RFK, Jr. and CHD Sue Biden, Fauci for Alleged Censorship
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 28, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Friday filed a class action lawsuit against President 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.
Kennedy, CHD and Connie Sampognaro filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Monroe Division, on behalf of all the more than 80% of Americans who access news from online news aggregators and social media companies, principally Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
The plaintiffs allege top-ranking government officials, along with an “ever-growing army of federal officers, at every level of the government” from the White House to the FBI, the CIA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lesser-well-known federal agencies of inducing those companies:
“to stifle viewpoints that the government disfavors, to suppress facts that the government does not want the public to hear, and to silence specific speakers — in every case critics of federal policy — whom the government has targeted by name.”
Kennedy, chairman and chief litigation counsel of CHD, said American Democracy itself is at stake in this case:
“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, ‘Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.’ It also violates the Constitution.
“The collaboration between the White House and health and intelligence agency bureaucrats to silence criticism of presidential policies is an assault on the most fundamental foundation stone of American Democracy.”
The lawsuit’s argument rests on the Norwood Principle, an “axiomatic,” or self-evident, principle of constitutional law that says the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
According to the plaintiffs, the U.S. government used the social media companies as a proxy to illegally censor free speech.
The complaint cites the now-weekly, ongoing disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter files,” other lawsuits and news reports — which revealed threats by Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor.
The suit points to examples where the censorship campaign allegedly trampled First Amendment freedoms, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory and the suppression of facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
The plaintiffs do not seek financial damages. Instead, they seek a declaration that these practices by federal agents violate the First Amendment and a nationwide injunction against the federal government’s effort to censor constitutionally protected online speech.
The complaint points to a Supreme Court decision that said social media platforms are “the modern public square” and argues that all Americans who access news online have a First Amendment right against censorship of protected speech in that public square.
Jed Rubenfeld, one of the attorneys arguing the case filed Friday, explained why the lawsuit was filed as a class action:
“Social media platforms are the modern public square. For years, the government has been pressuring, promoting, and inducing the companies that control that square to impose the same kind of censorship that the First Amendment prohibits.
“This lawsuit challenges that censorship campaign, and we hope to bring it to an end. The real victim is the public, which is why we’ve brought this suit as a class action on behalf of everyone who accesses news from social media.”
According to the complaint, when the administration violates the First Amendment of an entire class of people, the judiciary must step in to protect American’s constitutional rights:
“Apart from the Judiciary, no branch of our Government, and no other institution, can stop the current Administration’s systematic efforts to suppress speech through the conduit of social-media companies.
“Congress can’t, the Executive won’t, and States lack the power to do so. The fate of American free speech, as it has so often before, lies once again in the hands of the courts.”
The lawsuit also names Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce, DHS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other individuals and agencies — 106 defendants in total.
‘The largest federally sanctioned censorship operation’ ever seen
According to the lawsuit, efforts by federal officials to induce social media platforms to censor speech began in 2020 with the suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak theory and reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Once President Biden took office in January 2021, senior White House officials reported the Biden team began “direct engagement” with social media companies to “clamp down” on speech the White House disfavored, which officials called “misinformation.”
Revelations would later prove the administration was asking social media companies to suppress not only putatively false speech but also speech it knew to be “wholly accurate” along with expressions of opinion.
This practice, it alleges, spread from the administration and through the entire government, becoming “a government-wide campaign to achieve through the intermediation of social media companies exactly the kind of content-based and viewpoint-based censorship of dissident political speech that the First Amendment prohibits.”
Similar allegations about this massive federal censorship campaign also so were alleged by the plaintiffs in the Missouri. v. Biden case, but this case introduces many new allegations.
Some, but not all, examples of government-coordinated suppression of free speech on social media cited in the complaint include the following:
- Substantial evidence of coordinated efforts by Fauci and others to suppress the lab-leak theory, which remains plausible and supported by evidence.
- Extensive email communication between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, demonstrating Facebook and other social media companies adopted policies that identified any claims about the lab-leak hypothesis to be “false” and “debunked.”
- Facebook’s admission that its censorship of COVID-19-related speech, on supposed grounds of falsity, is based on what “public health experts have advised us.”
- Public statements by Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of communications from the FBI.
- Extensive public commentary by FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan about his work with social media companies and CISA to discuss suppression of election-related speech on social media.
- “Twitter files” documents on Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
- “Twitter files” documents demonstrating weekly meetings between agents from the FBI’s 80-agent social media task force and Twitter to discuss content suppression along with direct payments from the FBI to Twitter for compliance with requests.
- CISA’s work with the Center for Internet Security, a third-party group, to flag content, including particular individuals, for censorship on social media.
- “Twitter files” evidence about the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a vast network of high-level interactions with the federal government and social media platforms — which included proposals, ultimately adopted, for the U.S. government to establish its own “disinformation” board. One free-speech advocate described the EIP as “the largest federally-sanctioned censorship operation” he had ever seen.
- Documents demonstrating after the election, the EIP was transformed into the “Virality Project,” which was dedicated to “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”
- Threats by congressional representatives, senators and Biden to break up Big Tech if they did not improve censorship practices.
- Census Bureau documents describing work by its “Trust & Safety” team with social media platforms to “counter false information.”
- “Twitter files” documents, news reports, and documents received through Freedom of Information Act requests that demonstrated myriad, consistent communications with Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) and numerous Biden administration officials named as defendants in the lawsuit including Murthy, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, officials from the CDC, DHS, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CISA, the U.S. State Department, the White House — including White House Counsel — and other agencies about how to take action against “misinformation” related to COVID-19.
This last set of communications included action against the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which includes Kennedy. According to the complaint, “Facebook itself has stated that the infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ claim has no factual support.”
Kennedy tweeted some of the evidence that the White House directly censored him.
The complaint alleges that the collusion between the administration, federal agencies and social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected free speech now also extends beyond the election and COVID-19-related commentary to include suppression of speech on topics such as climate change, “clean energy,” “gendered disinformation,” pro-life pregnancy resource centers and other topics.
It also alleges, based on research from the Media Research Center that identified hundreds of instances of censored critiques of Biden, that social media companies “have achieved astonishing success in muzzling public criticism of Joe Biden.”
It argues that the defendants’ power over social media gives them a “historically unprecedented power over public discourse in America — a power to control what hundreds of millions of people in this county can say, see, and hear.”
CHD President Mary Holland, who also serves as CHD general counsel, told The Defender :
“If Government can censor its critics, there is no atrocity it cannot commit. The public has been deprived of truthful, life-and-death information over the last three years. This lawsuit aims to have government censorship end, as it must, because it is unlawful under our constitution.”
The lawsuit asks the court to permanently enjoin them from, “taking any steps to demand, urge, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media platform to censor, suppress, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to constitutionally protected speech, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, protected content or viewpoint expressed on social media.”
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.
Trudeau invokes “flat-earthers” and “anti-vaxxers” as he calls for social platforms to be liable for “disinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 28, 2023
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked “flat-earthers” and “anti-vaxxers” to call for a crackdown on “disinformation” online. He made the comments during a town hall event in Ottawa last week.
Trudeau began by saying the government should find a balance between censorship and free speech to protect people from disinformation.
“Governments have very limited tools to protect people in an online world, which is a good thing. It allows for a tremendous amount of freedom – freedom of expression, freedom of discovery – no oppressive governments controlling what you see, what you want, but it also opens us up to a tremendous amount of crap, of hate speech, of things that are illegal, but also things that are just going to bring us down roads where we’re going to get lost,” he said.
He then talked about misinformation in terms of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers.
“I remember a few years ago before the pandemic, getting really fascinated by flat-earthers, and trying to understand – sort of – the thinking behind them, of people who decided actively to create an identity for themselves that was to just clearly reject what science settled thousands of years ago with the ancient Greeks and that there’s no real contrast to,” he explained.
“It’s more of an identity thing rather than a reasoning thing, and to have people sucked into that, it was fascinating to try and see what it was all about.
“And of course, we went on to understand the phenomenon of anti-vaxxers and anti-science, anti-skeptics, and this rise in these echo chambers that are validating this kind of thinking in ways that have real consequences.
“There are people in Canada who died surrounded by their families because they truly and genuinely believed that the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus, and it killed them.”
The PM then argued that online platforms should be held responsible for the content they host.
“My responsibility as Prime Minister is to try and keep everyone in this country as safe as I possibly can, but I can’t protect everyone from every bit of disinformation on the Internet. So we have to have reflections of how we move forward, how we responsibilize the companies that are controlling so much, the private companies that are controlling so much of the public square you now live in that doesn’t have police paid by your taxes to keep you safe.”
“It doesn’t have rules around businesses to regulate so you don’t get scammed by the corner store. This is the new world we’re in that we’re going to have to try and adjust to, and I can tell you, I’m worried about the direction we’re going.”
Jabbed pilots’ roll call of death and injuries
By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | March 27, 2023
‘Mayday! Mayday!’ is something no airline pilot wants to say, and no passenger wants to hear, but this month Virgin Australia, Emirates, United and Southwest airlines have all turned back aircraft or made emergency landings because air crew have suffered serious health incidents. A British Airways pilot died of a heart attack just before he was due to fly a plane from Egypt.
Here’s the timeline:
· March 3: Virgin Australia crew received a memo describing why flight VARA A320 from Adelaide to Perth returned 30 minutes into the journey: ‘The First Officer [co-pilot] became unwell. A return to Adelaide was considered the best course of action by the captain.’
· March 11: United flight 2007 from Guatemala to Chicago was diverted because the captain had chest pains, landing at George Bush airport in Houston.
· March 12: It is reported that a British Airways pilot collapsed and died in a hotel in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before he was due to fly.
· March 13: Emirates flight EK205 from Milan turned back because the co-pilot felt unwell 90 minutes after take-off.
· March 22: Josh Yoder, President of US Freedom Flyers, an organisation fighting vaccine mandates for airline staff, tweeted: ‘On a Southwest flight departing Las Vegas, the captain became incapacitated soon after take-off. He was replaced by a non-Southwest pilot who was commuting on that flight.’
According to pilot and medical aviation doctor Jackie Stone, airline pilots have Class One medical clearance. This means they are extremely fit and extremely healthy, with less than a 1 per cent chance per year of having a medical incident that could immobilise them. They receive extensive annual medicals and are grounded if an incapacitating condition is picked up.
This makes the above highly unusual, and the favourite explanation for this increase is vaccine injury. Especially as we now know vaccines can cause myocarditis, heart inflammation which can cause heart attacks, and blood clots, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes, although authorities claim these are ‘rare’.
Glen Waters, a member of Aussie Freedom Flyers, a group fighting aviation vaccine mandates, is a former captain with Virgin Australia whose career was terminated on its twentieth anniversary for refusing the Covid jab. He said: ‘Injuries in aviation following Covid-19 vaccination are occurring and data is not being vigilantly collected or reported. We have a growing list of anecdotal post-vaccination injury reports from pilots, and other staff, across the airline industry.’
Captain Lee Maisey, who worked for Jetstar, New Zealand (owned by Qantas), was fired after 13 years for not being fully vaccinated. She not only suffered vaccine injury but felt her employer was unsympathetic. She said: ‘In November 2021, I reluctantly took a first dose of Pfizer vaccine because I was threatened with being fired. Ten days later I was walking on the beach when my feet went a funny colour, then my legs started going numb and tingly. By the end of the day both arms and both legs were just fizzing.
‘My heart would miss beats and I’d have palpitations.
‘Then came the insomnia. I lay down in bed and my eyes just didn’t shut. It was like that all night. I found out later that this is a side-effect of the vaccine.
‘I told my bosses at Jetstar what was happening. They were not sympathetic. They arranged for me to speak with an aviation medical doctor over the phone. His response to my side-effects was “Yes, that’s normal.”
‘The second was the head of medical. I spent over two hours on the phone, and I was particularly worried about the insomnia. On any other occasion that would be enough to pull my medical [clearance to fly]. I asked her if this would happen, and she said: “It’s up to you.” Which I found remarkable.’
International airline pilot Brit Malone (not his real name) was injured by the AstraZeneca vaccine, not recommended by the FAA but available to pilots outside the US. He was advised not to have another AZ vaccine, but his airline then insisted he get a dose of Pfizer so that he had received the recommended two doses.
Mr Malone said: ‘I succumbed to pressure and had the first dose of AstraZeneca. While I was flying, I was aware of this pain forming in my leg. I didn’t pay too much attention, I go to the gym a lot and thought I’d pulled a muscle.
‘I woke up one morning and found a blue line up the inside of my leg. It was a blood clot. I was off work for three months on blood thinners. It’s been confirmed by a number of specialists that it was vaccine-related.’ Mr Malone has since been diagnosed with cancer and has a 17cm tumour in his liver.
Josh Yoder of US Freedom Flyers said: ‘To ensure passenger safety the pilot medical should be updated to include d-dimer tests, which pick up blood clots, and troponin tests, which measure troponin proteins released when the heart muscle has been damaged.’
Many airlines mandated Covid-19 vaccines even though pilots are not allowed to take part in drug trials and are allowed to receive only approved medication which has been in general use for a minimum of 12 months. The Covid vaccines were, and are still, experimental and we are currently in phase four trials, so pilots should have been exempt.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s recommendations are followed globally by all aviation governing bodies. The FAA website says: ‘The FAA generally requires at least one year of post-marketing experience with a new drug before consideration for aeromedical certification purposes. This observation period allows time for uncommon, but aeromedically significant, adverse effects to manifest themselves.’
Some airlines, especially in Australia and New Zealand, simply sacked pilots refusing to have a Covid vaccination with the result that those still in service and suffering health conditions potentially caused by the jab are trying to hide it. Glen Waters said: ‘The most worrying is flight deck crew failing to disclose medically significant conditions for fear of losing their pilot’s licence.’
Airlines are aware that Covid vaccinations are being questioned for causing serious adverse events but have chosen to ignore all safety signals.
Dr Kate Manderson, the principal medical officer of Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), says she has no concerns about Covid vaccinations although she is aware of the case of American Airlines pilot Bob Snow, who suffered a heart attack last year, six minutes after landing his plane in Dallas, Texas. Citizen journalist and entrepreneur Steve Kirsch talked directly to Susan Northrup, who is the Federal Air Surgeon for the FAA, the top medical officer. She has never talked to Snow either although Kirsch provided her with Snow’s phone number. Bob Snow says that he has never been contacted by any authority for information about his vaccine-induced heart attack.
In June 2021, I reported that four British Airways pilots had died unexpectedly but BA refused to confirm or deny whether vaccines were implicated.
Fed up with negotiating with their airlines, pilots are fighting back. Qantas pilot Alan Dana, who set up Aussie Freedom Flyers, and former Virgin Australia captain Shane Murdock have launched a legal action on behalf of pilots, engineers, ground staff, and cabin crew, against Qantas and Virgin for breach of contract and unfair dismissal. They say aviation staff cannot be legally injected if they are being coerced, while both airlines argue this is not the case.
To support Aussie Freedom Flyers’ class action please donate here or here.
US Freedom Flyers have also launched a legal action.
The FAA issued this statement: ‘The FAA’s Federal Air Surgeon determined that pilots and air traffic controllers can safely receive the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Novavax vaccine. The FAA has seen no credible evidence of aircraft accidents or incapacitations caused by pilots suffering medical complications associated with COVID-19 vaccines.’
A Jetstar spokesperson said: ‘All New Zealand-based pilots, irrespective of the airline they work for, were required under New Zealand government health orders to be fully vaccinated in order to fly. All Jetstar employees are required to comply with government requirements at all times.’
We contacted all five airlines mentioned at the top of this article and Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority but received no response.
Biden Administration demanded crackdown on “vaccine-skeptical” WhatsApp chats
Despite it being end-to-end encrypted
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | March 26, 2023
The Biden administration was pushing for the censorship of COVID-related content on WhatsApp, according to communications between the White House and Meta, the company that owns the messaging platform.
This move has raised concerns about freedom of expression and the ability to communicate privately on digital platforms.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram, which are also owned by Meta, WhatsApp is an encrypted direct messaging platform that is used for private conversations between individuals or small groups. The White House has been pressing Meta executives to find ways to measure “reduction of harm” on WhatsApp, insisting that they must have a “good mousetrap” to observe what conversations are shared on the platform.
According to the report by David Zweig, who echoed Reclaim The Net’s reporting from January, the White House has also offered to work closely with Meta to curb the spread of so-called “vaccine-skeptical” content.
However, because of WhatsApp’s structure, targeted suppression or censorship of certain information is not possible. Instead, the focus of content moderation on WhatsApp has been to push information to users.
This has included partnering with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and over 100 governments and health ministries to send COVID-19 updates and vaccine-related messages to users.
This move by the Biden administration raises concerns about the impact on freedom of expression and the ability to communicate privately on digital platforms.
With the White House pressing for content moderation on the platform, it could undermine this privacy and freedom of expression that is expected on end-to-end encrypted apps (although WhatsApp is perhaps less trusted anyway over its ties to Meta.)
Climate-Neutral Already By 2030?… Berliners To Vote On Climate-Neutrality Referendum Today!
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | March 26, 2023
Berliners are going to the polls today in a referendum on whether or not to make the city “climate-neutral” already by 2030 instead of 2045.
That’s quite a lofty goal for a chaotic, financially broken city that couldn’t even build an airport.
Polls showing slight lead for “klimaneutral ja”. And no campaign in Berlin has seen funding to this scale. Acc0rding to media reports, most funding has come from foreign countries, mainly from far left groups in the USA.
According to a report by online Bild, one wealthy New York couple (Albert Wenger und Susan Danziger) even donated half a million euros to fund a campaign to get the people to vote “ja”.
Should Berliners vote to make the German capital CO2 neutral by 2030, it would mean enacting an amendment that would force the city of Berlin to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 instead of 2045. This would affect almost every aspect of Berlin life, from transportation, to heating and widescale major building renovation.
Foreign funding
The amendment is being pushed by the Green Party and radical groups like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, who are largely financed by foreign funders like the Climate Emergency Fund, Abigail Disney and Hollywood film director Adam McKay.
If the amendment gets adopted, immense power will be transferred a small group of unelected people, a so-called Climate Protection Council of “experts”, appointed by the Berlin Senate. Climate targets for 2045 would turn into climate legal obligations for 2030.
Huge restrictions, astronomical costs, loss of private property
Critics warn this would mean many more restrictions on freedom, Berliners might even have to say goodbye to their cars completely. Under the amendment, the Berlin airport would be a part of the climate budget. thus posing the risk of reducing the number of flights.”
Moreover property owners would be forced to make largescale, costly renovations and have to install solar panels. No one knows where the money is magically supposed to come from.
Unachievable, pie-in-the-sky
Critics are speaking up, however, calling the radical climate project “factually impossible” and “out of the question”, noting that even the original 2045 target timetable was almost impossible to meet,” Bild reports.
Recent opinion polls show the results of today’s referendum are expected to be very close, slightly tipping in favor of the referendum.
We’ll report the results this evening as they become available.
This means there’s a good chance that the City of Berlin might well end up being an even greater basket-case than California. Somebody needs to lead the way to show the rest of the world what a folly rapid climate neutrality can be.
My would-be assassins are still in office – former Pakistani PM
RT | March 25, 2023
Death threats will remain a constant part of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s life until he can return to power and hold his would-be killers accountable, he told Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi on Saturday.
Khan told Rattansi that he has survived two attempts on his life in the last week – one which involved him being led into a “deathtrap” outside a court in Islamabad on Saturday, and another in which agents of the state would provoke police into opening fire on a crowd of Khan’s supporters before “coming after” him to finish the job.
“The threat is real because these people are sitting in power,” Khan said. “They are petrified that if I win the elections they will be in trouble, or held accountable.”
Khan blames Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, and Major General Faisal Naseer, a senior intelligence official, of plotting his assassination at a rally last November. Khan, who was removed from office through a no-confidence motion seven months earlier, was hit in the leg and hospitalized.
Sharif denies any involvement in the murder attempt, and has accused Khan of spreading “false and cheap conspiracies.” Sharif has also denied colluding with the US to have Khan removed from power.
Khan has since been charged with 143 criminal offenses, with the government most recently accusing him of terrorism after his supporters rioted outside the Islamabad courthouse last Saturday. He views these charges as politically-motivated, and aimed at preventing him from contesting this year’s general election.
While he has been barred from participating in the election, he insists Pakistan’s election commission had no legal grounds to ban him.
“They are petrified that their elections, my party will sweep them,” Khan told Rattansi. “In all opinion polls, my party is poised to win a two-thirds majority in Pakistan, hence them wanting to get rid of me.”
“The threat is real until the elections,” he added. “They’re worried that if the elections take place and I come back into power, they will be held accountable.”
Khan’s PTI party has won 29 out of 37 by-elections since he was removed from power, and a Gallup poll put his approval rating at 61% earlier this month, compared to Sharif’s 32%. Provincial elections in the PTI strongholds of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were set to be held on April 30, but were pushed back until October this week, after Sharif’s government withheld election-related funding from the provinces.
Amid the apparent threat to his life, Khan said that he is “taking precautions,” and now gives speeches from behind bulletproof glass. Referring to the Pakistani authorities, he said that “those who were supposed to protect me are the ones I’m in the greatest danger from.” – Video link
Hungary comments on Ukraine’s NATO and EU bids
RT | March 25, 2023
Hungary will not agree to Ukraine joining NATO and the EU as long as Kiev continues to discriminate against ethnic Hungarians living in Transcarpathia, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
Szijjarto added that he raised the issue at a meeting with the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, Ilze Brands Kehris.
Up to 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools are in danger of being closed in Ukraine due to the nation’s education law, Szijjarto said. “I made it clear to Ilze Brands Kehris… that Hungary will not be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration [bids] under any circumstances as long as Hungarian schools in the Transcarpathia region are in danger,” the minister wrote on Facebook on Friday.
Kiev has been cracking down on minority language rights for years. Laws enforcing the use of Ukrainian in education and television were adopted as early as 2017 under then-President Pyotr Poroshenko. In 2018, another law banned the teaching of Russian, as well as Romanian, Polish, and Hungarian beyond the primary school level.
In 2019, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission criticized Ukraine’s State Language Law, saying it “fails to strike balance between strengthening Ukrainian and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights.”
Budapest has been among the most vocal critics of Kiev’s language policies in the West. According to Szijjarto, Ukraine has not done anything substantial to address Hungary’s concerns.
“For the past eight years, we have continuously received promises from the Ukrainian authorities that they will solve this problem, but they have not actually done anything,” he said.
Around 156,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, most of them in the western region of Transcarpathia. Ukraine is also home to around 150,000 ethnic Romanians and more than 250,000 Moldovans, and Bucharest previously joined Budapest in demanding that the language laws be revised.
In February, Szijjarto announced that the Council of Europe will review Kiev’s treatment of minorities and issue a report on its alleged discrimination against ethnic Hungarians and Romanians living in Ukraine this summer. He pointed to yet another law adopted in December 2022, which mandated the use of Ukrainian in most aspects of daily and public life, including schools.
Mexican President Says Trump Arrest is About Keeping Him Off the Ballot
Agencia Press South via Getty Images
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 23, 2023
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador slammed the Biden administration for accusing him of corruption while abusing the justice system in America to engage in a political witch hunt against Donald Trump “so that he doesn’t appear on the ballot”.
AMLO made the comments in response to a U.S. government report that accused his an administration of “human rights violations,” a charge which he asserts is a tissue of “lies”.
Over the weekend, Trump said he expects to be arrested in connection with a potential indictment for ‘hush money’ payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
“Right now, former President Trump is declaring that they are going to arrest him,” said AMLO, adding, “If that were the case… it would be so that his name doesn’t appear on the ballot.”
Obrador said he sympathized with Trump because he too had been targeted with “the fabrication of a crime, when they didn’t want me to run.”
“And this is completely anti-democratic… Why not allow the people to decide?” said AMLO.
The president also shot down claims that he was responsible for the mistreatment of journalists by pointing to America’s treatment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, adding that the report criticizing his administration, “should not be taken seriously.”
“Let’s see, human rights? Why don’t you release Assange?” he asked. “If you are talking about journalism and freedom, why are you holding Assange?”
Obrador also said the U.S. had no right to browbeat him about violence given their alleged role in blowing up the Nord Stream oil pipelines.
“If you talk about acts of violence, how is it that an award-winning United States journalist tells us that the United States government sabotaged the Russian-European gas pipeline?” the president stated.
“Why is a cartel, or several cartels, allowed to operate in the United States, freely distributing the fentanyl that does so much harm to young people in that country?” he asked.
AMLO said the U.S. should stop trying to “be the government of the world” when their own behavior is rife with inconsistencies.
Last night, a letter written by Michael Cohen’s attorney said that Cohen acted alone when paying off Stormy Daniels in 2016, with the case against Trump looking increasingly flimsy and more likely to collapse altogether.
Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy
RT | March 23, 2023
Artyom Uss, son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region, Aleksandr Uss, has fled house arrest near the Italian city of Milan, the ANSA news agency has reported.
The Carabinieri – an Italian law enforcement agency that also acts as the military police – is searching for the alleged fugitive, the agency added.
According to ANSA, Uss is believed to have broken his electronic tag before fleeing his home on Wednesday afternoon.
The developments come just days after a court of appeals in Milan approved the 40-year-old’s extradition to America. Uss was detained last October at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on allegations of sanctions evasion and money laundering. The New York district attorney had earlier issued an international arrest warrant for him.
Uss, who had been held under house arrest since his initial detention, denied the allegations and his lawyer had told TASS that they intended to appeal the extradition decision. According to ANSA, Uss was preparing to contest the court’s decision when he disappeared.
The US has claimed that the governor’s son allegedly purchased American military technology before selling it to sanctioned Russian entities. He is also accused of smuggling oil from Venezuela to customers in China and Russia.
In October, a Russian court ordered Uss’s arrest on money laundering charges. Moscow has since demanded that he be extradited to his homeland.
Governor Aleksandr Uss has claimed that the charges against his son are politically motivated. Lawyers for Artyom Uss have also suggested that Washington may want to use him in potential prisoner exchanges with Moscow.
Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles is caught collecting and selling personal data
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | March 21, 2023
Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) has been caught selling drivers’ personal information without their consent and without the option to opt out. Last year alone, the BMV made around $25 million from selling personal information, according to WRTV.
Asked if the BMV sells personal information, a BMV employee said to WRTV: “No. Well, you’re not supposed to. Can’t tell you for sure what they do, but they’re not supposed to!”
Though the employees might not be aware of the practice, an investigation by WRTV found that the Indiana BMV does sell personal information and the practice is legal. The BMV can sell personal information like your name, date of birth, past and current addresses, license plate number, make and model of your vehicle, VIN, date of purchase, license type, and your driver’s record.
In the past decade (2012 to 2022) the BMV made over $237 million from selling drivers’ personal information. It sells the personal information to lawyers, bail bond companies, insurance companies, private investigators, debt collection companies, recovery agents, law enforcement agencies, security guards, auto dealers, tow companies, school corporations, and mobile home parks.
The BMV refused an on-camera interview. However, in an emailed statement, a spokesperson said: “Data is only available to qualified entities who meet the eligibility and use requirements in Indiana Code § 9-14-13-7 or § 9-14-13-8.
“Consumers do not have the option to opt out at this time,” they added.
Asked how the money generated from sale of personal information [is spent], the BMV said: “The revenue generated from sales to qualified entities goes to various accounts within the BMV, most significantly the Tech Fund. The funds support maintenance and ongoing upgrades to infrastructure, databases, and security.”
Biden fails to dismiss censorship collusion lawsuit
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 21, 2023
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) civil rights group has announced that a federal judge has rejected a motion to dismiss a First Amendment lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, where the government is accused of involvement in censorship.
“The Court finds that the complaint alleges significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action, and is unpersuaded by defendants’ arguments to the contrary,” the decision reads.
We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.
The Biden White House thus failed to stop the legal challenge which alleges collusion between the government and Big Tech to suppress information they disapproved of concerning the pandemic and US elections.
The decision not to accept the motion was made in the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana by Judge Terry A. Doughty, a statement from the non-profit said.
The NCLA explained that it represented doctors Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty, as well as Jill Hines, and that the suit lifted the lid on the censorship regime that the organization says a number of federal agencies had put in place.
The number in question is “at least” 11 agencies and sub-agencies (including the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security, DHS), the NCLA said, and backed this claim up by information that came out during the discovery process.
Government officials are accused of participating in a lawless censorship campaign that used a wide variety of tools to get social media companies to toe the line, from collusion and coordination, to coercion.
These serious claims laid out in the lawsuit, which Judge Doughty just allowed to proceed, further allege that the result was the censoring, blacklisting and shadow-banning of the clients represented by the NCLA, as well as other methods of silencing them, such as deliberately downranking their content, throttling, etc.
Explaining the decision to deny the motion to dismiss, the judge said that, based on past censorship, the threat of future censorship is “substantial” – rather than being “illusory or merely speculative.”
The NCLA welcomed the ruling, describing it as an important victory in the battle for free speech in the US, and lauded the district court for recognizing the scale and damage of government-orchestrated censorship.
“The Court has seen through the government’s unrelenting efforts to deny responsibility for using its vast power to silence thousands upon thousands of Americans online, often removing factually true information the government did not like,” commented NCLA’s senior litigation counsel, John J. Vecchione.
The case is now headed to a preliminary injunction hearing set for May 12.
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Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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