

White House Tells Social Media Platforms To Take A “Zero-Tolerance” Stance Against “Hate Speech”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 26, 2023

The White House unveiled a strategy to fight antisemitism that involves telling Congress to push social media platforms to be held “accountable” for hate speech.

The 60-page document details four pillars of the strategy which are raising awareness, improving safety for Jewish communities, reversing what they call the normalization of antisemitism, and countering antisemitic discrimination and hate speech.

In a pre-recorded message before the unveiling of the strategy, President Joe Biden described it “a historic step forward” and the “most ambitious and comprehensive US government-led effort to fight antisemitism in American history.”

The document contains over 100 calls to action for legislators and others in society to fight antisemitism, including calling on online platforms to have “zero-tolerance” for hate speech.

The outline involves working with social media platforms heavily.

“We also call on Congress to hold social media platforms accountable for spreading hate-fueled violence, including antisemitism; impose much stronger transparency requirements on online platforms,” the White House said in a statement.

May 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

IRS Opened Investigation Into Journalist Matt Taibbi On Christmas Eve, Following Government Censorship Reporting

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) examined independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s 2018 tax returns on December 24, 2022, which was a Saturday and Christmas Eve. It was soon after Taibbi published the first batch of Twitter Files, internal Twitter documents exposing how federal government agencies pressured Twitter to censor content.

The timing raised eyebrows and many believed it to be an act of retaliation for sounding the alarm on government-backed censorship.

The House Judiciary Committee obtained the details after the IRS was criticized for visiting Taibbi’s home in March about the tax filing, on the same day the journalist testified before Congress about the Twitter Files.

In a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, chair of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said the documents the agency provided “raise more questions than they answer.”

The IRS defended the review by saying it was trying to determine that Taibbi was not the victim of identity fraud. It further claimed that in 2019, it wrote to Taibbi to explain that there was a discrepancy in his 2018 tax return. However, the documents obtained by the committee show that the IRS opened a review of the tax return on Christmas Eve last year.

Additionally, Taibbi did not owe the IRS. In fact, he was owed a refund, according to the documents obtained by the Committee.

“The IRS asserted to the Committee that it sent a letter to Mr. Taibbi on October 24, 2019 — nine days after Mr. Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return — asking Mr. Taibbi to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and could not be processed until he confirmed,” Jordan wrote.

“The IRS alleged that it sent a second letter to Mr. Taibbi on March 23, 2020.

“However, according to Mr. Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with his 2018 tax return — that is until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. Taibbi’s home three years later.

“The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the Committee.”

Jordan added: “The IRS’s production shows that the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022. Not only was this date Christmas Eve and a Saturday, but it also happened to be three weeks after he published the first Twitter Files detailing government abuses and the same day that Mr. Taibbi published the ninth segment of the Twitter Files, detailing how federal government agencies ‘from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA’ coordinated to censor and coerce speech on various social media platforms.”

In March, Taibbi said that an IRS agent visited his home in New Jersey and left a note telling him to contact the agency.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Congress To Investigate WHO Plans To Use “Listening Surveillance Systems” To Identify “Misinformation”

Rep. Chris Smith wants an investigation into the World Health Organizations plans to surveil speech and more

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023

If you’ve been following our reporting on the issue, you’ll already know that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic prevention initiative, the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), recommends using “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “misinformation.” But as more people are learning about how unelected bodies are being used to suppress speech and potentially override sovereignty, it’s starting to get more pushback.

According to documents from the UN agency, PRET aims to “guide countries in pandemic planning” and work to “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The PRET document describes misinformation as a “health threat,” and refers to it as an “infodemic.”

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness,” the document states.

However, it continues to recommend invasive methods of countering the spread of misinformation.

“Establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation,” the WHO wrote in the PRET document.

“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs in risk communications principles and encourage their application.

Communication should be tailored to the community of interest, focusing on and prioritizing vulnerable groups.

“New tools and approaches for social listening have been developed using new technologies such as artificial intelligence to listen to population concerns on social media (such as the Platform EARS developed by WHO).”

The document also recommends testing these tactics during “acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza.”

“Develop and implement communication and behavior change strategies based on infodemic insights, and test them during acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza. This includes implementing infodemic management across sectors, and having a coordinated approach with other actors, including academia, civil society, and international agencies,” it explains.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) is holding a Congressional hearing on the WHO’s pandemic accord.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently met with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, to discuss the accord and the “critical role” of the US “in global health security.”

In his opening remarks at the World Health Assembly, Ghebreyesus said: “I urge you to deliver the pandemic accord on time, as a generational commitment. The next pandemic will not wait for us. We must be ready.”

The Accord’s preliminary document, zero draft, was first published in February.

In March, the Biden administration’s envoy at the negotiations, Pamela Hamamoto, said that the administration is “committed to the Pandemic Accord, to form a major component of the global health architecture for generations to come.”

“The American people have a right to know exactly what the Biden Administration is negotiating at the WHO, especially as the President remains silent and fails to reassure us that he will protect our Constitution from bureaucrats at this troubled United Nations body,” Rep. Smith said.

Smith is particularly concerned that the Accord could undermine the sovereignty of the US over its healthcare infrastructure.

“The zero-draft WHO pandemic treaty starts off with very harsh criticism of the United States and the international community by calling it a ‘catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic,’” Rep. Smith noted. “Article 4 of the treaty pays lip service to sovereignty and then completely overcomes that lip service by saying, ‘provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries,’ which empowers the WHO to step in and prescribe what each country would do.”

During the hearing, Smith plans to ask Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the contents of the accord’s zero draft.

“Under absolutely no circumstances should the Biden Administration surrender American sovereignty to the World Health Organization and allow the voice of the American people and consent of the governed to be subjugated to dictates of an agenda-driven global administrative bureaucracy,” Smith insisted.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

MISSOURI VS BIDEN: “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LAWSUITS OF OUR LIFETIME”

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

HighWire Editorial Contributor and Editor-in-Chief at UncoverDC, Tracy Beanz, describes Missouri vs. Biden as, “one of the most important lawsuits of our lifetime.” Attorney General of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, and Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, take on the Office of the President and other federal offices for colluding with social media to suppress speech countering their narrative regarding COVID-19.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , | Leave a comment

First COVID Vaccine Injury Lawsuit in U.S. Targets U.S. Government, Social Media Giants

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 23, 2023

Five people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, along with a father whose 16-year-old son died from vaccine-induced cardiac arrest, are suing the Biden administration and top U.S. public health officials.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, the plaintiffs — including Brianne Dressen who suffered severe nerve damage after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine — allege the U.S. government colluded with social media companies to censor them when they posted stories about their personal vaccine injury experiences.

Defendants include President Biden and top-ranking White House officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

This is the first lawsuit brought by U.S. citizens injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dressen — a preschool teacher from Saratoga Springs, Utah — volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s clinical trial for its COVID-19 shot. Now, she says, she is “collateral damage of the pandemic.”

Dressen co-chairs React19, a “science-based non-profit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for those suffering from longterm COVID-19 vaccine adverse events globally.”

After receiving the AstraZeneca shot, Dressen experienced extensive adverse effects — including doubled and blurry vision, severe sensitivity to sound and light, heart and blood pressure fluctuations and intense brain fog — that worsened over time.

She said Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, GoFundMe, Reddit and Instagram removed content she posted about her injuries.

According to Dressen, the plaintiffs’ experiences of censorship “pale in comparison to the thousands of Americans we know who all have experienced the same thing.”

“There is nothing scarier than reaching out for help only to be silenced,” Dressen told The Defender. “It was as scary as the vaccine reaction itself.

“Our constitutional freedoms must be protected, regardless of whether or not we are in a national emergency,” Dressen added.

Dressen — who now experiences “permanent disability” with “ups and downs” — said she and the other plaintiffs are “not fighting this fight for a select few” but are fighting on behalf of the “tens of thousands who are experiencing the same kind of censorship.”

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed the suit on behalf of Dressen and the other plaintiffs, who include Kristi Dobbs, Nikki Holland, Suzanna Newell and Ernest Ramirez.

All but Ramirez experienced COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries. Ramirez received the Moderna vaccine with no adverse effect  — but his 16-year-old son died of vaccine-induced cardiac arrest five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Newell is a former triathlete from St. Paul, Minnesota, who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after she got the vaccine and who now relies on a walker or cane to get around.

Case challenges ‘shocking’ government mass-censorship

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs experienced “heavy and ongoing censorship” on social media platforms — including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and GoFundMe — “when they attempted to share “ their personal experiences after they, or a loved one, were medically harmed after taking the vaccine.”

For instance, TikTok on multiple occasions removed Holland’s video posts in which she shared her personal experiences related to her COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries and recovery process.

TikTok said the videos violated “Community Guidelines” for posting “violent and graphic content” and for “integrity and authenticity” concerns.

According to the complaint:

“This case challenges the government’s mass-censorship program and the shocking role that it has played (and still plays) in ensuring that disfavored viewpoints deemed a threat to its agenda are suppressed.

“This sprawling censorship enterprise has involved the efforts of myriad federal agencies and government actors (including within the White House itself) to direct, coerce, and, ultimately, work in concert with social media platforms to censor, muffle, and flag as ‘misinformation’ speech that conflicts with the government’s preferred narrative — including speech that the government explicitly acknowledges to be true.”

Kim Mack Rosenberg, the Children Health Defense’s (CHD) acting outside general counsel, said the new lawsuit is important because it exists “at the intersection” of COVID-19 vaccine injury and COVID-19 censorship.

“The complaint here alleges — as have other cases — a massive censorship program to control the narrative and promote the government’s COVID-19 propaganda,” Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.

She added:

“Silencing those who have been injured, like the plaintiffs in this case, by the very product promoted — and in some cases mandated — by the government is particularly egregious and causes further, albeit, different injury to those individuals, whose First Amendment rights have also been violated.

“Moreover, censoring these injured individuals injures the public, depriving them of important information and discourse on these issues.”

Missouri and Louisiana in May 2022 filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.

Former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt alleges the Biden administration led “the largest speech censorship operation in recent history” by working with social media companies to suppress and censor information later acknowledged as truthful.”

In March, CHD Chairman on Leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CHD filed a class action lawsuit against Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech, including facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Commenting on the new lawsuit, Peggy Little, senior litigation counsel for NCLA, said in a statement:

“Americans injured by experimentally approved Covid vaccines are being deplatformed, silenced, suppressed, defamed and cancelled by their own government for reaching out to others simply to share and receive information critical to their physical and mental well-being.

“Government actors have bullied, threatened and coerced social media companies to strip these plaintiffs of their First Amendment rights of association and speech. Suppression of speech critical of the government by the very government actors mandating the vaccine is frightening.

“NCLA’s lawsuit seeks to restore these plaintiffs’ civil liberties and the free flow of information guaranteed by the First Amendment for all Americans. We must never again lose our constitutional bearings in a pandemic.”

Casey Norman, one of the NCLA lawyers representing Dressen and the other plaintiffs, agreed. He said that the government claims it suppresses “so-called misinformation” for the sake of “public safety and welfare.”

“Fortunately,” Norman added, “the First Amendment says otherwise: the government may neither censor our clients nor induce others to do so.”

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Justice Neil Gorsuch Speaks Out Against Lockdowns and Mandates

Brownstone Institute | May 18, 2023

In a statement made today on a case concerning Title 42, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch breaks the painful silence on the topic of lockdowns and mandates, and presents the truth with startling clarity. Importantly, this statement from the Supreme Court comes as so many other agencies, intellectuals, and journalists are in flat-out denial of what happened to the country.

[T]he history of this case illustrates the disruption we have experienced over the last three years in how our laws are made and our freedoms observed.

Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.

They shuttered businesses and schools public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.

They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Federal executive officials entered the act too. Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide.They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans.

They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent. Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them. In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.

Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it. One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.

A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.

We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.

But maybe we have learned another lesson too. The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government. However wise one person or his advisors may be, that is no substitute for the wisdom of the whole of the American people that can be tapped in the legislative process.

Decisions produced by those who indulge no criticism are rarely as good as those produced after robust and uncensored debate. Decisions announced on the fly are rarely as wise as those that come after careful deliberation. Decisions made by a few often yield unintended consequences that may be avoided when more are consulted. Autocracies have always suffered these defects. Maybe, hopefully, we have relearned these lessons too.

In the 1970s, Congress studied the use of emergency decrees. It observed that they can allow executive authorities to tap into extraordinary powers. Congress also observed that emergency decrees have a habit of long outliving the crises that generate them; some federal emergency proclamations, Congress noted, had remained in effect for years or decades after the emergency in question had passed.

At the same time, Congress recognized that quick unilateral executive action is sometimes necessary and permitted in our constitutional order. In an effort to balance these considerations and ensure a more normal operation of our laws and a firmer protection of our liberties, Congress adopted a number of new guardrails in the National Emergencies Act.

Despite that law, the number of declared emergencies has only grown in the ensuing years. And it is hard not to wonder whether, after nearly a half-century and in light of our Nation’s recent experience, another look is warranted. It is hard not to wonder, too, whether state legislatures might profitably reexamine the proper scope of emergency executive powers at the state level.

At the very least, one can hope that the Judiciary will not soon again allow itself to be part of the problem by permitting litigants to manipulate our docket to perpetuate a decree designed for one emergency to address another. Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Arizona v. Mayorkas marks the culmination of his three-year effort to oppose the Covid regime’s eradication of civil liberties, unequal application of law, and political favoritism. From the outset, Gorsuch remained vigilant as public officials used the pretext of Covid to augment their power and strip the citizenry of its rights in defiance of long standing constitutional principles.

While other justices (even some purported constitutionalists) absconded their responsibility to uphold the Bill of Rights, Gorsuch diligently defended the Constitution. This became most apparent in the Supreme Court’s cases involving religious liberty in the Covid era.

Beginning in May 2020, the Supreme Court heard cases challenging Covid restrictions on religious attendance across the country. The Court was divided along familiar political lines: the liberal bloc of Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan voted to uphold deprivations of liberty as a valid exercise of states’ police power; Justice Gorsuch led conservatives Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas in challenging the irrationality of the edicts; Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberal bloc, justifying his decision by deferring to public health experts.

“Unelected judiciary lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people,” Roberts wrote in South Bay v. Newsom, the first Covid case to reach the Court.

And so the Court repeatedly upheld executive orders attacking religious liberty. In South Bay, the Court denied a California church’s request to block state restrictions on church attendance in a five to four decision. Roberts sided with the liberal bloc, urging deference to the public health apparatus as constitutional freedoms disappeared from American life.

In July 2020, the Court again split 5-4 and denied a church’s emergency motion for injunctive relief against Nevada’s Covid restrictions. Governor Steve Sisolak capped religious gatherings at 50 people, regardless of the precautions taken or the size of the establishment. The same order allowed for other groups, including casinos, to hold up to 500 people. The Court, with Chief Justice Roberts joining the liberal justices again, denied the motion in an unsigned motion without explanation.

Justice Gorsuch issued a one paragraph dissent that exposed the hypocrisy and irrationality of the Covid regime. “Under the Governor’s edict, a 10-screen ‘multiplex’ may host 500 moviegoers at any time. A casino, too, may cater to hundreds at once, with perhaps six people huddled at each craps table here and a similar number gathered around every roulette wheel there,” he wrote. But the Governor’s lockdown order imposed a 50-worshiper limit for religious gatherings, no matter the buildings’ capacities.

“The First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion,” Gorsuch wrote. “But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesars Palace over Calvary Chapel.”

Gorsuch understood the threat to Americans’ liberties, but he was powerless with Chief Justice Roberts cowing to the interests of the public health bureaucracy. That changed when Justice Ginsburg died in September 2020.

The following month, Justice Barrett joined the Court and reversed the Court’s 5-4 split on religious freedom in the Covid era. The following month, the Court granted an emergency injunction to block Governor Cuomo’s executive order that limited attendance at religious services to 10 to 25 people.

Gorsuch was now in the majority, protecting Americans from the tyranny of unconstitutional edicts. In a concurring opinion in the New York case, he again compared restrictions on secular activities and religious gatherings; “according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians… Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”

In February 2021, California religious organizations appealed for an emergency injunction against Governor Newsom’s Covid restriction. At the time, Newsom prohibited indoor worship in certain areas and banned singing. Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Kavanaugh and Barrett, upheld the ban on singing but overturned the capacity limits.

Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion, joined by Thomas and Alito, that continued his critique of the authoritarian and irrational deprivations of America’s liberty as Covid entered its second year. He wrote, “Government actors have been moving the goalposts on pandemic-related sacrifices for months, adopting new benchmarks that always seem to put restoration of liberty just around the corner.”

Like his opinions in New York and Nevada, he focused on the disparate treatment and political favoritism behind the edicts; “if Hollywood may host a studio audience or film a singing competition while not a single soul may enter California’s churches, synagogues, and mosques, something has gone seriously awry.”

Thursday’s opinion allowed Gorsuch to review the devastating loss of liberty Americans suffered over the 1,141 days it took to flatten the curve.”

May 21, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Lawyers: Nouri’s solitary confinement ‘world record’, jail treatment ‘heinous’

Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official, at an appeals court hearing in Sweden. (File photo by Mizan)
Press TV – May 20, 2023

Lawyers of Iranian national Hamid Nouri, who has been illegally detained in Sweden for more than three years, have criticized his trial process and the way he is being treated in jail, saying the 62-year-old’s solitary confinement is too long and regarded as a “world record.”

Mizan news agency, affiliated with the Iranian Judiciary, cited Nouri’s lawyer Hanna Larsson as saying at the tenth session of an appeals court hearing that her client has now spent 3.5 years in solitary confinement in Swedish detention centers, describing the long period as a “record” in the world and the way he is treated by jailers as “very heinous.”

Larsson said Nouri’s family members have been prevented from visiting him, blaming the Swedish prison authorities for refusing to arrange meetings despite having “enough time to do so.”

“He is entitled to have in-person and virtual meetings, but no meeting is held,” she said, adding that the prison authorities have also deprived Nouri of having access to his laptop and iPad over the past weeks.

Larsson also rebuked the Swedish authorities for preventing Nouri’s access to crucial documents required for defending him at the court, dismissing as “not true” the prosecutor’s claim that the documents had been handed over to her client.

“These documents were of great value to our client and now we cannot defend him as we should and be ready for defense,” Nouri’s lawyer underlined.

Larsson also brought up the issue of Nouri’s failing eyesight, saying her client had for several times called for arranging an appointment with an ophthalmologist but the prison authorities turned down the plea.

Thomas Bodström, another Nouri’s lawyer, confirmed Larsson’s remarks and voiced his criticism of his client’s trial process.

Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official, was arrested upon arrival in Sweden at Stockholm Airport in November 2019 and was immediately imprisoned. He was put on trial on unfounded allegations made by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group.

The terrorist group alleges Nouri was involved in the execution and torture of MKO members in 1988, but he has vehemently rejected the allegation.

Back in July last year, a Swedish court sentenced Nouri to life imprisonment. The court, which was described by Iran as illegal in the first place, convicted Nouri of war crimes and crimes against humanity based on the MKO allegations.

The 62-year-old has been put in solitary confinement since his illegal arrest. His next appeals court hearing is scheduled to be held on May 29.

May 20, 2023 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

‘Patriot Act on Steroids’: Bill to Ban TikTok Could Lead to ‘Sweeping Surveillance and Censorship’ in U.S., Critics Say

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 19, 2023

U.S. lawmakers are considering a bill that would grant the U.S. government vast new powers to surveil and censor U.S. citizens.

The RESTRICT Act — the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or Senate Bill 686 — would give the federal government new powers ostensibly to mitigate national security threats posed by technology products from countries that the U.S. deems adversarial.

The bill would grant the U.S. secretary of commerce the authority to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” national security risks associated with technology linked to a foreign adversary.

There are only six countries on the foreign adversary list — China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and Cuba — but the bill allows the secretary and Congress to add any other country “if it became necessary.”

The bill does not stipulate the criteria for adding a country.

Additionally, the bill would give the commerce secretary the power to negotiate, enter into, impose and enforce “any mitigation measure” in response to national security risks.

The bill’s “broad” and “vague” language puts a great deal of power into the hands of the executive branch, according to critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a “leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world.”

The EFF called the bill a “dangerous substitute for comprehensive data privacy legislation.”

Meanwhile, the White House “applauded” the bill, stating that it would “empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services operating in the United States in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security.”

The bill — which has yet to be scheduled for a vote — would create a legal framework through which the U.S. government could ban TikTok.

TikTok is regarded as a national security risk by some U.S. lawmakers who fear that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, might share sensitive information from the more than 150 million U.S. TikTok users with the Chinese Communist Party.

U.S. Big Tech companies including Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Google’s parent, Alphabet, are expected to benefit from an expanded market share if the U.S. government bans the Chinese-owned TikTok. 

‘Mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul’

However, according to investigative reporter Jordan Schachtel, “This bill is no mere ‘TikTok ban,’ it is a mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul.”

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” agreed. He told The Defender :

“The RESTRICT Act is not only aimed at the activities and expression of companies and individuals from nations deemed inimical to U.S. interests; it is a backdoor means through which the federal government can oversee the opinions and activities of all U.S. citizens, increasing the state’s powers of surveillance and abrogating citizen’s first amendment rights.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also had harsh words for the proposed legislation:

Many on both the Left and Right have criticized the bill, calling it the “Patriot Act on steroids” or the “Patriot Act 2.0.”

Weeks after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which the American Civil Liberties Union said was “an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.”

Critics fear the RESTRICT Act would expand those powers even further.

EFF condemned the bill’s potential threats to free speech, noting that the bill doesn’t require the executive branch to justify its restrictions on expressive technologies like TikTok and that it limits lawsuit challenges to the restrictions it sets.

“Due to undefined mitigation measures coupled with a vague enforcement provision, the bill could also criminalize common practices like using a VPN or side-loading to install a prohibited app,” EFF said. “There are legitimate data privacy concerns about social media platforms, but this bill is a distraction from real progress on privacy.”

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who co-sponsored the bill, said in remarks on the Senate floor that the bill would not allow the government to “surveil Americans’ online content” or “access any American’s personal communications device.”

However, the RESTRICT Act’s broad language could potentially be interpreted to address satellite and mobile networks, cloud services and storage, internet infrastructure providers, home internet gear, commercial and personal drones, video games and payment apps, CNN said.

“Instead of passing this broad and overreaching bill, Congress should limit the opportunities for any company to collect massive amounts of our detailed personal data, which is then made available to data brokers, U.S. government agencies, and even foreign adversaries, China included,” EFF concluded.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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.

May 20, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The climate scaremongers: How to lose a lot of money – buy an electric car

By Paul Homewood | TCW Defending Freedom | May 19, 2023

New analysis shows that electric cars (EVs) are depreciating at twice the rate of petrol cars. According to the Express :

‘EVs on average will lose 51 per cent of their purchase value from 2020 to 2023, compared with just 37 per cent for petrol vehicles. This equates to a massive £15,220 loss for electric car owners, with petrol drivers seeing a decrease of £9,901.

‘The data, from ChooseMyCar.com, used a comparison of new car prices three years ago compared with their value now.

‘The higher the original purchase price of the car, the bigger the loss, with the Tesla Model S losing £25,000 in value in just three years – a 46 per cent drop. However, entry-level EVs like the Nissan Leaf are also losing a massive amount of value in such a short space of time. The Leaf’s value dropped by £13,000 – or 58 per cent – despite being one of the most popular small EVs on the market.’

There are three factors in play here. Firstly the battery life for an EV, typically around 100,000 miles, means that the car is virtually worthless once it gets to around 80,000 miles. Nobody is going to pay thousands for a car which will end up in the scrapyard a year or so later. This depreciation works its way up the chain. For instance, if you buy a petrol car with 50,000 miles on the clock, you expect to still get a reasonable trade-in three years later.

Secondly, whilst new EVs are attractive for companies and green virtue signallers thanks to government subsidies, there is very little demand for them amongst the public at large. People buy second-hand cars for a very good reason – they cannot afford new models. Consequently they cannot afford to pay a surcharge for a second-hand EV, even if they want one.

Thirdly, increasing numbers of EVs are appearing on the second-hand market, reflecting the surge in new sales in recent years. As demand has not increased, this is also forcing the price down.

The prospect of losing so much money in depreciation will inevitably make drivers think twice before buying a new one.

Meanwhile a US study has found that EVs may not reduce emissions of carbon dioxide as much as thought – indeed they may even increase emissions. According to the report:

‘the relevant and surprising emissions wildcard comes from the gargantuan, energy-hungry processes needed to make EV batteries. To match the energy stored in one pound of oil requires 15 pounds of lithium battery, which in turn entails digging up about 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals needed – lithium, graphite, copper, nickel, aluminum, zinc, neodymium, manganese and so on. Thus, fabricating a typical single half-ton EV battery requires mining and processing about 250 tons of materials.’

The fact that much of this mining and processing takes place in China, where energy is nearly all derived from fossil fuels, makes the carbon footprint even larger. Other studies have suggested that an EV will break even at about 60,000 miles as far as emissions are concerned. This new study implies that the situation is probably worse.

And as some of us have been warning for years, the UK and EU rush to phase out petrol/diesel cars is beginning to cause real harm to the European car industry. Whereas Europe has long had an unassailable technological lead over China in car manufacturing, EVs have introduced a level playing field which China is now exploiting through its lower energy and labour costs, along with its near–monopoly of the battery market.

As a consequence, Chinese EVs are flooding the German market. Official statistics have revealed that 28.2 per cent of the electric vehicles imported into the country during the January-March period originated from China. This figure demonstrates a substantial rise from the 7.8 per cent recorded over the same period in 2022, highlighting China’s expanding influence in the global adoption of EVs. If this was not bad enough, the data also reveals a decline of 23.9 per cent in German exports of new vehicles to China compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

Unsurprisingly, then, a major study by Allianz Trade, part of the European insurance giant, says that China’s growing share of the EV market in its home market and the EU will see the European car industry shrink by €24billion a year and associated supply chain industries shrink by an additional €21billion.

It is not only Chinese inroads into Europe which are in play here; another nail in the European motor car industry’s coffin is the fact that the enforced switch to EVs will force millions out of their cars completely, because they are simply not fit for purpose for many drivers.

Indeed it is becoming increasingly clear, with ULEZ zones, 15-minute cities and so on, that the real objective of European governments, including our own, is drastically to reduce the numbers of cars on the road, cut the mileage driven and force us all on to buses, bikes and Shanks’s pony.

They do not seem to care that they will destroy a major industry and millions of jobs as a direct consequence. – Full article

May 18, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

Ongoing Fascist Repression in Pakistan

By Junaid S. Ahmad | Global Research | May 18, 2023

Confirmed and corroborated by at least two dozen of my former students both inside Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus as well as those protesting it. This is the face of fascism, the culmination of a year-long Washington-backed regime change operation against former prime minister Imran Khan.

“Around 7000+ PTI supporters and workers across Pakistan are in illegal custody of multiple LEAs and Police at the moment and not presented in any court after so many days of abduction.

The IG of Punjab himself claimed 3500+ abductions in Punjab. The actual number is around 5000+ for Punjab and 2000+ for KP & Islamabad.

No law permits any custody after 24 hours without presenting the accused in courts. Out of ~5000 abductions in Punjab, only ~200 presented in Punjab’s courts so far.

None of them were not involved in any kind of vandalism at all and arrested just because they are peaceful PTI Supporters/Workers and their families.

It’s the first time in history that political workers’ female family members are also being picked up to pressurise and humiliate them. In one case, an 8 year-old kid was also kidnapped for a few hours.

Hundreds of them are reportedly being tortured and pressurised to give false statements against PTI leadership.”

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. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

May 18, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

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